> scary rebase -i commands that can leave your tree in a half-broken state if you so much as sneeze

Complete bullshit. Might as well say "scary screwdriver that can turn up in your recturm if you so much as sneeze". Sure, I believe that might have happened to you (heard stories from friends that work in the emergency room), but I run rebase -i 10 times during the time I work on each branch (literally: I don't even care to write "proper" commit messages while writing the code, will reorganize and clean them up later anyway), and it never happened to me.