It looking "prettier" is pretty arguable.

The body text is as close to black as it is white. #444 is borderline acceptable. #888 is absurd.

Yes, I opened it and didn't even bother trying to read before hitting the Firefox Reader View button.

What looks good about unreadable text on a blinding white page in the middle of the night (PST)? ;)

The black on light gray of old was just the right amount of contrast... TBL got it right.

That's what I came here to say. Anymore, I won't even bother to try to read an article when the site shows such contempt for its readers.

It's a very contrast of display thing I think. I've seen those sort of pages on a Macbook and they are more easily readable than they are on my machine, for instance. I have to use stylebot to 'fix' quite a few pages that commit this sin (to varying degrees). This is quite an extreme example though.