The specific distro doesn't really matter. What matters is package choice (being able to do the few things you listed with the apps you would like to use). I guess if you're among the Debian evangelists you probably value stability more than any other consideration. Just pick some server distro or Debian again.

Setting up an app in docker is the easiest option, even more than just simply installing the binary?

Legality has nothing to do with morality. People who think this are cop apologists and are probably the type to just follow orders in a fascist society.

Historians are not going to be looking back at them very nicely.

While I understand the anger at the residential system I wouldn't go and burn the buildings down. My mom is a residential school survivor and I'm sure it was a significant factor that affected that side of my family in various (negative) ways. I still wouldn't go and burn down the church.

Big deal, just self host in a VPS if you're willing to pay $$$.

Don't make the mistake though of self hosting (Dendrite) as it will just choke, in my case it was a single user instance subscribed to only a handful of channels but apparently that was too much for my server to load messages in any manner that would be considered quick.

I've self hosted several services at once on there but apparently Matrix is just too heavy too handle compared to other things.

I might just import these over to my server.

Not sure I've ever run into anyone who seems to have put so much thought into this. Good stuff.

Even if your security oriented it seems many frown upon any self hosting whatsoever.

I got a small team in school to all adopt my self hosted Matrix as a chat solution for a project we were working on throughout the year. It was great. Everyone jumped back to Discord after we graduated though.

Droughts in the west are going to end up causing mass migrations once all the water is finally gone, and the extreme heat in the east makes me think if anything people are going to be leaving the USA, probably in our lifetimes.

At what baseline should contributors be writing articles or edits? Like 10th grade reading level?

I always hear people appreciate brevity and clarity, but that seems a pretty tough task for certain subjects like the aforementioned math ones.