I feel like that whole concept flew the coop a looong time ago

That’s a very interesting tidbit. Good to know, thanks for sharing!

So out of curiosity, why Mint over, say Debian? Has Debian added telemetry etc as well?

I think you might be right for the simple reason that (based on that same source and my presumption of their names ) all the C* people seem to be American as well.

Please pardon my ignorance on the matter, how does Mullvad compare to Brave?