I was going to just leave this in the tags but no, I've seen too many people misunderstand this and it's very simple and easy to explain so I don't know why anyone who shares this fun fact doesn't use this analogy.
so if you took a few leaves and threw them into a blender and pulverize them to as fine a paste that you could they would still be green. this is because chlorophyll has a green PIGMENT in it. now I can't speak to the base color of blue jay feathers so we're just going to talk about blue macaws for this example. If you went and put a Blue macaw feather in a blender and pulverized it to the finest powder that you could you would get black powder. this is because blue macaw feathers have black pigment in them, but they reflect blue light because of a microscopic bubble texture on the surface.
to explain it further, have you ever seen one of those little rainbow hologram things? like how they'll put a holographic Crystal or sparkle pattern on like a Pokemon card?
yeah that motherfucker, if you tried to scrape the top layer of this card off to get the hologram "pigment", you wouldn't get bubkis. in fact if you scrape the top of this card very lightly, the yellow part would still stay yellow because it's yellow because it is PIGMENTED, but the hologram where you scratch it will stop being holographic. now it will still have the pigment underneath it because that is pigmented but the rainbow effect comes from a TEXTURE on the top.
you could even put these kind of holograms on chocolate, are you following? it's a texture!
it's the same reason that bubbles are rainbow colored despite being too thin to see pigment in them.
IT'S A TEXTUREEEEEEE!!!
blue pigment will always be blue, you can crush up a Rose and use the Rose goop to color something else the color of that Rose! leaves, bones, clay, rocks!! that's pigment! disturbing its structure will not change the color because its a PIGMENT!!!
but a blue macaw? a pigeon's neck? a raven's feathers? and a blue jay apparently? that's a texture.
"yeah that's how color works" NO!! bubbles are clear!!! they just happen to have a broad spectrum iridescent TEXTURE, and some bird feathers have a short spectrum of iridescence.
bird texture
i like what you're going for but color isn't always inherently pigment only. just cause something isn't the pigment blue doesn't mean it isnt the color blue? all pigments are colors but not all colors are pigments?
i mean thank you for the science though.
I mean, I think you're missing the point in that this is just describing a difference between a couple of ways that colors can exist beyond our perception. it's clarifying why that fun fact is relevant, what its really trying to say, and why the response of like, "that's how all color works, that fun fact is wrong and patronizing" is both inaccurate, and flattening a real truth unnecessarily.
when something "is blue" vs. "looks blue", that's a useful distinction to understand; I know that my computer screen is not Actually Blue, but rather is shining blue light at me to look blue. when it turns off, the screen is black. which is also different from the black of a dark Tumblr theme.
maybe I specifically am not doing anything with that understanding, but isn't there inherent value in understanding the world around us a little more?
I got the impression that the original tweet's intent was not "this fun fact is stupid and boring", it was "don't slander blue jays, they aren't fake blue, they're real blue"
it's not a matter of insulting them, it's just an interesting detail!
huh, the "it's not a color it's a texture" is a kind of color eliminitivism i havent heard before. i don't see why that stops at iridescence. Can move on to pigments: it's not a color, it's a molecular structure. It's just atoms. Apparently there are colored objects, actually just atoms and empty space.
#'the colour of blue jays works in a different way than the colour of most ordinary things you're familiar with' is a fun fact#'blue jays aren't *really* blue' is a philosophical interpretation of that fun fact i don't much care for#at least not without very careful context-placing
(via @sigmaleph)
this is a good way of looking at it. I do have to wonder about the specifics of the original claim, since all we're seeing here is a potentially paraphrased quote from a tweet complaining about that claim
So I think the best strat here is for the users who did get the new layout to just stop using the desktop version of the site for a while, like a week or a month or however long their 'experiment' is supposed to last, while the users who didn't get the new layout should keep using the desktop version like normal or, perhaps, use it even more than usual.
My guess is that they're doing basic A/B testing on the new layout to see if it would boost engagement: the userbase is split roughly 50/50 between the 2 versions and they are going to be comparing the engagement data between the 2 groups of users to see if it's worth it switching everyone to the new layout or not.
Basically, if you got the new layout and don't like it - don't use it. If engagement metrics of group B (new layout) are lower than those of group A (no change), the experiment will be considered a failure and they will have to reverse the change.
If your tumblr suddenly looks like twitter - it's a sign to log off and go touch some grass! (or just use the mobile app since that engagement data isn't relevant to this particular experiment)
