One of my earliest experiences with systemd's binary log files was on an embedded system I had ~~chrooted~~ systemd-nspawned into, and every time I tried to get the log output it would segfault (some issue with qemu-static probably). Very frustrating experience.
Really feels like "Embrace, extend, extinguish" but the thing they're extinguishing is unix-as-a-programming-environemnt.