Filigree & Shadow

So there you were, minding your own business, when you received a notification that someone you don’t know sent you an email asking you for information you possess. You said to yourself, you said, “sure, why not,” composed a thoughtful and thorough reply with your thumbs on your phone, and hit Send. You went about your day, you enjoyed an evening constitution with your husband, and you eventually went to bed.

You arose from your slumber the following morning, you fed your cats, and you unlocked your phone. There it was: a reply from the original sender who is unwilling to revise their position despite relevant contrary evidence. For whatever reason swelling up inside you, you wrote a reply to make their consequence unmistakable without sounding personal or emotional: you asked for my perspective, and this was my conclusion. You closed your mail app, you changed into your running gear, and you ran 5K—not the fastest or in the shortest amount of time, just completed.

You returned home, you made yourself a cup of coffee, you took a shower – I like to take a sip of coffee when I’m done showering, don’t judge – and you’re getting ready to shave when a notification appeared on your phone.

You already knew, as if you were waiting for this.

There was a reply. “See my answers below,” despite you never asking a question. You showed it to your husband. You both had a laugh as you said, “I’m not reading all this.”

I know we throw around the term “Dunning–Kruger effect” in the Age of Information, but people use that term too freely, and I don’t actually know enough about their overall expertise to establish it. But I will say my hourly rate is €150 with a 1-hour minimum. And if your kink is epistemic arrogance (excessive confidence in one’s own understanding coupled with insufficient recognition of the limits of that understanding), I’ll be sure to get paid for it.

I’m just a mom who likes to dabble in mathematics for funsies despite having balanced my checkbook (remember those?) perhaps thrice in my entire life.

Today is my husband’s birthday, and I asked him what he wanted. So I says to him, “Justin,” I says. “Justin, what do you want for your birthday?”

And he says to me, “I want a map of the Netherlands where I can put pins in all the cities I’ve visited.”

So that’s exactly what I did. I ordered a map of the Netherlands, a cork board, and push pins with cute little flags on them.

Whilst he was away at work yesterday, I assembled the map and cork board, then tried frice (STILL A WORD (I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL IN BATTLE)) to attach the blessed thing to the wall. I have since learned that our landlord apparently repaired these walls with the thinnest imaginable layer of paint and plaster, and I am now beholden to several areas where – despite my best intentions – the board absolutely does not wish to be hung.

Justin returned home from work, saw the map, and announced that for his birthday he would now like me to hang the coat racks on the wall for our jackets. Then he says to me, he says, “You didn’t order an easel for the cork board yet, right?”

Did you know that Brugmansia suaveolens (angel’s trumpet) has an extraordinarily sinister toxicological reputation?

Anyway, I thought it would be a hoot to diagram a model of a relationship trajectory:

(x(t), y(t), z(t))

where (t) = time, (x) = love/attachment, 👍 = relational stability or reciprocity, and (z) = emotional disturbance produced by life events.

A saddle becomes particularly interesting as a metaphor because it contains both stable and unstable directions: love remains strong, relational stability fluctuates, and external events introduce emotional displacement, with the entire trajectory evolving through time.

Happy birthday to my husband .

It’s a beautiful day to wake up, forget everything that was said yesterday, and develop an inexplicable, insatiable desire to go see the plants at the conservatory.

Last night over dinner with friends, as one does, we talked about AI. If I were still pursuing work as a visual or UX designer, I would be terrified for my career. I’ve met vendors here in Europe that use ChatGPT and Gemini _on their mobile phones_ in place of designers, photographers, developers, marketing agencies, etc. No laptop, no budget, no delay in turnaround. Did I say, “Thank God I’m a perfumer (and a mom)” last night? Absof**kinglutely.

In the perfume industry – intended choice of words here, let’s not pretend fragrance isn’t a multibillion market – AI is unusually powerful for materials discovery. A company can give a model enormous chemical spaces containing molecules that have never been synthesized and ask questions such as:
Which structures are likely to smell?
Which might smell woody, floral, musky?
Which are likely to be stable, biodegradable, safe, manufacturable, and sufficiently powerful at low concentration?

