Did you use a rice cooker? Rice cookers operate by “sensing“ when all the water is boiled off, by means of a temperature sensor that detects when the temp goes above 100°C. (If you have just the right ratio of water in there, this is what you want.)

Having too much water in a rice cooker is indeed terrible for the end result, but only due to the nature of how a rice cooker operates… I’m sure if you treat it like pasta and take it off the pot after 10 minutes or so ( not waiting for the water to boil away) you’d get much better results.

No, cooked on the stove. I'm not even that picky about rice, but I draw the line at sludge.

It's really not that bad, you drain the extra water in a strainer or something, and the residual water that's left mostly gets absorbed into the rice.

Still not the same texture as traditionally cooked rice and my Asian wife doesn't care for the cooked-like-pasta rice herself, but I personally don't find it objectionable when I've had it.

Yes, but about half the arsenic has been transferred to the cooking water, which you can pour down the drain.

So far the arsenic doesn't seem to have any quantifiable negative effects on me, so I'll continue as I've already been for decades. Your concern is appreciated, however.