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.
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.
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.)
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”.
I was going to say chips, which, because I’m British, is the same thing.
(Anyone wanting to get into an argument that “fries” without prefixes like “steak fries” are thin and “chips” without prefixes like”skinny chips” are chunky, sure maybe, but I don’t care. It’s all fried potato product.)
I’ve never heard of that distinction, but then again I’m from America, where “chips” means a completely different fried potato (or sometimes corn) product. I think y’all call them crisps?
Was a long-time customer of Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips back when it was more than one lonely store in Ohio and 2 sequestered on Long Island, here in the US, so yeah, that is a distinction USAns can know about
–Dave, and yes, over here it still takes the ‘steak’ to make fries non-thin
Chicken nuggets. Actually I could go for a chicken nugget pyramid with like 15 varieties of dipping sauces right now. The sauces is probably a cheat but in that case I’ll eat them anyway and go “nyum nyum” and lick my fingers in Joyce’s face.
You made me wonder what Joyce would think of rijsttafel: a dozen different foods, but each served in a separate dish. No touching! (And suited to a large appetite.)
Based on what I found from looking up that word, I think she’d be fine with it? I imagine she’s been to a buffet or potluck before, and this doesn’t seem to be meaningfully different from that basic concept.
if we go with exactly one ingredient (and not with one food type), chicken nuggets doesn’t compute and neither does anything fried – and even polenta, rice or noodles need extra water. So possibilities’d entail: eggs, mashed potatoes without extra fat nor salt, fresh vegetables of one kind, grilled meat or fish, fresh fruits of one kind. Given Joyce sculpture tendancies, I’d say mashed potatoes would be the best to make a tower of it.
a late pedantic nitpick: no, it doesn’t, because after reading that question we have no idea of the answer. it suggests the question, or gives rise to it.
–Dave, a begged question incorporates the answer you’re supposed to give
We don’t, afaik. People use the word colloquially though, like as a way of expressing that you might be attracted to the scent of some people, or that some part of your deep lizard brain may detect when your partner is extra-fertile, stuff like that.
Scent fetish awakening? XD; you’ll def sweat after the first time they hook up so enjoy it now before that happens and it feels either awkward or excitable next time they sweat in another exercise, i mean there are ppl into more ‘extreme’ smells like used socks versus fresh sweat lol
Modern research suggests this is incorrect. You can predict how attracted to someone you are going to be by smelling their recently-sweated shirts even if you’ve never met.
“Pheromones” as in magical chemicals that make people attracted to you don’t exist. There isn’t any compound that directly stimulates your brain the same way that a cat in heat stimulates potential mates.
But every person does have a unique smell and those smells are involved in attraction and sexual arousal. This could be considered a type of pheromone.
They do, but some people like to pretend that humans are not animals in the Mammalia division. We have pheromones and sensory bulbs just like all the other mammals.
similarly, because humans are animals in the Mammalia division, you should dismiss out of hand anyone who maintains that we use bipedal locomotion, wear clothes or learn symbolic communication in childhood. No need to look up any sources at all.
Humans definitely have pheromones, what they don’t have are releaser pheromones. The effects have been shown, but the specific individual human pheromones have not been identified, leading to controversy about their existence. But an fair unbiased perusal of the studies leave little doubt that the effect is real. For instance see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3987372/
Hmm, I don’t love that that review didn’t include any of the actual data.
Looking for newer reviews to see if we’d got anywhere, I found a few (with similar levels of confidence – weak to moderate), but also this, that specifically addresses that the evidence accumulated remains solidly “maybe”.
<3 <3 <3
i love you for going through scientific papers to judge the solidity of their results.
we do not trust abstracts, folks! scientists are incentivized to publish solid results and failing that, to make their results *seem* solid. they know that almost no one will go beyond the abstract, if that. good practice is to at the very least take a look at the sample size, and hopefully check for a few other potential red flags (such as data publication, pre-publication of hypothesis, blinding etc).
without minimal verification or corroboration, a single study's abstract is virtually information-free
@clif, you may be unbiased but the research itself is not. You don’t get nearly as many citations for publishing a paper that says “our study of pheromones in humans found no proof of their existence” as you do for a paper saying “pheromones may affect women’s mate selection”.
