I clicked on the SDMB link in the OP of this thread, and received a warning:
This Connection Is Not Private
The website may be impersonating “boards.straightdope.com” to steal your personal or financial information. You should close this page.
Clicking on ‘Show details’, it says the certificate is issued to *.cloudfront[dot]net, that it expires 17 December, 2017, and This certificate is not valid (host name mismatch). Organisation (under Details) is amazon[dot]com.
Could this be an effect of turning Flash Player on? Or is it something else?