TBH I've struggled to get through long-form writing - and this isn't even that long - for years, mostly because they're so full of filler. A compelling headline, but every time it starts to get close to an answer to the compelling headline, it diverts into telling the backstory of one of the people in it. Loads of filler. AI just seems to make it cheaper or faster to generate filler.
Agreed. Lots of recent (last 10-20 years, say) non-fiction is annoyingly flabby.