One of the most valuable substances for humans to scent ourselves with was ambergris, which is chunks of poop from sperm whales with upset bowels. Worth more than gold. I think humans are one of the more crazy parts.
Casi
all of life is just this weird self aware slow burning chemical reaction that really likes sensation.
Agemegos
A big slow fizzle.
The same is true of astrophysics.
Needfuldoer
Futurama taught us that!
(Via Roseanne Barr of all people, because that made sense in the early 2000s.)
BarerMender
You… you mean… humans are part of nature? On no! I’m not special! How do I get back to being the center of the universe?
Kazuma Taichi
appropriate gravatar
BarerMender
I’m surprised to find that the s in ambergris is pronounced. “–grease,” not “–gree.” Learn something new every day.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Ambergris is from their intestinal tract, but it’s not poop exactly. More like congealed bile or something. It may be a product of the whale’s protective mechanism from eating hard pointy bits, like squid beaks.
Okay, Sol, first I need to apologize. The “flag” button was next to the reply button and my early morning fingers are stupid. I accidentally have altered Willis to a completely inoffensive comment from you and I am sorry.
Also, to your comment, I imagine the contact high is just nature’s way of giving the lion’s insentive to perform the behavior. It seems like the actual advantage of smelling like your prey is that if you are stealthy they won’t react in time to save themselves because their nose is saying “just a member of the heard, all is well” rather than “oh shit a lion!!”
All my life I’ve had a very poor sense of smell, but I can still always tell the difference between my husband’s workout sweat vs his stress/anxiety sweat.
And now pregnancy has given me a normal sense of smell, and I can tell the difference from across the dang room.
It does make sense that my evolutionary monkey-brain super wants to know when my partner is stressed the heck out.
I believe it has something to do with complimentary immune systems. Should try and dig up that study, but there’s so much wacky stuff going on with the science of human smell it’s hard to know what studies are serious.
Not much of a leap to suppose we’re programmed to like the smell of a person your body recognizes as someone it wants to bone down with, though.
Are you thinking about the 2022 “More than just a pretty face? The relationship between immune function and perceived facial attractiveness”? It’s a very small study, needs way more research, and I’m personally not enthusiastic about their testing methodology.
159 participants at Texas Christian University. So there’s some hard selection basis built-in that throws skepticism flags for me.
Kazuma Taichi
there’s definitely older studies than that, as I remember being taught about complimentary immune system smell compatibility back in the 2006-2014 range (I don’t remember if it was high school or uni)
now whether the older studies hold up to snuff or not I can’t say, because it was presented in a classroom environment, and classrooms aren’t exactly known for including all their citations in the lessons, even as they demand we do such in assignments
@Amelie, I would caution against ideas that feel intuitively easy to believe. it may not be much of a leap to believe that humans select their partners partly based on body smell, but hypotheses for biological cues for human behaviour are in direct competition, in political discourse, with social explanations. which is too bad, but… i’ve seen your comments, i think you know it’s true.
(which is not to say we shouldn’t explore such hypotheses, obviously.)
(but let’s just all at the very least try to learn something from the contrast between the amount of effort that has been poured into finding innate factors for human behaviour the last, say, century versus how tremendously little it has been able to prove with any solidity.)
deliverything
Just speculating:
Another possible complication is the way the forces of society can sometimes override biological effects. Think of it like this: if humans did produce pheromones, but mates were frequently chosen for reasons other than personal attraction (such as for money or status, or selected by others in the form of arranged marriages), a mutation that removed the ability to make or detect pheromones mightn’t end up significantly affecting reproductive success, and so potentially spread throughout the population. In fact, being attracted to someone who smells nice more than someone who’s successful could be maladaptive.
Even in that hypothetical case, many humans could retain the ability to produce or respond to pheromones, and a well-performed study may detect it, but it’d add a lot of complication to an already-difficult subject to analyse.
I used to have near bloodhound levels of smelling ability, to the point that I smelled a toxic chemical leak and broke the door leaving the room 20 seconds before the gas alarm went off for a chemical that was supposed to be so toxic that if you could smell it you were already dying (new mown hay was the scent). Then until I got fired maintenance used to use me to test their chemical sensors because I was way more sensitive than the sensors.
I was in a bookstore and smelled sweat. It was GREAT. I followed the aroma and found an alarmingly attractive young lady in gym clothes. I would have been stunned if it had been an old nasty dude. The smell was too good. I left her alone and fled
Here, I’ll take it away – I can’t think of a more effective way to activate Joyce’s OCD than to do something sexual in the gross public showers. That’s two of her biggest triggers. If you can somehow work in food mixing, you could go for the hat trick lol
better neglected and/or lonely housewives than the, in my experience, more likely seduction of lonely/neglected members of the youth congregation which happened in my youth group, and many others in one of the big churches in my town
He was aware enough of the unlikelihood of her being receptive of his, er, “counseling”. Of course, she might not be his preferred type to, er, “counsel”.
