Not taking issue with the overall point of the post - this is icky. Buuut, this: >More generally, it's bad because it deceives readers into thinking this is an

Not taking issue with the overall point of the post - this is icky. Buuut, this: >More generally, it's bad because it deceives readers into thinking this is an organic link. This is a huge stretch. Somewhere on the order of 0% of the average blog readers would ever see the type of link used, let alone understand that “oh, that totally shoulda been a no-follow”. Those aren’t for readers- they’re for robots.