Wow, that is very disappointing. I had started using startpage as a Google alternative. While it still may be preferable to Google specifically, their mail product is definitely out.
My current favorite music player on PC is Quod Libet. It gives a bit of the old FB2K vibe with how its music selection works as well as all the plugins. I use it on Linux, but I know they have a Windows version as well.
Some instances have their own political leanings that can affect content and moderation. The "Tankies" referred to in the previous post tend to be Russia/China supportive anti-capitalist posters. Not everyone on those instances leans that way (I don't), but some instances don't federate with those three, especially lemmygrad and hexbears, because of it. You can also individually block instances if you personally don't want to see their stuff. On the whole, you probably don't need to worry about it, but if it becomes annoying you have the option.
DeSantis specifically stated that it was to get rid of "woke indoctrination in schools" when he enacted a very similar program in Florida. So, while you are correct that most veteran employment programs used to be about that, the recent teacher one is more about the shitty right wing politics.
In high school, I used to look for the most offensive bumper stickers possible. My favorite was from a band I liked that said "Genitorturers sodomized my honor student". Let's just say that parents of other kids did not like it.
I knew someone in school that had a CD-i and I was excited to try out the Zelda game... I made a terrible mistake as did the people that made it. It's probably still a cool collector's item, but man it was bad.
How long have you had it? I was looking at that phone, but the one star reviews (there were many), scared me off.
More than anything I just want a newer/supported version of what I am still using, the Pixel 4a. It's about as big as I want a phone to get, has been rock solid for over four years, and it supports GrapheneOS (or did before they cut support).
I used Openbox directly without a DE for a number of years on my netbook. It was perfectly serviceable for that use case, but I don't think I'd have been as happy with it for my main workstation or personal desktop.
I'm not personally interested because of the lack of headphone jack, but I have always thought their marketing was going to have an up hill battle because of the name and I saw this quote in the article "Nothing is made better by its community" and it made me laugh.
I heard it spoken first as well, but I ended up seeing it in text form not long after. I think it would have been more confusing if that hadn't been the era of internet companies thinking they were clever if they dropped a letter (usually a vowel).
Other than customization, which honestly will always be cumbersome, it sounds like your issues are with the key caps, switches, and layout. I suspect you will get used to the lay out, but I have no patience for switches or caps I don't like. Normally, I'd say that you should just swap out the key caps and/or switches and most of the problems you mention go away, but the Q1 has a far less common layout so that makes replacing the key caps more of an issue. I am not a fan of the stock caps on the Keychron either and I'd have already had replacement caps lines up if I bought one.
In the end, the Q1 is expensive enough that if you are not liking it, I'd return it and get something else. There is no way I'd personally go for a "regular keyboard" (by which I assume you mean a cheap rubber dome keyboard), but I'd probably get one that had a more standard layout and maybe something a little smaller since you are used to using a laptop.
Oh, I remember ed! He's the talking horse from that old black and white show, right?