I don't see any actual temper lost here.

In one case he points out that someone is making commits that have messed up a file's indentation, and to stop doing that because it's messing things up (they were).

In the other case he points out that rust's default format rules are wrong (in the context of version control readability, they are) and asks someone to fix them.

I was thinking the same thing about a video I just watched covering Linus ranting to someone who asked a question on the mailing list about big endian support on risc5.

Basically some guy asked in a single sentence if there was a chance for support and Linus and everyone else wrote essays about how dumb it would be, and I'm wondering why bother reporting on such a niche and completely arbitrary tirade about experimental CPU architecture.

That said it did include Linus writing a long list of similar examples of hardware choices that he finds offensive that was entertaining, and that's probably why people report every time he rants about stuff; he puts a lot of effort into his opinions and it give people a lot to chew on if they are interested in those topics.

Can we not?

You mean, "stop using nice and spicy original content made by a popular person, to create high ROI articles"?
In this world when you could have an article when <insert movie-actor/singer name here> sneezes in front of the camera, why would someone not capitalise on someone putting years of past experience and thought into writing an essay?