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Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

reuters.com

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Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#171

Post by ajross »

IshKebab wrote: post #162
ajross wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calibri font has "I" and "l" the same, according to Wikipedia. A better font should avoid characters being too similar (such as "I" and "l" and "1"). Only when used in a context where they can be confused. This is a situation where HN is going to give bad advice. Programmers care deeply about that stuff (i.e. "100l" is a long-valued integer literal in C and not the number 1001). Most people tend not to, and there i…

> Most people tend not to Yeah because normal people never have to deal with alphanumeric strings...

No, because normal people can read "l00l" as a number just fine and don't actually care if the underlying encoding is different. AI won't care either. It's just us on-the-spectrum nerds with our archaic deterministic devices and brains trained on them that get wound up about it. Designing a font for normal readers is just fine.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#172

Post by roughly »

fnordprefect wrote: post #110
youngNed wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But.... and this is important, it's not funny. "Here is a thing that makes a slight difference, with no cost, to a small percentage of people" "Nah, woke. Let's make it worse for them." There is nothing funny about performative cruelty

I'm with John Gruber, who is hardly a fan of this administration: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/10/state-departmen... "Calibri does convey a sense of casualness — and more so, modernity — that is not appropriate for the U.S. State Department. And I do not buy the argument that Calibri is somehow more accessible for those with low vision or reading disabilities. People with actual accessibility needs shoul…

> And I do not buy the argument that Calibri is somehow more accessible for those with low vision or reading disabilities

Oh well that settles it, John Gruber doesn’t buy the argument. Wrap it up and let’s head home, folks, this one’s settled, no need to refer to any actual research or evidence.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#173

Post by roughly »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #159
youngNed wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performative? The one that you read about. The one that had a press release, the one that had articles on social media that you are commenting on. Meaningful? The one that looked into which font was more readable, for the most people

Do you have trouble reading Times New Roman? Every computer I used growing up used it in much lower resolution.

No, but I’m also not an accessibility expert, so my opinion here’s pretty irrelevant.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#174

Post by ivanjermakov »

Times New Roman is extremely common and often the only accepted font for official documents and colloquial works in post-soviet countries: https://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2018-12-10_rossijskim_chinovni....

I have only bad memories of using it since I directly associate it with endless formatting fixes for my diploma and course works.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#175

Post by bsder »

cafard wrote: post #68
treetalker wrote: post #22

Butterick on TNR: ( https://practicaltypography.com/times-new-roman-alternatives... ) > When Times New Roman appears in a book, document, or advertisement, it connotes apathy. It says, “I submitted to the font of least resistance.” Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a color. To look at Times New Roman is to gaze into the void. > If you…

For about ten years I worked for composition shops, and eventually for a maker of typesetting systems. Through blurred eyes I could tell TNR from Baskerville from Garamond from Janson from ... Some of these fonts I can still identify. But I have no idea what font was used in the book I just finished reading or the book that I'm returning to later today. My main question about a font is whether I can read it with old…

My old eyes really wish more people used something like New Century Schoolbook.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#176

Post by youngNed »

xanderlewis wrote: post #101
youngNed wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But.... and this is important, it's not funny. "Here is a thing that makes a slight difference, with no cost, to a small percentage of people" "Nah, woke. Let's make it worse for them." There is nothing funny about performative cruelty

With no cost?

I hadn't planned on spending my evening googling the pay grade of government officials, calculating the time taken to change a font on Microsoft Word and extrapolating that over a year.

But I'm game if you are?

Jupyter notebooks or excel?

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#177

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Hizonner wrote: post #46

I'm mostly surprised it wasn't Fraktur. How pitiful do you have to be as Secretary of State to get into minutiae about fonts, anyway?

As pitiful as the last guy, apparently? As the article says, the decision to switch to Calibri in the first place came directly from Blinken. (I try not to get into anti-anti-Trump discourse, but getting worked up about fonts seems counterproductive to me.)

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#178

Post by chrisweekly »

idatum wrote: post #18

I love how people are passionate about fonts. Search for the 2017 Saturday Night Live skit with Ryan Gosling "Papyrus". It captures the obsession! "It’s like they spent $300 million on the movie, and then.. They just used Papyrus."

yes! the first one^1 is hilarious! the sequel^2 is somehow equally funny.

1. https://youtu.be/jVhlJNJopOQ?si=jq6NsPhnzwCKXFPr

2. https://youtu.be/Q8PdffUfoF0?si=sx8XC0X6oJqJIXmc

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#179

Post by Havoc »

CodingJeebus wrote: post #130
Havoc wrote: post #120

This is why I'm seriously considering learning Chinese. Next 50 years won't be US lead. When senior government officials are spending time & public mindshare/attention on whether a particular font is or is not diverse then you know it is game over. The details don't matter...this being a topic at all is the news

Read up on the state of the Chinese economy, it’s not a given they’ll be in the drivers seat long term either.

I know they're leveraged to the hilt, their demographics are shaky AF etc.

...but end of the day productive capacity is what matters. I don't see anyone close on that mix of pace, tech, low cost, ability to execute and scale.

A strong argument could be made on any of those metrics that someone could beat them fair and square, but the whole blend...there is nobody even competing in same league and that lead looks like it'll last rest of my lifetime

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#180

Post by [deleted] »

websiteapi wrote: post #166
bravoetch wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think by 'joke' people mean "their actions are unreasonable to the point of ridicule, and were they less consequential would be akin to the performance of a circus clown instead of a diligent policy maker." But the rest of us just shorten that to "joke".

So it’s a partisan word then and basically devoid of meaning and consistency across political lines. When hasn’t the us political class been a joke by such a definition…? Perhaps when we owned slaves, or interned the Japanese?

[deleted]
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