Not being able to run Signal on my Android tablet feels really inconvenient. That would be no. 1 on my wish list

The middle ground (IMO) is local news that's actionable. For me that means reading up on community meetings in my district, events involving local representatives, proposed zoning or street design changes, small-scale infrastructure projects, funding for schools and libraries, etc.

Ultimately these are things that will affect your quality of life much more directly than anything involving national politics, or whatever irrelevant topic cable news anchors want you to get whipped into a frenzy about.

Kitty, but most commands are probably happening in eshell. Feels more easily scriptable to me

I use Fedora Silverblue personally (feels rock-solid and borderline impossible to mess up), but you might want to get more familiar with the basics before getting into immutable distros. I'd echo what everyone else is saying and do Linux Mint first

Also insanely unhealthy to consume stuff like this on a day-to-day basis

Just mpv for me. Simplest and most versatile option

The Pixel Tablet can run GrapheneOS, which is the best stock Android alternative IMO

The US has a pretty severe urban / rural divide in most of its states, but I don't think it's enough. You'd usually need a pretty clean split along territorial lines for that.

Minus the sandboxing and security improvements, apparently

Basic functions like web browsing are borderline unusable on the OG pinephone, unfortunately. Still a fun device to hack away at, but I wouldn't use it as a phone

Linux phones for me. Really impressed by how these things have come in the last 3-4 years, and now we're getting close to having at least one that's usable day-to-day (with plenty of rough edges, obviously). As soon as that happens I hope more people will decide to take the plunge and really start pushing things forward.

I got one for $200 last year and think it was worth it. Don't think I'd ever really spend more than that on a gaming device