Disabling auto-polling for notifications?

Is it possible to disable the background JavaScript or whatever is responsible for checking for new notifications?

I use the "Most recent topics as table" view for the forum, and as a side effect of that background process, leaving a tab open means that the read/unread status only keeps the last hour or so unread.

I'm not sure if I phrased that properly, so let me put it this way:
Visit permies, sleep for eight hours with no tabs open, check permies = that view shows the last eight hours of replies as unread
Visit permies, sleep for eight hours with one or more tabs open, check permies = that view shows the last hour of replies as unread

I tried using the "Keep track of threads read on a thread by thread basis" feature as an alternative solution, but the "Mark all topics as read" link in the normal forum view doesn't seem to do anything, so instead I have perpetually unread topics.