Agreed. I was going to read to the end, to see if the animation was ever mentioned in the text, but gave up on the article before finding out. The snow definitely factored in to that.

yeah I switched to reader mode directly, but still stopped reading because of the hypocrisy

There is a snowflake icon in the upper right that turns it off and changes the background to yellow, but yes, it does undermine their credibility. Using an actual hamburger icon for a little menu might be some whimsy but also somewhat relies on someone being aware that the standard 3 horizontal bar menu icon is often referred to as a “hamburger menu,” again undermining their argument.