(responding to Rick)
I sit corrected on the terminology and parameters. I've been doing the right things for a few years, but I got it wrong in my last post.
I manually do "dnf upgrade --refresh" (no other options or parameters) for patches almost every week.
I manually do "dnf system-upgrade [etc]" (or whatever the upgrade instructions say to do) to upgrade from F(n) to F(n+1) roughly every half year, within a month before F(n+2) is released.
I do also try to avoid automated patches and updates (except for rkhunter's database) as much as I can. Something keeps trying to do automated updates, but I have not been able to figure out what, or how to shut it off. Once this grub menu font issue is solved or closed, I'll address this in a separate new thread.