When I get a blank page I just click on the NoScript button and start whitelisting the safer-looking domains until the page finally loads.

How often do you actually interact with those sites? If it's almost never, I suggest giving NoScript a try, most sites are readable with it on. Obviously, you'd need to whitelist any utility sites you use, like email, but that list is likely small and doesn't change very often.

I browse on mobile with JS disabled and most news sites still work.

Happens frequently to me with uMatrix. Then you look at the list. You know the usual suspects like jQuery, google ajax, bootstrap, Akamai etc. fairly fast.

On other sites you look at what they want to include and you just think "yeah, no, let's not do that" and just close the page.

> i wouldn't be surprised if more and more sites start to require mandatory js to view their content.

Which is all the justification you need to block it.