You can develop an intuition for anything when you spend 2+ years looking at only that thing.

You're probably right, but some things come easier than others. I'm less confident in my knowledge about the basics of mechanics of continuous media than general relativity, and the former is actually somewhat related to my specialization.

I think doing research in grad school is one of the most stable jobs out there.

It remains to be seen. I'd like it to be true, but different countries, education systems etc. For sure, I'll write some "this is how PhD in Poland looks like" post in the future, but right now I only know things second-hand.

Regarding that article:

I can usually at least appreciate most of Hossenfelder's complaints (mathematical beauty != promising physics), but this particular piece is truly terrible. "Two women working in tandem won't give birth to a child in four months" is an almost too perfect rebuttal to those time calculations she brought up.

As far as 'mathematically well-defined problems' go, all I can do is to kinda smirk at that idea and ask how she defines well-defined problems. Seriously, where's the cutoff? What's the verdict on Navier-Stokes? Are ill-posed problems OK? What about ill-posed problems where unique solutions are only ensured by the arbitrary choice of norm? 'No' to any one of those means that fluid dynamics and phase transitions aren't physics. 'Yes' to either one of those opens the gates to all kinds of ST.

I could go on.

/rant, agreement otherwise.