The fragrance survey thread inspired me to take a perfume journey this weekend. I sniffed myself dizzy and discovered a dozen candidate scents and one odd piece of website copy.

There is something almost admirable about the rank fiction that serves as Eight & Bob’s origin story.

The gentleman enthusiast who winces at the thought of profit tainting his art. A recipe lost for half a century, recovered. A source plant so reclusive it escapes scientific classification; so temperamental, yet so indispensable, that only seven percent of its already fitful, dithering harvest dictates the global supply of a perfume from which the producer apportions each nation’s allowance in a grand concession to the yearning noses of the world….

I am a little inured to the extrait de bull in branding, but this packed potpourri of horseshit projects like the drydown of a cabbage dinner. And it just keeps delivering. There’s JFK incognito! An ever-resourceful butler named Philippe! A car crash. Nazis.

The point, I think, is to congratulate the buyer discerning enough to look past brand stories. All such tales are a volley of gas for the connoisseur to ignore, they seem to be saying. It might have made for a fun comic book. As it is, Eight & Bob’s puffery is a little too on the nose.

My real-world impression: I would like my linen cabinet to smell like this—faintly, maybe. There is an initial citrus fizz over cream soda in a clean white shirt; a soft-palmed, dry handshake that keeps a steady grip longer than you would expect; and cool wood. I'm going back to try it again. This is a scent that convinces you, "You don't need to check my references." And maybe Mother Teresa can show up in the backstory sequel.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

He's Canadian and he'll always have the most ridiculous source (see the post title) or the worst, goalpost-moving response ("who said that?" "how?" "well the lady said there was no impact because they just didn't get their $50M payday but they still had all the medicine." "I don't think the number is zero, but it's not what people said it would be.")

I know the easiest answer is just ignore him like most people do. But it is so infuriating when there are hundreds of thousands of people actively dying.

Hi Tilderinos!

I've recently found myself being less and less interested in posting to Tildes and reading less, which surprised me as it had become a pretty strong habit for me. After giving it some thought, I've realized it's because I have noticed a sharp uptick in negative sentiment being posted about/shared here (largely in the forms of pessimism/defeatism and/or apathetic/indifferent responses to people's struggles and experiences), and so I wanted to actually do something about it rather than simply grumble and let it continue unabated.

This isn't to shame or tone-police anyone - it's rough out there, and I don't think posters are on here trying to put struggling people down. But I wanted to come back with something firmly, boldly optimistic: I believe that we are actively making the world a better place. Yes, even you, random reader who might feel like they're stuck in a rut and/or doing nothing notable. Just by frequenting a website that's explicitly geared towards constructive communication and deeper thinking, you're making the world a better place. I truly mean that!

I think good things are still happening, and I think a lot of really smart people aren't giving up on trying to make the world a better place, one small step at a time. To quote one of my favourite BlueSky Poster's Username: Better Things Are Possible.

Never forget it!

I'll share a few positive trends I've noticed lately in the comments, and hope others will share as well - but no pressure. I hope this brightens even one person's day!

I'm curious how everyone here is coping this summer. Personally I prefer winter, I can always warm up with blankets and hot soup if it gets too cold. But this time of year even with the AC on full blast my brain still feels entirely cooked.

For my room it is now 80F/27C and it feels too dang hot!!
(also about 40% humidity here, which is high for what is normally a desert region)

I sometimes think that I’m a stoplight if I get a good green light, I think that I got good random number generation from the world.

This comes from the speerunning ppl that they gauge a good cycle of events to be good when the random number generation gives them a good “cycle”

I have a dispenser style Brita filter (link) that I keep in my fridge. I noticed a few weeks back it was dispensing water slower and at a slight angle, and figured maybe the plastic bits had gotten worn down and it might need replaced soon.

Today, I noticed it was even slower, so I emptied it and held it up to try to look at the nozzle. Couldn’t really see anything, but I did notice the nozzle appeared to be removable so I did that to get a closer look…

Looked like maybe there was some biofilm or mold or something at the nozzle tip. Cleaned it with soap and water and a straw brush, but honestly I’m horribly grossed out.

I’ve been drinking most of my daily water dispensed by it. I haven’t been sick or anything over the past month so like, presumably I’ll be OK but…ew.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 166 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results!

I was initially thinking of making a custom visualization with all the game covers in a big collage together, but I ended up not having the time to do it. :'( If anyone is interested in trying to make that though, please do! I think it'd look really cool.

• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! Hope to see you in the next survey! :)

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 324 people that responded! It was honestly a bigger number than I was expecting so I'm really happy with how it turned out. :D Here are some stats that I can put in Markdown:

• 34 years old is the median age
• We have lived a combined 11615 years
• And the generational breakdown with:
  • Millennials at 59.0%
  • Gen Z at 26.9%
  • Gen X at 12.3%
  • Baby Boomer at 1.5%
  • Greatest Generation at 0.3% not sure if this one is legit ;)

View the full results here

• Tip: You can set a custom age range using the "Set age range" filter to get a better view of results! All the graphs update along with that filter.
• Or get a ZIP download here of the data

Let me know your thoughts about the survey, what you liked, what you didn't like, if you'd like something different about them, you name it!

Thank you all again for participating! I hope to see you in the next survey. :)

This is sort of a philosophical, logical, and psychological paradox. If you are content when being unhappy, then your preferences are satisfied. So, you wouldn't want to change anything and, in that sense, you are happy. But if you're happy, then your preference is unsatisfied and so you're unhappy. But, it seems plausible in real-life that someone, for some complicated reason, actually doesn't want to be happy. If we accept that such a thing exists, then what exactly are we talking about?

Is anyone else in a part of the US where there are a ton more fireworks this summer than ever before? It can't be just my neighborhood. Literally every night since the beginning of June, someone is setting fire to their (presumably inversely proportional, that is to say, increasingly diminishing) disposable income. The prices of everything are higher than ever—gas, food, housing, everything—and yet. What is going on out there??

Went on a guys trip to Johnsons Shut-Ins the last week. Go ahead and Google what happened there last night. I don't really know the point of posting this here but I feel like sharing.

It started raining around 11pm. The tents held up fine for a while.

I remember waking up at one point to hard rain. I checked the tent but things seemed fine. That was probably about midnight or 1am. Around 2am I woke up cause something felt wrong. The tent was moving and shaking.

I opened the door and saw chaos. It was like looking at the sea in a storm, and I was being carried off by the rushing water. We were swept into a shelter, where I was able to find footing to grab my kid (I was telling "GET UP, GET UP NOW" the whole time) and toss him onto a table out of the water.

I managed to grab quite a bit from the tent and toss it on too and then wedge the tent between two trees.

I then saw the other tent from my group float past. I couldn't help them.

My kid is crying, a torrent of rising water is at my feet, and I spotted that the bathroom shelter nearby was higher up. I grabbed my kid and had to fight my way through the raging water worrying I'd drop him with any misstep. I made it across and we were the first ones there.

Slowly others came. First my FIL and then other campers tricked in. We didn't know what had happened to my bil or my nephew, just they they'd been swept away. My FIL had been sucked out of the tent when he opened the door.

Another family we could hear yelling across the water. A father and son stuck in the trees. They showed up later at the shelter, apparently the son had been pulled away from his dad but wedged on a tree and was able to escape. The dad went back to find the rest of the family. They were all ok.

A few hours later, my bil and his son showed up. They'd been pinned by the current to the trees for at least 2 hours. Hypothermic and exhausted, but safe.

Dawn came and the rain stopped. We gathered what ever else we could find and then left through flooded roads.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Something that generally works for most people, but you were an exception.

Something you were expecting to help, but it didn’t.

Something that promised a lot but failed to deliver.

Something that fell through.

Something you couldn’t get used to.

Could be an item, a piece of advice, a plan, a path, a relationship, etc.

Whatever it was, it didn’t work and that was significant.

What was it? Why do you think it didn’t work? How do you feel about it?

How do you do, fellow users?

I've just arrived. Hi-ho! Anyone else new here as well? What do folks usually do around these parts? Any do's and don'ts for new users?

Edit: Woah thanks y'all for the warm welcome! Can't reply to everyone but I really appreciate all the advices.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

May we spend the day CELEBRATING TOGETHER THE MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE WHO MAKE US WHAT WE ARE, and also THE ALLIES WHO PROPPED US EVERY TIME WE NEEDED THEM, and finally in remembrance that 250 YEARS AGO WE DECIDED DEMOCRACY WAS COOLER THAN BEING RULED BY A SINGLE PERSON.

That is all :)

I'm running out of content and need some help. Some of my notable favorites:

• Hey girl, are you a microwave? Because mmmmmmmmmmmmmm (doing my best to imitate the hum a microwave makes).

• Hey girl, are you a parking ticket? Because you have FINE written all over you.

• Hey girl, if you were a fruit, you'd be a fine-apple.

