As per my understanding, this particular block was done without ANY fee on the attacking transaction itself. Which means that the miner in question was probably in on doing this for some purpose on behalf of someone. Like some weird statement that it can be done and then use it for some narrative.

Usually users need to bid to get into the block. If the NFT degens wants to spam the timechain with their JPGs, usually they will have to pay the fees to get into the block. The total size of the block is not affected so the file size of the node is not impacted. But it could potentially crowd out transactions.

But there is another argument that ordinals could actually incentivise to fill non-filled blocks.

I actually believe its mainly a nuisance

that will make transactions more expensive at times but it won't disrupt the incentives, and novelty will fade away soon. I dont think its a sustainable attack vector as long as they have to bid to get into the block.