timemachineyeah:

not like fucking normal sunglasses or whatever either. Like actual certified eclipse viewing gear or else don’t fucking look.  (I heard a guy at work saying he was gonna look “through a CD” a it would be fine??? IT WILL NOT BE FINE. I TOLD HIM SO)

listen, I spent a couple months recovering from eye damage I did in middle school WITH MY EYES CLOSED and facing the sun. Like, after running the mile in gym I collapsed on the grass with my eyes closed too tired to even move my arms over my eyes and I was 1. Colorblind for about 15 minutes after I finally sat up and 2. Had artifacts in my vision for several weeks that slowly healed. And like MY EYES WERE FUCKIN CLOSED and it was just a few minutes while I was resting and the doctor said if I’d laid there any longer there would be no coming back and my vision (which is already not great) would have had permanent holes or worse so like I feel like this incredibly obvious to anyone who’s listening to anyone but just in case somehow you missed every other memo but for some reason are reading this blog post just:

Don’t look at the sun with your naked eye. Don’t look at the sun without protection that is, like, super high level certified for looking at the sun. 

(but also if you want to recreate the temporarily colorblind thing you actually can safely at home - it’s caused basically by the same thing that causes you to see an inverted remnant of a brightly colored thing if you stare at it and then stare at white - you know? That thing? Except your whole vision is bright backlit red for a long time so when you finally open your eyes you’ve basically undone the existence of the red/green spectrum entirely. This should really be its own post. Anyway. Don’t look at the sun, even with your eyes closed. Use a bright flashlight or something.)