I seem to have a panel on the left that is obscuring about half of the text. I'm sure that can't be the intention - is it yet another case of incredibly poor design?

There appears to be no way to dismiss it, and it doesn't move. In short, I can't read the article, because someone wanted to be clever.

Added in edit: It becomes visible if I reduce my text size, rendering the text visible, but difficult to read. Interesting trade-off.