[20:22:00] -tower.freenode.net- Server Terminating. Received SIGTERM

You’ve basically already left, whether you know it or not. Yesterday they nuked their services database. I’d been there ~20 years, but it’s dead. Libera.chat has been lovely.

Yes, this all matches my experience as someone connected to “classic” Freenode, right up until they killed the server (after the last step that page describes).