Certainly agree that I’ve never asked or been asked about this before!
My original thing, though, was that it couldn’t be used interchangeably for fractions or percentages, but could for whole numbers. So your example with 50% clearly doesn’t work, but 3 times more and 3 times as much could more easily mean the same thing.
I can absolutely see where you and that article are coming from, but it takes me so much more brainpower to reach that conclusion, whereas it intuitively feels like they should mean the same thing. And maybe that is because the two are used interchangeably in everyday speak so I’ve never had to think about the difference.
That only works if X is a fraction or percentage though? Because 3 times more and 3 times as much do mean the same thing.
It really is incredibly how much global influence both the US and UK have pissed away over the last decade or so.
I’m not sure ‘but they hit me first’ is quite the justification for annexation you think it is.
I’d hazard that the absences can be pretty easily explained by the episodes of excessive drinking.