Are you also going to insist that The New York Times have the print equivalent of #AAAAAA?
It could get a lot worse in the HDR age where the screen has an ability, limited in time and space, to get super bright and you might have to play a video (not an image or web page glyph) to get at the ability.
DarkReader will save your eyes, I'm not fond of extensions, but this one is worth it: https://darkreader.org/
Ever used an iPhone or iPad?
For apps made by Apple, like Settings or Mail.app, the dominant background colors are white and light gray.
(The App Store uses more colorful backgrounds because it is trying to sell you stuff.)
Why does Apple choose those colors? Because the typical Apple user is intimidated by computers, and those are the most calming colors.
If your screen is too bright, turn it down. Don't make it everyone else's problem.
By contrast (no pun intended), HN's grey on light grey is very hard to read for me (with poor eyesight), especially in dim light. It fails accessibility best practice standards, having a contrast ratio of only 3.54:1: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=828282&...
Black and white may be jarring, but it's easier to turn down the brightness than to have to use a custom stylesheet just to make grey-on-grey more readable.