Fair enough, but the totality of enough studies showing enough different results is persuasive for signaling pheromones. Additionally, it makes sense. But, still not proven, and possibly not provable given the plasticity of human learned response to stimulus. (It’s the way to bet though.)
It did just kind of hit me, and I’m saying this neutrally, that both Joyce and Joe seem to be kind of hoping this relationship is going to “fix” them. Joyce wants Joe to help her explore things she knows nothing about; his redemption is important to her, yes, but I also think she’s very drawn to the fact that this is a very sexually experienced man who a) finds her desirable, b) proceeds at the exact pace she’s comfortable with. Meanwhile, Joe obviously wants Joyce to influence him to be a better person. There are pitfalls in a relationship like this. Of course, there are also major strengths!
No doubt that is part of it. Early in my relationship with my wife I felt like she “saved me” and in a sense she did in that I wanted to do better for her
What I didn’t realise until much later is I saved her much more than she saved me (undiagnosed depression is not fun)
So it can work but yeah at some point they’ll need to take each other off the pedestal they put up for each other
I think Joe, at the very least, either has Joyce on a pedestal or holds himself very low in comparison to her. The dude is positively *skittish* sometimes.
He has experience in being sexual, but none in being romantic and, I suspect, has paid no real attention to romantic behavior in others. This is all new, strange, and hard to navigate, and he’s being very cautious. That, and probably being afraid to “revert to type” and blow up the relationship, is plenty enough to make one skittish.
Joe is hoping his conduct with Joyce will demonstrate that he’s fixed himself–which, IMHO, is an altogether different proposition and a significantly less fraught one.
After all, his improving behavior dates back at least to the discovery of the list and the subsequent eye-opening fallout from that. (which, to be fair, also involved Joyce)
Back in the List Incident, Joyce didn’t just scream at him and storm off. She opened up and waved her vulnerability in his face. I wonder if anyone else has ever said to him, “here, Joe, this is what it’s like to be me. I wanted you to know.” Maybe he’s decided that he aspires to be that brave.
For someone who puts on such a facade of emotional ignorance and invulnerability, Joe is remarkably sensitive and attentive to Joyce’s needs. He did this for Amber and Dina, too, and even for Danny, even if he plays it off as bregrudging. It’s really sweet. I’d even go as far as to say that he’s had some of the most compelling character development of the entire cast.
Before I got old I used to be able to smell when a woman was aroused, unfortunately I never could smell when a woman was lesbian so I kept trying to get women who were aroused by the woman standing next to me. That was embarrassing from time to time, especially when I started going to places that had more LGBTQ people attending that were also places that picking up people was acceptable/expected.
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Shame Joyce just used her 1/day Teleport ability. Now she can’t activate it to go fetch her Shower Shoes.
She’s clearly up to 2 per day.
What level do you have to be to get a second?
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
To hell with your Pastor! Just fuck Joe already! you know you wanna ^^
A vivid, and startling ironic, turn of phrase.
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
that’s why animals like to roll in stank, I guess, shortcut to SOMEHOW AMAZING
Lions like to roll in poop (generally prey animals) and get a sort of high off of it. Nature do be crazy.
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.
all of life is just this weird self aware slow burning chemical reaction that really likes sensation.
A big slow fizzle.
The same is true of astrophysics.
Futurama taught us that!
(Via Roseanne Barr of all people, because that made sense in the early 2000s.)
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?
appropriate gravatar
I’m surprised to find that the s in ambergris is pronounced. “–grease,” not “–gree.” Learn something new every day.
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.
Dogs love to do that too. I read that predators do this to mask their scent so that prey animals don’t detect them.
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!!”
I flagged you on purpose, just to feel alive.
“flagged a man in DOA, just to feel alive”
you hold that shit in
Musk.
AAAAAAAAH 😫
Definitely an X factor.
I hope their servers get obliterated soon by YTP-sized c*m explosions.
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.)
Because fresh sweat = not bad, stale/old sweat = nasty
This.
This is true, honestly.
Correct
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.
Off topic but congratulations on the pregnancy! Hope it’s as safe and comfortable as possible.
