I also find that type of animation really annoying, even if it didn’t cause problems due to its high resource demand.

As a rule of thumb, I’d say animations should only be used for short-term things. Eternal animations will make a substantial fraction of people’s devices heat up, have fans speed up, &c. I think it is probably most.

And in the case of this article, animations don’t even fit with the art direction which is otherwise delightful.