Interesting points. Forums are clearly not good replacements for mailing lists. They might be a good complementary to mailing lists but both have very different affordances.

I agree with this so much. It's another one of those I feel I could have written. I have a hard time thinking I could use the current crop of "inference as a service" while they carry so many ethical issues.

There's a lot of this. Learning different languages to get out of your habits definitely brings compound benefits.