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
We’re talking about the guy who commented about how Becky “used to be so beautiful,” right?
155 thoughts on “Programming”
Doctor_Who
Shame Joyce just used her 1/day Teleport ability. Now she can’t activate it to go fetch her Shower Shoes.
jeffepp
She’s clearly up to 2 per day.
Thag Simmons
What level do you have to be to get a second?
Paradox
Its a rubber band teleport effect
She can teleport, but returns to the spot she left (or nearest unoccupied space) at the start of her next turn
NGPZ
To hell with your Pastor! Just fuck Joe already! you know you wanna ^^
True Survivor
A vivid, and startling ironic, turn of phrase.
NGPZ
The irony is that I know the slipshine ain’t gonna come until the next storyline, which Willis says is “hornier than usual” T_T
Ana Chronistic
that’s why animals like to roll in stank, I guess, shortcut to SOMEHOW AMAZING
Sol
Lions like to roll in poop (generally prey animals) and get a sort of high off of it. Nature do be crazy.
3oranges
One of the most valuable substances for humans to scent ourselves with was ambergris, which is chunks of poop from sperm whales with upset bowels. Worth more than gold. I think humans are one of the more crazy parts.
Casi
all of life is just this weird self aware slow burning chemical reaction that really likes sensation.
Agemegos
A big slow fizzle.
The same is true of astrophysics.
Needfuldoer
Futurama taught us that!
(Via Roseanne Barr of all people, because that made sense in the early 2000s.)
BarerMender
You… you mean… humans are part of nature? On no! I’m not special! How do I get back to being the center of the universe?
Kazuma Taichi
appropriate gravatar
BarerMender
I’m surprised to find that the s in ambergris is pronounced. “–grease,” not “–gree.” Learn something new every day.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Ambergris is from their intestinal tract, but it’s not poop exactly. More like congealed bile or something. It may be a product of the whale’s protective mechanism from eating hard pointy bits, like squid beaks.
someone
Dogs love to do that too. I read that predators do this to mask their scent so that prey animals don’t detect them.
nothri
Okay, Sol, first I need to apologize. The “flag” button was next to the reply button and my early morning fingers are stupid. I accidentally have altered Willis to a completely inoffensive comment from you and I am sorry.
Also, to your comment, I imagine the contact high is just nature’s way of giving the lion’s insentive to perform the behavior. It seems like the actual advantage of smelling like your prey is that if you are stealthy they won’t react in time to save themselves because their nose is saying “just a member of the heard, all is well” rather than “oh shit a lion!!”
Taffy
I flagged you on purpose, just to feel alive.
thejeff
“flagged a man in DOA, just to feel alive”
Imogen
you hold that shit in
Sirksome
Musk.
NGPZ
AAAAAAAAH ?
Reltzik
Definitely an X factor.
NGPZ
I hope their servers get obliterated soon by YTP-sized c*m explosions.
Needfuldoer
He missed a golden opportunity by not getting into the cologne market.
(Then we’d be able to smell his weird fans coming, instead of having to listen out for the “whoa that’s crazy” noises coming from their phones.)
shrub
Because fresh sweat = not bad, stale/old sweat = nasty
StClair
This.
DailyBrad
This is true, honestly.
Raja
Correct
Leorale
All my life I’ve had a very poor sense of smell, but I can still always tell the difference between my husband’s workout sweat vs his stress/anxiety sweat.
And now pregnancy has given me a normal sense of smell, and I can tell the difference from across the dang room.
It does make sense that my evolutionary monkey-brain super wants to know when my partner is stressed the heck out.
BBCC
Off topic but congratulations on the pregnancy! Hope it’s as safe and comfortable as possible.
Leorale
Thank you! ^^
shrub
Hope he changes/cleans his work out clothes regularly
Leorale
He does: I’m talking fresh workout-or-heat sweat vs. fresh stress-or-anxiety sweat. Totally different scents somehow.
Next time I’ll tell him I can smell his fear. I’m sure that’ll help.
saltchocolate
He’ll make tons more of that stress sweat
David DeLaney
i see no possible way this could go wackily wrong {tm}
Amelie Wikström
I believe it has something to do with complimentary immune systems. Should try and dig up that study, but there’s so much wacky stuff going on with the science of human smell it’s hard to know what studies are serious.
Not much of a leap to suppose we’re programmed to like the smell of a person your body recognizes as someone it wants to bone down with, though.
Dorje Sylas
Are you thinking about the 2022 “More than just a pretty face? The relationship between immune function and perceived facial attractiveness”? It’s a very small study, needs way more research, and I’m personally not enthusiastic about their testing methodology.
