Reminded me of [750 words](https://750words.com/). I have some brief experience on writing 750 words everyday for a couple of weeks, then gave up (just like my other blogging attempts, unfortunately). It seems overall beneficial, but hard to keep on doing.
I agree that this whole thing could end up being good for people stuck in the current system. Personally, US immigration path has become so much less reasonable comparing to Canada's. Hostility is the word I'd describe the system in US.
On another topic, the American PhD's quote doesn't make sense without context. Why "mediocre" scientists are the issue for scientific "competition"? The proportion of top people is always low, scientist or not. It's the system's fault that the whole scientific process becomes a "competition" in my opinion.