>In fairness it can add up pretty quickly on popular sites.

Aye, if they're only looking at it from a "cookie placement/tracking or nothing" hard-limit perspective, which is what the OC posited it as.

...but if other sites can absorb the costs, case in point: NPR, why is it such a dastardly evil thing to point out? Is there some foolhearted belief that if we cut tracking, tomorrow, the internet would cease to function? Is there absolutely no room for advertisements without cookies/pixels in the modern world...? Do we really believe that it's that expensive to serve webpages?

of course it's not expensive to serve pages. but creating content and services that are worth serving can be pretty expensive.