• Hey girl, did you change your name to Campbell? Because mmm mmm.

The feel I'm going for is delivering these with lots of very exaggerated eyebrow raises, often times finger guns, and my best Johnny Bravo voice.

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 165 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results!

• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! As mentioned in the original post, this will be the last survey for a little while! On August 2nd however I'll be back with the vote for the next surveys we'll do. :D

Title doesn't refer to a literal "itch" (though it certainly can!).

Instead, it's something that's bothered you for a while, or that you've been passively curious about, or that you've been meaning to get to, etc.

What was the itch, and how did you scratch it? How do you feel about it now?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Last year I ran an AMA while sitting in a field waiting to graduate from my undergrad program. I had planned to do the same thing again as I graduated from my master's program but was foiled by the 502 Bad Gateway last week, and then forgot to do it after as I was busy with moving and celebrations.

So, 1 year older (and wiser? -ish?), with deeper eye bags and less sleep, AMA

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 244 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results!

• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! Hope to see you in the next survey! :)

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 213 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results!

I'd like to thank @TaylorSwiftsPickles and @DefinitelyNotAFae once again for helping out with this survey! <3

• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! Hope to see you in the next survey! :)

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I was talking with a friend about recent events that seemed eerily suspicious to me, and was wondering if all of you might have any similar experiences.

(Preemptively tagging this as politics. If anything in this thread is deemed malicious or inflammatory, let me know and I'll delete the thread)

"Different" can be interpreted in any way, in any context, for any magnitude.

When did you realize you were different?
What prompted it?
How did you feel about it then?
Has the difference changed over time?
Have your feelings changed over time?

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 115 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results! And the next four surveys we will do are:

1. In first place with 26 votes: What is your gender identity?
2. Second place with 25 votes: What's your favorite video game?
3. Third place 24 with votes: How optimistic are you about the future?
4. And fourth with 23 votes: How often do you visit/read Tildes?

• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! Hope to see you in the next survey! :)

Question for those interested, what would be a good way to pose the next question "What is your gender identity?"

I have some ideas but I'd like to hear other people's thoughts too since I think historically this has been one of the more debated questions in the demographics surveys. And I think this one's an important one not to mess up. Let me know!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I'm not some big psychonaut or anything. I haven't even had a proper trip outside of smoking some laced weed a decade or so ago. I microdosed shrooms (golden teacher) for a few years, but I topped out at 100mg twice a week. I've done about 2g of shrooms (different varieties), but at that level its more like a really great buzz off of alcohol with a little euphoria on top. Nothing crazy.

Anyway, I have a cartridge of NN DMT. I'm going to start light with only one hit, which should last only five minutes or so. I have a connect for ayahuasca, but it all seems to intense and drawn out and... just more than I want to do for a first go. I also don't really want to be that deep into something around a bunch of randos who also coughed up a couple hundred bucks to trip in some lady's living room.

I've been reading up on it for a while and have absolutely no anxiety about it. Even though its light, I'm still going to have a friend sit for me just to play it safe.

Ultimately, I don't have any grand expectations or anything. What I get out of it, positive or negative, will be good. I've read about higher doses actually improving the task-switching in the brain, which would be nice for my ADHD. I don't take any drugs for ADHD, depression, or anything, so I'm in a great spot on that front too.

Tell me your experiences (good or bad!)

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 318 people that responded! Check out this special results page to see how the Tildes community chose!

• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Could be something about you, your thoughts, priorities, health, etc.

Could be something about the world, the way things work, etc.

Could be anything really.

What has changed, and how do you feel about it?

You've just been convicted by the UN security council for being a Tildes user, and have been sentenced to 7 years in a penal colony, but you get a choice. Do you choose either:

1: Mars - 7 years without ever being able to go outside without a suit on, but afterwards you could travel back to Earth, if you desired.

2: New Mongolia: An Earth-like planet, almost as if Earth was new again. But it's a one way trip.

(Asking for a friend)

Had been wondering about this for a bit. The "classics" we know had already all been written and popular by then. Right now, I don't see any major piece of writing apart from the occasional r/nosleep posts that would evoke that kind of feeling when being read which I would get reading say, "Psychosis" or "Gateway of the Mind". The "backrooms" theme was the only recent concept I know that came to be in that subculture, but that was lot more visual than in a literary format. Thinking about it, a kind of mainstreaming of this culture happened in the years before 2020 through memes and animations, and then it just faded out of memory. What do you folks here think happened to it? Where might the authors be now? Horror as a genre doesn't feel the same again since creepypastas have gone.

