So my understanding with this new info is that LK99 is quite likely to be ‘something’, right? That something certainly does not have to be a superconductor, or anything even remotely impactful.

But am I understanding it correctly that the explanations of pure fraud or ‘cat walked on keyboard during original measurements’ can be mostly ruled out?

Germany (social.bund.de) and the EU (social.network.europa.eu) already have it. I think it’s very likely that other governments, especially european ones, will start to do this.

With the internet being so dominated by american voices, I dont think a lot of people have fully appreciated the sentiment change in the higher levels of european governments. Sovereign control over their digital spaces is something that is actually mattering on the level of nation states. Its a way of thinking that is kind of new to most people, as we rarely think about the sovereign powers of nation states, and even less so in the context of the internet. But now were starting to do that again, and it actually matters.