So, they curate more, but it's with a small select group of their own friends? Could it be to make sure those rewards are getting to their community so they have it to spend, specifically? That looks like a calculated effort to extract to me.

This data specifically includes vote diversity. Venezuelans are the highest scoring there. Ie. they are the ones who spread out votes among hundreds of different accounts - that's not vote sharing.

Just looking at power downs is only part of the story. Especially after the haircut rule triggers, we receive earnings in liquid Hive and HBD when the haircut isn't in effect that doesn't need to be powered up in the first place. This means many of your figures are quite low from the reality. The truth is those numbers could be double the figure you cite.

I don't see how that adds up. The post goes into both power downs and HBD disposal. Rewards in liquid Hive is a rare event on the Hive chain and mostly outside of the time periods analysed.