It's the messianic fake novelty and loathsome invented marketing terminology that I'm objecting to. You can unfussily make notes, using your own emergent organisation exactly like people have done for centuries at least. Tech can add searching and organisational niceties, and it makes sense to use them. Obsidian is good at this (I use it).
Or, alternatively, you can do exactly the same thing and get terribly zealous about it as a grift, or a way to mask the fact that your notes are all about notetaking systems and just add nothing to the sum of human (or even your own) capability.
I'm not arguing against the activity of taking notes, nor working with different representations and arrangements of them to discover what emerges, nor against note-taking software, just all the timewasting blather that goes with it. "Second brain" (probably TM'd somewhere) is by the way only a dull grey businessy echo of Andy Clark's (much more interesting) 'extended mind' theme.
The value of whatever style of note-taking suits your work and personal style has been well understood for centuries. All the productivity piffle has added nothing to it, though it has earned a few bucks from book sales, youtube ads, and merch.
It's decent note-taking software with useful features and a storage medium that's currently in favour. If you have a use for such a thing, it's one of the best options available right now.
But that's all. You can forget all the "second brain"/zettelkasten stuff. It's just marketing gumpf used to build careers prattling about notetaking methods (dressed up as something fancier).
I haven't tried any of the community plugins - if any of them come close to what you want, why not file issues outlining what needs improving? I've only used Obsidian tangentially, but from 10000ft it does look like the app tends to incorporate the best plugin ideas over time, so this route might get what you want into the app eventually.
Emacs org-mode does demonstrate that it is possible to create a usable interface for text-mode tables.
I don't have many subscriptions (most of my software is FOSS, and I don't do media streaming), but the few I have I'm quite happy about. None of them are corporate behemoths, they create quality products that I like to use, as far as I can see from the outside they're decent companies that treat their employees well. I quite enjoy the fact that I can make a small contribution to these products/companies continuing to be sustainable.
And I'm at the extreme end of anti-capitalism. I'd prefer to see everything employee/citizen-owned. But in the world we actually live in today, I see no inherent problem with subscriptions.
There can be contingent problems. I won't, for example, subscribe to any music streaming services because they give musicians an unfair deal. But that's little to do with subscriptions per se.
Or, alternatively, you can do exactly the same thing and get terribly zealous about it as a grift, or a way to mask the fact that your notes are all about notetaking systems and just add nothing to the sum of human (or even your own) capability.
I'm not arguing against the activity of taking notes, nor working with different representations and arrangements of them to discover what emerges, nor against note-taking software, just all the timewasting blather that goes with it. "Second brain" (probably TM'd somewhere) is by the way only a dull grey businessy echo of Andy Clark's (much more interesting) 'extended mind' theme.