The release of Pants 2.8 got covered in InfoQ, including an extended interview with @happy-kitchen-89482 https://www.infoq.com/news/2021/11/pants-build-system-2/ about both Pants and Toolchain.

Urgh, I wish they had been more precise about the Rust/Python part, but ah well

Agreed. Folks, to be clear: we love Python and are committed to it. That hasn't changed.