"You're free to want sites to work..."
How do you define "work"?
My definition of not working would be failure to receive a 200 response and some useful content.
The text of every recipe on this site is viewable without Javascript. In my experience, this is the case with most websites today.
I know the Javascript on website must do something to enhance the plain text of the recipe. Javascript is a cool language and I respect the creativity of web developers.
By not using Javascript I may have to forgo the "user experience" the developer has prepared for users, however I still get the text of the recipe. For me, that is enough. In other words, the website "works".