When a feed is loading, a big blue bar flashes repeatedly at the bottom of the story list. This becomes very, very bothersome if for some reason the feed has trouble loading.
I recommend that instead of a large, blue, flashing bar, something more subtle be implemented to indicate still-loading. Even just turning off the flashing would help.
Following-up my own post here – in short, flashing things are almost always, always, always disturbing. We got rid of “blink” for a reason.
I’d never even noticed this until you mentioned.
I understand some people notice these things more than others. I guess you’re one of those people.
Especially … interesting if the list is on top of the feed.
Been there for four years now and I haven’t heard any other complaints. I like it and it’s the flavor of the site.
That said, I did just expand it to be taller (to be more consistent with the new iOS app that’s in beta), but I may reduce the height again.
Ok, just pushed out a change that makes the loading bar far smaller and less in your face.
I’m probably more sensitive to it than most people – I turn off all animated gifs in Firefox 
I think narrowing the bar as you did will help. Most people wouldn’t have noticed it if the feed successfully loaded, but in my situation issues can occur frequently with loading. If the loading took time, for whatever reason, it was pretty glaring.
Thank you, Samuel, for your responsiveness.