Some hyperlinks created by users in their posts were having issues, but that got fixed shortly. There were also some issues with hyperlinks on user names I found in one place. One person's profile name would be displayed, but when you clicked on it, it would go to a different person's profile. This only happened once. All these things were rare occurences over the past week.
About the "huge- top part that pauses then squishes itself to normal" -- that happens when either the computer is low on virutal memory or when downstream rates are lagging. So, whether or not this occurs is a function of computer speed and isp speed, atleast that is my understanding.
Also, martialtalk has sometimes been kinda slow at certain times. Don't know if it is my isp or martialtalk itself.