This is what I do anyways because I am too impatient to watch through 15 minutes of blah blah to reach the end and hear, "in my next video I'll actually show you how to dobthe thing that you came here to see."
Give me a decent web page with searchable text and a few pictures (if needed) and I'll be happy.
I ran my small HOA for 1 term and people came at me, bitched about stuff and I got them to come to a meeting where the other homeowners could express their concerns about the proposal and we'd come to an agreement and write up a change. It was no big deal. We even negotiated group rates for shared services and made it so that the costs of the HOA were offset by the savings from the services.
On the other side of the coin, when I left my position to give somebody else a turn at the process I largely automated, they ran it into the ground and bankrupted it while chasing a personal grievance against the city.
Somehow, the HOA attracts power hungry nobodies but they can be voted out if you're willing to work at it. Also, talk to your neighbors. My guess is that there are others who would back your proposal.
I used to struggle to get to sleep and hated those who could do it anywhere. They'd say, "just clear your mind", which wasn't helpful. It could be other things, but I figured out that my mind was always busy, sometimes from stress, sometimes from excitement. For me, it's extreme focus. Often, I'll put my mind to work on a complicated problem I'm having at work or home. If I have nothing, my go to is to see how far I can get calculating the binary digits (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64...) or the Fibonacci sequence in my head. I don't get very far and I'm out.
I worked through college doing landscaping for new construction in the Midwest. I don't know about all the rest of the stuff here, but we spent most of our work to put a 2' plastic barrier all around the house. In some situations we'd put in a French drain around the house, too. Later on, I figured out that we needed to cover the gap from the backfill so that the water would at least start it's journey moving away from the house. We'd also mound up the dirt next to the house because it would settle.
I see the new cheap "nationwide" builders now will sod right up to the house and in talking with the homeowners, they all have an active sump and worry about finishing off the basement for that one time that the sump doesn't keep up.
I read somewhere that the thought that you can vote with your dollars makes you feel good and empowered to make choices, but is overshadowed by the fact that doing so means that whomever has more dollars has more votes.
Regarding Congress, I was really hoping that this big fear of TicTok would result in some sort of GDPR type laws which empower the individuals to take control of our personal data, which could also be used to prevent our personal data from being used against us by foreign countries.
I came here to say the thing that you said in better words. I'm on a diet for health reasons that closely resembles the vegan diet, so to keep it simple, I'll say to people that I'm vegan. Most wait staff don't care if I ask if a menu item can be made vegan, but family or people I'm dining with will either send hate vibes or go into a long thing about some distant vegan relative who died from malnutrition.