Edit (from a comment): Might it be so that text-based subcultures died out in favor of visual ones? SCP articles rely heavily on the visual aspect of things. I can't imagine someone putting out the effort to write out something like "Ben Drowned" and get a good audience nowadays, though of course I may be wrong.

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 148 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the results! Here's a few quick stats:

• 50 total distinct languages were submitted!
  • 30 of which people responded speaking fluently
  • 40 of which people responded they are familiar with
• The top 5 languages (combining fluent and familiar):
  • English with 146 responses (not a surprise :P)
  • French with 54 responses
  • Spanish with 50 responses
  • German with 39 responses
  • Japanese with 25 responses
• And people responded with this many languages (combining fluent and familiar):
  • 1 language at 9.5%
  • 2 languages at 39.9%
  • 3 languages at 22.3%
  • 4 languages at 14.9%
  • More numbers on the dashboard!

• View the full results dashboard here
  • If you have any ideas for visualizations or stats I can add I'd love to hear them!
• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating!

Also I'm making a change to the schedule! The survey for the coming week will be a simple one: "Pineapple on pizza? Yes or no". I have an idea I'd like to work out to make the surveys more customizable and easier to set up but that will take some time, that's why I'm deciding to have a fun in-between survey and next week we'll have the vote on the next surveys coming up. :)

I was reading the potential gatorade-esque business idea thread @daychilde put up the other day and it got me thinking about all the potential business ideas my partner and I have been kicking around. I'm hoping folks can post their prospective business ideas here and folks within those industries and provide feedback, insight, or hurdles to the ideas. Kind of like the hobby thread from a few weeks ago. Excited to hear what everyone is thinking about!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 174 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the visualizations and a rough comparison with the previous survey! Here's a few quick stats:

• 41 distinct countries are represented!
• Spread across the following continents:
  • America at 45.7%
  • Europe at 39.9%
  • Asia at 8.7%
  • Oceania at 5.8%
• With the top 5 countries of most responses:
  • United States at 36.2%
  • United Kingdom at 8.6%
  • Canada at 6.9%
  • France at 4.0%
  • Australia at 3.4%
• And the results for whether people were living in the country they were born in:
  • Yes at 74.7%
  • No at 23.0%
  • No answer at 2.3%

• View the full results dashboard here
  • If you have any ideas for vizualisations or stats I can add I'd love to hear them!
• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! I hope to see you in the next survey. :)

An event, a moment, an experience, etc.

Can be big or small; significant or insignificant; serious or funny.

It doesn't have to be a bad thing. You could be glad you missed out on something!

What did you miss out on?
How do you feel about it?

@RoyalHenOil's comment in another thread got me thinking, and I feel like it might be helpful for me to hear what other Tilderinos have to share about this. I've wondered for years if I might have ADHD. Any time I've looked into it, it never seems like I check enough boxes for that to be an accurate label. But I've also gotten the impression that many psychological things like ADHD might be better understood as a spectrum (or even a region?), so lately I keep coming back to the possibility that I just have some other/related flavor of executive dysfunction. Or maybe I just haven't figured out how to "adult" properly yet for other reasons. I don't know, but it feels like being able to name the way my brain works would help things somehow.

I tried for hours to write up an explanation of my experiences, but I couldn't come up with anything that felt accurate and was a reasonable length, so the five-second version is this: The thing I keep coming across and identifying with is the "hyperfocus mode" that some people report. I enjoy this but also feel like it must have something to do with my struggles in some areas. I can prioritize tasks effectively plenty of the time, but I also can't at other times. If I used an Eisenhower matrix, things in the "important but not urgent" category would mostly be gathering dust (except for ones I happened to focus on). I don't really have any control over the "hyperfocus mode" and its target changes unpredictably.

There's an exhausting amount of nuance I could add to the above. I'd really love to hear from anyone who's had experience with any sort of divergent executive function that doesn't seem to fit into any of the currently available boxes we use to understand these things.

Addendum: I reread RoyalHenOil's comment just now and I think responding to it directly might be easier than writing out my own explanation from scratch, so I'll include that response here for anyone who feels like reading it.

Radicalization has, of course, varied meanings to pretty much any person you ask to define it and it is both contextual and a spectrum. I will provide no definition of such here as this isn't a pissing contest and a person's definition is likely to be highly personal based on their own lived experiences up to and post said "radicalization".

Today is my yearly reminder of what I consider to be the impetus of what "radicalized" me.
So thought I'd ask all of you for yours.