There are readers who like to read and there are readers who read primarily to get to the information that interests them. The former like long pieces because they give them the opportunity to do more of the thing theylike, reading. So if there is an antagonistic relation, it is between readers who like to read and readers who want to find the information quickly.
However, I don't think there's such an antagonism. For every long, literary-style piece that conveys some kind of technical or historical etc information that may be interesting in the latter kind of reader, who just wants the facts, there are another 10 sources that give just the facts.
For example, when it comes to Ms Shilling's Orifice, you can find the same information on wikipedia in much shorter form:
Beatrice Shilling OBE PhD MSc CEng (8 March 1909 – 18 November 1990)[1] was a British aeronautical engineer and amateur racing driver. During the Second World War, she designed and developed "Miss Shilling's orifice" to restrict fuel flow to the carburettor of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines in the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire fighters. Previously the pilots had experienced a loss of power or even complete engine cut-out during combat manoeuvres, posing a potentially lethal disadvantage in the Battle of Britain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Shilling
Note also that the damniniteresting.com piece is sub-titled with:
Long-Form/Podcast: How a female engineer defied all norms to save England in the Second World War.
Written by James Holloway • 09 October 2020
Long-form should give a hint about what is to come. I believe such descriptors in articles (which I've seen many times, as e.g. in The Guardian's "The Long Read" etc) are there exactly to match the right readers to the right pieces.