This may be a good alternative to the various web-based services... The email-style user interface is also familiar, and you can set up filters to ignore or star certain stories.

I usually remove at least the Snap versions of Firefox and Thunderbird and replace them with binaries from Mozilla - they will still self-update.

I tried to use Thunderbird as my email client but I kept defaulting to webmail.

Use Thunderbird Firefox. This feels like it s truly my own device in a way that s rare these days.

Yes, that is the sort of concepts and implementation I am talking about (and had hoped perhaps to move Thunderbird towards).

The alternative way seams to be to merge the filter into the search bar And moving the search bar somewhere sensical. Yes, this is the way I imagine what would work for the most, including me.

It is a thing that can be entirely automated and both Thunderbird and NeoMutt are able to ha[ndle it]... I can't believe we haven't normalized this in the nerdy spaces.

I switched away from Thunderbird to Outlook TWO FULL DECADES AGO, and in that time they have never once given me a possibility to switch back.