I loathe the old school Latex look. I appreciate Latex as a markup language, but the computer modern fonts always drove me nuts.
To each their own though. It's interesting to me that someone else had the opposite reaction.
I used uBlock customization to block the font from loading to read the article.
For those on Mozilla Firefox[note], please also give the reader view a try.
Reader view is also available on other browsers such as Safari on the iPhone.
[note] - (if you are not on it, please consider downloading and using it but that is a different conversation)
Also, Computer Modern on the same screen, but rendered by Okular or Evince, when viewing a LaTeX document, is also perfectly legible.
When it is rendered properly, I find it very pretty and legible.
I can totally see how it would feel sort of comforting though. I hadn't thought about it before but it does remind me of old Springer texts, and I could see how that would feel "homey" or something. This conversation has me kind of "resetting" my perspective on it a bit.