Looking through a selection of papers on serif vs non-serif fonts the conclusions seem to be that there is little difference when printed, but when viewing on-screen sans-serif is preferred.

The verbiage in the PR reminds me of a bit from The Night Watch [1]:

> [...] and at some point, you will have to decide whether serifs are daring statements of modernity, or tools of hegemonic oppression that implicitly support feudalism and illiteracy

[1] https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf

What do you call a Banana Republic that has lots of different kinds of bananas?

Besides all the daily stuff that happens with the current US government, I'm _really_ excited (not in the best way) to see how the citizens of the USA, Europe and the whole world will deal with the aftermaths of the current government.

Strange times to live in.

Regardless of the reasons why, I'm glad. I cannot stand calibri. It's one of the ugliest fonts I've ever had to use, somehow looking uglier than even joke fonts like comic sans

For a moment I thought it had something to do with "Cuadernillos Rubio" [1]. They are small workbooks quite common in Spain for kids to learn how to write. However, the font they use is not Times New Roman...

[1] https://www.amazon.es/-/en/gp/product/8417427627?ref_=dbs_m_...

Good - Calibri is not open, badly supported on Linux et al.

HN should rejoice in the US gov using a font that is open and truly cross platform.

> The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched to Calibri, a modern sans-serif font, saying this was a more accessible font for people with disabilities

That's interesting because I've long been under the impression that serif fonts promoted easier reading. As such, serif fonts could / should be considered more accessible.

Funny but my impression is that these days kerning is usually pretty bad with Serifed fonts in, at the very least, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Powerpoint, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.

It is not so bad if you are using it for paragraphs but I can't stand the way serifed fonts come out if I am setting display text for a poster unless I manually take over and adjust the kerning. After I had this problem I was wondering if I was the only one or what other people did so I looked at posters people had put up around campus and had a really hard time finding posters where people were using serifed fonts in large sizes and my guess is people either start out with sans or they tried something with serifs but changed their mind because it looked wrong.

This is approaching Saparmurat Niyazov levels of weirdness.