XCancel: https://xcancel.com/ronnui_/status/1294677498064756737
Original: https://x.com/ronnui_/status/1294677498064756737
Related story:
A few months ago, we were at a supermarket with my mom, buying some stuff.
My mom needed an antiperspirant. When she was about to grab a black one, I heard a guy “helpfully” telling her that she was grabbing one “For Men™”, that the ones “For Women™” were the pink ones.
I immediately looked at the guy like “lol what, who asked”.
(My mom uses “men’s” antiperspirants because she doesn’t care about that, and they are usually cheaper than “women’s”)
Perfumes are very often made from incredibly stinky stuff that is proccesed and heavily diluted.
Ambergris used to be one of the most valuable ingredients in parfums, its formed in the intestines of sperm whales which they vomit. Fresh it smells like literal shit and sea. But after a long time drying in the sun it develops a more complex earthy smell.
Castoreum is literally the anal glands of beavers. Civet Is from glands near the genitals of Civet cats. Both are incredibly foul initially but heavily diluted into sm that smells nice and complex for humans.
Ambergis is still really valuable, but not for it’s own scent. They use it in all perfumes, or colognes, to affix the smell onto your skin so it doesn’t just evaporate away as those volatile oils will do. Some people have found 250k dollars in ambergis I’ve heard, just floating in the ocean, it’s the beaks of giant squid that sperm whales battle in the deep, they don’t digest and their intestinal systems form this ambergis around it to protect themselves from getting cut on their tract or whatever. Then they expel it eventually and it floats.