Outside of the US, stuff is at least not as bleak. It’s a bit harder to destroy things that have been established for so long. Like in New Orleans, things had been established for a long time and it took a natural disaster (Katrina) to destroy the independent venues. But there are no protections against late stage capitalism in the US. Often, taxes alone will destroy independent venues. And yeah, I don’t have any hope in the US government doing anything to help. It would sooner call all music a form of terrorism and make it illegal.

Do you live outside of the United States or something? Or just not go to concerts? Live Nation owns almost all of the small venues too. They’ve bought nearly everything out, and the few remaining independent venues are on life support. And if you’re a local band, good luck. 20 years ago, venues would pay you to play. But now you have to pay them like $200 just for the privilege of playing at a small venue with a 350 person capacity. In my city less than 20 years ago, I remember being able to walk downtown in the music district on any day of the week, and there would be over a dozen venues right next to each other all playing something different. It could be a Tuesday night. Music was everywhere, and tickets were $6-20. But there was also tons of free stuff. But after the venues all got bought out, that all stopped. There’s not enough big money in music 7 days every week. A lot of venues now only have shows as little as twice a month. And then they’ll want to charge $70+.

Why shouldn’t we be outraged? Music culture is being destroyed. Your “stop going to shows” solution isn’t a solution. Nobody is going to concerts several times in a week anymore. What there once was has been destroyed. Live Nation needs to die.

Don’t forget about Peruvian food with G - literally some of the best food on the planet. Since the contest began in 2012, Peru has won World’s Leading Culinary Destination in the World Travel Awards every single year except for one. But a lot of people have no idea that the cuisine even exists. G also has a lot of fusion foods such as Vietcajun and Chifa.

But if you’re vegetarian, D is the obvious choice.

As a Texan, I’d fully support our state becoming part of a newly created Southwest Territories that is governed by Canada.

The first half of the 2000s was a lot better for Linux gaming than the second half. That time period after game companies stopped releasing anything for Linux but before Wine became realistically usable was very dark.