Part of this is sites like Facebook intentionally subverting proper click and drag behavior with photos, links, etc. It's incredibly annoying, and we should be shaming sites that do it.

Safari is following in the iTunes and Preview in the "what's wrong with this once pretty decent piece of software??" thing

Among web devs Safari is considered "the new IE" (which among web devs is probably the lowest insult)

TL;DR avoid Safari. It's rubbish.

I can't personally justify using chrome over safari on my macbook though, I don't last the entire day with chrome but do with safari. Any other alternatives?

I also can't stand the lack of plugin support on Safari. Is uBlock origin or similar available on that platform yet?

There are adblocking plugins available now, yes. Though last time I checked uBlock Origin wasn't one of them, unfortunately.

uBlock is available for Safari, but uBlock Origin is not.