I hate Italian subway vents

They give me nausea. Why? They are long arrays of perfect gratings, that is, parallel bars of metal against a pitch-black background. The contrast is very high, and the gratings move on my retina, and therefore on my visual cortical neurons, as I walk towards then on them on the sidewalks. Any visual neurophysiologist will tell you that the result of showing moving gratings to visual cortical neurons is massive activation, with an atypically high firing rate that no natural scene will ever provoke.

How and why that leads to nausea, I don't know yet. But the nausea is instantaneous, along with an annoying pain-like feeling between the eyes, as if I were forcing both eyes to look inwards. Striped shirts and dresses do the same to me. I often have to find a way to discretely block the view of the assaulting stripes in the garments of people who are in my line of sight.

Architects, please take note: low contrast and gentle curves, with only the occasional straight line here and there, please...