Yea but having a hybrid doesn't just take care of that 1.3%, it tremendously helps those that are blind [1], the huge smear with different versions of JS, those that come in on mobile with JS enabled and then flick it off because your site broke for their random configuration of screen size and mobile browser, etc.
Finally, that's the UK. Students in India trying to learn about space may not have the internet speeds we're used to, and might browse with JS disabled because that's the literally the only way they can afford to without blowing data caps.
Anyway, you'll never catch me doing it unless I'm testing my own site, but it's definitely forward-thinking and kinda polite to have SOME sort of fallback for people without JS enabled.
Nobody is asking any miraculous things. Merely a dump of article contents without any formatting effort on webdesigner's part would do. Us "nojs vegans" aren't picky. Don't even need pictures, just the meat (I'm sure a pun of some sort could be made here) of the page.
I don't think that's unreasonable, given that the meat here is just plain text, something that web has been capable of delivering years before your javascript crutch became widely available.
A hybrid approach is best, especially when this article is literally text and some photos.