self-hosting matrix is possible, and after I got it set up, it works fine. That said, push notifications were acting up a lot at first (might have been fixed by an update since that hasn’t been an issue in a while), and it is rather annoying to get your desktop and mobile clients set up to not be annoying about not being verified (iOS apps seem more fiddly with verifying than Android apps in my experience)

Despite my annoyances at first, the Element client really is the best and most mature one out there, and I do recommend it. Don’t bother with any of the other ones; despite what the fluffychat settings want you to think, Element is the only client that can do any kind of audio/video calling, and most of the other clients only have web apps, so there’s no hope for getting push notifications on mobile.

Ultimately it has worked for me, but my demands are three humans in a voice call once a week, no screenshare (use Parsec for that), and occasional text messages.

Spacebar looks great, and is exactly what I want, but it doesn’t look close to production ready yet

Yo dawg, I heard you like Windows, so we put Windows in your Windows so you can use Windows while you use Windows

I’ve taken to the term 3rd-wave Trek for the 2010s-present shows to identify the stylistic differences in production compared to shows made in the 80s-90s or 60s.

Each era is molded by the media conventions of it’s time. And there I go reinventing Marshal McLuhan again: “the medium is the message”

If you’re okay with earbuds, Pine64’s PineBuds purportedly have ANC

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Quick search turned this up, but I’m on mobile, so not in a great place to dig into how viable it is. A Reddit post indicated it’s in some sort of alpha/beta stage, but I think it is something you can use today

Edit: Forgot the link like a fool https://positive-intentions.com/