Pretty compelling arguments.

I do think that the ML / CS / etc. community is actually more open than other academic fields, and so this is definitely the right subfield to start in. Putting open access preprints online is not common practice in all disciplines, although it really should be.

I wonder if it makes sense for Distill to also publish on fields outside of pure ML - e.g. as applied to specific problems in other domains. I work in materials informatics, and I suspect that research in such fields (ML + applied sciences) might benefit quite a bit from having key results 'distilled' in this format.