Probably unrelated but there might be an issue with Firefox 142.
Some kids have been playing a browser game (cookieclicker) for a couple of days on one of my machines, using xclicker to push things along.
Straight after upgrading firefox to 142 yesterday (no other upgrades) they came over to tell me that the game can no longer be run with xclicker active. The gui becomes sluggish, clicks stutter, cpu and ram use rises to max (24GB) at which the machine freezes.
Changed clicker interval from the 15ms they have been using for days to 50ms but the same happens, only at a slower rate.