For years there was the “Phantom”, a notorious criminal, haunting all of Europe. DNA testing revealed that it was a female and her crimes ranging from petty theft to murder were seemingly unrelated to each other. That each of them were done in different countries didn’t make solving the case any easier.
But eventually they did solve it. They found the woman working in a cotton swab factory. Turned out many police departments were using the wrong type of swabs. So there seem to be more than one way to incorrectly use cotton swabs.
I was curious if this was real, and it is! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7966641.stm
Case file do an episode on it. Well, she appears in an episode in chasing that killer
Now that’s some serious incompetence there, and it’s sad that it took so many cases to figure it out.
That makes me think the based an episode of CSI:NY after this. An almost identical plot.
I swear every time my spouse tries to use wd40 I have a stroke. We have several kinds of specific lubes for different situations ffs, all in the same easy to access bin, stop trying to use wd40 as a catch all super lube that’s not how it works.
People don’t send letters much anymore but please don’t lick the envelopes. Just dip a finger in water. Just as easy, less germy, and doesn’t cause a lingering chemical taste.
Nobody seems to understand how to use dental dams. Look it up, stay safe people.
Greetings from my wife. She wanted me to send you this picture:
Having grown up with Red Green I’m team duct tape 100% but I’ll die on my WD40 hill
Hehe. Sometimes it’s just the way it is. We all have boundaries and our personal limits. 😆
Duck*
Both have been used at different times so the words are effectively interchangeable. However I’d also like to point out that in my example specifically duct tape is the proper word to use as that’s how it is used in Red Green:
As a huge fan of ol’ Green (born & raised Michigander), and I don’t recall him ever using it on ducting, yet I can easily remember a plethora of examples where he used it for its hydrophobic sealing properties.
But those envelopes are tasty…
It’s so sad stamps don’t need to be licked anymore.
Nothing beats a licked envelope followed by a stamp chaser.
Do you let out an airy ‘aaah, yep’ and slap the envelope onto the table, too? I just kinda want to see someone exasperated and hunched over a USPS counter being like ‘another!’ as they pull letters out one at a time and the register worker hands them just a single envelope and stamp each time.
I guess I could see them being tasty if you’ve got the palette of an 80 year old smoker who grew up eating poverty suspended in aspic.
Lol, that’s me!
Casually suggest using WD40 as lube for the next sexy time. When they say “what,” you can say “why not? You use it for everything else.” Maybe it’ll click.
Of course, this advice may negatively impact this, and possibly several future potential sexy times, but it’s a small sacrifice if it keeps people from using god damned WD40 as a fucking lube.
Dental dams.
I know what it is yet never found it selling.
Licking envelopes.
There was a time when the glue was somewhat sweet. I grew out of it quick enough - wasn’t willing to stick paper in my mouth - but not quick enough to not build that memory.
WD40
It has a very wide range of uses but there is a limit for it.
I had to look up dental dams, TIL.
Glad to spread the word! They’re an important piece of PPE that a lot of people overlook
I knew what they were but I am still not understanding the connection to WD40.
I have tmj and so my jaw can lock shut sometimes. WD40 can be used to quickly un-seize my jaw so I can get some proper lube in there and keep enjoying what’s on the other side of a dental dam.
You’re telling me not to clean my ears with swabs??? I’m sorry, but I will swear forever that they are intended for the ears. The only issue is that the makers don’t want to get sued if anyone hurts themselves. I mean, c’mon, the Japanese use both ends of these in their ears! You want me to start doing that?
They were specifically created for cleaning ears. First line of the wikipedia history.. The reason Q-Tip says not to use them in ears is plausible deniability. They know they mostly get used to cleaning ears. But it’s incredibly easy to puncture your eardrum doing that. In order to stop people from suing them for using their product in its main use case and hurting themselves, they simply specifically instruct against using it that way. While that is a wholly ridiculous falsehood, without it they’d have probably been sued so much that no one would make them. And then I wouldn’t be able to clean my ears.
This seems to be largely an American phenomenon, that people sue the maker of a product for themselves failing to use the product correctly, no? Or at least I can’t remember a single instance outside America where either someone sued the producer for using a product incorrectly or the producer pre-emtpively puts warnings on for ridiculous stuff to not get sued if people try these things.
Either way, good to know that cotton swabs were primarily made indeed to clean ears. I don’t use them for that, but it always weirded me out when they came in those pastelle color packages with openings like tissues, perfect for a bathroom, but someone said “Yo, don’t use them for your ears! They were made for swabbing grease off motor chains.”
