I'd honestly love to see someone measure temp drop of metal vs plastic V60s. Although metal conducts heat more easily (i.e. it "takes" heat from the water more easily), it's thermal capacity is lower than plastic, glass, and ceramic. In my mind, preheating the metal should be less of a concern because it takes less energy to bring the metal up to temp. This is all theoretical though. Maybe I'll meet someone with a plastic V60 one day and ask to borrow it for this exact test.
Seems like you answered your own question. Arch is not for people who want something that works out of box. If you want a GUI, suspend on lid close, sleep on idle, etc. by default, don't do Arch. You have to be prepared to debug issues, configure lower level OS features, and read a lot through the wiki and web searches of you are going to use Arch.
Can you tell me more about Koji Alchemy? I do a lot of Japanese cooking, and I enjoy fermentation, pickling, sourdough, etc. This book sounds like it's be up my alley.
I also heard that store bought koji is generally subpar in quality. What does this book have to say about that?
That really depends on your definition of "sane defaults." Even a lot of the computer science professionals I work with wouldn't consider Arch Linux defaults as sane. I picture sane defaults to include a lot more basic functionality that Arch doesn't have out of box (automatic suspend, desktop environment, lock screen, etc.).
I use Arch for the exact same reason you do though. Once you get past the tedious stuff like setting up your networking stack, setting up idle suspend, etc. it's nice to choose whatever WM/DE you want and customize it how you want.
I'd honestly love to see someone measure temp drop of metal vs plastic V60s. Although metal conducts heat more easily (i.e. it "takes" heat from the water more easily), it's thermal capacity is lower than plastic, glass, and ceramic. In my mind, preheating the metal should be less of a concern because it takes less energy to bring the metal up to temp. This is all theoretical though. Maybe I'll meet someone with a plastic V60 one day and ask to borrow it for this exact test.