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ebbi

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But.... and this is important, it's not funny.

"Here is a thing that makes a slight difference, with no cost, to a small percentage of people"

"Nah, woke. Let's make it worse for them."

There is nothing funny about performative cruelty

I'm with John Gruber, who is hardly a fan of this administration:

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/10/state-departmen...

"Calibri does convey a sense of casualness — and more so, modernity — that is not appropriate for the U.S. State Department. And I do not buy the argument that Calibri is somehow more accessible for those with low vision or reading disabilities. People with actual accessibility needs should be catered to, but they need more than a sans serif typeface, and their needs should not primarily motivate the choice for the default typeface."

Official departmental paperwork shouldn't look clownish.

The same John Gruber that, quote tweeting a news article about Israel closing off phone and internet services to Gazans, wrote "Fuck around and find out"

> And I do not buy the argument that Calibri is somehow more accessible for those with low vision or reading disabilities

Oh well that settles it, John Gruber doesn’t buy the argument. Wrap it up and let’s head home, folks, this one’s settled, no need to refer to any actual research or evidence.

> they need more than a sans serif typeface,

Agreed.

So... why are the administration going in the opposite direction?

> Official departmental paperwork shouldn't look clownish.

Oh. It's about looking clownish. Right. OK. Pull up a chair, this might take a while, and we will get to typefaces pretty late on, I'll be honest

With no cost?

I hadn't planned on spending my evening googling the pay grade of government officials, calculating the time taken to change a font on Microsoft Word and extrapolating that over a year.

But I'm game if you are?

Jupyter notebooks or excel?

I'm not talking about monetary cost.

I'll never understand this silly take. they just took a venezuelan oil tanker. is that a joke to you? you might disagree with what they're doing, or argue they are incompetent, but joke is very strange take. they are very serious. ask some undocumented immigrants in the USA about how much they're joking.

in fact - any country seeing what trump is doing both domestically and internationally and not taking their actions potentially against them seriously is stupid imho.

I think by 'joke' people mean "their actions are unreasonable to the point of ridicule, and were they less consequential would be akin to the performance of a circus clown instead of a diligent policy maker."

But the rest of us just shorten that to "joke".

Thank you - exactly what I meant. I thought it was a common understanding when used in this context.

So it’s a partisan word then and basically devoid of meaning and consistency across political lines. When hasn’t the us political class been a joke by such a definition…? Perhaps when we owned slaves, or interned the Japanese?

I'm laughing at their sheer incompetence. This is coming from a minority who has been targeted by US governments policies and has lost friends because of this.

Yes, the US government is a laughing stock while we have sympathy for those negatively impacted by the decisions made by these incompetent idiots.

you and I have very different definitions of joke it seems.

I think you just need to read more. Your comprehension of common terms in context is lacking.

Obviously they would take a Venezuelan oil tanker. Oil is the only reason Trump is interested in Venezuela.

https://intelpoint.co/insights/venezuela-saudi-arabia-and-ir...

Anyone who is laughing is a sucker and an idiot. You keep thinking this administration is incompetent, when in fact they are achieving all their goals. At this point anyone saying they are laughable should be assumed to be part of the propaganda. Ho ho ho, looks at the silly Nazis with their silly swastika.

what

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