Underrated the meta that changed my mind [v4]

There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019. Mostly thinking out loud — feel free to push back hard. Mostly thinking out loud — feel free to push back hard.

Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not. The trade-offs here are not obvious to me and I keep flip-flopping. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right.