I've been wondering for a while now if I might have that gene or whether Cilantro is just a herb i dislike. I can stomach dishes with cilantro in them, but it just stings through everything. No matter how little was put in, it tastes to me like somebody over-cilantro'd the dish. I've never eaten anything where I thought "Mmmh, yes, there's a subtle hint of cilantro" - it's always "Oh, there's the cilantro, and it's just too strong".

But whenever I read about this online, people say that it tastes like soap. It's been a couple of years since I was toddler enough to just put soap in my mouth. But in my mind, the taste of soap is mostly bitter, with an overwhelming tropical/fruity/citrussy flavor of whatever the producers decided to make the soap smell like. I also imagine it having a really unpleasant texture/mouthfeel. I have no urge to try eating soap, just so I can compare it with the taste of a herb. And I assume that most people with the Cilantro-gene also haven't made an actual taste-comparison. So hence my question: In what way does anything - but cilantro in particular - taste like soap?

You know the scene. Two characters (usually a somewhat harmless looking protagonist against a burly big tough guy) start to fight. A crowd forms around them.

"5 bucks on the big strong guy.", says one person in the crowd.

"10 bucks on the obvious winner.", another crowd member bets on the same.

"100 bucks the underdog main character wins.", shouts a supporting character also in the crowd. The others look at him in disbelief.

Then the fight happens, underdog wins, and we cut to the supporting character with a wad of cash in hand being really smug.

What's the logistics of that money exchange? Like, if there was a bookie keeping track of who bet how much on what, and doing the pay outs, that would obviously work. Or if people individually accepted each others bets. But these stories always just display people shouting, and then the winner with the money. Is this shouting style betting actually based in reality, or is it just a nice dramatization for entertainment purposes?

I'd expect the shortest day of the year to also be the coldest, with the coldest season of the year spreading out equally on both sides of it.