"<div style="text-align: left;"></div>"
into the template defaults to the "normal" header style, rather than the "paragraph" header style, thereby preventing the need to select it every time i create a new post in order to avoid the annoying double spacing.
and, indeed, it appears to work.
even if it rather sillily inserts that line at the beginning of every carriage break...
i still don't like this, but that was the biggest usability problem. i've sent a large number of complaints to google regarding customization [if you're going to change it, whatever, but why force it? why not allow me to tweak it? the new ui is ugly and cluttered, and i'd like a way to make it more orthogonal and less cartoonish. i'll get used to it, i guess, but i won't like it and i just don't understand why you'd want to force users to get used to things that they hate].