Actually, it's interesting reading an article with just text and nothing else. It kind of makes me want a text-based browser mode that works on modern sites.
Now if only we could directly open articles in text mode, and save ourselves the pain of loading (or at least rendering) all the crap first. Like a right-click menu option next to the "Open in new tab/window/private tab" options
As far as I can tell, the Firefox reader mode algorithm needs the entire page loaded in order to figure out what part of the page is actual content. It's necessary because nowadays you can't tell from the HTML alone.
I guess that makes sense, but even then: loading is not the same as rendering to screen. I don't know which of the two is the bigger drain on resources in mobile, but it can still help.
Redirects to www.seuhistory.com for me (brazilian version of the History Channel's site). This site is terrible. I tried to read another article from US (i assume) version and it is impossible. It redirects to your localized site (where there are different articles and posts) and doesn't let you choose.
(I'm not even in the Netherlands, and my browser doesn't ask for Dutch via Accept-Language.)