How about OP does anyway? Bash as a scripting language is fucking great!
Since when is simplicity an argument against writing programs? Whether scripts or frameworks? "Hard to read" is not neccessarily an inherent trait[1] of the language, and more likely wrong on some PEBKAC level.
I have a customised environment at near 10k lines of bash in 5 projects, all of it in the correct tool for the job, aka a proper scripting language, so I can suggest another use for your thumb :-)
I implemented it in Python (while reading from that LISP version, a Java version, and Melanie Mitchell's "Analogy-Making as Perception"): https://github.com/jalanb/co.py.cat
Because "The custom and practice of the web has always been that publicly accessible pages are served without payment"
The publishers are not offering content subject to a fee (which I am not paying). They are offering content for free, and also offering ads for free.
Accepting one of their free offers, and rejecting another of their free offers is not the same thing as "just consume ... without paying"
Some news sites do offer their content subject to a fee, and if they were interesting enough then I would pay that fee. But, because none of those sites (that I have encountered) are worth it, in comparision with the freely-served pages of the net, I choose not to pay those sites, and forego their content.
But if they are not explicitly charging a fee, then we fall back to the default custom and practice, which is that they offer content for free, and ads for free, and I have the right to accept as many, or few, of those offers as I like.