> For example, random sentences like "The good news is that math doesn’t really care what some Australians or overpaid programmers at Big Tech think."... There's no context for this, [...]

To me this is funny/entertaining w/o taking focus off the topic.

It is the kind of humor you will find in the UK and northern Europe. Dry, and has at least one level of indirection.

I.e. not someone tripping over something and you hear a laughing track dubbed over that – in case you missed that was meant to be funny.

I generally like when a text about a mentally taxing topic is lightly interspersed with such digressions.

Most of my American friends don't grok them and not seldomly react like you – they consider these rants and not funny.