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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

#621

Post by mgkimsal »

stronglikedan wrote: post #611
baggachipz wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The levels of pettiness in this administration know no bounds. I'm sure they'll forbid the use of "woke", and require all government employees to say "I terminated sleep this morning".

What an odd take. Every administration does this sort of petty stuff. nothing new under the sun.

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.

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

#622

Post by [deleted] »

sorenjan wrote: post #602
Terr_ wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone sharing my confusion: Yes, that cringetastic text (and borderline Hatch-Act violation) is up there, but it's a different linked domain: https://americabydesign.gov/

> AN OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT > What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump, you're not wrong. This is beyond satire by now, it reminds me of Idi Amin and his official title: His full self-bestowed title ultimately became: "His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas a…

[deleted]

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

#623

Post by sejje »

pas wrote: post #552
corrections wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that was the cost of additional a11y remediation, likely the direct cost of using a different font/typeface going forward was the time it took for people to read the memo and get used to change the formatting (maybe even set a new default, maybe change templates). https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/full_text_of_marco_rubio_... of course simply comparing years without a control we have no way of knowing the effect of…

Thanks for linking that.

Sadly way more informative than our traditional outlets.

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

#624

Post by rtkwe »

adrian_b wrote: post #533
rtkwe wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True though the confusion about that is largely when you're not dealing with words like passwords or hashes. In the context of words it's going to be generally disambiguated by context, I can't think of an example off hand in writing where I and l will that ambiguous. The removal of serifs probably has a higher impact to more people unless I'm missing some common situation where they'd be easy to confuse in context.

On the Web I see very frequently foreign names, user handles or URLs where I am confused about whether there is an I or an l, because that Web page has chosen to use a bad sans serif font that does not differentiate these letters. Sometimes there is no problem because the words or links containing ambiguous letters can be copied and pasted. Other times there is an annoying problem because either the stupid designer h…

Yeah I understand it's an issue other places but I don't think it's actually a significant issue in government documents and forms written in English which is the usecase here. The choice doesn't have to satisfy all requirements it just needs to be a good choice for government writing.

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

#625

Post by watwut »

nxor wrote: post #608
watwut wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer cruelty signaling, because there is profound difference between the impact of the two on the world. Insisting on naming things so that "bad thing" and "good thing" are undistinguishable is not neutral, it is biased and favors bad actors.

[flagged]

1.) Overwhelming majority of political violence is by right wing.

2.) About Kirk specifically, liberals signaled "murder is bad" hard and frequently. Meanwhile Kirk himself signaled hatred.

3.) Meanwhile, Trump, Vance and Hegseth are constantly signaling "murder is good actually, if we are doing it" and "bullying is manly thing to do".

And that is exactly why it is userful to distinguish between "good thing signal" and "bad thing signal".

-----------

Conservatives have the option to signal good things. They make different choice.

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

#627

Post by mghackerlady »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #554
LucasFonts wrote: post #475

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a so-called “wasteful diversity font” is both amusing and regrettable. Calibri was specifically designed to enhance readability on modern computer screens and was selected by Microsoft in 2007 to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite…

I bet they want to get rid of Calibri because it was designed by a Dutch person. There's only two things I hate in this world, people who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch. (disclaimer: I am Dutch).

I've always heard this joke with the french instead of the dutch

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

#628

Post by ndkap »

nabla9 wrote: post #523
LucasFonts wrote: post #475

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a so-called “wasteful diversity font” is both amusing and regrettable. Calibri was specifically designed to enhance readability on modern computer screens and was selected by Microsoft in 2007 to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite…

I think we all can agree that Comic Sans MS reflects the current US government best, both spiritually and aesthetically.

As an aside, I didn't know what Comic Sans looks like, so I searched on Google and it rendered the whole page in that font. I tried with other Fonts too like Arial and Times New Roman, and it did the same there. So cool!

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

#629

Post by Swenrekcah »

stronglikedan wrote: post #611
baggachipz wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The levels of pettiness in this administration know no bounds. I'm sure they'll forbid the use of "woke", and require all government employees to say "I terminated sleep this morning".

What an odd take. Every administration does this sort of petty stuff. nothing new under the sun.

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.

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

#630

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

watwut wrote: post #565
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer "ideology signalling" so that it's neutral and we can use it to apply to both sides.

I prefer cruelty signaling, because there is profound difference between the impact of the two on the world. Insisting on naming things so that "bad thing" and "good thing" are undistinguishable is not neutral, it is biased and favors bad actors.

Sure, but that's immaterial to this context, which seeks an apolitical term for "says things they don't believe to curry favour".
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