This doesn't seem to work very well in economies where housing isn't constantly appreciating like crazy (I'm not from the US)...

Anecdotal, but a year ago we lost the whole RAID array in a rented Hetzner server to some hardware failure.

In a way, I think it doesn't matter what you use as long as you diversify enough (and have lots of backups), as everything can fail, and often the probability of failure doesn't even matter that much as any failure can be one too many.

A few years (I'm a slow learner), but it was worth it because of the sheer amount of Japanese content that I consume.

I can visualize an apple, somewhat vaguely, but I've never been able to hold a stable mental picture of anything for longer that a split-second. It just blinks out of existence the moment I "see" it, which makes it rather dysfunctional...

Not at all the case with sounds though, I can play back some of the music tracks I listened a lot to, flawed of course but still recognizable. My brain even starts doing it on its own at night, not letting me fall asleep.

Imagination is weird.