Just like the author, I don't have time to learn the ins and outs of new "local optima" technologies all the time. I want a static site generator that "just works". So yes, give me a Wordpress-style GUI for creating a blog, then "compile" it to a static site, then deploy.

Seems like all the static site generators have lots of directory structure conventions and hoops to jump through for simple things like pagination and dates.

And at this point we are really talking about what fits naturally in our own hands. I use a documentation tool (mkdocs) for my blog, but that's because like GP, I prefer working in git+vim.

I don't think git plus a text editor counts as a local optimum…

Well, git might on a time scale of decades. But I sincerely doubt we're going to see anything better in the text editor space than emacs and vi for the remainder of my professional career.