Hmm, I thought it wafnt fo bad, myfelf

oh my god, you're right, they just used an f, no wonder I found it so bad! That is really annoying. Enraging even.

The text doesn't use an `f`. If you copy from e.g. the 1700 passage you get `ſ` not `f`.

Probably people are confused by ligatures. Indeed it is a long S.

This is correct. And if you don't like that font's long-s, you can fix it with

document.body.style.fontFamily = "Baskerville";

Baskerville has a nice long-s. TNR is also not bad. Garamond is passable.

I should have noticed, it has a full cross bar, I guess it's my fading eyesight and also the white text of green is perhaps not the best contrast.

It doesn't have such a bar in the article e.g. "swifter" https://imgur.com/a/XwsoVgB