Yup. Tailscale+Mullvad isn't a bad option, but I'd rather not depend on tailscale and a true local connection will always be better.
But then you have to pay through tailscale and then more identifiable.
As I mentioned I have a server, and I use a VPN to connect always to it. This makes using a paid VPN a bit harder. The dedicated VPN IP should fix this issue but I haven't looked into how difficult that'd be.
Agreed. I used NextDNS to get started. Its absolutely amazing for that.
After that I wanted more, so have gone the Pi-Hole+VPN route and am not going back.
That's a good idea.
Probably just a shell script. Someone mentioned using curl so that'd be pretty easy