It is objectively more concerning and “absurd”, regardless of “team”, that Blinken arbitrarily introduced fragmentation by adding an additional font to official government communications when a convention had been established across government to use Times New Roman.
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!
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.
Wild. I'm curious now if someone has an ordered list of fonts from the gayest to the straightest.
You sound like someone saying we shouldn’t have ramps and elevators because crutches exist.
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).
I think Calibri is arguably a better font, to me the bigger issue is the commercial license used in govt works.
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.
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 the change (well, if we were to look at the previous years at least we could see if this 145K difference was somehow significant or not)
Sadly way more informative than our traditional outlets.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelt...
This particular thing was not all that common between Presidents who succeed normally by election. I think the most recent was Robert Gates serving as SecDef across the Bush II/Obama transition, before that there were five kept across the Reagan/Bush I transition, and no more in the post-WWII period.
(It’s true that the pettiness level in this Administration is unprecedented, but this is not a valid example.)
It's so utterly juvenile and unprofessional. The kind of thing a petulant twelve year-old does for attention.
Which is stupid, of course, especially considering that sans-serif fonts improve readability on screens for most people, not for a minority.
EDIT: extraneous "don't" in the middle of a sentence
There's no end game in particular.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelt...
I guess people like to stay asleep.
Will be a rough awakening
I used to believe that people would wake up, but that does not seem to be what happens. They are just herded around by the next dog that comes along.
If I say I bought a yellow car, nobody cares. If I say I bought a yellow car to troll the libtards, now everybody is mad even though what I said makes no sense and it all has little consequence anyway.
Was the switch to Calibri in 2023 also a waste of time and money, or are font switches only bad when the Trump administration does them?
> A cable dated December 9 sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts said that typography shapes the professionalism of an official document and Calibri is informal compared to serif typefaces. > "To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface," the cable said.
I don't read that purely as an "anti-woke" move, why did Reuters only highlight that part and not the bit about professionalism? I do indeed agree that serifs look more authoritative.
The _second paragraph_ of TFA gives a reason for the introduction. Please explain how you came to the conclusion that the change was arbitrary.
I get that people’s biases make accepting reality difficult, but this will all end poorly if you can’t even just be objective on basic things like it being detrimental for one single department of the federal government to arbitrarily change rather significant things like the official font, even worn text, communication is the primary work product and format.
Why did you ignore all the other aspects and simply latch onto something you thought was a loophole because you cannot objectively adapt a relevant definition?
This is not reddit. You should have higher standards for yourself.
Given the complete absence of either in the current administration, this is clearly not the real reason. So “woke” is the only explanation left.
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.
https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/12/state-department-ret...
I don't usually go back to comments from seven days ago, but I missed the full memo being on DF. The sideswipe at the previous administration is childish, sure. But the way in which Reuters has portrayed this memo is even more shocking to me after reading it. Holy culture war partisanship, batman.
What a waste of government time and spending.