If you subscribe to [email protected] , you'll get emails. No JS required there.

(With Javascript disabled, that page still renders, so I'm not sure why it doesn't show for you.)

It might depend on how the Javascript is being blocked. I use uBlock Origin advanced mode to selectively block Javascript (I imagine uMatrix is similar), and always have to whitelist discourse's CDN.

The difference is probably that selective blockers like uBlock/uMatrix don't show <noscript> elements, while globaly disabling Javascript does, and discourse might be relying on the noscript element (on mobile right now, so I can't check to be sure).

Possibly, yeah; I went to about:config to disable it and triple check before I made my comment. Maybe it interacts differently with various plugins.