I have given up trying to fix Safari slowness on M2 Air Mac OS Ventura. Removed all extensions, disabled everything, booted in safe mode (in which it works great!), and did bunch of fixes - and while the performance has improved it still lags so far behind how chrome operates on same notebook, its making me ditch it for good on the Air. At this pt I think this is a M2 Air + OS issue more than anything else, and while there are tons of issues highlighed on forums all over, there is no clear solution to this.