That‘s how it is in Germany. You can only get laid off without a negotiated severance package, when the employer is in financial trouble. Even then you need start laying people off the employer needs to do it according to the social contract (e.g. single mothers last). Both is really hard to proof (in court) so usually everyone gets a severance package anyway.
This means when you hear about big layoffs in Germany usually all of them get a severance package or agree to something else. These layoffs are not comparable to the USA.
This is the shortened and positive descriptions of the process, but of course there are also (justifiable) downsides of doing it this way.
I don‘t think it is a binary situation: Complete self sustainability vs. full dependence on large corporations. Rather it is a spectrum and everyone feels comfortable somewhere else on it. Also I don‘t think the ends really exist, as someone else will always have power over you (you can‘t reasonably maintain everything yourself) and you can always migrate/quit from a service.
Over time your position might change. For me personally I think Tailscale is a great service and for someone just starting out I would definitely recommend it. I think a lot frustration can be avoided when you don‘t set your self-hosting goals to high at the beginning. You can always update your setup later on.
My opinion: Figuring monetization out while keeping most of your audience happy will be the most important step to be a viable alternative to YouTube. Big YouTubers like LinusTechTips, Corridor Digital or something like Nebula already have their own service, because it is worth it to have fewer people pay more. Sadly everyone of them develops their own solution which are not interoperable. Are you in the talks with anyone to migrate to PeerTube backend? I think this would be such a gamechanger.
I cannot judge the merit of the paper itself, but Climate Healers seem to be a vegan focused non-profit. So they could be arguing against animal agriculture for other reasons than climate change. Which can be valid reasons as well.
I don't know about the specifics of the ban described in the description and I am glad that you try to offer an alternative to the established communities. The more the merrier.
I wonder if Lenovo gets a revenue share when they sell a game on the device. This could also explain the $100 price difference as the they are counting on the additional income. Are there any leaks / rumors on this?
In Germany the current government had the idea (but never follow through on it) to allow a married couple to form a new last name based on their last names. Funnily enough the article mentions that this meshing of names is already possible and getting more popular in the USA and Great Britain.
I believe this is something to be aware of and if this is something you don't want use GOG instead. But in reality as long as Steam exists you will be able to download and play your games. If Steam ceases to exists then you will not be able to download them, but there will be ways to still play them, if you previously downloaded them. It is not like "owning" movies on Amazon (or just recently on the Playstation Store), where you always need to stream the movies.
Keep calm and contact support. They are responsive, nice and will help you. I had a very similar thing, if not exactly the same. They gave me instructions, some of them I already read online, some of them not. It felt hopeless and it went back and forth multiple time until it suddenly worked again. They really know their stuff. In the end it was something with the base OS version.
I would definitely recommend to try it out right now. I‘ve never encountered any bugs and it is very polished overall. I think the only things that are unfinished are some story campaign scenarios, but there are enough in different difficulties to keep you busy for quite some time.
Everyone who played and loved "The Settler 2" should give this a try. It has even more depth and removed a lot of the quirks like managing the stationing of trained soldiers.
I‘ve actually when something like this will happen. A few years ago German energy providers and distributors needed to split, because it gives you an unfair advantage if you own both. Whole companies were split in two. People working for years together would no longer work together. In the end consumer were much better off after the split. I feel the same way with internet browser. It is unfair if you own the infrastructure (Chrome, energy grid) and the services that run on it (YouTube, power plants).
Some examples
Come to Germany and see for yourself :)