I Think I May Have Found the Solution to Wordpress's Bloated, Janky "Updates"

 ClassicPress is "a community-led open source content management system and a fork of WordPress 4.9.x ..."

Tag line: Stable. "Lightweight. Instantly Familiar."

I'm using it for a new site I'm working on, and so far it's like Wordpress before Wordpress turned to shit. So I'm hopeful.