Luke, I think you often come across as defensive. I think it is difficult to avoid since you write a lot and thus put yourself out there for people to criticize and people do often comment in an aggressive fashion, but I think you should be aware of it anyway. I think avoiding seeming defensive would be useful to you because seeming defensive seems to make discussions more adversarial.

The phrase that gives me that impression here is

So now your objection is to my tone? You've reached DH2 on the disagreement heirarchy. I'll take another look at my tone, but it's not much of a disagreement if we're disagreeing about tone.

I am a neutral observer of this conversation; I've only read the last two comments.