Louis DeJoy, the U.S. Postmaster General who was installed by Trump in May 2020, spent the months prior to the November elections undermining voting by mail and sabotaging the Postal Service. There were multiple lawsuits about it.
Exactly. It has reached critical mass to a point where if you're not on it, you're basically not communicating.
Also, I remember that cross-carrier calling was an issue, which is why most people would need to use dual-SIM phones. Not sure if it's the same for SMS.
As far as I know, SMS in India and Brazil is not free. This means that for majority of users switching to a data-based app is not so much as a choice, but a necessity. In the US texting via SMS has been free for several decades, so there's no reason for people to look for an alternative.
But also, 99% of the population is not technical enough to download such apps and use them. They will only use the default apps that came with their phone, whatever outdated protocol they happen to be utilizing. Why else do you think Facebook, for example, pays manufacturers to preload their crapware on new handsets? And even more to make it as difficult to remove as possible.
This would not be a problem, but Apple purposefully and maliciously degrades the messaging experience by compressing the shit out of any MMS sent to (or received from) non-apple devices. Even non-multimedia stuff like group chats or reactions are being broken. On purpose. To piss you off just enough to maybe consider switching to their closed proprietary ecosystem.
It may not work on you and me, but you'd be surprised how effective it is on young impressionable teens who are under extreme peer pressure by their stupid "friends" who are shallow enough to care about the chat bubble colors. My 16 y/o son was quite happy with his Pixel 5a, but was literally bullied into switching to an iphone. He spent a decent chunk of his summer job's earnings to buy a used 12 mini and a replacement battery for it. Now he can't sideload apps, or rearrange his home screen, or a myriad of other things that he's gotten used to on Android, but at least his bubbles are the "right" color.
digiKam - https://digikam.org - FOSS for tagging metadata to the images, such as date/time stamps, etc.
Takes ~2 minutes for a single scan, depending on the quality settings. I usually scan in all the prints from the same session or date, then batch tag them with the date, organize them into albums, and finally upload to Google Photos and Moments (self-hosted on Synology DS409+).
I'm about halfway through my shelf of physical photo albums. I've been doing that on and off for about 6 months now, averaging maybe one album per week. I could go much faster, but it's quite tedious, and I get bored quickly.
Videography and photography. Was always making short vacation collages using GoPros. Then 2 years ago finally bought a real mirrorless camera and a couple of half-decent lenses.
Also, fishkeeping. Have a 20-gallon tank right now, and prepping a 125-gallon replacement.
Daddy Bezos needs another rocket.