The styles in Simple Press fontawesome is killing my website load time. Reduces the load from a B to a E. Optimizations methods like loading to head or third party plugins like Autoptimize do not help.

Waterfall results:

style.css?ver=5.5.3 (incomplete) >4.86s

https://ehrmanblog.org/wp-cont.....?ver=5.5.3 No Response Headers - Request incomplete

Would be ideal if Simple Press was to load the CSS in by proxy instead of local URI.

hmmm....there must be something else going on - there's no way that it should take 5 seconds to download a css file...

But, you can also try disabling the fontawesome iconset under the FORUM->OPTIONS->Iconsets screen.