In the days when dictionaries were not yet omnipresent, I heeded complaints about the breadth of my lexicon. Now, when the meaning of every word in the world is nigh instantaneously knowable from every Internet-connected device including the one you used to fuss about "farrago", I no longer worry about it. Congratulations! You learned a new word today.
I think the point is that the 3rd paragraph is one sentence with 35 semicolons. Generally, a sentence should hold one or two ideas, but this one is a mixture of a lot of ideas. Hence, one might call it a farrago.
Personally, I think I'm OK with this use, as it's supposed to be a kind of list after the colon. Isn't the proper use of semicolons somewhat subjective, anyways?
Done to this awful extent, it's not just a stylistic choice but a UX error. Human brains optimized for reading initially recognize words and phrases based in part on their shape, and orthographic conventions like initial majuscules and bullet lists evolved to facilitate that recognition in support of legibility.
Abusing semicolons in this way is, in the most strictly pedantic sense, not syntactically incorrect inasmuch as a semicolon joins independent clauses. But that's like saying you can use a flathead screwdriver in place of a cold chisel. Sure, if you hammer on it hard enough for long enough, you can eventually muddle through, as long as you don't mind making an unserviceable mess of the work. But it's still the wrong tool - just as are thirty-five semicolons here.
Syntactically permissible or not, this usage is nonetheless an error, not because it is stylistically grotesque - although it is also that - but because it actively impairs legibility rather than promoting it.
I know what that word means, but only because it appeared in Asimov's "The Stars, Like Dust", which I finished two days ago. I didn't know what it meant, and had to look it up.
