If memory serves me correctly, I think Chomsky did a similar analysis of American print media in the 00s and arrived at similar findings. We've just got ours some twenty years later.
Looks like the article was edited since this comment
No reference to Mercury retrograde anywhere to be seen
Or, is there some other article mentioning it?
Been a few years since using Emacs extensively. From memory, IRC is a good fit for what you are after for texts and some emojis. No clue regarding multimedia messages.
If IRC is acceptable
Make your own channel on say, Libera chat, set your own rules for how long those messages are retained. Make a user for each of your devices. You are set. I've used ERC a few years under Emacs. Also used GNUS for reading and writing emails from the big providers.
OpenSUSE newcomer here, from decades of Debian and Debian derived systems.
I vote Debian with Xfce4 for the base system with Nix or Guix to let the kids freely install and play with software as required without requiring root. Stable release should be good. Testing release if time and resources to keep up with the updates are at hand.
Along with teaching the kids computers and software, please also consider teaching them how the Debian packagers, maintainers, developers, testers, admins, etc work and might never meet others in the project whilst releasing a great system every couple of years.
Around the same time just have a think did a deeper dive on the idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcSnwW5v3f8 . In the spirit of protecting the environment, it would be good to accommodate birds, wildlife etc in the thought process.
Like you said, looks like a combination of resources, financing, political will and, the technology itself seem to have come together to bring us here.
Does anyone know anything about vertical axis wind turbines? I see a lonely VAWT on the rooftop of the building across the street from ABC on Harris Street Ultimo. Could neatly complement rooftop solar panels.
I think looking into
man chattr
is a good option for this