This afternoon at a gather I had chance to speak with Tarah Wheeler at some length, and she noticed that I spent most of the discussion reading her lips. As part of the discussion it came out that I'm a synaesthete and was having great difficulty understanding her because I was unable to pick her voice out of all of the distracting visual phenomena due to all of the other discussions happening around me, but I was able to focus on her lipstick and pick her voice out of all of the static. The discussion turned to synaesthesia as I …

In the halcyon days of the 80's, a fairly common trope of cyberpunk was people (usually background characters but occasionally a main character) wearing battlegoth makeup - funky facepaint that distinctively changes your appearance. Often it was described as a stylistic choice, not unlike what some media stars effect today though occasionally you see it at street level. Facial recognition systems are pretty primitive today but they're starting to be deployed by law enforcement and advertising agencies just the same to gather actionable information for later use. Right now eye tracking software is used to determine what keeps people's attention for …