lwn consistently renders almost completely wrong

Yes, LWN's table layout renders the same everywhere. But no, that's a bug and not a feature. LWN's nesting of tables disables the adaptive column splitting algorithm of my stylesheet, essentially forcing my UA to render LWN articles the same way your UA renders them for you. OK, I can reverse the colors and jerk the font size up or down. But that's about it.

What use is having a license to modify any of multiple competing UAs if sites send them nothing but scrambled text illegible unless flowed according to algorithms defined more by legacy than anything else.

Even configuring a maximum width of paragraphs is risky. Web browsers have long been stagnant, not for a lack of libre implementations of standards but for a lack of site compliance with said standards. And yes, LWN, I'm looking at you.