the one obvious caveat is the reduction in nuance; I wonder if part of the polarization and strawmanning we've seen in the past decades is partly due to this constraint.

I wouldn't say it's superior in general. Threads are different from highlights. There is a reason why they evolved, and I'd say it's not purely because of limitation. I like to think of them as paragraphs. And when sharing media, it's almost like a slideshow. Threads are useful imho and different from blog posts. It goes without saying that I'm a fan of highlighter (understatement of the century). In case one of the onlookers doesn't know, I wrote this blog post a while ago:

dergigi.com

Purple Text, Orange Highlights - How nostr can benefit readers and writers. | dergigi.com

Using nostr as a base layer to create, consume, and monetize long-form content.