Give it a few years.

I use sway in tabbed monocle mode, i.e. no windows at all, just one thing at a time like on mobile. Never going back to mousey Windowsy 1980s-style computing.

Tiling window manager plus a terminal.

Hmm, say what? No, it looks GREAT.

to open PDFs

mupdf

for selecting the text and stuff

This is what is slowing things down.

In 20 years of using Linux my partition scheme has always been to say yes to whatever the OS suggests.

Luigi Mangione.

ITT: lots of generic VPN advice by people who have no experience with the specific problem.

Surely as a career scientist you could find the rigor to spellcheck a 5-word post title.

Yes, it was called Pidgin. But things become more complex when you add E2E encryption. The ideal destination is a single agreed protocol, just like one exists for things like telephones, the web, and email.

Seems this is the standard response in animals in times of stress and penury, and humans are no exception. The challenge is to find a way to surmount it. Tough times coming.

But possibly not better than 1855, unironically.

Messengers are the archetypal example of software that has to deal with the network effect. IMO we don’t have the luxury of trying and using lots of FOSS messengers and never picking a winner. At some point there has to be only one left if we want anyone to use it.

The frontrunner candidate is Matrix.

Hard truth: In democracy you get the politicians you deserve. It’s right in the name. If you don’t feel represented, it’s not their fault, it’s yours. The politicians are only there because you and your fellow citizens put them there. Rhetoric of “them and us” is irrelevant because they are you. It’s the “self” in “self-government”.

Sure, this won’t be popular. Lots of excuses will be offered as to why voters are responsible for nothing and this alien blob of “politicians” is to blame for everything. It’s always easier to avoid responsibility, and what simpler a target than politicians? But alas the logic is watertight.

Symmetrically alternative recipe that I recently heard (from a French academic): “hopeful pessimism”. The idea being, roughly, that while it’s delusional to be optimistic, hopefulness is by definition subjective and therefore valid. And indeed quite sensible given that we can never know the future and therefore it really might turn out to be better than expected.

Surely that’s the point of OP’s question.

That’s certainly an oddly optimistic take in this neighborhood.

Unless you mean space exploration, which I personally think is a delusional distraction.

Leaving aside the unfortunate denouement here, I’m always just so impressed with how far ahead of the world the USA was in the 1930s. This bridge had an 853m main span, the Golden Gate’s was 1.2km! The Hoover Dam. The Empire State - a 400m skyscraper built in a single year the best part of a century ago. Mind blowingly impressive.

This is the most solid solution IMO. I use Linphone on desktop with a Twilio phone number over SIP.

It works. Not that I get to try it often: I consider phone calls a barbaric relic of the past and get by fine without them. I use the number to receive 2FA SMS mostly.

That’s not what I advised at all.

Lots of self-important, irrational, hand-wavy responses to this question as usual.

Assuming you are the only user (sounds like it) and you secure your client device properly, then no, there is no reason not to do what you propose. Go ahead and do it, you’ll save yourself lots of redundant typing and clicking.

Others here can keep performing their security theater to ward off the evil spirits.