I got some understanding of what’s going on so I was then able to search and find this post:
https://forum.getpublii.com/topic/unnecessary-css-file-load-with-editorial-2-theme/
in this file
assets/css/fontawesome-all.min.css
I removed this code to not load the fonts - it was the last thing in this file
@font-face{font-family:"Font Awesome 5 Brands";font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;font-display:auto;src:url(../webfonts/fa-brands-400.eot);src:url(../webfonts/fa-brands-400.eot?#iefix) format("embedded-opentype"),url(../webfonts/fa-brands-400.woff2) format("woff2"),url(../webfonts/fa-brands-400.woff) format("woff"),url(../webfonts/fa-brands-400.ttf) format("truetype"),url(../webfonts/fa-brands-400.svg#fontawesome) format("svg")}.fab{font-family:"Font Awesome 5 Brands"}@font-face{font-family:"Font Awesome 5 Free";font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-display:auto;src:url(../webfonts/fa-regular-400.eot);src:url(../webfonts/fa-regular-400.eot?#iefix) format("embedded-opentype"),url(../webfonts/fa-regular-400.woff2) format("woff2"),url(../webfonts/fa-regular-400.woff) format("woff"),url(../webfonts/fa-regular-400.ttf) format("truetype"),url(../webfonts/fa-regular-400.svg#fontawesome) format("svg")}.far{font-weight:400}@font-face{font-family:"Font Awesome 5 Free";font-style:normal;font-weight:900;font-display:auto;src:url(../webfonts/fa-solid-900.eot);src:url(../webfonts/fa-solid-900.eot?#iefix) format("embedded-opentype"),url(../webfonts/fa-solid-900.woff2) format("woff2"),url(../webfonts/fa-solid-900.woff) format("woff"),url(../webfonts/fa-solid-900.ttf) format("truetype"),url(../webfonts/fa-solid-900.svg#fontawesome) format("svg")}.fa,.far,.fas{font-family:"Font Awesome 5 Free"}.fa,.fas{font-weight:900}
the first page test showed a size of 420K
now the test shows a size of 274K
https://www.webpagetest.org/result/230117_AiDc19_F8E/
So that’s a good improvement.
the fontawesome-all.min.css file is
Bytes In (downloaded): 11.9 KB
Uncompressed Size: 54.7 KB
So it’s only 11.9K in actual download – but I’m going to try to understand it better at some point.
If as the other post here says, it’s only being used for social media icons and such, then I ought to be able to make it much smaller.