Lots of people say you have to use sulfate-free shampoo to avoid damaging or stripping your hair. There also people who say you have to use shampoo with sulfates to get your hair clean.
They are both wrong.
Academic hair science is a mess. Hair is very diverse. Different hair reacts differently to ingredients. Ingredients work similarly on skin but with hair, ingredients work differently.
If 100 people use glycerin on their skin, you might have 60 people’s skin get more hydrated and improve, 20 people’s skin stays around the same, the final 20 might get worse for some reason – like the glycerin helped some other ingredient penetrate and their skin got irritated, or they have an allergy. There’s still complexity, but you wouldn’t have half the people’s skin dry out more. But that’s kind of how it is with hair.
Variation in curl pattern can also affect how ingredients work.
When it comes to wet vs dry detangling, water makes hair weaker inside and cuticles raise so you should detangle when dry. At least on straight hair. But on curly hair, hair sticks less to each other (like spiral pasta vs spaghetti pasta) and the weakening bonds makes it less damaging and results in less breakage. But even then, we still don't know everything (which is better for wavy hair, what if you use a brush or comb, what if you bleach your hair, what if your hair is longer, etc.). There's a lot of variables.
Hair science is really sparse. You can't generalize hair. Even things like humidity can change the results. The structure of hair as we know it is still evolving and there isn't a lot of consistency in terminology.
For example, around the late 90s, some hair scientists decided that half the protein in hair wouldn’t be called keratin anymore. But not everyone follows this. You’ll see things like “hair is 80% keratin by mass” in a paper from 2017. It’s clear they’re using the old definition – but if a paper says “we concluded that this ingredient works on keratin in hair”, what do they mean by “keratin?"
Hair products aren't about individual ingredients, it is about the overall formulation. Sulfates usually refers to sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate, which are surfactants. Surfactants help break up oil and mingle with water so you can rinse it. Sulfates have sulfate heads, the tails are similar to other surfactants.
These 4 diagrams show 4 different ways that shampoos clean at a microscopic level – each diagram goes from left to right. The pink tadpoles are the surfactants.
You can see that the surfactants are working together to clean the hair. This is called a supramolecular process, where molecules are interacting without going through a chemical reaction.
And all 4 of these are probably happening on your hair at the same time, to different extents – there’s probably more mechanisms still to be discovered.
How much of each one is happening depends on the formula of the shampoo and what type of stuff you are cleaning off.
If you look at the ingredients, you'll have 3 or more surfactants. If you change the ratio of the ingredients or swap one of these surfactants with something else, the shampoo will work differently. Plus there's other ingredients like polymers to take into account. The texture of the shampoo and opening of the bottle changes how it disperses and spreads as well.
Even just checking the pH of a product isn't the whole picture when it is so complex.
Cosmetic formulators spend a lot of time just doing trial and error, making formulas and trying them out. Changing little things about the formula causes big changes.
Good Housekeeping did a test with 10 shampoo and conditioner pairings. Some had sulfates and some didn’t. The set that stripped hair dye the least had sulfates – it was Tresemme’s Keratin Smooth Color set.
Formulators know that people who go for sulfate free want a gentler shampoo so that's what they aim for when making the formulation. They know there’s all these widespread myths about sulfates being harsh – they’ve been around since the 90s. Adding sulfates doesn't mean it will strip more. There’s a good chance that if you grab a random shampoo with sulfates, and a random shampoo without sulfates, the one with sulfates will clean better because of product design and that's how they were formulated. It’s not because just adding sulfates automatically makes shampoos strip more. They might have also added other ingredients to make the hair feel cleaner.
How well it foams doesn't tell you how well it cleans. How well something foams depends on how a formula interacts with air and water to stabilise a thin stretched out film of water. Cleaning is about how it interacts with oil and dirt. But if something doesn’t foam when we use it, we tend to feel it isn’t cleaning well. It’s just a psychological thing.
How well a shampoo cleans is complicated. Bottom line: Sulfate-free and sulfate-containing don’t really mean much. How well a shampoo cleans is too complicated to predict that easily.
It’s much more useful to look at what the shampoo is telling you. If it says “clarifying” it’s a shampoo designed to clean your hair better, if it says “colour protection”, it can have sulfates and still strip dye less. It’s also really useful to look at reviews from people with similar hair to you and try a sample before buying.
What did he mean by thal doxxed him? Was he using his real name on his nexus account? That's doxxing yourself. Otherwise yeah that's pretty bad to doxx someone else if thal did indeed give out his full name and other identifying information. I keep reading about mod authors getting harassment in real life and I always wondered how people were able to get the authors' real names, phone numbers, etc.
