We are starting to integrate with a Content Delivery Network. This should speed-up page loading and your experience with the site, and reduce the load on our discourse server.
As of now, all images before today are configured to the CDN. New images after now will be are served locally. JS, themes, and avatar images are coming soon.
If you see any issues possibly related to this update, let us know. I personally haven't noticed a speed-up, but perhaps you do. It's been suggested folks farther afield might see get the most page-load-time benefits.