It is just for the harness. Using a Mac Mini gives you direct access to Apple services, but also means you can use AppleScript / Apple Events for automation. Being able to run a real (as in not-headless) browser unlocks a bunch of things which otherwise be blocked.
I didn’t create this, but on the surface it looks like a reasonable median between “Superpowers”[1] and “Gas Town”[2]. Posting as I don’t see any discussion on it here yet.
Your logic seems to be “he doesn’t look like a fitness influencer, therefore he’s not fit and healthy”, and I’m not sure that stacks up. Maybe his goals are not the same as yours, and you shouldn’t conflate them?
Good for them, and good for everyone else here who's happy about the switch to remote working. That said: I think I'd almost rather quit than "work from home" indefinitely.
For me I'm not "working from home", I'm "living at the office". I deeply resent that my work has taken over a part of my home. For the record: I love my job. I also really miss working from the same physical space as my colleagues. Meetings which I used to enjoy are now awkward and draining. Lastly: I even miss my commute home in the evening (not so much my morning commute, to be fair). It used to give my 30 minutes in which to decompress and switch my brain out of work mode.
There's another Sanderson Cosmere book called Warbreaker which crosses over with Stormlight pretty heavily from book 2 onwards (it's also very possibly there are references in book 1 which totally passed me by). You'll definitely have a better handle on why a particular object which shows up in the Stormlight books is so scary if you read Warbreaker first.
Book 4 of Stormlight does have some pretty big references to the original Mistborn trilogy, too.
On the whole I try to read books in the order I bought them (ish), but Sanderson is one of the authors I'll just drop everything for when a new book comes out. Disclaimer: he does have some bad habits (mainly inserting "wise ass" characters who don't fit the tone or setting, and who I strongly suspect carry the author's voice a little _too_ directly). But he does epic world building incredibly well, and very different to just about any other author I've read. He also writes action exceptionally well.
The engineering lab I did my PhD in (the Ocean System's Lab at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh) fit this description.
One example: Myself and two colleagues took two weeks out of our studies to build an autonomous boat after we realised there was enough spare parts lying around the lab to do so. The idea originally came up over beers with the lab supervisor. I think he bet us £10 we couldn't do it in that amount of time.
I'm sure it varies a lot between labs and Universities, but it measures up to my experience.