I think it's more the keming of the domain portion of the HN title, especially combined with HN's rather small font size choice (it's a meager 8pt¹!) there, and that it just happens that the mis-kemed result ends up with "John Mastodon", and is thus not trivially noticeable as "wrong"…

(I read it the same way, too.)

(¹I personally have a browser override for HN's tiny font choice; I thought that 12pt was the universally agreed upon "base text" point size, and "10pt" was "small text", but HN's "normal" is 9pt.)

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m-hodges 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s a Mastodon community joke.

https://boingboing.net/2022/12/18/mastodon-users-embrace-col...

	▲	deathanatos an hour ago \| parent [-]
		TIL! (Though I'd also wager that originated from someone having to squint at more bad kerning.)

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roywiggins 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/john-mastodon

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lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> keming

Kerning?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning

Also, if that was the mistake, it's kinda funny given the likelihood it was caused by a kerning issue.

	▲	deathanatos an hour ago \| parent [-]
		An intentional "pun". E.g., reddit.com/r/keming

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ajkjk 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

HN is simple enough that it scales well with browser zoom, and so (imo) is excusable for not following that 12pt standard.

	▲	mh- 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed. I need a larger font on a lot of sites nowadays, but HN is probably the one that behaves best with simple browser zoom. I have it set to 125 or 150% depending how tired my eyes are..