WetShaving
This is a community of enthusiasts, hobbyists and artisans who enjoy a traditional wet shave: brush, soap, and safety or straight razor. We are a part of the WetShaving community found on Reddit, Discord, and IRC.
New subscribers welcome!
Please visit our wiki, which is always and forever a work in progress.
🪒 Check out these alternative front-ends for this server:
https://gem.wetshaving.social/ - a nice modern interface
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Our sister Mastodon instance is https://wetshaving.social/.
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🪒 Community Rules
Rule 1 - Behaviour and Etiquette
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Be Respectful. Do not bully, flame, or harass others.
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Malicious comments are not allowed but heated discussion and salty banter is okay.
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Low effort replies and complaints about content will be removed.
Rule 2 - Content Guidelines
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Mail Calls, Simple Questions, and SOTD posts belong in the recurring weekly threads.
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Posts must have sufficient content to generate a meaningful discussion.
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Images, links, or videos must include additional text that summarizes the topic.
Rule 3 - Reviews and Disclosure
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Use [First Impressions] in the title if your experience with the product is limited.
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Use the [Review] in the title if you can provide comprehensive details with enough familiarity to answer follow-up questions.
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Disclose how the product being reviewed was acquired (e.g., PIF, loan, or purchase). If the product was provided to you directly by the maker or vendor free of charge or at a discount, you must disclose this fact even if the item will later be returned to the maker or vendor.
Rule 4 - Advertising
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Vendors are to keep marketing within the biweekly Deals/New Products threads.
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Non-vendors may post topics about products if it will foster a compelling discussion.
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Do not solicit donations or share fundraisers without mod approval.
Rule 5 - Inappropriate Content
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All NSFW/L content must request mod approval and be flaired appropriately.
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Non-shaving related NSFW/L content is not allowed.
Rule 10 - Moderator Discretion
- The rules may not apply perfectly to every situation. The mods have final discretion.
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Collision of Spheres
Two of my hobbies collided today when the newest episode of Geschichten aus der Geschichte (an excellent weekly history podcast in German) about the history of the Eau de Cologne popped up in my podcatcher and Mastodon feed. I grabbed my 4711 "Original Eau De Cologne" splash and frag, my tub of SSL (the closest scent I have in soap form) and started the episode and a shave, confident that I would hear the history of 4711 while using it.
Well, as it turns out, 4711 isn't the original at all. They even had to change their name in the 1700s point because they had a clashing brand with the original Eau de Cologne, "Farina" (not just a copy, the copying perfumer found a random Italian dude called Farina and licensed the rights to his name.) and were forced in a civil suit to change their brand.
Another thing I learned is that the original eau de cologne (the Farina) marks a major turning point in the history of perfumery, because Farina solved the problem of distilling scentless alcohol, i.e., it is the first perfume based on what we now know as perfumer's alcohol. Fascinating.
That is interesting about the alcohol. When I first started this hobby I kept seeing reference to Denatured Alcohol, which has a distinct, strong smell (at least in the US). This is meant to prevent consumption, and therefore there's no related taxes added on. Anyway, I thought "that can't be right", and later found out there's such a thing as perfumers alcohol. I wonder if perfumers alcohol is still tax free (at least alcohol tax). I've heard it's not very easy to buy, but I don't know the details.
There's a similar situation with alcohol in the EU/Switzerland, where alcohol can be tax exempt if it has an added ingredient that makes it unfit for human consumption.
For perfumes, Wikipedia knowledge says this tends to be Diethyl phthalate ((DEP) is a phthalate ester. It occurs as a colourless liquid without significant odour but has a bitter, disagreeable taste)
They also mentioned something similar briefly on the podcasts episode: apparently there was a French law prescribing that anything that can be consumed by humans is required to list all ingredients (I surprised, as I'd have massively thought that these kind of laws have centuries later). This marked the beginning of perfumes no longer being marketed as healing beverages.