Point to me a devout Buddhist who is somehow toxic. or one who has ever existed.
How about this? Literally toxic.
I'm vaguely aware of what it was, but don't see how it would ever relate to mine or really anyone's enjoyment of video games.
Well... Since you asked (sorta): a large part about it is related to the lack of any sort of integrity among games journalists. This impacts your enjoyment of games by influencing what games you hear about and play, and which games make money and thus which developers make further games. It also influences developers in a slightly more subtle way - aspects of really popular games will work their way into other games as developers play them and possibly enjoy those parts, or possibly just think that including those parts will make them more money.
disappointed they didn't influence Obama
This is missing the intent. The prize was given to Obama, not to influence him but to influence the people around him. It was basically an endorsement of his campaign promises, a statement: "People elsewhere in the world like what this guy is saying, or at least it's a big improvement. You, as a country, could stand to move in this direction."
Maybe they underestimated just how partisan politics are here, but instead of encouraging people to support Obama's stated goals (e.g.: closing Guantanamo - a big campaign promise) it just caused them to deride the prize and, to some extent, the opinions of the rest of the world. Just look at how people talk about the UN. China went the same way: for many years they talked about how they were being slighted because no Chinese person in China had ever won a Nobel prize. Then when Liu Xiaobo won it in 2010 they turned against the prize altogether, dismissing it as unimportant.
customers choose graphics card first, then a screen that works with that card
I don't think that's true, a monitor will outlast a video card by years and years. The difference between G-sync and Adaptive Sync is that if people start buying monitors with Adaptive Sync Nvidia will start supporting them. Everybody wins. (except Nvidia's bean counters)
we got screwed by the government forcing them on us
Like most complaints about the government that I see on Slashdot, this never happened. They set energy efficiency standards for lightbulbs, that's it. Some companies decided to meet those requirements with CFLs, some with LEDs, some with high efficiency incandescents.
Also, CFLs aren't new, they've been around for decades. This wasn't a matter of needing further development time, this was a matter of poor quality. Probably not the conspiracy that the article is speculating about, but who knows.
No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.