@graf@jonwzee I'm not quite sure who you're blocking (none of the IPs listed are mine). BazQux is not currently being blocked. Use dig bots.bazqux.com to get an actual list of BazQux IPs to block. Or grep for User-Agent BazQux.
I'm guilty as charged in that I changed my User-Agent from BazQux to Chrome in November. I sometimes do this as a shortcut to avoid asking admins (who often don't know how blocking/unblocking works). But I actually changed it back to BazQux and moved to the original servers (discourse.bazqux.com/t/nitter-poast-org-not-updating/341/11?u=vshabanov) a few days ago, so it's as legit as it can be from now on.
BazQux was doing about 2k requests a day. I added a rate limit, so now it makes about 1.3k requests (one every 67s). I can limit it even more if you want.
If you care about the number of requests, a hosted RSS reader will make fewer requests than several self-hosted "free" ones, because the feeds are shared and there are no custom rules like update every minute. $30/year is less than what you would pay for hosting and work to set everything up yourself. And that money actually goes to an indie software developer instead of a BigCo.