corn puffs puffity

Yay, I finally found a brand of plain corn puff snacks again, with no preservatives, and no real nor artificial butter flavor:
Mikesell's Puffcorn Delites

No, Google, no.

My phone is annoying me. I want to disable "OK Google" detection, so that it won't listen for those trigger words; I don't want it potentially recording my voice all the time. But I don't want to completely disable microphone access for Google searches. I would like the microphone to be used *after* I click the microphone icon in the Google search box.

Yet no matter what settings I change, when my home screen is displayed (which has the search box at the top), when I say "OK Google", it still always brings up the "Listening..." screen and will then search on the next thing I say.

I've never even enabled the Google assistant; I wonder if that has something to do with it. Whenever the screens come up where one would enable it, I click to Cancel, as I don't want to give it all the permissions it asks for. It seems like maybe you have to enable the assistant in order to subsequently and effectively disable it? But that doesn't really make sense.

The phone settings screens confuse me. After clicking more than a few items deep into them, I lose track of where I came from. Some of the screens can be accessed more than one way, which adds to the confusion.

Some of the settings I've updated:

Phone Settings - Google - Search, Assistant & Voice - Voice - Voice Match
"Access with Voice Match" is disabled
"While driving" is disabled
Everything else on this page is greyed out/disabled

Google Maps - Settings - Navigation Settings - "Ok Google" detection
"While driving" is disabled

Phone Settings - Apps - (gear icon) Configure apps - Assist & Voice Input
"Assist App" - is set to None.

Phone Settings - Google - Google Account - Data & Personalization - Activity Controls
"Voice & Audio Activity" (and all the other items) are "Paused"

Did you know that you can change the voice used when search results are spoken? This setting is enabled for me, even though I haven't enabled the Assistant:
Phone Settings - Google - Search, Assistant & Voice - Google Assistant / Settings - Preferences - Assistant Voice

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Yesterday, it was Google Maps that annoyed me. While out shopping, I tried to bring up my offline map, but couldn't as it had expired. What's the point of having an offline map, if it expires all the time so that I can't use it!? I only get reminded that it's expiring ahead of time if I go into Maps. Why should I have to re-download it every 3 months? Yes, Google provides them as a free service, so they can make their own rules. But it feels like they are taking away something from me that I downloaded fair and square. I'd be willing to pay a single time fee, to be able to keep my maps downloaded permanently, and to choose when to update them.

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I've been wanting to switch to CyanogenMod or do something which would let me have more control over things like this. Haven't gotten around to it yet. The last thing I did was to unlock my boot loader.

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Something else odd:
Phone Settings - Google - Connected apps
This showed "McClatchy Social Signin" as a connected app. I have no idea what that was for or where it came from, so I disconnected it.
The only other connected app listed on that screen is "Android device".