Way too broad a brush to paint with. If we want to retain any sort of liberal democracy we need to stop with the rhetoric that "if you're not as far in X direction as I am, you must be on the other side". Its destroying the democratic party.

I'm a staunch democrat, and this is just sad to see. Progressive and centrist should both be able to coexist. We should be able to call out ineffective policies within our own movement without being called far right radicals.

That said, the letter here wasn't about undergrad or expensive college - its about the federal government stripping funding for research for political reasons. Sad. We should be investing in US research capabilities. And like it or not, our research universities are pretty freaking good at... research.

That has changed. It should be reinstated. Cut red tape, get back into the business of taking (literal) moonshots as a government.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48068348

Points: 10

# Comments: 2

Doesn't even discuss open-source when a key point its making is "tech is built on the backs of others".

Doesn't come close to the safety I feel in the Tesla. Not even close. I know anecdotal

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46579353

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Of course there is no "a priori", the general public doesn't know what a letter is "a priori" until they are taught. At the same time they are taught which fonts are formal and authoritative and which are not.

Everyone knows Comic Sans is not appropriate for a legal brief. No matter if that is "a priori" or not.

The author states "The formality and authority of serif typefaces are largely socially constructed, and Times New Roman’s origin story and design constraints don’t express these qualities."

Yes, formality and authority are both, quite literally, social constructs. There is NO "natural" or "universal" formality or even authority without human social input.

I would also argue that, though most users cannot distinguish between a serif and sans serif font, they DO understand the serif fonts connote formality. eg in high school they were told to submit their papers in a serif font, or where they read a court opinion they also read serif (even if not the same font).

Sure, the State Department could have selected a different serif font. But a reversion to what was previously used seems completely normal.

Secondarily, I do think Calibri looks far too casual for the State Department. Its what I would use if I were quickly printing out my notes...

Often the intel community is dead right, but get thrown under the bus by the admin. The intel community can't really come out and say "actually what our pres is saying is false, we told him this would happen".

Almost killed the agency

I have struggled to get things like this stood up and hit many footguns along the way