AI can narrow billions of theoretical possibilities down to a relatively tiny number worth synthesizing and smelling. That potentially replaces an enormous amount of brute-force screening.

Perfume composition is different because the desired output isn’t simply a molecular property. There are mathematical relationships AI can learn. It might know, empirically, that certain combinations tend to increase diffusion, longevity, floral character, sweetness, substantivity, etc. Given enough formula and sensory data, it could probably produce a technically competent formula.

But now ask:
Does this smell beautiful?
Does it feel finished?
Is that overdose fascinating or unpleasant?
Does the composition remain beautiful hours later?
Does this smell like everything already on the market?
Does that strange trace impurity actually make the composition better?
Does this communicate grief, sunlight, alienation, s*x, an old hotel lobby, or whatever the perfumer is trying to express?

Those are problems only a human can solve.

I regard AI as a helpful productivity tool – Notion, anybody? – and I’ve maintained for years that generative AI is highly problematic given human bias—to say nothing of environmental damage. But AI as a nose? F**k that.

What you are looking at is the Lorenz attractor (obvi). Developed by meteorologist Edward Lorenz whilst studying atmospheric convection, it’s a classic example of chaotic behaviour: tiny differences in initial conditions can eventually produce dramatically different outcomes.

This also serves as an example of how we had to condense passages in an encyclopædia for our papers in school, to say nothing of my love for chaos theory.

My background is originally in fine arts – and motherhood—I’m also a mom – then later in graphic design. Our department chair was a vocal advocate of “The Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines.” Higher education can only provide so much to a student, and this handbook did/does a great job of filling in the gaps when you were/are about to graduate or new to the industry.

The handbook contains:
• model contracts and terms to adapt to a designer’s needs;
• pricing surveys for buyers and sellers;
• salary information and job descriptions; and
• resources and references.

My edition coming out of college also had information about digital media and the web (this is how old I am (omg shut up)).

Unless you attend a school like ISIPCA or a graduate program – or work for a fragrance corporation – you may not know all the professions that exist within the fragrance industry. You also may not have a clue how to price your work when approached for a commission. You may also be unaware of how to advocate for your rights to a formula you developed in an independent role.

No one asked but this is the Internet, and opinions are like intrusive thoughts. I’m excited to see the take shape, so here is my €0,02 on what I would want.

The union would provide transparency for its members, and it would also hold its members to a shared set of principles, such as:
• correctly disclosing all ingredients used in a perfume;
• refraining from any use of “green,” “nontoxic,” “does not contain parabens or phthalates,” etc. in marketing communications;
• adheres to an inclusive, accessible lexicon for both perfumers and consumers alike; and
• does not advocate for the creation of dupes.

What’s a little more chaos, right? 🦋

Being a perfumer in the U.S. is a very different experience than the rest of the world. Thanks to The Free Market©™®, one only needs to fill a bottle with anything that tickles their fancy, slap a $300 price tag on it, and sell to an unknowing consumer believing its contents are safe to wear. If you, the perfumer, get it wrong, transfer to Washington. Transfer to Jefferson. No one at Westerberg is going to let you play their reindeer games.

And if you, the U.S. perfumer, think you can simply saunter into the EU with a standing back handspring back tuck when a standing back tuck is standard procedure, there is still the front handspring, step out, round off, back handspring, step out, round off, back handspring, full twisting lay out to perform.

Being a perfumer in the EU means you need paperwork for everything you used in the production of your perfume. Every material must be traceable. Your bottle, spray pump, collar if you have one – snood if you’re feeling fancy – and cap must have their papers. Outer packaging requires all the necessary consumer safety information, along with sworn affidavits that nary a trace of lead exists in the printing inks. (And by 2030, all of your packaging must be recyclable.)

There’s more, of course, for the Product Information File to be a ticked checkbox on your to-do list. But you gotta motor if you want to make the Cosmetic Product Safety Reports (stability testing optional!) and Responsible Person Representation on time.

And this is just for one fragrance. Uno. Een. Try doing this for every fragrance in your catalogue. This is why everyone else is out here smoking, face and body covered in soot, as the U.S. concludes its cheer competition.

