Yep. Turning off JavaScript on Android makes the site load extremely fast. I downloaded the chrome beta and keep Java off for this site. I then use normal chrome for everything else. Don't get all the features, but you can read and respond just fine.
It always seemed that the redesign was VERY javascript heavy, and that it might have been contributing to the issues on mobile. Chrome has a very good javascript engine, but if something is implemented poorly you'll see the performance hit on mobile moreso than on on the desktop.
I've wondered about this but never tried it, assuming that the site would be inoperable without javascript. Also, javascript is such a big part of the modern web, it's a shame to disable it.
Also, you can't blame it on "Flash ads" just because it works better on Apple -- flash isn't supported on Android browsers either. Video-based ads could still be an issue, but I'm fairly confident it isn't Flash.
Back to the javascript thing, the ad systems rely heavily on javascript to load content, so if javascript is blocked I wonder if that's simply a red herring since the ads aren't being loaded, or if that's the real root cause -- that the javascript just needs to be cleaned up.