159 participants at Texas Christian University. So there’s some hard selection basis built-in that throws skepticism flags for me.
Kazuma Taichi
there’s definitely older studies than that, as I remember being taught about complimentary immune system smell compatibility back in the 2006-2014 range (I don’t remember if it was high school or uni)
now whether the older studies hold up to snuff or not I can’t say, because it was presented in a classroom environment, and classrooms aren’t exactly known for including all their citations in the lessons, even as they demand we do such in assignments
milu
yeah, i would take that hypothesis with some salt.
this 2020 Royal Society B meta-analysis says, basically, “we’ve got nothing”.
@Amelie, I would caution against ideas that feel intuitively easy to believe. it may not be much of a leap to believe that humans select their partners partly based on body smell, but hypotheses for biological cues for human behaviour are in direct competition, in political discourse, with social explanations. which is too bad, but… i’ve seen your comments, i think you know it’s true.
milu
(which is not to say we shouldn’t explore such hypotheses, obviously.)
(but let’s just all at the very least try to learn something from the contrast between the amount of effort that has been poured into finding innate factors for human behaviour the last, say, century versus how tremendously little it has been able to prove with any solidity.)
deliverything
Just speculating:
Another possible complication is the way the forces of society can sometimes override biological effects. Think of it like this: if humans did produce pheromones, but mates were frequently chosen for reasons other than personal attraction (such as for money or status, or selected by others in the form of arranged marriages), a mutation that removed the ability to make or detect pheromones mightn’t end up significantly affecting reproductive success, and so potentially spread throughout the population. In fact, being attracted to someone who smells nice more than someone who’s successful could be maladaptive.
Even in that hypothetical case, many humans could retain the ability to produce or respond to pheromones, and a well-performed study may detect it, but it’d add a lot of complication to an already-difficult subject to analyse.
Opus the Poet
I used to have near bloodhound levels of smelling ability, to the point that I smelled a toxic chemical leak and broke the door leaving the room 20 seconds before the gas alarm went off for a chemical that was supposed to be so toxic that if you could smell it you were already dying (new mown hay was the scent). Then until I got fired maintenance used to use me to test their chemical sensors because I was way more sensitive than the sensors.
Agemegos
Phosgene?
Puppeteer Nessus
I was in a bookstore and smelled sweat. It was GREAT. I followed the aroma and found an alarmingly attractive young lady in gym clothes. I would have been stunned if it had been an old nasty dude. The smell was too good. I left her alone and fled
Wendy
They continue to be adorable. Jesus.
RassilonTDavros
Joe and Joyce Perform a Shower: A Dumbing of Age Pornographique
Grimey
Don’t do this. Don’t give me hope.
Tesset
Here, I’ll take it away – I can’t think of a more effective way to activate Joyce’s OCD than to do something sexual in the gross public showers. That’s two of her biggest triggers. If you can somehow work in food mixing, you could go for the hat trick lol
Drain
Someday
Amelie Wikström
I figure students and faculty are all really wary of shower stall sex for different reasons. . .
BBCC
Your youth pastor can eat shit, Joyce.
anon
imagine if it was leaked that the youth pastor had been seducing neglected/lonely housewives this whole time lol
Concolor44
That scenario is not ENTIRELY unlikely, given the demonstrated proclivities of pastors/youth pastors/associate pastors.
Casi
better neglected and/or lonely housewives than the, in my experience, more likely seduction of lonely/neglected members of the youth congregation which happened in my youth group, and many others in one of the big churches in my town
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Is this the youth pastor that I speculated never talked to Becky to help her deal with her mother’s suicide? Which I would have thought was his JOB.
jeffepp
He was aware enough of the unlikelihood of her being receptive of his, er, “counseling”. Of course, she might not be his preferred type to, er, “counsel”.
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
We’re talking about the guy who commented about how Becky “used to be so beautiful,” right?
Opus the Poet
I think that’s the one.
BBCC
We don’t know who said that iirc. It could’ve been the youth pastor but there’s no confirmation that I recall.
True Survivor
There is no solid scientific evidence for that Joe. Dina would be so disappointed.
S.R.
I’m pretty sure humans having pheromones is a known thing.
Mym
Which ingredient?
I’m gonna guess Dry Flour
Agemegos
Tubesteak.
Animedingo
Cheese
Needfuldoer
Pancakes or waffles.
(I know those have multiple constituent ingredients, but they combine into one consistent food. As I understand Joyce’s rules, that counts.)
thakoru
Panel three begs the question: What’s the ingredient? If y’all were getting a giant plate towering with exactly one ingredient, whatcha getting?
My first thought was cheese, so I’m going with that. A mild cheese. Mozzarella or something.
Jeff K!
Noodles.
Mym
Scrambled eggs is my favorite post-workout meal
brionl