Remember “THE DRESS” Phenomenon A Few Years Ago When People Couldn’t Agree On The Color? (Now We Know Why)

“The phenomenon continues to be utterly fascinating to vision scientists like me, and for good reason. The very existence of ‘the dress’ challenged our entire understanding of color vision. Up until early 2015, a close reading of the literature could suggest that the entire field had gone somewhat stale—we thought we basically knew how color vision worked, more or less. The dress upended that idea.”

Nell Stevens Goes To The End Of The Earth (Literally) To Write A Novel In Isolation (Turns Out Isolation Was Completely Distracting)

” ‘Bleaker House’ is as formalistically inventive as any postmodern, genre-subverting work of fiction—which made me wonder, as I was reading it, whether in fact it was a postmodern, genre-subverting work of fiction, and not a memoir at all. Had Stevens invented her stay on Bleaker Island? Had she invented the island itself? Or had she invented the premise that she went there to write a conventional novel, and all along intended to write something that subverted the very idea of a novel?”

Why Email Will Never Replace The Handwritten Letter

“It can be hard to pin down what makes a personal letter, along with what makes for its individuality and authenticity. Connection is the most basic ‘reassurance that I am not floating out there alone in the universe’, as Nina Sankovitch writes in Signed, Sealed, Delivered. A letter links two particular persons, even when its words are handed round and read to others. And while we’re more connected than ever now, our connections can be less specific – we post a lot of ‘personal’ updates to a varied or unknown audience who has no responsibility to respond.”