I’m awaiting a reply from a supplier for one. final. material. to determine my cost of goods to manufacture a fragrance I reformulated ahead of IFRA standards that will most likely prohibit Cetalox and restrict p-Cymene. I’m also attempting to future-proof my bottle and packaging for compliance today so I’m not having to redo everything in 2030.

And that’s how you land a post about launching a fragrance in the EU whilst referencing “Heathers” and “Bring It On.” 🚬

Hi, . I may be just an independent artisan perfumer – I’m also a mom – who lacks passive-aggressive tendencies, so I’ll get right to the point: .njie.perfumes brought Gowé to your door first.

Your official statement spent an extraordinary amount of language struggling to separate being the victim and cause of this crisis, so I thought I would give you a little assist in crisis review.

Crisis management isn’t litigation. The objective isn’t to demonstrate that every allegation against you is technically incorrect. The objective is to identify the legitimate grievance, acknowledge it without unnecessary self-incrimination, explain what happened, and demonstrate that you learned something.

So now that you do know, and knowing is half the battle, what are you going to do about it?

(I’m also available for picnics, lodge meetings, children’s parties, and smokers.)

DID YOU KNOW I HAVE A PATREON? I HAVE A PATREON.

ANYONE WHO’S ANYONE HAS A PATREON. IT’S ALL THE RAGE THIS SEASON IN EUROPE, IT’S ALL ANYONE CAN TALK ABOUT:
“HEB JE EEN PATREON?”
« TU AS UN COMPTE PATREON ? »
„HAST DU EINEN PATREON-ACCOUNT?“

I WROTE IN MY PATREON. YOU’RE WELCOME.

Our portraits of the cats arrived today from . These are the digital images reset for Instagram proportions. The actual prints are each A3 in size and frames have already been ordered. We couldn’t be happier with the results. I broke into tears when I first saw Jóna’s portrait. Justin appreciated how Pudge is less zaftig than his physical form. Lovecats

I’ve nothing to sell you, this is a story about my maternal grandmother. You’re welcome.

When you’re a young woman growing up in Rochester, New York, and you’re raised in a devout Catholic household, you attend Catholic school. Such was the fate for Mildred, my grandmother. She was a good – not exceptional – student who followed instructions, completed her homework, and dutifully prayed to Sweet Baby Jesus, His Mother Mary, the Holy Spirit (cosplaying as a dove), all the saints as required, and especially Big Daddy. It would almost be impossible to find fault with Mildred, except for one trait: she hated cleaning the chickens for mealtime.

Nowadays, one only has to trot to their local market for chicken that’s been scalded and plucked – remember, kids: a chicken gets plucked; brows get tweezed – entrails removed, the carcass dressed and broken into commercial cuts, and then portioned for sale. But in Mildred’s day? Every student had their turn at cleaning the chicken for meals, and this was something she hated to do. Not because she loved animals, far from it—in her later years, she was convinced she could feed her dogs (plural) chicken bones despite us begging her not to do that. Why the animal shelters kept letting her adopt one dog after another is still a mystery, but I digress.

Mildred simply found the entire process repugnant. Her workaround for cleaning the chicken was to roam the neighbourhood around the school, asking random housewives to do the deed for her.

“But James,” you ask, “but James. Did she really roam the streets with a dead chicken in her hands?” Yes. Yes she did. Until a housewife rang the school and reported Mildred to the Mother Superior. When it was once again Mildred’s time to clean the chicken, the Reverend Mother (and Baby Jesus) stood over Mildred as she sobbed uncontrollably, cleaning what would later be lunch.

And now you know why you can’t break a nun. Or a grandmother that truly saw and did some s**t. And that is also why she looked at me on her couch as we watched her favourite show Jeopardy, and said, “I’d rather live next to a homos*xual than a rapist,” then exhaled her cigarette. I was fifteen.

I had composed one of my better posts (if I do say so myself) ready to kickoff involving computer software, technology, and the adult entertainment industry. It even included a millionaire whomst ruined what could have been an otherwise okay hookup had he not grimaced after audibly farting – this story had it ALL – but even p**n is awash in AI hoping to fight another day for relevancy, so instead I will herald the month of June with a simple prayer:

Be gay, do crimes.