An author of a personal blog does not have to care about judgements of usability vs what they find appealing. A personal blog is a place of self-expression firstmost, not a public service nor a product that targets users. When usability is not the primary goal, you may take unconventional design decisions. If the author likes snowflakes all over the canvas, snowflakes it is. They put an easy way to disable them, I did it in <1 second through disabling JS before I even noticed there was a switch, that's all. Similarly, I would not care about the design choices of apple if I could just disable them even if it took me 5 minutes to do so.

I agree that the author has the right to self express. But in this case, I think the point being made is that it's less about what the author cares about, and more about the author's topic. They're writing about usability and design, while using (arguably) poor judgment and taste for both. It would be a little bit like an extremely out-of-shape person criticizing a marathon running program as being too hard on someone's body, or a homeless person writing that active investing is better than Vanguard's low-fee indexing model. The person's context doesn't make their arguments right or wrong, it just lowers their authority and believability.

> It would be a little bit like an extremely out-of-shape person criticizing a marathon running program as being too hard on someone's body, or a homeless person writing that active investing is better than Vanguard's low-fee indexing model. The person's context doesn't make their arguments right or wrong, it just lowers their authority and believability.

it absolutely would not, it would be more akin to someone wearing a fat-suite for a joke and criticizing someone for running with bad form

but you are taking this so seriously I can't quite tell if you're joking anyway