I write a tech blog on Gemini ( https://geminiprotocol.net/) , and read other people’s blogs from the Antenna aggregator on that network . IRC is still quite active for some topics, again on the tech theme libera.chat is the place to go now.

Same answer as last time this was asked, I am very happy with Posteo.

Sorry for the delay, but the answer was long enough that I turned it into a blog post instead. Feel free to try it out.

Gnus in Emacs, configured to use autocrypt.

Posteo. Happy with them. For client, gnus in Emacs. Have it configured to do Autocrypt too, but almost nobody else on the planet does 🙁

Seriously, I find Gemini useful, even keep a blog on it.

archive.org is great for borrowing old books, that you probably can’t get your hands on otherwise. Just need a bit of research following references to find titles to search for.