wtf is #ao3 doing with cache control headers & blocking polite download scripts?

The site UI is garbage, obviously people will use #fanficfare to read in something better.
Web 2.0 was a mistake. Ao3 & other tag-based index searching should be protocol-based with pointers to distributed p2p storage.
I'm considering just attempting to scrape the entirety of some tags that vaguely interest me to build my own search-engine & content archive.

This nonsense infuriates me.
The caching can be addressed with webRequest.onHeadersReceived but a heavy memory-inefficient wasteful browser shouldn't be necessary in the first place.