> retaining lots of disconnected facts has never really been something I've needed to solve for.

At in regards to Anki usage, the “disconnected facts” seem to be something that only students (high school/college) or people new to Anki do. These people are very much using Anki for a short term goal like passing a test or class. For that use case, “disconnected facts” works just fine.

The people who use Anki (long term) outside of school and outside of 2nd language learning usually have much more connected webs of cards. While the individual cards are usually atomic, they might have a dozen or more cards all attacking a concept from different angles. Also in this usecase it seems just the act of formulating the questions is the biggest part of the learning. The reviewing part is almost secondary.