The crossword ran on election day. The clue for the big across line was something like "headline tomorrow" and the crossing clues worked equally well to match "CLINTON ELECTED" and "BOBDOLE ELECTED". For example the first crossing was "Halloween animal" (CAT/BAT) and so on.

Would your quality of life browsing the web not be infinitely better if you just span up a VM and sat behind a vpn on it?

Um, no. No, I don't think so.

Just running uBlock Origin, the pictures did not load for me either.

I imagine that website is doing something that I wouldn't approve of.