Okay, I sorta SOLVED IT. Really it’s a workaround.
I saw a lot of Ember node.js discussion, and talk of themes and plugins, and I thought it was weird since I’m trying a fresh install without any of that stuff.
My discourse setup went flawlessly when… I DIDN’T ENTER A MAXMIND KEY.
So I’m guessing the installation of MaxMind is a memory hog or otherwise broken.
I’m pretty upset at having wasted a day on this, but I got my forum splash screen so what can I do.