Thank you! ^^
Hope he changes/cleans his work out clothes regularly
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.
He’ll make tons more of that stress sweat
i see no possible way this could go wackily wrong {tm}
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.
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
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.
(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.)
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.
Phosgene?
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
They continue to be adorable. Jesus.
Joe and Joyce Perform a Shower: A Dumbing of Age Pornographique
Don’t do this. Don’t give me hope.
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
Someday
I figure students and faculty are all really wary of shower stall sex for different reasons. . .
Your youth pastor can eat shit, Joyce.
imagine if it was leaked that the youth pastor had been seducing neglected/lonely housewives this whole time lol
That scenario is not ENTIRELY unlikely, given the demonstrated proclivities of pastors/youth pastors/associate pastors.
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
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.
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”.
We’re talking about the guy who commented about how Becky “used to be so beautiful,” right?
I think that’s the one.
We don’t know who said that iirc. It could’ve been the youth pastor but there’s no confirmation that I recall.
There is no solid scientific evidence for that Joe. Dina would be so disappointed.
I’m pretty sure humans having pheromones is a known thing.
Which ingredient?
I’m gonna guess Dry Flour
Tubesteak.
Cheese
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.)
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.
Noodles.
Scrambled eggs is my favorite post-workout meal
Pretty sure Joyce considers Macandcheese to be “one ingredient”.
Of course. It grows on MacNTrees
+1
assuming they don’t want a full meal i suppose a post workout smoothie would be good XD
Smoothies typically have multiple ingredients.
It’s also quite hard to get them towering on a plate, unless they’re really thick.
I’m imagining just putting the blender on a plate.
Eat the blender
Some kind of fruit. It’s winter, so probably oranges.
At first I thought it was some vague Joyce innuendo and the giant towering ingredient was Joe. But I don’t think that’s actually what’s going on.
If I was Joyce, it would be hot dog. Or fish. Those are my preferred post workout giant quantity foods.
… hot dog most emphatically does not have only one ingredient
but does Joyce know that
–Dave, neither does mac-n-cheese
Fries is clearly the answer.
I was going to say chips, which, because I’m British, is the same thing.
(Anyone wanting to get into an argument that “fries” without prefixes like “steak fries” are thin and “chips” without prefixes like”skinny chips” are chunky, sure maybe, but I don’t care. It’s all fried potato product.)
I’ve never heard of that distinction, but then again I’m from America, where “chips” means a completely different fried potato (or sometimes corn) product. I think y’all call them crisps?
Was a long-time customer of Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips back when it was more than one lonely store in Ohio and 2 sequestered on Long Island, here in the US, so yeah, that is a distinction USAns can know about
–Dave, and yes, over here it still takes the ‘steak’ to make fries non-thin
You should be less insecure about your fried potato.
Chicken nuggets. Actually I could go for a chicken nugget pyramid with like 15 varieties of dipping sauces right now. The sauces is probably a cheat but in that case I’ll eat them anyway and go “nyum nyum” and lick my fingers in Joyce’s face.
You made me wonder what Joyce would think of rijsttafel: a dozen different foods, but each served in a separate dish. No touching! (And suited to a large appetite.)
Based on what I found from looking up that word, I think she’d be fine with it? I imagine she’s been to a buffet or potluck before, and this doesn’t seem to be meaningfully different from that basic concept.
if we go with exactly one ingredient (and not with one food type), chicken nuggets doesn’t compute and neither does anything fried – and even polenta, rice or noodles need extra water. So possibilities’d entail: eggs, mashed potatoes without extra fat nor salt, fresh vegetables of one kind, grilled meat or fish, fresh fruits of one kind. Given Joyce sculpture tendancies, I’d say mashed potatoes would be the best to make a tower of it.
She should ask Roy Neary for some tips.
+1 for ancient media reference, CE3K.
a late pedantic nitpick: no, it doesn’t, because after reading that question we have no idea of the answer. it suggests the question, or gives rise to it.
–Dave, a begged question incorporates the answer you’re supposed to give
This thing always comes to mind when it comes to pheromones
Towering with only one ingredient? Waffles? Pancakes? Ham? Mac ‘n cheese? …Joe?
