That actually does square the circle.

Every other time I have suggested upvoting someone past a karma threshold so they could do a thing, I got downvoted into the negatives. Because, clearly, someone hitting 250 karma and getting to pick their own header color is an enormous threat to the social pecking order and quality of discussion by completely destroying the signal value of karma ranking.

I shall be back next year to repeat this experiment and see if it works again (assuming I remember).

Only if HN had RemindMe! 365 days "April Fools upvotes".

Well, I assume you will have your 250 by then. Just comment and/or post articles. You aren't too far from it.