All of this drama reads like a bunch of teenagers interacting tbh. If someone presented this to me as a script, I would tell them it was badly written haha
Also side note: you can use teddit.net to link to reddit without giving reddit traffic. I think there's another one too called libreddit.
This is so bizarre, even for skyrim modding community standards lol
I like NordWarUA's armor replacers. I'm also a fan of the various outfits by DeserterX, docteure, dint999, Harry2135 and Team TAL. 4th Unknown has some great armor too. I also use Kirax's project vindictus armor packs, hard to get nowadays. Oh and Artisian Cloaks and Apachii Divine Elegance.
For weapons, I like Dawnguard Arsenal and ArteFakes. Unique Uniques is also good.
Vanilla Follower Expansion - Brelyna adds new lines to Brelyna, the new student at the College of Winterhold, including lore-friendly conversation and location-specific idle comments!
Download link: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/93973?tab=description
This mod adds ~100 new lines of dialogue to Brelyna, generated with Elevenlabs AI voice cloning. She's a new to the College, and Skyrim as a whole. She'll make a few comments on cities, dungeons and other locations. 100% lore-friendly (but not canon)!
You will be able to access the new lines once you have completed her quest "Brelyna's Practice", and have recruited her as your follower.
What this mod does:
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Add idle dialogue to Brelyna
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Add backstory to Brelyna
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Integrate into the vanilla follower system
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Expand a tiiiiiiiny bit on her romance
What this mod does not do:
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Turn her into a "super-follower" à la Inigo, Lucien, Remiel, etc.
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Add any new follower mechanics
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Edit her appearance (the screenshot is from Nordic Faces)
Download link: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/93973?tab=description
“The Restless Dead” improves undead enemies, increases their variety, and makes them more challenging to fight.
LE: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/115811
SE: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/94100
Introduction:
Skyrim’s map is dotted with ancient temples, tombs and ruins. In the vanilla game, these dungeons are usually populated by the undead, mainly draugr, occasionally skeletons or ghosts. But encounters with these enemies tend to be a bit underwhelming, due to the lack of variety in appearance and skill between them. All draugr wear the same armor pieces, and their tactics are extremely limited. Fights with “unique” bosses usually feature some interesting mechanic, but even these draugr use the same model as regular enemies. Skeletons are unarmored Level 1 pushovers. Ghosts are just semi-transparent glowing bandits.
“The Restless Dead” breathes new life into these rotting corpses by overhauling pretty much every aspect related to the undead.
Features:
Localized Enemy Spawns:
Dungeons populated by the undead have been grouped into different categories:
- Dragon Cult Temples
- Solstheim Tombs
- Ancient Tombs
- Special Dungeons
Each dungeon type spawns specific foes that fit its theme.
Increased Visual Variety:
New draugr and skeleton models have been added, making it easier to deduce an enemy’s class and level
Smarter and Tougher Enemies:
Encounters with the undead have been made more challenging and dangerous
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All undead enemies were assigned new classes.
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Stats and levels for undead enemies were revised and modified as necessary.
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New enemy level tiers were introduced, the highest being seven. Tier 7 enemies scale up to Level 100, though at a slower rate than the player.
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Leveled skeleton variants were introduced.
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Leveled lists were modified to ensure that specific enemy types get the right equipment. Ebony items were removed from leveled lists. Ancient Nordic weapons were nerfed slightly. An extra tier was added to equipment lists for enemies in Ancient Tombs.
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Undead enemies’ armor was given an actual armor rating.
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New spells were added to certain enemy classes and bosses.
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Undead enemies received perks that provide bonuses to attack, defense and spellcasting abilities based on their skill levels.
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New combat styles were added to ensure that enemies make the most out of their skills, perks, spells and equipment. Higher level enemies are more skilled at combat.
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Named bosses were given unique skills, perks, spells or equipment that set them apart from regular enemies.
New Features:
(Note: All of the following features have been implemented in part, but will be expanded further in later updates).
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New unique bosses were added to dungeons that didn’t have one (still a work in progress, a number of dungeons have a placeholder NPC for now).
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Most named bosses carry unique items (hold on to these items for now, as they will be reviewed and modified at a later date).
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Dragon Priests and dragon worshippers may drop bone charms when they die. Don’t dispose of these bone charms yet, as they will be used to boost and upgrade Dragon Cult artifacts (which will be part of a later update).
LE: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/115811
SE: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/94100
It will direct you to where you can download the mod. Premium isn't necessary, there's just some manual clicking involved and will take longer.
MO2 is still the way to go for more control, but vortex isn't too bad either, it's just that most people use MO2 at least on the old sub. Mods are mostly preference. Even cleaning the vanilla master plug-ins is debatable. If you have the time, I would experiment with wabbajack lists. If you just want fixes/essentials and want to do everything else yourself, there is Skyrim Modding Essentials by Phoenix.