• strawberry
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    213 months ago

    I wonder if our current world has a specific smell that people from the 80s would notice

    • kamenLady.
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      93 months ago

      People from the 40s would recognize the current smell of the world.

      • @[email protected]
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        93 months ago

        I feel like it’s probably the people from the ~1880s-1920s would know the smell of the world today

    • v_krishna
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      133 months ago

      Cannabis. At least most major cities in Europe/North America I find it really common now to openly smell cannabis all hours of the day. Combination of the strains being MUCH stronger and legalization. Even just 20 years back, of course in the Haight in SF or certain parts of NYC you’d smell it, or outside clubs/bars at night. But today I walk through Downtown SF at 830am and smell it every other block. Was in the design district in NYC a few weeks back and same deal.

      • @[email protected]
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        113 months ago

        It’s common, but absolutely not omnipresent the way cigarette smoke was. Even now it’s quite distinctive and noticable, even if common.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        At my work it constantly smells like cannabis because there’s a literal weed factory next door.

        It’s great because I just blame my weed smell on the factory.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 months ago

        ~~Methane needs 5-16PPM [PDF] to be detectable with human smell. Atmospheric Methane is at about 2ppm. So the vast majority of people would not notice a difference. ~~

        nvm see below

        • @[email protected]
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          63 months ago

          methane doesn’t have an odor, you linked to the data sheet of trichlorofluoromethane, a completely different molecule

          The gas in your house is artificially made stinky so that people would notice leaks and blow their house up, which happened a lot back when the stinky chemicals weren’t added and it was odorless

          • @[email protected]
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            33 months ago

            That’s what I get for moving quick, thank you. I guess the overall point that methane will not make the atmosphere smell still holds

  • ObliviousEnlightenment
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    393 months ago

    One of the few things America has done unambiguously right is the strong anti-snoking campaigns. I think my mom is the only smoker I know anymore

    • @[email protected]
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      323 months ago

      It’s so good that most of the og tobacco barons are dead and don’t have much power, otherwise current admin would be introducing mandatory smoking right about now

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        Laws vary state to state. I walked into a bar in rural Pennsylvania that had ash trays on the bar and the odor hit me in the face as soon as I walked in the door. Don’t miss that one bit. Someone told me it’s still legal in places that don’t serve food

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        There are still hotels with ‘smoking’ rooms in I think South Carolina and Kentucky at least, you definitely want to make sure you have a non-smoking room or you’ll be inhaling musty old tobacco smells the entire night, something I had made the mistake of once.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 months ago

      Smoging was almost gone here too like 10 or so years ago. Now it seems like almost everyone is back to cigarettes. I haven’t been on a single date with a non smoker in probably 4 years. I know a guy who has a pretty stubborn g Form of cancer for years, but he would never stop smoking. Everyone is like: yeah it’s unhealthy and all, but i’m cool like that. I get that and i don’t care about your health, it’s gross and you are a walking littering machine. There has to be better ways to be unhealthy

  • @[email protected]
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    253 months ago

    Experienced this when I went to Barcelona a few years back. Lovely city, but stepping out into the street felt like stepping into a cigar bar.

    • 🧟‍♂️ Cadaver
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      123 months ago

      I don’t mind it in the streets. I mean, as long as it’s outside it’s okay.

      However, I remember a hotel in Spain where clients would be allowed to smoke indoors. It was hell.

    • @[email protected]
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      73 months ago

      I tie it to Germany. I remember getting off the plane the first thing I got hit with was the smell of cigarette smoke. And then wandering through parks and seeing kids smoking with their parents.

      • @[email protected]
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        63 months ago

        You should go to Cologne (or I bet any other major city), now it’s weed smell everywhere 😂

    • @[email protected]
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      53 months ago

      Same experience in Paris a while ago. My sister was about to dig into her spaghetti when someones cigarette ash drifted onto it…

  • Atelopus-zeteki
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    663 months ago

    Friends and I love to dance to live music, and back in the day this was often in a local bar, where people were drinking and smoking. It was policy to remove our clothing outside to let it ‘air out’ rather than bring that smoke smell into the house. Of course we were all dancing HARD, in a smoke filled rooms. I wondered if I was in training to be a fire fighter, or what?

    • @[email protected]
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      173 months ago

      I remember going out at night then leaving my jeans on my bathroom floor, then in the morning the whole bathroom would smell like an ashtray. It was the worst!

      Unfortunately it’s still like that at my in-laws houses. Whenever they send our kids birthday or Christmas presents in the mail, we have to air out the packages for a few days.

