ironically, explaining that "we need a simpler API" takes a dense 69-page technical missive that would make the Kronos Vulkan tutorial blush.

It's actually not that low-level! It doesn't really get into hardware specifics that much (other than showing what's possible across different HW) or stuff like what's optimal where.

And it's quite a bit simpler than what we have in the "modern" GPU APIs atm.

I don't understand why you think this is ironic