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I've complained about this trend in the past, and it seems to be getting worse rather than better. I have the Evernote Clearly bookmarklet in my toolbar (it seems to work better than Readability) and I find myself using it more and more often. I don't mind not quite black text on a very (very) light grey background, but far too many websites just don't have enough contrast to be readable.

I agree. For reading, high contrast is exactly what I want. Despite all these trends in UX design, the best user interface is still a white piece of paper with blank ink.

The colors in the blog read fine to me. I have trouble with color bleeding when straight black is used on straight white. I would have gone with something a bit darker, say 60 or 70%, but definitely not 100% black.

I'm not sure you can use this particular blog as a good counterexample though. That text is damn-near 40% white, which is ridiculously light.