I run noscript in Firefox for casual browsing and reading. I don't do it out of paranoia. I do it because most sites load much faster. The number of external scripts loaded on media sites is usually the bottleneck, with 20+ not uncommon.
Why do all links on medium point inwards?
Arguments made by those who don't know better are:
1. To track clicks on outbound links
2. To preserve "pagerank" or some such think.
Neither of these are strong arguments since you can track outbound clicks with G.Analytics or any other analytics service worth using, and outbound links have about zero impact on pagerank of the linking page.
What reason could possibly be so great that you choose to break the web for it?
"break the web" is a little melodramatic though.