Not a lot of products have to do that. The one people bandy about is McDonalds adding “Caution: Coffee Is Hot” to their stuff, but the actual coffee spill lawsuit was over coffee hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns. Few things need cautions against their intended use.
Q-Tips / cotton swabs are an almost uniquely bad tool. It’s incredibly easy to rupture your ear drums. There’s no actual health benefit to swabbing your ears – it just feels good your ears get itchy. A safer tool could be made, but it’d be more expensive, more involved to use, and there’s probably several but I can’t be bothered to find out, and neither can you. They make a product that they know is inherently dangerous to use and has no specific benefit. So it has a warning against doing it. Same as cigarette packs have a warning that they cause cancer, even though everyone buying them knows that and smokes them anyway.
Better ear cleaning tools exist. They are little plastic scoops. I used to use a bent paperclip. Basically anything you can put into the ear canal and then pull/scoop/scrape earwax out is far better than a qtip, which only compacts wax into clumps. The one good use case for the qtip is drying. They can absorb water well inside the ear canal and belly button. I personally use them on my navel after showering since I have an “innie”
I’m going crazy this goddamn thread.
Don’t shove things into your orifices. Wash your ears maybe with the help of your wet fingers under the shower. If you got fat fingers or tiny ears, maybe use cotton swabs etc on the other most area of the ear canal to clean away excess.
Your ear is self cleaning. Dont stick anything in it.
Like do people stuff cotton up their urethra to dry it after peeing? Leave your holes alone.
I work in a call center where I wear headphones for 8 hours. I also game online and wear headphones at home for an hour or two each day. I am a very oily person. My ears DO NOT self-clean, as you say, given my situation. I use a peroxide ear drop every few weeks to cut down the buildup nowadays, then flush with an ear syringe. You can’t make generalizations. People should get to know their bodies and stay healthy. If I do not do these things I just described, by the way, I start to lose hearing after a few months.
See, you’re describing washing them. Good.
In ears also dont stop your ears from self cleaning, just means the final stretch has to be washed out i guess. As you do. Dont shove paperclips in there.
And consider over/onear headphones maybe.
People should get to know their bodies and stay healthy. If I do not do these things I just described, by the way, I start to lose hearing after a few months.
Yes they do, through education and medical advice. Not by sticking things into their holes.
If you got crazy buildup despite washing, you need to speak with a doctor too.
Don’t shove things into your orifices
Don’t tell me how to live my life.
Flared bases!
Don’t shove things into your orifices.
BUT I HUNGER
Food hole is the exception
You can get soft silicone ear pickers with a built in camera now so you can see what you’re scooping.
Yep, somehow America wound up doing thing that way, where instead of regulating preemptively, lawsuits are expected to do a lot of what regulatory bodies do in other countries. It’s an awful system and rarely benefits those that have been caused harm, especially when there are limits on punitive damages that are supposed to encourage corporations to not be shitbags. Individuals don’t have the resources to sue companies, either, so at best one occasionally gets a check for $2.14 for being part of a class that won a class action lawsuit.
Basically every absurd lawsuit you hear Americans do is either:
-
genuinely frivolous, tossed out of court immediately, amplified to paint suing corporations as bad
-
someone trying to get damages from a company which genuinely wronged them, often with life altering consequences
Also jeez folks, clean your ears any other way, shoveling wax out of your canals with a non sterile tool regularly is asking for infections. The wax is there for a reason!
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- Omega_Haxors ( @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml ) 2•1 year ago
Americans are giga sheep. If you want prospective of just how little they think for themselves, there was a misconfigured road in a GPS app and people kept literally driving off the road because their GPS told them to, even though it was clearly and visibly into a body of water.
Then there’s also the hilarious Apple Wave prank, where a single image tricked people into nuking their phones. What makes that prank even funnier is that it was directly inspired by the iOS update that made your phone waterproof which people also fell for.
Screwdrivers are not actually pry bars.
You’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands!
“Your offer is accepted!”
Blasphemy!
Well, big flathead screwdrivers aren’t for screwing things in. Small ones have a place for decorative screws, like on light switch covers, but big flathead screws should never be used.
So big flathead screwdrivers are better as pry bars than as screwdrivers.
The ceiling fan: it changes directions with a switch, clockwise for winter, counterclockwise for everything else. Also opening those glass Doña María mole sauce jars: gotta flip it upside down on a paper towel and pry where the lid indicates, then flip it rightside up and twist
Edit here’s a vid that I learned from for the mole sauce. pipedbot do your thing pls
They aren’t being used wrong. It’s just that no one will say it’s OK to use them that way for liability purposes for when someone inevitably screws it up or already has too much wax. It also depends on what type of wax your ears make (people have different kinds. Wet, dry, or somewhere in between)
I’ve used them for decades “the wrong way” and checked my ear canal with a little bluetooth camera thing made for ears. My canal and eardrums are immaculate, so it happens to work great for me.