Technically, teleporting back would fall under returning.
I thought humans didn’t actually have pheromones, or a way to receive them?
They don’t :p
That pastor of Joyce seems rather sus all the while 0_0
BTW your pixel Joyce avatar ROCKS 🤩
thats not just pixel joyce, that’s MegaJoyce, sister of MegaMan!
Thanks, I don’t know who made it.
You’re right, but it never stopped skeevy websites from marketing them to PUAs, so it might not be common knowledge.
We don’t, afaik. People use the word colloquially though, like as a way of expressing that you might be attracted to the scent of some people, or that some part of your deep lizard brain may detect when your partner is extra-fertile, stuff like that.
(I don’t mean that this has any basis in science. I mean that it’s just a popular idea.)
Scent fetish awakening? XD; you’ll def sweat after the first time they hook up so enjoy it now before that happens and it feels either awkward or excitable next time they sweat in another exercise, i mean there are ppl into more ‘extreme’ smells like used socks versus fresh sweat lol
Speak plainly, Ascian.
Modern research suggests this is incorrect. You can predict how attracted to someone you are going to be by smelling their recently-sweated shirts even if you’ve never met.
Smell being involved in attraction =/= pheromones.
“Pheromones” as in magical chemicals that make people attracted to you don’t exist. There isn’t any compound that directly stimulates your brain the same way that a cat in heat stimulates potential mates.
But every person does have a unique smell and those smells are involved in attraction and sexual arousal. This could be considered a type of pheromone.
Orions do.
Is that from something, or does it have something to do with astrology? It’s usually one of those.
Star Trek reference
Of course. 😒
Sokath, his eyes opened!
One of these days we’re going to encourage/convince/browbeat/goad you into something popular. 😛
And on that day, I’ll make a video review about that thing.
This woman just spontaneously teleported. Why are we assigning human limitations to her?
They do, but some people like to pretend that humans are not animals in the Mammalia division. We have pheromones and sensory bulbs just like all the other mammals.
similarly, because humans are animals in the Mammalia division, you should dismiss out of hand anyone who maintains that we use bipedal locomotion, wear clothes or learn symbolic communication in childhood. No need to look up any sources at all.
Humans definitely have pheromones, what they don’t have are releaser pheromones. The effects have been shown, but the specific individual human pheromones have not been identified, leading to controversy about their existence. But an fair unbiased perusal of the studies leave little doubt that the effect is real. For instance see
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3987372/
The abstract is interesting. I need to skim the methods and results before I form a more solid opinion.
Hmm, I don’t love that that review didn’t include any of the actual data.
Looking for newer reviews to see if we’d got anywhere, I found a few (with similar levels of confidence – weak to moderate), but also this, that specifically addresses that the evidence accumulated remains solidly “maybe”.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2019.0262
<3 <3 <3
i love you for going through scientific papers to judge the solidity of their results.
we do not trust abstracts, folks! scientists are incentivized to publish solid results and failing that, to make their results *seem* solid. they know that almost no one will go beyond the abstract, if that. good practice is to at the very least take a look at the sample size, and hopefully check for a few other potential red flags (such as data publication, pre-publication of hypothesis, blinding etc).
without minimal verification or corroboration, a single study's abstract is virtually information-free
@clif, you may be unbiased but the research itself is not. You don’t get nearly as many citations for publishing a paper that says “our study of pheromones in humans found no proof of their existence” as you do for a paper saying “pheromones may affect women’s mate selection”.
Fair enough, but the totality of enough studies showing enough different results is persuasive for signaling pheromones. Additionally, it makes sense. But, still not proven, and possibly not provable given the plasticity of human learned response to stimulus. (It’s the way to bet though.)
It did just kind of hit me, and I’m saying this neutrally, that both Joyce and Joe seem to be kind of hoping this relationship is going to “fix” them. Joyce wants Joe to help her explore things she knows nothing about; his redemption is important to her, yes, but I also think she’s very drawn to the fact that this is a very sexually experienced man who a) finds her desirable, b) proceeds at the exact pace she’s comfortable with. Meanwhile, Joe obviously wants Joyce to influence him to be a better person. There are pitfalls in a relationship like this. Of course, there are also major strengths!
bad semicolon. i’m sorry everyone.
that semicolon’s fine
it joins two clauses, each of which could stand as an independent sentence
–Dave, do not make me start singing Conjunction Junction
See, now *this* is the kinda comment PedanticJerkass should be making lol. Take notes, PJ, you need to work in more Schoolhouse Rock.
