>Why can't we just have a minimal place to just publish our thoughts, without having to use a static site generator or setup a Wordpress/Ghost instance?

Because if this gets even remotely successful (actually used by people) you'd need a way to pay for costs at minimum. So you either get people to pay (hard sell given the "free" competitors) or monetize by other means -> bloat

Self host (open source) and you're probably worse off than just using a static site generator.

Not trying to flame your effort here, just that there is a really fundamental reason for why we can't have nice things. This model only works... if it doesn't work (doesn't get popular, doesn't actually get used by people)