Begamitholy McMierda! I think @Mrfunkedude figured out why browsers slow to a crawl. it's not the instance, per se, rather how mastodon is coded.
it seems that if you stop the federated stream, toots start building up above the toot you're reading. if you leave the timeline at the toot that caught your eye, new toots piling up above start to chew up memory.
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