Comment by chinathrow

Can you cite a source that Blinken's decision was arbitrary? Because Rubio himself is quoted here as attributing a reason for the change (i.e. that it wasn't arbitrary).

I'm also interested to hear your thoughts on the arbitrariness of Microsoft's decision to switch to Calibri in 2007 - imagine the "fragmentation" that must have caused across the business world!

You seem weirdly worked up over this.

Blinken made no public statements on this until he was asked about it. He did not come out and say for example, "For too long, the vision impaired community have been discriminated against by the systemic bias via the use of Times New Roman. Today we are taking action to change this and restore the dignity of those this font has long oppressed", but Rubio just did exactly this. For all I can tell the actual decision was a recommendation made by an internal team doing an accessibility review.

Sure, this is a good point, but only if you completely ignore the the accessibility gains provided by the change. But I'm guessing rationality wasn't on the menu when this was written.

No, Times New Roman is old fashioned, so moving to something more readable doesn't shock me.

If changing fonts once was a wasteful empty gesture that they used to pat themselves on the back and which didn't benefit anyone, then isn't changing it a second time the exact same thing?

People do have tools to make things more readable. Some of those tools are professionally designed fonts and typefaces which are easier for people with low vision to read.

You sound like someone saying we shouldn’t have ramps and elevators because crutches exist.

> if a person is visually impaired, why wouldn't they have tools at their disposal to make things readable?

If it's on a screen in a browser, probably. If it's printed, or on a display not under a reader's control, probably not.

FWIW, I'm partially split. I generally prefer sans-serif overall - have for decades. I think I slightly prefer serif for some printed material visually, but... when I actually have to engage and read it, for long periods, I think I tend to opt for sans-serif. Noticed this on my kindle years ago, and kindle reader now - I usually swap to sans-serif options (I think it's been my default for a while).

If I were to guess, the switch to Calibri in the first place was because people were able to use the MS default in practice instead of having to hand change it, or use "official" templates, which imo is probably more appropriate anyway.

I think Calibri is arguably a better font, to me the bigger issue is the commercial license used in govt works.

> They haven't. And you really think changing to Calibri benefitted anyone?

The wild thing is that even if you don’t respect the switch to Calibri on the grounds that it doesn’t really benefit anyone and is therefore wasted effort for little or no gain, the decision to switch back is a decision to double that wasted effort.

That said, it’s clear from the daring fireball story linked in the thread that this is being super overblown and Rubio isn’t really making an argument that Calibri is wasting money. This is an arbitrary decision.

Calibri is a tool to make things more readable

It’s only for the department of state though, and the previous cost to change to Calibri was about $145,000 over two fiscal years.

A dollar a doc? Sounds like a sweet job.

This is demonstrably false. Previous administrations have not. It used to be normal to do things like keeping cabinet members appointed by their opponents or not put up a mocking picture of your predecessor in the white house.

Petty as in 'small and does not really matter' or petty as in 'vindictive'. All administrations do many small things that may not ultimately have much impact, but often those may be for benign reasons. Understanding the reasoning behind the decisions would help in determining what kind of 'petty' this is.

Nah, the state department is big enough to do both at the same time - at least it would be at full staffing levels.

Point is they're doing both, at once.

All paragraph text to to use the proper manly IMPACT in the future.

So what next? Wheelchair ramps? Seats for the elderly and the pregnant? Accessibility features don't displace or even inconvenience the majority in any manner. They only make facilities accessible to an additional crowd, who should be getting them as a matter of right in the first place. What's the end game here?

Many things labeled as woke benefit the masses like environmental protection.

I guess people like to stay asleep.

Will be a rough awakening

I'm way past raging—just laughing at the stupidity at this point.

Oh, you're just obsessed with this, aren't you?

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Yes, a true "mask-off moment": I do find that classic LaTeX papers look more trustworthy than whatever MS Word outputs by default.

Associating TNR with authoritarianism would not even be historically accurate, because many authoritarians pushed to simplify writing (Third Reich, Soviets, CCP); if anything, TNR looks _conservative_, which is probably the look that Rubio is going for.

Fasces or fascist?