I don't think it's fair to say the author's reasoning is terrible. A blogpost is always written for some specific audience, and in this case it looks like the blog post was targeted at programmers generally, not C++ experts. I agree that constructs like std::some_container<T*> are almost never the optimal solution. And yes, with RAII locks can be freed in the destructor, which rules out a class of mistakes.
The main things to take away from the blogpost were, I think, the concept of intrusive lists, to think about what objects look like in memory, and how you can construct code so that an object can be part of multiple containers and can remove itself from all of them when it's destroyed. Those are certainly concepts worth talking about, and so I think the blogpost was pretty great.
The main things to take away from the blogpost were, I think, the concept of intrusive lists, to think about what objects look like in memory, and how you can construct code so that an object can be part of multiple containers and can remove itself from all of them when it's destroyed. Those are certainly concepts worth talking about, and so I think the blogpost was pretty great.