The spinner is new and always spins once per frame. I was using it on unstable to test and fix lag issues. We were redrawing once per second (except when scrolling) and when something changed 10ms into that second the screen didn't refresh until that second fully elapsed. This caused a full 1s lag on image loading (added to a 2s lag due to it not having been done async). I recently fixed both of those, so image loading is almost instant if the image is cached.

I kind of like the spinner showing that gossip is alive, and getting a basic feel for how often it is redrawing. But if you think it is bad we will add an option to hide it and hide it by default (because I'll want it on for myself).