Having `assert` calls without a message string isn't very helpful when debugging, and it turns out that it's easy enough to make use of ESLint to enforce better `assert` call-sites.
In a couple of cases the `assert` calls were changed to "regular" throwing of errors instead, since that seemed more appropriate.
Please find additional details about the ESLint rule at https://eslint.org/docs/rules/no-restricted-syntax
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