3d ago

Marco Rubio bans Calibri font at State Department for being too DEI

techcrunch.com Marco Rubio bans Calibri font at State Department for being too DEI | TechCrunch

Calibri, which could make documents easier to read for the vision impaired, was apparently installed in 2023 by the department’s then-DEI office. Rubio’s memo has designated Times New Roman as his tenure’s official font, stating it will “restore decorum and professionalism” to documents.

A Boring Dystopia @lemmy.world

techcrunch.com /2025/12/10/marco-rubio-bans-calibri-font-at-state-department-for-being-too-dei/

130 7

Not The Onion @lemmy.world

Marco Rubio bans Calibri font at State Department for being too DEI

techcrunch.com /2025/12/10/marco-rubio-bans-calibri-font-at-state-department-for-being-too-dei/

440 65

Not The Onion @lemmy.world

Marco Rubio bans Calibri font at State Department for being too DEI

techcrunch.com /2025/12/10/marco-rubio-bans-calibri-font-at-state-department-for-being-too-dei/

171 14

117 comments

The font was chosen in an effort to make documents easier to read for the vision impaired.
So It's Republican policy that the government must not, even in the smallest way, make life any easier for disabled people? And the government must not do nothing and leave in place something that already makes life easier for them, but must actively intervene to make it harder? Of course it is, but what the fuck is wrong with these people that they dedicate their entire life to getting into government so they can punch down and hurt others? How have they not even accidentally stumbled into being better than the worst they can be?
- Its the culling of the herd. They feel they know best what the make up of the country should be. Its the same thing as eugenics. It makes sense if you think helping the disabled is a waste of resources.
  How do you develop this point of view? How did people become convinced the h man was right? People are susceptible to propaganda. I heard the comments on popular sites about Taylor Swift being pro right after her last album was 25% astroturf. Heard from Phil Defranco on yt, there was a study.
  Go look at the shit on truth social. I've met people that only look at the conservative part of the web, like fox news junkies of the last 25 years. They're radicalized by astroturf, then hide in these echo chambers. Most of the discourse is directed by people with vested interest in political outcomes.
  People I was friendly with were trying to say Charlie Kirk would have been a good president when he died. He was such a kind and selfless Christian, they say. I cant find anything defendable in his media output, but once you're radicalized, its just about hitting the talking points. "Woke ideology." "Trans mind virus." "Communists and Socialists." "Empathy is bad for our coutry." Once you believe you're surrounded by enemies, its easy to be manipulated by fear.
- Fascists always go after disabled people first because it’s harder for them to fight back and fascists are cowards.
- Surely if you want to kill disabled people, it's a good idea to start by making them feel shunned and their lives extremely difficult first, no?
  That way, a lot of them die off, lose their power and voice in society, and are way easier to purge when the time comes!
  You can't build a Christiofascist Oligarchy without obliterating a few societal eggs, after all!
- Gotta hurt. Thats the policy.

Were the Epstein files too legible?
- Most of them are published as they were written, so they aren't affected by the government's preferred font.
  
  just watch them start publishing in wingdings

Ok Boomer

"Small government" but also lets waste money on dumb shit like this that doesn't matter.
Also wouldn't a serif font cost more in ink over the course of millions of documents printed? Those serifs might not take a lot of ink to add but they do add up.
- They've never been for small government. This lie needs to be called out every single time.
  
  "small government" is just a dog whistle for "lower rich people taxes".
  
  The government AND the national debt ALWAYS grow under Republicans.

Oh they found that the font was helping someone. Can't have that.
These people are such fucking trash...

Reminder that Donald J. Trump fucks children and there is proof of this that they are trying to distract us from in order to protect him and the rest of the kidfuckers.
STAY ON POINT.

Imagine being so much snowflake that a simple font upsets you. Words fail.

Ugh.
At least Arial exists. And Helvetica. But Times New Roman? What is this, English class in the early aughts? 12pt font, double spaced with one inch margins?
Hell, if you want wanna make America great again make it Courier; tech bros'll think you're coding but we know you really just want to take us back to late 1800s when typewriters and bad economic policy were in. Or maybe something appropriate for this administration, like Wingdings.
- Times New Roman is disgusting
  
  It pisses me off when creative writing contests require this font in their submissions. It's probably the ugliest of the common fonts. Why anyone would want to read it is beyond me.

its a nice distraction of whats going in with the epstein files, and immigration.

This has got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.
- They should ban toilet paper, it's too woke.
  
