Of these 5 criticisms of contemporary theory, all of them except dark matter seem to stem from a suspicion about the eventual result through the lens of beauty,

Of these 5 criticisms of contemporary theory, all of them except dark matter seem to stem from a suspicion about the eventual result through the lens of beauty, unification, etc. I don't think it is really justified to label it this way. We know that quantum field theory is not the correct final theory because it breaks down at short lengths and high energies. It is in some sense most likely even the completely wrong way for looking at the problem. Quantum field theories are mathematical tools to deal with many particle systems and they have some nice properties like making locality manifest, they however also force things onto us that are non-physical or hard to work with, for example gauge symmetries and virtual particles. So even if there were no four different forces that could maybe be unified into one, there would still be a lot of issues with quantum field theory. However, the dark matter problem stands out as one where measurements do not line up with theory, and seems more of a classic example of how we've typically "turned the crank" on making progress in the past. It is of course true that dark matter is in a certain sense a more tangible problem, but on the other hand there is the problem that there are so many different suggested resolutions. Astronomical and cosmological observations may be the way to go for modified gravity or small black holes, particle detector experiments may be the way for weakly interacting massive particles, and each other resolution requires probably its own set of experiments. So that problem seems not so much that nobody is investing the effort but that we are not really sure where to look and for what. And in case of things like weakly interacting massive particles we somewhat come back to extending the standard model because such extensions may better inform us where to look.