That was really entertaining, thanks for linking it.

I especially liked this bit:

David Johnson famously once said, For any instance {G = (V, E)} that one could fit into the known universe, one would easily prefer {|V |^{70}} to even constant time, if that constant had to be one of Robertson and Seymour’s.

I was curious so I tracked down this:

Johnson estimated that the hidden constant is “somewhat larger” than 2 ⇑ (2 ⇑ (2 ⇑ (h/2)) + 3), where 2 ⇑ t denotes an exponential tower of t 2s (2 ⇑ 0 = 1 and 2 ⇑ t = 2^2⇑(t−1)) and h is the number of vertices in H.