Youtube recommendations used to be an amazing way to find new music. Sometimes you even had a little community of people in the comments going from video to video.

Another casualty of enshittification, I guess.

In Latin America, definitely. But I'm not sure that there have been a wave of left wing governments elsewhere the Global South, unfortunately.

Glad you're feeling better. I got COVID (didn't take a test but pretty sure) for the first time in April. Thankfully it wasn't that bad apart from the worst sore throat I've ever experienced. My fever only lasted a couple days and I was mostly better in a week.

What scared me was that I lost ~90% of my sense of smell for several days. Ironically, I had just started a bit of a perfume habit so I had at least a dozen samples that I could use to "train" my nose.

Now, every so often when I'm smelling a perfume or food or that smell after the rain I remember to be grateful. We really take stuff like that for granted.