As the article says, you can train your sense of smell. Just reading Nosedive has been enough to retrain how I think about certain smells. Recently someone was complaining about how bad some old shoes smelled, and all I could think was that they smelled like cheese rind, which is much less unpleasant.
Edit:
> others cannot detect the sulfur compounds responsible for the unpleasant odor of “asparagus pee.”
Not everyone produces that smell after eating asparagus either, which complicates things
> It is understood that certain chemicals block certain receptors, occupying their binding sites such that no other volatile molecules can reach them. These antagonists might have smells of their own—they activate other receptors—but, in principle, they will dampen or eliminate the smells that depend on the receptors they block. Such aromachemicals could be used not simply to cover up the stink of a latrine, but, in essence, to prevent it from being smelled at all.
