see attached image, but basically having the images on the right side makes it so hard to "read" a post with an image, going back and forth with your eyes to "get" the whole post. So much easier to just put the images between the up-/downvote buttons and the text post.
I don't know if there's a reason for that besides looking different from similar sites. If so, I don't think this is the way, it really puts a strain on your eyes and our brain is not used to absorb information in this way.
The layout of the cards themselves are done with CSS templates, so it should be enough easy to bind their layout to an option (image on the left/right, similar to how you have show/hide compact mode)
I've got a feeling the layouts will be optimized over time, it's only the first few weeks since the Reddit migration.
I'm still working on getting kbin locally but I've posted a thread before showing some sample UI updates.