Aside: don’t buy into the myth that older cars need more maintenance or cost more to maintain. Its an excellent sales pitch to convince people to keep upgrading but it’s not always reality. Modern cars can easily cost more to repair and maintain than older cars because more technology = more that can break. Car manufacturers have, over time, crammed more and more proprietary parts into cars which they can then charge exorbitant amounts for and force you to use their mechanics rather than your local.

I have both an 25+ year old Toyota that’s still going strong and still only needs basic maintenance (parts are also easily available and cheap). I also have an ‘older’ Nissan Leaf EV that is very little maintenance and has nothing in it that reports back to Nissan. It’s got a nice balance of technology and most things we can maintain or repair ourselves if we want. Parts for this are also easily accessible and cheap.

I also highly recommend people learn more vehicle maintenance themselves (easier of older cars with less tech) so you can either do things yourself and/or you’ve got more knowledge yo protect yourself from mechanics and car dealers who try to scam you by repairing/replacing things that don’t need it.

I switched to GrapheneOS about a year ago. It was a conscious choice and I also wanted to use my phone as a phone. I installed the absolute minimal apps needed to function when out and about. I refuse to use things like Messenger and WhatsApp (I redirect friends and fam to Signal). I also experienced a decrease in phone usage which has been really nice. I feel like I’ve definitely kicked the doomscrolling habit as I don’t feel inclined to pick up my phone all the time and the only time I use Lemmy (Voyager app is the only social media app on my phone) is when I’m in a waiting room.

I really love the freedom that my phone is (mostly) just a phone and I’m not constantly online and constantly available. There’s just this weight lifted of not being constantly aware or hypervigilant about my phone.

If I ever couldn’t use Graphene anymore for whatever reason, I would just go back to using a dumb phone and prepare ahead more.

Is there a particular reason for Zulip vs something like Signal or Jitsi or Matrix? (Also asking for myself because I’ve been looking into Matrix again lately and this is the second time I’ve seen Zulip come up and in relation to VTTs lol)