[mcbits]

A solid 3,000-word article with enough CSS to make the page look nice will fit comfortably in 20-30KB gzipped. A Raspberry Pi could handle on the order of tens of requests per second (tens of thousands per hour).

A fluffy 500-word Medium-style article with 1-2MB of JavaScript serving no apparent purpose and 5-10MB of animated GIFs would be another story.

[user5994461]

A realistic static site will have multiple css, a logo, potential images in the headers/footers/sides, links to the other top read articles with icons, pictures/schemas/drawing/photos in the content.

That sets any stupid article at a 500kB bar.

I have no doubt that a HN engineer can publish a single .txt file and force gzip-9 compression, however that's not an acceptable blog by any standard.