  • @[email protected]
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    3 months ago

    Look at pictures of people in their 30s back in the 70s, and compare them to people in their 30s today. It’s a massive difference, I hypothesize that it’s the leaded gasoline and secondhand smoke that makes it although I’m not aware of any science to back that up.

    • @[email protected]
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      23 months ago

      More stress, tbh. We’re starting to see it swing back, a lot of millennials look older than their Genx counterparts at the same age

    • @[email protected]
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      53 months ago

      There is a lot of science to back it up, but all of it is on the opposite direction (those things cause aging), and we can’t really tell if the aging we saw was caused by any of them or if there was something else going on.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 months ago

        Some of it is also styles. If you came of age in the 1970s, then 50 years on, you probably dress and have your hair done like it’s the 1970s. We associate those styles with old people and then see the same styles in old photos, which makes the people in them look old.

        That’s only a partial explanation, though. A lot of that stuff did age you faster.

  • Blackout
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    233 months ago

    You used to be able to light the rivers on fire too but Nixon helped ruin that.

  • Lucy (she/them)
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    513 months ago

    It’s still this way in the place where I live 😖

    I hate nicotine so fucking much

      • @[email protected]
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        393 months ago

        Well let’s just hope the tobacco industry doesn’t get the good idea to cut Elon or Trump a check…

        • @[email protected]
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          153 months ago

          Vapes are way more popular with younger audiences though. I don’t think tobacco companies care about getting more people hooked on cigarettes anymore, and they don’t need government help to make vaping more popular.

          • @[email protected]
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            3 months ago

            autistic person here, I still don’t get why people start. Like, I get that once you start you are physically addicted by the nicotine, but why even start? You don’t look cool, you don’t look tough, you only look like a dumbass who’s gonna go broke buying cigarettes, die in their 60s, and spend a painful life while reaching it because you are always exhausted and out of breath

            Like shit, do weed or LSD, at least you’ll have a nice time, but cigarettes are just all downsides

            • @[email protected]
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              33 months ago

              People generally start when they’re too young to really understand consequences, and there’s a tiny buzz you experience during the first few cigarettes. I think there’s an aspect of self-harm to the psychology of it as well (and obviously it is self-harm, but we don’t really think of it like cutting or something similar)

            • @[email protected]
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              63 months ago

              Thats a new way of thinking about smoking tho, again back in its hayday it was seen as cool, ,tough, adult, badass, rebellious, etc which is part of why it got so popular… along with this alot of kids grew up with smoker parents (or smoker friends) so they didnt see any problem with starting themselfs

  • volvoxvsmarla
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    113 months ago

    We visited friends in Serbia in summer. It took me back to this smoking world I had long forgotten. Inside smoking and non smoking tables in crowded cafes side by side. And the craziest part was the indoor playgrounds for kids with cafes adjacent or part of it where you could also smoke (and buy hard liquor). But you know what, my kid could play for less than 1,5€ an hour on a rainy day, even when I lived in Munich there were like 2 indoor playgrounds in a 50 km radius and they cost a fortune. They had them everywhere for dirt cheap. So, I’ll happily get off my high horse.

  • @[email protected]
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    333 months ago

    I remember going into cafés and things when I was a young man about 14 years old… You wouldn’t be able to see across a small room for the sheer fog bank of cigarette smoke.

    We didn’t think anything of it

  • @[email protected]
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    3 months ago

    And it made about as much sense as having a pissing section in a public pool.

    I remember in the early-mid 90’s going to pizza hut with my family to cash in one of those sweet book club free pizza stamps and the smoking section always being packed with other families. The other kids would be playing and having a fun time while all the adults enjoyed their refreshing delicious cigarettes while everyone ate. There was no real, “smoking or non-smoking” section. It’s was a smoke filled restaurant with the option to sit shoulder to shoulder with someone smoking a cig or being a few feet away from said smokers.

  • @[email protected]
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    3 months ago

    I remember when I was a teenager working in restaurants during high school I’d come home and shower afterwards. when I’d wash my hair it’d reek of cigarette smoke because I’d spent the last 5-9 hours standing in a giant plume of it.

    I picked up smoking in college, I wonder if that was a factor. Thankfully I quit, eventually

  • @[email protected]
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    583 months ago

    I remember when the smoking ban was introduced in the UK and the smell of smoke in pubs and clubs was replaced by the stench of body odour, I was actually wanting smoking to return as it was a more tolerable smell!!

    Either I’ve got used to it now or people have learned to wash because I don’t notice it anymore!