Franky, I'm a fan of how those advertisements are tied into the site. Not flashy or obstructive, classy, embedded into the tile grid. No garbage tracking scripts loading, no plugins, just a simple colour image (from the same domain!!). If all ads were like that, I'd throw away my uMatrix and Adblock.
I use both in conjunction because AdBlock removes ads while simultaneously fixing the flow of the site, while uMatrix leaves gaps and holes in the site. But I need uMatrix to be safe from XSS (unfortunately, most websites include jQuery from a different domain, what a stupid practice). Also, uMatrix breaks a lot of sites (especially sites using content delivery networks on multiple domains) so if I really want to access the content, I open it in an incognito window and disable uMatrix temporarily on that site (it's tedious to figure out what exact request broke the site. I only do those manual exceptions for my most favourite sites). Like that, the site works but most of the tracking and the ads are still blocked ;)
Yes, it is sad that the state of the internet has degraded so much that this is necessary.
I ran adblock+noscript for many years for the same reason. Thats why I am suprised you would want to deal with two extensions when you could just use umatrix. What "flow" does adblock fix?
Like I said, I have had a similar setup for probably a decade now. So no, I don't think that it is a sad state of affairs that adblock/noscript/umartix are necessary. Did the "state of sexual intercourse" need to degrade to a certain level in order for condoms to be necessary?
No, I don't want the "Collapse placeholder of blocked elements" uMatrix option activated because then, if a website embeds e.g. youtube videos or soundcloud songs I have no visual cue of their existence, whereas, if the option is disabled, I see it greyed out with a link that I can click to watch it in a separate window. I feel like our discussion is at this point a clash of personal preferences and would not like to continue. Have a nice day :)