Just after the Steam machine was announced with specs, and just before hardware prices jumped back in November.
Ryzen 5800X, 32GB, 2TB, RX9600XT (16GB) so above the specs of the OEM machine
It cost me $650 (including some parts that I already had like PSU etc)
It's a nice gaming machine, and a capable desktop PC as well.
It's not a small cube with detachable face plates, but fairly small anyway. I like it.

... is of the kind:
"You should invest a lot of money in OpenAI"
?

Nah. Oxygen++ would turn all of the space computers into Rust. :)

"press F1 to continue"

Arch/XFCE with Steam (flatpak) plays 100% of my 500+ game library (many of which are "Windows-only") without any issues.
Also, many non-Steam games (especially the more modern titles) play without issues using system wine.

A 16" laptop screen located 1.5ft from my eyes (in my lap) appears subjectively approximately 3 times larger than a 59" TV located on the wall, 10ft away.

Why do you think it's normal for one to think they have to open an application that they never intend to use?

You know what's better than OneDrive on Linux? It's called "NAS". A spare, low-power computer with Linux and ZFS, and also OpenSSH. Combined with a cheap domain name (few bucks every couple of years) it allows me to access my files through sftp and rsync from anywhere in the world. And with sftp integration in Thunar, I can access them as if they were on a local drive from any of my machines. No headaches. And all my personal files are located on my own physical hardware.

(oh yeah, works just as well in case I want to access them from a Windows machine which does come up occasionally - only without the file manager integration and I have to use a proper sftp client).

DDR3 was actually extremely cheap about 2-3 years ago. I managed to get 64GB of ECC DDR3 for about $25. Server memory, yes - which is exactly what I needed. Haven't looked at prices lately.

DDR4 is not unaffected.
I recently had to purchase some DDR4 (recently = a week ago). The price I paid, after searching for deals, was approximately 30% higher than what I had paid for equivalent memory in August.

Define "respiration". If your definition includes something along the lines of "perform gas exchange with the environment" - then there are many organisms alive that don't do that.

... the idea of putting that contraption into a phone. :)

Same in Arch and derivatives.

If you want Steam support out-of-the-box, your bext bet is Ubuntu or one of the derivatives thereof (Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc).
But realistically, Steam runs fine on basically any modern distribution. Even if not supported by the distribution's own package repo, you can also install it e.g. via flatpak. I personally use a distribution related to Arch, which does not support Steam as-is. But I have flatpak installed, and Steam from Flathub using flatpak. It works perfectly.

Science? Really? There's a lot of soft-brained, unscientific and technophilic pseudo-religion in the article.

Let's work with the argument's load-bearing phrase, "exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit."

There are so many things to criticise in that single statement of bias. Suffice it to say there's a good case to be made that "provincial domesticity and tribalism are prevalent inherited traits in humans", without emotional appeals to a "spirit" not in evidence.