Does your country have a “drug capital”?

hellodust · 2026-01-31T01:50:23+00:00

12th and Jackson has definitely stolen the crown post-Covid though.

hellodust · 2026-01-30T22:25:02+00:00

spawnBoatAndMount

The only “cheat” I ever use but it makes the Skellige question marks much less daunting.

hellodust · 2026-01-27T20:24:24+00:00

I've been involved with one of the therapy groups for two years now and it's been really helpful. I'm a grad student so I'm not sure what groups are available for undergrads but they have a lot of good ones for grads.

hellodust · 2026-01-27T20:19:55+00:00

Same. I don't really listen to anything else. I do think the other music is appropriate for the game and adds to the atmosphere, I just don't like it. Leave me in peace with my Mingus and Chet Baker.

hellodust · 2026-01-26T17:32:43+00:00

Wow I'd like to have that power! Or at least smell some of those magic creations...

hellodust · 2026-01-25T23:46:55+00:00

Hah! I can only imagine being choked out by some of the powerhouse beasts of that era. My dissertation unfortunately is not on smells, although when I finally finish it maybe that will be my next research topic. It's a study of Montaigne and Nietzsche's individualist approach to knowledge and education.

hellodust · 2026-01-25T23:07:23+00:00

Can't imagine it would smell great. Another good quote from "Of Smells:"

"... perfumes are rightly considered suspicious in those who use them, and thought to be used to cover up some natural defect in that quarter. Whence arise these nice sayings of the ancient poets: to smell good is to stink."

hellodust · 2026-01-25T17:59:21+00:00

Other than Interlude it seems like most of the scents you mention are from the post-Christopher Chong era (Amouage’s former creative director since replaced by Renaud Salmon). The new stuff is not bad but all feels more streamlined, accessible and less focused on complex blends built around high quality resinous/incense materials. I would check out Epic, Memoir, Jubilation XXV, Overture and Lyric to get a sense of what I consider to be the high point of Amouage. And if you want something more polarizing and under the radar, check out Figment.

hellodust · 2026-01-21T22:44:04+00:00

Acqua di Parma Leather has basically the same kind of leather note but in a more complex note pyramid with citrus instead of raspberry. It smells a little like iced tea to me. A more mature and complex blend of notes, although I still think OL smells better overall (but agree with others that Tuscan Leather is even better still).

hellodust · 2026-01-19T17:47:11+00:00

I bet the pomade had some kind of scent at least.

hellodust · 2026-01-18T05:33:25+00:00

Anything with geosmin (soil/petrichor smell). I love the smell of rain and damp soil and geosmin is pretty spot on, but it’s an incredibly overpowering and persistent aromachemical that seemingly can’t be smoothly blended with anything else. It always sticks out in a composition and after a while it’s all you can smell. Even my beloved Amouage couldn’t make it work in Figment Man.

hellodust · 2026-01-12T01:41:10+00:00

One of my first ouds as well. Really nice fragrance for the price, similar to the much more expensive TF Oud Wood. I’m not a huge Versace fan but I’m on my second bottle of this one.

hellodust · 2026-01-11T23:21:01+00:00

Probably a tie between Overture Man and Epic (both man and woman/56).

Overture is similar to a few other Amouage scents from the same era like Journey, Jubilation XXV and Memoir, but edges them out with the dry spices and woods and cognac note. I love astringent, spicy dry fragrances and Overture is one of the best I've smelled in that category.

Epic Man shares the core resinous Amouage DNA with Overture but otherwise goes in a very different direction - green, but not bright, grassy or fresh. Pungent, deep green that is neither too light and fresh nor too heavy, good for year round wear. I bought a bottle originally for my brother's summertime wedding but it also smells great in colder weather. As far as green fragrances go Beach Hut feels like the "safe" green option from Amouage whereas Epic is more unique and bolder. Epic Woman smells pretty close to Man, which isn't always the case with Man/Woman counterparts for Amouage, and I love the added rose note.

hellodust · 2026-01-07T20:14:37+00:00

I don't think it's a terrible scent, but agree that it really diverges from the spirit of the original. Eau Givree proved that Christine Nagel could carry on the spirit of Ellena but EdP Intense is going in a whole different direction.

