A couple notes:

First, renormalizarion was hand-wavy when it was first introduced, but it has since been made mathematically rigorous. Additionally, renormalization is a mathematical process to make a theory self-consistent. If you consider it an odd idea because it is physically nonsense, I would caution against forming a physical intuition from any given accurate mathematical model. Especially with fundamental quantum mechanics—there’s a reason why there are several interpretations of QM and have been for a century.

Second, and arguably more importantly: this ScienceDaily article is extremely misleading. The original paper (linked by OP in another comment) says

This is a scenario where the inflaton does not exist, and thus opens up the possibility to provide a picture of inflation that is model independent

So the paper does rid itself of the inflaton field, which is, as you said, a bit of a hand-wave. Crucially, however, it does not abandon inflation—in fact, it explains those “for no reason”s that you mentioned.

Angling the holster so that it’s already pointing at the target when it clears the waist

It’s clearly not, though?

I don’t think this is ai. Just filtered weirdly

4-Chan is a self-hate group. It’s full of people using slurs to refer to themselves, so I’m not sure you can really call this a non-cruel context

Dopamine does a lot of things. It does not cross the blood-brain barrier.

So taking this would be all side effects and no benefits