I rarely click on links when I see the source as medium.com. The quality of content there feels too much like blogspot back in the day.

Same. Quality issues aside, the experience of trying to read content on mediums miserable.

Their insistence on taking up an outsized proportion of screen real estate for a header and footer promoting medium.com is beyond obnoxious.

A platform for consuming content should not distract the reader from concentrating that content.

Also if I like a blog I'll bookmark it and check back. I do not need to sign up to "never miss a story from _____."

Yep, nailed it. For those of us who still read despite all that, here's the browser extension you've been looking for (Make Medium Readable Again): https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA