Disclaimer, I work for Canonical and worked with the VLC devs on the snap.

The snap of VLC is nearer 190MB, not 700MB for data-transfer and on-disk size comparisons. All snaps are loop-mounted squashfs files. What you are "du"ing is the mounted read-only files. The actual snap file is in `/var/lib/snapd/snaps/` and on my system is 189MB. The snap contains not only VLC but a bunch of libraries of course. However the bulk of the space (300MB uncompressed) is taken up by VLC plugins which make the snap a great out of the box experience of many users, whatever their use case.

Sure we need to optimise startup time, and that work is ongoing. We could certainly trim the snap down a bit, and I will be looking at that when I'm back from vacation.

http://www.thelinuxlink.net/ has a comprehensive list.

That isn't as clear a picture as the image you found would indicate. Research found by that search show the hot spot tracks for the Yellowstone WY and Newberry OR calderas appear to trace back to a common unexplained origin around the Owhyee Plateau on the OR/NV border.

Also note that even the meanest volcano can't produce enough pressure to cause shatter cones in rocks. If the pros confirm them, it would mean the only possible causes are an impact or a nuke.