Oh for real. I was thinking of some of those things too. It can be very confusing, especially when they start talking about less concrete things like how much time a person has spent reading stories on Medium and such... wait, how exactly does that change the rate? How much does a person have to read for the rate to change? It's all just clear as mud.

Interesting that you've done some math to highlight the issue... I read another article just yesterday where someone had done this as well and it was just as baffling. Math isn't my thing so I'm glad you broke it down like this.