  TP is gay as fuck. Rubbing your own ass is sin. Didnt you know? On reddit there were a couple of posts about redneck guys not wiping their own shitty ass, as it is gay to touch anus or anus be touched. The brainrot is frightening, yet fascinating with this sample group of institutionalised uneducation, xenophobia, egoism and patriachal focused propaganda.

Times New Roman is wayyyy too classy for Trump Administration. They should switch to Comic Sans MS.
...Oh no, I'm re-heating font jokes that people older than me found funny decades ago. What has this present political climate reduced us to?
- Nah, should be Papyrus, it pretends it's a return to tradition but it's really just ugly and racist.
  
  OK I love that fonts stir up such strong feelings in people... but racist? How tf is papyrus racist?
  
  It’s tribal yet futuristic
  
  Papyrus? Are you kidding me? There's no place for that in a professional office setting!
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FTfxtyDpqWI&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD
  
  WEBDINGS!
- Times New Roman is precisely what Trump admin wants. You know, since the far right has a hard on on the Roman empire.
- Don’t forget there also fucks kids and they are protecting him.
- i wouldn't argue with comic sans personally. i hear it's a good font for some types of dyslexia. i'd rather have more people be able to read it than look dignified.
  
  There are other even more dyslexic-legible fonts that IMO look better

i mean you can't spell calibri without lib. where's your god now, atheists?
- At the same time it's reminiscent of "caliber", which one would expect to appeal to good Christians.

I have never in my life tied a font to politics or morality.
- spoken like a Gill Sans user
- 𝕬𝖗𝖊 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖘𝖚𝖗𝖊 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙?
  
  Tis not the font but the fonter.
- Garamond does look somewhat Apple-ishly pretentious, and Lucida does evoke associations with Sun and some corporate spirit, and Arial\TNR\CN trio does feel like "Windows font classic" combination.
  But banning a more readable font to show you have "decorum" ... there's a word "чмошник" in Russian, I've recently realized I'm that, and also a whole crowd of adults and peers around me 13 years ago. Actually there's just one girl who wasn't that, and one adult. Who got the shortest straws in that story.
  That word means someone miserable and envious enough to look for confirmations and signs of coolness in all things they use and do.
  I've also recently realized that I don't like computer people, and of other professions dealing with calculation and materiel. They are glorified bookkeepers and managers. The reason tech workers dislike management so much is because the whole industry is much like machine-assisted management. Paradox of small differences.
  Yeah, I know you lot like being perceived as magicians and the industry as having something to do with intelligence. Read de Saint-Exupery's Citadel, there's a passage on "a special book for generals", and you will recognize that whole industry, from its lowly brick layers to its prophets.
  
  чмошник (rude, derogatory) schmuck, stooge, sleazeball, jerk (contemptible person)
  So yeah I agree.

Must be a slow day in the state department...

More distractions

So this is 100 percent true, verifiable, by me. Just keep in mind this is the same admin that wanted to cut 'frivolous spending'. Think for a minute the wasted development hours changing the font on every webpage on every portal that DoS uses. Seriously, it's fucking stupid.

What. An. Idiot.

Calibri kind of sucks, it's better on screen then TNR, but it's ugly as shit still. A better font could probably be found that reads well on screen and in print. But:
Rubio did admit in the memo that Calibri wasn’t the “most illegal, immoral, radical or wasteful” example of DEI to his mind’s eye, but he still berated the font for contributing to “the degradation” of the State Department’s official correspondence.
Fuck this guy, regardless.
- Nah man I can actually get on board with this. I used to hate Times New Roman but it's streets ahead of the scourge that is Calibri, and with modern monitors serif fonts look fine.
  
  The problem isn’t the font itself, it’s the fact that they’re being reactionary.

Straight out of Hitler's playbook!
- "Adolf Hitler bans Gothic font from Nazi publications for being too Jewish"
  Man, I fucking hate how much history rhymes
  
  Time is a flat circle that only consists of about 100 years.

Marco Rubio apparently doesn't have enough shit to do at work.
- This is a distraction for the Pam Bondi memo

fuck me what a sad bastard.

You know how if you're reading a headline from the onion and you mistake it for real you've "eaten the onion?"
Is there a name for the reverse phenomenon? Where a real headline reflecting actual reality is so ridiculous that you reject it out of hand as satire only to realize it was genuine? Regurgitating the onion? What's the name for this?
- Is there a name for the reverse phenomenon?
  the onion has eaten you, maybe
- !nottheonion@lemmy.world
  Inspired by the analogous subreddit.

