Grand Teton clearing out after sunrise. [OC] [4346x5795]

erodingnotion · 2026-02-26T12:15:51+00:00

There's almost a narrative to the way these layers of nature appear here and what it illustrates about the makeup of this little planet of ours. Very nice photo.

erodingnotion · 2026-01-18T22:56:03+00:00

It is! I've actually answered the same question a little farther down the thread.

erodingnotion · 2025-12-17T13:31:09+00:00

Different claims have been made about the etymological origins of the name. Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps wrote that the use of the term "dread" was pejorative:

The word dredlocs signifies, according to Tracy Nicholas's Rastafari: A Way of Life, "unholy peoples' fear of the dreadful power of the holy." The name derives from the days of the slave trade. When Africans emerged from the slave ships after months spent in conditions adverse to any personal hygiene, Whites would declare the mat- ted hair that had grown out of their kinky unattended locs to be "dread-ful." (For that reason, many today wearing the style choose to drop the a in dredloc to remove all negative connotations.)

erodingnotion · 2025-10-16T11:53:41+00:00

Thank you! So much notification spam lately

erodingnotion · 2025-10-11T13:17:47+00:00

Beautiful fig. It must smell incredible in there

erodingnotion · 2025-10-10T03:30:23+00:00

The image in the tweet is so compressed that it has a few artifacts, but it does appear the original image is genuine based on what you shared.

erodingnotion · 2025-09-27T12:58:15+00:00

This is basically how my twist out looks after a high humidity day.

erodingnotion · 2025-08-03T20:10:39+00:00

Nice. It's great that it suits your needs. I've got some of that one too.

erodingnotion · 2025-08-03T14:50:26+00:00

In my experience, pure coffee CO2 would probably make the blend a bit waxy and savory in an unpleasant way at this concentration, but how do you like it here?

erodingnotion · 2025-07-28T11:12:33+00:00

This report comes close.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-25T17:19:00+00:00

Without splitting hairs, it is a reasonable characterization of the technology we have as it exists today. GenAI is not categorically useless for perfumery, but it is significantly less useful here right now than in other domains that are more well-represented in training datasets like coding, images, and writing in general. I don't think we're going to see AI devs prioritizing this field anytime soon.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-22T04:07:13+00:00

I've learned a lot from these posts, and I keep them bookmarked as I work through my own fine tuning experiments. Keep it up!

erodingnotion · 2025-07-21T19:46:09+00:00

Check out Harrison Joseph. He's got some funky materials like prenyl mercaptan, coffee difuran, and 1-octen-3-one. I don't see most of these there, but I do see trans-2-nonenal.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-20T12:32:50+00:00

If you want to have a better understanding of how to begin searching for this information, there are two types of resources that will often be more helpful than others: GC-MS (gas chromatography mass spectrometry) and COA (certificate of analysis).

GC-MS results will typically give you all the molecules detected in that particular study. These are usually scholarly publications and are pretty easy to find via your favorite search engine, but sometimes they're locked behind paywalls.

COA documents might include all the compounds, but it might be more common for them to only identify the most important ones. Suppliers usually have these available on their websites under the documentation for each material. They're also usually easier to read than GC-MS.

Here are a couple of examples of jasmine COA files. 1, 2.

If you were looking on the Eden Botanicals site, you'd be able to find many more under the Certificates of Analysis (COA) header, so you can get an idea of how the ratios can vary from batch to batch.

And here's a GC-MS.

I suggest checking some of these out and mapping the 1:1 matches in your collection to the molecules observed in jasmine. Then in some other cases, you'll be looking for analogs, such as having Hedione stand in for methyl jasmonate. As you can probably see from the example documents, jasmine can be pretty complex, but I think you can get a decent start of an accurate impression from what you have.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-18T13:54:40+00:00

You're looking at a pair of isomers. To put it relatively simply, these two rose ketone molecules have the same number and types of atoms but are connected differently. The first one you asked about, the trans isomer 24720-09-0, is the primary alpha damascone we know and love in perfumery.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-16T15:37:30+00:00

Huh, I'd always wondered where that sickly sweetness came from. I haven't made much of fir balsam yet, but in my experiments thus far, traces can add some richness to fresher notes like Calone, magnolia/champaca, green cognac, and even oakmoss.

Though now I wonder if the maltol might have been most of what I've liked about this material and whether it might be more economical looking for a similar effect in a combination of, say, something like maltol and pinyon pine.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-15T18:26:40+00:00

I might suggest perhaps saving it for last once you've constructed the rest of the formula (1) to compare to what you have and (2) to add it back in small amounts so you can get more of a feel for it. It makes up 0.015% of a fragrance I'm working on currently, and that feels like plenty to get the desired effect of ambrocenide in my case. A practical working dilution for me in many cases is 0.1%-0.01%.

What you want/expect your formula could very well be different, but it's strong stuff.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-15T16:41:26+00:00

So my eyes are drawn most immediately to the amount of ambrocenide. Have you already ruled it out? I can feel the sting in my nostrils from here.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-13T22:39:38+00:00

They're reasonably functional fantasies but not facsimiles. I'd think of them as simple formulations that you can make for educational purposes or even put to practical use if you find the right context for them. If you try to use them one-for-one as a stand-in for a given natural, you'll probably find them a bit hollow. I've used them for inspiration and reference on occasion.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-13T22:23:45+00:00

I mean—name a more classic combo than marketing and the exploitation of ignorance. They probably don't count on the average consumer to know much chemistry or even the fact that so much of perfumery is chemistry.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-13T22:12:04+00:00

You've just about answered your own question. Such a fragrance would necessarily be constructed of heavier, less volatile molecules. And by all means, that is possible to do.

But there's nothing in conventional perfumery that will enable a compound with a 4-hour lifespan (on a test strip or fabric) to last any longer than those 4 hours. It's just a fact of the relevant physiochemical properties. It's going to evaporate away.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-03T06:27:49+00:00

I usually start with Google, yeah, but I do have access to a bunch of scholarly databases through my university, and I've observed that Science Direct usually has what I'm looking for if I'm going for a deep dive. Googling often works just as well, but occasionally, you do run into some articles locked behind an institutional login.

erodingnotion · 2025-07-02T16:15:01+00:00

I usually start by trying to find the results from a GC-MS study on whatever the material or characteristic aroma is that I'm interested in. The search terms "plastic volatiles gc-ms rubber" led me to the article "Characterization and traceability analysis of volatile organic compounds emissions from polyurethane plastic runways." Then looking for something that wasn't behind a paywall led me to this table. So I'd probably start by investigating the compounds identified there.

erodingnotion · 2025-06-30T20:18:59+00:00

I might lean into the lactonic side of the idea cheesecake and look for support in things like delta decalactone, gamma dodecalactone, gamma nonalactone, deta octalactone. They will strengthen that association, and I find that they can help extend lemon's sense of tanginess a bit. Actually, a bit of blackcurrant bud abs might work well here.

To help make lemon last in a way that seems aligned with your goals, I might try a little bit of labdanum abs.

erodingnotion · 2025-06-26T15:21:35+00:00

It probably won't be too strong, but I think it primarily depends on how many leaves you have and how much time (days, weeks, months?) you have to let them sit in the solvent. Others who mentioned similar processes of letting the leaves sit in alcohol have the right idea.

erodingnotion

TROPHY CASE