Great question - but semi related, I really enjoy sim racing despite rarely driving a car in real life (maybe once a fortnight).

The metaverse doesn't appeal to me, or most people, but there's something to be said about jumping in VR and taking a car to a track virtually with a good force feedback wheel, nice load cell pedals and a H-pattern shifter.

Heck I even enjoy euro truck simulator from time to time.

I just keep adding holes to my belt

I've been there, but you can definitely find hobbies that cost nothing.

Hiking/walking/running is free and good for your mental and physical health (although if you dont have appropriate footwear, I'd stick to walking).

Music production is free (if you already own a computer) with free DAWs and free plugins. This is a great way to be creative, learning music theory is also free but not super necessary

Writing is free, this can include fiction, as well as journaling. I enjoy journaling but

Software hacking is free with ghidra and x64dbg, I've been working through crackers, which are pieces of software written specifically to be cracked.

Programming is free and the resources to learn programming are free. If you have no experience python is super easy to jump into.

3D modelling is fun to learn and again, free. Fusion360 will give you a free license for personal use, or there are other free options. I learnt this to 3D custom designs, and your local library probably has a 3D printer to use if you want to go that route.

Your city almost certainly has a free art gallery, I love spending days at the art gallery with headphones listening to beautiful music and looking at beautiful art.

Cooking can be a fun hobby, and although not free, it's money you were hopefully going to spend anyway, it can be fun to find new recipes and try them. And if you plan correctly and buy in bulk, you can save money this way.

Contribute to open street maps, this is free and helps the community.

Of course the more fun hobbies, and more traditional hobbies do cost money, and can get very expensive very quickly so I do understand your frustration, but finding free cheap hobbies was key to getting out of my depression and I urge you to find something, these suggestions may not be right for you but it just shows there are options

I have no idea what I'm gonna do when my LG eventually dies. I went from the v30 to the v40 and now the v50. Not a single phone on the market offers what I want in a phone anymore

It's not hard. It's wasteful and unnecessary. It means you can't charge your phone and listen to music at the same time. There are no advantages to removing the headphone jack

How is buying a dongle you shouldn't need better for the planet than a phone manufacturer providing a headphone jack??? The phone already has a DAC in it, they literally only need to include the actual port

almost everyone I see in public transportation use wireless earbuds. Usually I look like the odd one out for wearing wired earphones.

your sample is incredibly biased, you're taking 1 demographic and assuming everyone acts like that. Go into a recording studio and see how many wireless headphones they use, Go to a concert and see how they are driving their speakers. Just because a lot of consumers use wireless earphones in an environment that doesn't lend itself to good audio (like public transport), doesn't mean most people are using it.

it's not a redundant component at all. USB-C doesn't carry analogue audio. You need an external DAC to convert that digital signal to analogue to make it usable. You can't plug your headphones into a USB-C port.

It's a reference to the movie Don't Look Up. Not sure what EU is.

You think selling something that isn't yours, after you told the owner you would return it, is drama for the sake of drama?

Short for utility vehicle. Basically anything with a cabin, and some sort of bed or tray at the back.

There's a pretty distinct difference between eating eggs, and egg being an ingredient

Not sure what exactly you mean by headset. But headphones and IEMs will use a 3.5mm or 1/4" jack. My sennheisers use it, my beyerdynamics use it, my audio Technicas use it. Even my KZ IEMs and moondrop IEMs use it. This is a universal standard for a reason.

And not sure what the data rate has to do with anything. It's an audio connector, it's not used to transfer data, it's used to move the drivers in a set of headphones. As usb-c doesn't output line level audio, any headset you have that uses it needs its own DAC and amp which is problematic for e-waste reasons.