That's it, were only going to use comic Sans serif from now on!

"Unlike you woke snowflakes I use Times New Roman"
- he should use Comic Sans.
  
  It's a good font. It doesn't impose style, it's easily readable. I'd use it if there were a version with 1) Cyrillic support, 2) monospace variant, 3) not too bold in standard weight.

All future documents must be in Fraktur.
- its not even funny because the nazis actually abolished Fraktur for being jewish or something..without googling it..yeah, probably something about "being jewish" that used to be their go-to, cant be wrong
  
  Hitler personally disliked Fraktur and gave a speech against it in 1934. It continued to be used as ‘the true German script’ until 1941, when the party did a 180 and banned it under the pretext that it wasn't Fraktur, but Schwabacher, a similar blackletter script, which they called ‘Jewish letters’.
  Moreover, it was banned so hard that cursive scripts Kurrent and Sütterlin were forbidden as well. As a result, people educated after 1941 often couldn't read handwritten letters and notes of their ancestors.
- I did Nazi that joke coming...

So just how gay CAN the Calibri font make you? Merely fabulous? Or are we talking about midriff-baring T-shirt and nut-hugger shorts gay?

I hope this gets incorporated in a College Humor font wars sketch...

This has been, and certainly now will firmly remain my favourite font.
- Unfortunately, it's proprietary licensed. I was wondering if there was an opportunity for protest use, but that's difficult with restricted licenses.

Rubio’s memo has designated Times New Roman as his tenure’s official font, stating it will “restore decorum and professionalism” to documents.
Bro it's going to take more than a font change!

This is one of the dumbest distractions I've ever witnessed. I suppose the purposely forcing an acknowledged shitty font that was pushed out for a reason is on brand for such a shitty administration.

What a weird flex

Everybody knows that this is yet another distraction, but how fragile are they ready to look like. They feel threatened by a text font and some numbers these days.

He wanted to make it Times Neo Nazi but was informed that didn't exist
(please no one check or inform me if that's actually a thing or even close to real)

The font was chosen in an effort to make documents easier to read for the vision impaired.
This is like removing the requirement of having curb ramps on new sidewalks because it makes it possible for people in wheelchairs to navigate
- Trust that these people would 100% be removing the curb cuts from every sidewalk if they thought they could get away with it.

We are a Wingdings nation!

I was expecting Comic Sans.

Uh-huh. Sure.
I'll get right on that, as soon as you can explain exactly how the singular genitive declension of the Latin word Dēus has literally any bearing whatsoever on office policies.

It's good to see the papyrus guy bounced back and became Secretary of State

That's it. I'm going to ban cupboards in my house for being to DEI too!
Makes about as much sense to me as banning a "DEI font"
- Let's be reasonable about this! What more things are DEI? Let's try to find something that is actually DEI to the core and ban it.
  Something that makes it harder for the established upper dog to dominate. Something that gives the little player a better chance!
  Yes I know it! Tarrifs! Tarrifs are DEI, now we got to ban tarrifs!!!!

Just when you think you've heard all the ridiculous shit out there, this guy goes and proves you wrong.

legitimately can't imagine being this much of an obedient and brainless little removed

Hope someone throws acid in his face and impairs his vision. That would be golden.

I hope they make papyrus the official font

“Not only am I tiny, so is my dick!”

I'm surprised he didn't make everything comic sans
- It is the traditional font of scammers and grifters. Comic Sans is perfect for Rubio.

Wait till he finds out about comic sans

MAGAts are so petty.

So... Just tell the browser to display Times New Roman as Calibri. Problem solved. I'm just amazed that this guy wastes his time and tax payer paid salary on something like this and people just accept it.

I thought “tech crunch” was something silly that Silicon Valley (the TV show) made up!

When I first saw this I mistook Calibri for Cambria. Why were they using Calibri (a sans serif font) at 15px for documents in the first place?
Associating the change with DEI is absolutely ridiculous, but Calibri was a silly choice. I think they should make everyone use LaTeX personally 😄

What a douche!!!
Should they use a new, “Cuban” font… do better!?!?! This guy is sucking the dicks so hard of the people who would deport him so hard if he WAS NOT GIVING MONEY AS AN ELECTED… HE IS A dumbass! And America need to wake the fuck up!
Why fight when he is legit coming from an immigrant family as well!!!???
#mostelectmagasuckers

117 comments