I tried to use Pocket because of Mozilla’s relentless promotion, but I ended up finding it too clunky compared to regular bookmarks.

Not really. I tried staring at a picture of Obama for 5 minutes, keeping my eyes fixed on his nose exactly between the eyes. After two minutes it was like his face got squashed vertically, his mouth got closer to his eyes and his ears got more pronounced. After 3 minutes my mind began trying to fill in his mouth, stopped seeing the teeth and instead just saw closed lips, like the area was a blind spot that the mind had to guess about. I saw both teeth and lips overlaying each other, like if each eye saw a different version, or if you hold your finger close to your eye and see both it and the background simultaneously.

For the last minute his features began morphing slightly, but never that much at a time before springing back. His eyes got a little downturned, his nose got a little less pronounced, and so on, but the features always corrected themselves immediately when my eyes moved just a little bit.

Again, I think it’s about how our eyes work. They’re not cameras, they respond more to changes in their field of vision than they see the absolute image. Keeping your eyes still on a still image means nothing is changing, so the information reaching your brain is limited. It has to start making guesses to fill it in.

Usually just a minute before vision gets blotchy, colors blend together and desaturate, and some things seem to move more around than others. For example looking at a dark painting on a bright wall makes the contents of the painting seem to jump more around than the wall around it. Staring longer makes things start disappearing as if my entire vision is becoming a blind spot.

I always begin seeing weird shapes if I keep my eyes fixed somewhere. Doesn’t matter where it is, can be a white wall even. I don’t think it’s anything more than a quirk of how our eyes work.