this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
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Good! Weird Al is awesome
Love Weird Al Hate weird AI
I am all for the proliferation of (Weird) Al in everything, particularly when using sans-serif fonts.
Since everybody wants AI cancelled nowadays, that'll just be... Weird.
I hadn’t heard about this. Somehow it doesn’t surprise me though.
I think they're saying people want to cancel ai, not AL - and playing on how in most fonts capital i and lowercase L look the same.
That's why I call it 'a.i.' because fuck giving that shit the honour of capitalising it, and also as someone that sometimes goes by Al (lowercase L).
Thanks. I feel dumb now.
I'm sorry you feel dumb, and you don't need to - we all have our "whoosh" moments. I only intended to clear the air regarding my long time hero Weird Al.
I think that was the commenter's intent, so don't feel too bad
The dumbass AI CEOs probably thought it would have been soooo clever to use Al for AI.
I saw him perform two years in a row at the local fairgrounds. The second show he says "For those of you that were here last year... this show is exactly the same!" and it was still great! He's one of the real ones.
Well it wasn't exactly same. I bet the previous year he didn't say that part about it being the same show. 🙃
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Good, his music is the only Al generated one I need.
Drives me nuts that the capital "I" looks the same as lower case "L". What happened to the top and bottom line on the "I"?
Wait till you find out about keming.
Nothing happened to it. It's there in some fonts, and not in others.
This is why I force OpenDyslexic on every website. I can't stand I's looking like l's, 0's looking like O's, etc. Also because I'm dyslexic.
Oh wow. That font has a lot of personality. Looks too much like everything is a 1960s concert poster to me. Braille institute Atkinson font is a less extreme alternative. I like Source Sans 3.
Yeah at first it looks hideous, but also every letter is extremely distinct from each other, so reading actually becomes easy for me. Of all things, comic sans is also a very good font for dyslexics. I'd rather have something ugly that is legible.
So I've been wondering about this, does this kind of font make reading easier immediately for you, or does it take a bit until you've gotten used to and, idk, learned the shapes of the individual letters, after which it's then faster?
It was pretty immediate. I was like man this is ugly, but when I actually tried it, straight away I noticed it was extremely easier and faster to read and I made much less mistakes. Like normally I misread words and letters and numbers a lot and reread the same line over and over and words just look like identical blocky shapes. A lot of the time I actually just guess what word something is based on length and context, which kind of works but not really. But with that font I can read normally.
I only even realised I might have it and got it investigated when I accidentally changed the font to OpenDyslexic in Kindle because it was just there, and then I'm like, ok wow I didn't even notice how hard it was before 😂
That's super interesting, and a funny personal story, thanks for sharing!
A lot of the time I actually just guess what word something is based on length and context
I mean, as far as I know that, plus the rough shape/outline of each word, is how fast non-dyslexic readers read in general, at least for common words, haha. Actually reading letter-by-letter is relatively rare
of my collection of neurodivergencies, dyslexia is not one of them, but I will use opendyslexic when reading ebooks.
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But to get to the point, some dudes created Helvetica, which was adapted later, like Judaism to Christianity, to create Arial.
Explanation
The reason being, Helvetica was made in the 1950s as exclusive for IBM and Microsoft didn't want to pay for it, so they had their own exclusive made in the 1980s, a legally distinct but practically identical version.
This is the category called Sans-Serif
Explanation
The name means 'without serifs', which are 'extra' identifiable pieces on the characters on the bottom like flicks on a and l or the feet on the i, I and 1
Popular serif styles from multiple sources exist ::: spoiler such as: From Apple:
- New York
From Google:
- Roboto
- Merriweather
- Lora
From Microsoft:
- Georgia
- Aptos Serif
- Cambria
Open source:
- EB Garamond
- Instrument Serif
- Libre Baskerville
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Good guy Al.
Good guy Weird Al.
Proper Alfonse
Ordinary Albert
Respect
Of course he can't be the poster boy for AI, he's already the poster boy for awesome :)
Al Yankovic has always been an awesome dude. I was a big fan in the 90s but have since outgrew him. I listened to his Greatest Hits Vol. 2 CD recently on streaming, and it's cool, but it just doesn't hit the same. I still appreciate him as an artist, though, and for how respectful he is of the original work he's lampooning.
I do fear AI will replace him for later generations. Parodies not done by Al were often credited to Al, even when they were dirty or profane (Al would never).
I feel like he should parody You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon. I mean, it's right there. "You Can Call Me Paul." If Paul says you can call him Al (the song title is from a misunderstanding that actually happened), Al can call himself Paul, at least for a joke. I'm sure somebody has done this, but it would make more sense if their name was Al.
I saw Weird Al when his tour hit my city last summer (finally! I've been a fan since I was a kid). Yeah I don't actively follow his stuff anymore but he and the band are still great. Fun show even as an adult.
He actually closed the set with a cover of You Can Call Me Al. From what I understand that's a regular thing 🙂
The Weird Al has out-AI -ed the AI. 🤭
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