with a lot of graphics. Even if they are small graphics, Linux will do a much better job at loading the content. FireFox's default max request thread count setting is designed for people that have slower internet connections. Have you tried the same post with the "View All" under Internet Explorer 11? The network stack on Linux is far more optimal than any Windows workstation will ever be. Not knocking Windows here, but it is designed to work on most hardware by people that do not want to pull back the curtain and fiddle with all the knobs and levers. Whereas, Linux is designed for people that see nothing wrong with buying a shiny new car and before getting it home, they paint it a different color and modify the engine and suspension.
The second time you load the thread (F5), the page should come up lightning fast because all the graphic content is cached locally. If it is still slow, open your developer tools (F11) and watch the Network request/response timings. One of the main requests will show a pause in the response. If it is the initial GET request for the HTML content, you are seeing the same issue I am. I ran my tests against the "My Posts" page where there would be no additional/changing graphical content. This way there was a single request and a single response.
If Skinner wants to deny that there is any network issues or database contention going on, well, I guess that is his right. There have been enough people complaining about this over the past year to warrant some investigation. If they don't want to monitor performance properly, well it's their business and their choice. I would love to hear his or ELad's explanation as to why the servers receive a request and, sometimes, pause for 30 seconds or more before the first byte of the response is delivered back to the client. The timings are dreadfully sporadic (milliseconds to minutes) and worse when there is heavy loading on the servers. The issue I am seeing occurs on Windows and Linux, and with multiple browsers. Most requests are fast to respond, but every 10th to 20th request takes for ever. It is faster to re-request the page than to wait on the original response. It cannot be a client threading issue because it is a single request. Heck, I can reproduce the issue using cURL or PowerShell - which would take the browser argument out of the equation. But if they say there isn't an issue, we will just have to accept that as their final answer.