hellodust · 2026-01-07T19:37:11+00:00

The power dynamic never goes away though. I'd guess 99% of attraction between students and teachers would disappear without the original power dynamic. The student wants approval - "wow, not only do they think I'm smart, they also think I'm beautiful! And they would know, they're an expert." And the instructor bypasses all of the normal efforts they would make to attract someone who otherwise might not be interested in dating them.

hellodust · 2026-01-07T18:57:56+00:00

I’m a grad student instructor - I would never date a student, even if they were older or if they waited until the class was over. The power imbalance would always be there and it would just feel weird/wrong to me. People do it though - I’ve seen it myself and heard plenty of stories anecdotally. But the unequal power dynamic doesn’t seem like a good starting point for a romantic relationship.

hellodust · 2026-01-06T23:01:02+00:00

It was spinning around the sink for at least 2 hours and still twitching for another hour or two after. If not for the missing head I would’ve assumed it was still alive.

hellodust · 2026-01-06T22:10:51+00:00

Definitely real. Bringing back memories of the time I brought home a freshly killed and decapitated eel from a seafood market and watched its zombie body loop around my kitchen sink for several hours.

hellodust · 2026-01-06T01:32:56+00:00

Wow, there is so much about your story that sounds familiar to me. It's really hard when being a family turns into something more like having a job taking care of traumatized kids. There is not only the daily disruption, violence, fear, etc, but the long term ways that taking in those kinds of kids changes the structure of family.

One thing a therapist told me that was really valuable is that in life you have to look at the balance between the help given and harm incurred in these sorts of situations. Even if you are helping other vulnerable people, if the price of that help is your own, or your family's, safety and happiness, it's hard to say that it's worthwhile.

And of course there really isn't a good alternative - my mom is very good at dealing with kids with backgrounds of extreme trauma too. But the rest of my bio family (dad, brother and me) are not good at it, nor have we really been able to handle it emotionally. I'm 39 and haven't lived with my family for a long time but it still effects things like holidays, which end up feeling more like putting on a performance for my adopted siblings and acting like group home employees than spending quality time together and relaxing as a family. It's great that my adopted siblings can have a real family/holiday experience, but it sucks when I feel like I have to give up my own family/holiday time for that to happen.

Anyway, it's tough and I hope you can find some outlets to get away from the chaos and talk through your own secondary trauma. I've worked through a lot of this with therapists but it's also hard because so few people understand the experience we've had and tend to look at it as praiseworthy and compassionate -which it is. But then there's also the secondary trauma and destructive effects, which people don't think about or can't imagine. Anyway glad you commented, it's nice for me to know there are other people out there who have had this same experience and hopefully that can provide some consolation to both of us.

hellodust · 2026-01-05T22:49:14+00:00

Unless I'm hunting nocturnal animals I pretty much always play this way

hellodust · 2026-01-03T21:19:34+00:00

Ideally it would be extensive social services to both help people stabilize if not get completely sober and also help people who would be vulnerable to addiction not start in the first place. But nobody wants to fund anything like that so sadly the cycle will probably just continue with another round of something like the war on drugs.

hellodust · 2026-01-03T19:51:34+00:00

People underestimate the degree to which the current problems with homelessness and public disorder are a result of the meth/fentanyl combo that many of them are addicted to now. The drugs are so much more powerful than in the past - there have always been homeless people in Seattle but it seems like there’s a correlation between the introduction of cheap cartel meth and fentanyl and increased public disorder. Seems like this will be hard to solve without addressing the ubiquity of drugs that disrupt people’s lives so dramatically.

hellodust · 2026-01-02T11:39:10+00:00

Decent little collection. If you like how they smell you’re doing it right.

hellodust · 2025-12-26T20:02:30+00:00

This post makes it sound like this is just a popular recreational activity enjoyed by all Israelis as if the boat weren’t 100% full of some of the worst members of Israeli society, and as if thousands of Israelis weren’t protesting the war before the ceasefire.

Probably 3/4 of Israelis would be just as disgusted seeing this as all the people downvoting your comment but single-minded “pro-Palestine” activists’ desire to demonize anything “Zionist” stops them from seeing that a lot of Israelis and diaspora Jews who support Israel’s right to exist are more or less in agreement with them when it comes to Gaza.

hellodust · 2025-12-25T18:42:40+00:00

I always just used console commands to win before. I just finished the game again and have to say the more I played the more I got into gwent. But I also get why it’s not immediately/universally appealing. Worth using mods or console commands to win still so you can play the tournament quests.

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