My biggest complaint is that it makes it damned near impossible to read.

Why must it become inaccessible to people with bad eye sight? My feelings aren't that fragile

Tip: No idea how HN is used on a phone, but on a PC and browser I just CTRL-A to select all text on the entire page and the light gray text becomes clearly readable. Since this does not impact scrolling location or anything else I'm satisfied with this very simple workaround.

Click on the time stamp if you want to read a particular downvoted comment. (On technical threads, it’s rarely useful; on political/social threads, much more commonly used.)

I think the max(min) is -4.

What do you mean by max(min)?