The fact that the author went out his way and styled it very uniquely displays that he does have taste :) It is just that your taste is different. Like another commenter pointed out, I liked the style (though I hated the pixelated font to begin with)

I don't mind any color palette or font or anything as long as it keeps text readable. But this choice is just user unfriendly. These horizontal black lines across the display just render text unreadable. Not to mention that sans serif for a longread is also a bad taste

Funny part is he points out at the end that it's highly subjective...

I actually really liked the look of the blog. It gave me a retro vibe, which is obviously what he was going for. But I'm also reading on my phone. Maybe the choice was more annoying on a larger screen.

I just came here to say I think the blog design had a really cool look, it brought me back to my early days plugging away on old Apple IIes and IBMs.

Once one gets over the infatuation phase one realizes how subjective taste really is. I thihk there are some common points though that one can tell someone has refined taste without necessarily liking it