(Sorry, for clarity, ur comment’s fine, Dave, it’s not rude or anythinh. The essence that PJ needs to take from your comment is its correctness)
Yeah, I just don’t think the clauses were linked enough to justify breaking out the old semicolons. Probably could’ve just been a period.
Sometimes a semicolon is fine in place of a period;
sometimes a semicolon is an understated wink ;
Sometimes a semicolon is just a semicolon.
Nah, who are we kidding. I choose to believe that every semicolon out there is winking at me.
No doubt that is part of it. Early in my relationship with my wife I felt like she “saved me” and in a sense she did in that I wanted to do better for her
What I didn’t realise until much later is I saved her much more than she saved me (undiagnosed depression is not fun)
So it can work but yeah at some point they’ll need to take each other off the pedestal they put up for each other
It’s nice to watch though
They don’t have each other on a pedestal at all. They have very realistic understandings of each other.
I think Joe, at the very least, either has Joyce on a pedestal or holds himself very low in comparison to her. The dude is positively *skittish* sometimes.
He has experience in being sexual, but none in being romantic and, I suspect, has paid no real attention to romantic behavior in others. This is all new, strange, and hard to navigate, and he’s being very cautious. That, and probably being afraid to “revert to type” and blow up the relationship, is plenty enough to make one skittish.
I’m gonna offer a modified thesis in return.
Joe, at least, isn’t hoping Joyce will fix him.
Joe is hoping his conduct with Joyce will demonstrate that he’s fixed himself–which, IMHO, is an altogether different proposition and a significantly less fraught one.
After all, his improving behavior dates back at least to the discovery of the list and the subsequent eye-opening fallout from that. (which, to be fair, also involved Joyce)
Maybe Joe’s conduct isn’t strategic at all.
Back in the List Incident, Joyce didn’t just scream at him and storm off. She opened up and waved her vulnerability in his face. I wonder if anyone else has ever said to him, “here, Joe, this is what it’s like to be me. I wanted you to know.” Maybe he’s decided that he aspires to be that brave.
Joyce finding out about scent matching and Joe, who knows exactly how this works, is like “…I don’t know how to handle this.”
Can confirm, pheromones are a powerful thing.
fresh sweat generally smells nice, give it fifteen minutes and he’ll smell like death Joyce
Aw and you drew in the stink lines and everything
… Jope noticed Joyce teleporting
–Dave, and doesn’t seem to have found it alarming or unusual, just an unexplained destination
*Joe
–Dave, of course. gah, did get all the rest
They should think about the environment and save water by sharing a shower… 🙂
For someone who puts on such a facade of emotional ignorance and invulnerability, Joe is remarkably sensitive and attentive to Joyce’s needs. He did this for Amber and Dina, too, and even for Danny, even if he plays it off as bregrudging. It’s really sweet. I’d even go as far as to say that he’s had some of the most compelling character development of the entire cast.
Given his parents’ divorce I’m not surprised how we’ve seen him talk to his dad. Good characterbuilding or backstorying.
A good clean sweat can be attractive. If it were any other 18 y.o. but Joyce I’d expect them to have run into it before.
Youth pastor is, in general, more cringe than regular pastor.
When someone’s sweat smells good to you, you know it’s meant to be. My husband always smells -amazing- to me ♥
SMELL ME, EVE
Before I got old I used to be able to smell when a woman was aroused, unfortunately I never could smell when a woman was lesbian so I kept trying to get women who were aroused by the woman standing next to me. That was embarrassing from time to time, especially when I started going to places that had more LGBTQ people attending that were also places that picking up people was acceptable/expected.
Secret preview to a fan comic I’m making! (Secret cuz not everyone checks this late on the yesterday’s comic).
https://twitter.com/MymdalinB/status/1736597685334098140/photo/1
It’s going to end up 18+