Not knowing about security or threat modelling, something I've wondered is how much does engaging in privacy protection makes you "stand out". Maybe someone knowledgeable can comment about it. At what point does it make sense to worry that using a vpn "flags you" to an authoritarian government? If government surveillance can tell there are individuals engaging in privacy enhancement, either by reduction of activity on non-private things or by the use of private services themselves, what is left to do?
On reading the title I guessed that it was in the spirit of the paper Will Any Crap We Put into Graphene Increase Its Electrocatalytic Effect?, that is, being somewhat dismissive of (or even mocking) similar research. If it’s not the intention it may be worth it to change the title to avoid that impression.
From the conclusion of said article: “Because doping graphene with cheap bird droppings produces more electrocatalytic materials than many complex multielemental doping procedures, we do not see any justification for such efforts, and we believe that researchers should focus their energy on other research directions.”
Seconded
1While we're at it, I might as well wish for the "flashback: this is not a threat" lecture.
3Images here won't load, but can be seen in the archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20221107200157/https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EEZsTatSoJz4CDvAc/distillation-experiment-chunk-knitting
Not an answer, but there is a beautiful short sci-fi story by Isaac Asimov that touches on this theme called "The last question". I don't know if it is okay to provide a link but it isn't hard to find online.
You might want to link to the post that afaict introduced this? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wB7hdo4LDdhZ7kwJw/we-don-t-trade-with-ants