snowdriftissue

Generally speaking people who need mental health help are going to be more easily discouraged by a negative interaction than the general population even if they can afford therapy in the first place. In the US at least there's also a shortage of therapists, meaning you might have to wait a long time to see anyone at all. And in my experience there are a lot more bad therapists than good ones (though assholes of this level are probably rare).

Honestly if it were me I'd just save myself the trouble, read a book on CBT and get some antidepressants. But that doesn't work for everyone.

Yeah this sounds pretty believable to me there's a lot of shitty therapists

porting the google number requires a phone plan w carrier; but i only use prepaid accounts between multiple carriers that change roughly every 6 to 12 months or so, depending on the price and whether or not they'll support the unlock phones that i buy online. also: my current carrier will not accept a google voice number per their technical support people.

Why not just switch to another VoIP provider like jmp.chat then?

and those companies rely on some sort of multi factor authentication and my experiences with forwarding teaches me that the forwarding doesn't always go through in a timely enough manner.

I guess. I've never had any issue personally

gmail allows you to forward all your emails to another inbox (https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10957?hl=en) and you can just port your number out of google voice (https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1065667?hl=en)

I assume you're "voting with your wallet" which imo is not an effective or worthwhile endeavor. What manufacturer is so much better than Google that they're actually worth going with over a Pixel with Graphene? The only one that I can think of is maybe Fairphone, but it only works in Europe and the extra cost would likely be better spent towards a donation to a project like GrapheneOS than a mediocre device that is neither private nor secure nor degoogled.

my primary reasoning for an android alternative is to get out of google's walled garden

You don't even need an alternative OS to get out of Google's walled garden. You can and probably should start doing that before you move to an entirely new OS.

Well that sucks

ALL of the internationally branded phones i've had (mostly chinese) had compatability quirks with my aftermarket jvc head unit.

I would suspect GrapheneOS would be more likely to work than these, but you could always ask on the forum if anyone has any experience

there was also something wrong with them and some esoteric policy at the places i purchased them from wouldn't let me get a refund

Ebay has very good buyer protections - arguably too good, making things hard for small sellers. Virtually impossible to not get a refund within eBay's 30 day return period.

do you have any information on movement with any oems & graphene?

They've confirmed it's happening but likely not until later this year or 2027

eos looks the most likely to me

Don't use eos if mobile security matters at all to you. It's also not nearly as private as GrapheneOS and frequently phones home to Google.

ig, you could just buy used though or wait for their own device to be released via the upcoming OEM partnership. I wouldn't be surprised if pixels are sold at a loss or break even point anyway, supplemented by surveillance capitalism and google play store revenue.

Unfortunately I don't know of any brands that sell non-IoT dry food feeders that have RFID/microchip recognition. My kitties are geriatric and require different prescription foods. Fortunately I bought a model that doesn't have mic/camera, they're on an isolated network, and I have network wide ad/tracker blocking. But I'd be open to alternatives if you know of any.

TBH I don't remember if it was wired or wireless but my understanding is that GrapheneOS's implementation is essentially the same as what is included on stock android for Pixels, so both wired and wireless work (https://grapheneos.org/usage#android-auto).

I used it with a stock system so not aftermarket. Do you have any specific reason to believe aftermarket systems wouldn't work? If they support android auto you should be fine.