> (The use of such cottagecore terminology for a process that requires being an ongoing client of a hundred-gigabuck, planet-burning megacorporation rubs me in many wrong ways.)

I hadn't noticed this - great point. To be fair the "home cooked meal" metaphor comes from 2020, predating genAI coding[1]. But even then, CPUs themselves are so normalised that we just kind of... forget how vertiginously complex the entire supply chain is.

[1] https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

At least with personal computers and your own programming skills, you could live off-grid and hack, and be kinda cottagecore, like Paul Lutus or those 100rabbits people. But if you depend on plugging yourself into the sloppotron to do anything, that's many things but self-sufficient isn't one. And self-hosted sloppotrons aren't there yet and require technical skills to set up besides.