I love the lens effect at the bottom of the viewport and design of the site overall, really cool. Do you have a post about that effect - or is the best way to learn about it in the developer tools?

I’m the opposite end of spectrum. I really disliked the frosted glass look on images as they loaded and left the page before finishing reading due to how off-putting I found it to be.

Too bad it makes the whole thing laggy enough that I didn't get past the first few paragraphs on my phone, and there's no obvious way to disable it

Thank you. You can investigate progressive blur.