Cotton swabs were invented in the 1920s for the purpose of ear cleaning. They were marketed as such until around 1980 when the market became worried about lawsuits from people stabbing their ear drums or people with lots of wet wax built up already in their ears compacting it towards the ear drum instead of it getting cleaned out.
market became worried
Also the fact that it’s a useless waste of time which does increase risk of damage and infection for at best saving a few seconds of cleaning any other safe way. Your ear wax is good for you, stop clearing it out, why do you think it’s even there.
Hitachi Magic Wand.
If a company can successfully desig, build and sell heavy machinery while at the same time manufacturing personal care items, let them be.
I am still sad Hitachi was too embarrassed to carry on the legacy of its name and sold off the Magic Wand brand to its subsidiary manufacturer. Hitachi, the brand name was a compliment to you, not a liability! You lost out.
And they’re only $50 for the actual Hitachi model. Always assumed it would be far more expensive.
I never use them to clean my earsz I use them to masturbate my ears. Nothing so good as a good ear scratching
earussy
Passwords. We assume a hard to guess and everchanging password will be hard to crack, but the whole point of machines is that it can be pinpointed with utmost accuracy, and everytime someone tells you to use special phrases in passwords, they’re also inadvertently saying “hey thieves, here is what to look out for, happy guessing”. They’re supposed to be more like speakeasies.
I remember long ago, when I was active as Dabran2 on Neopets, there was a vault with nine dropdown menus that you had to guess the combination to on the moon Kreludor. It was simpler and far more effective. To this day, I couldn’t tell you what’s on the other side (or I’d have to annihilate you and feed your remains to the turmaculus, assuming you believe I made it to the other side).
Passwords, as in user chosen secrets used to prove identity, are a really bad idea in general. Turns out, people are crappy at coming up with stuff that is hard to guess. They are also crappy at remembering things that are hard to guess. That’s why every website these days wants to SMS you a code or makes you use an Authenticator.
Thankfully people are catching on, and secure passwordless sign in is gaining ground rapidly.
I’m surprised no place uses IP addresses anymore to authenticate (I was around when Postopia did or whatever that candy themed game place was). Many IP-ban when it comes to identifying rulebreakers, you’d think they’d IP-authenticate too.
Imagine if your roommate could just get into all your accounts?
I know that’s untactical, but I mean as long as IP bans are already a thing…
All major services do risk based authentication these days. I’m fairly certain network address factors into the risk calculations.
Carrier grade NAT. For instance, on our local mobile phone network, thousands of handsets will have the same public IP address.
Yeah knew a guy that used to work at a place where they had him change his password every 2 months or so kinda stupid. Entropy is really all you need to check. Also by special phrases do you mean
saltingpeppering your passwords?What do you mean?
The peppering passwords? That’s where you add a special word or phrase in all of your passwords but not in your password manager. It’s usually done in case your password manager becomes compromised thats why I got a bit confused with your statement, haha
Yes, or a general way of putting it anyways.
Salting and peppering isn’t something you do; it’s something the site does prior to hashing your password and storing the hash.
Yes you’re correct but what I was referring to was using an extra string of characters to protect against a compromised password manager
Edit: Here’s a link to bitwarden’s website that further clarifies what I meant
No, I clean my ears with warm water. I dry them with cotton swabs.
Doctor Mike says not to do it, but I have been for years. This started when I got a wax ball that impacted against my eardrum and made me functionally deaf on one side until I could get into an urgent doctor’s appointment. The very next day, the same thing happened on the other side. I knew what was up for the second time and was able to get something from the pharmacy to handle it myself.
As best I can tell, there are two dangers:
- Mechanical damage, perhaps caused by accidental means
- Leaving bits of cotton behind that can then become infected
For me, I am fine taking this risk and plan to continue doing so daily.
Mechanical damage would require a major freak accident or you to be an idiot about it.
The real issue (according to my doctor, who has a lot more patience than most doctors and actually educated my stubborn ass on this) isn’t just the cotton residue you mentioned (though that is very much a factor) but also the fact that for every [small unit of measurement] of wax the QTip pulls OUT, it is also pushing IN about [small unit of measurement] of it.
This can mean infections, as you mentioned. As you push foreign content AND the wax (which is itself full of trapped bacteria) closer to your sensitive bits. It can also accelerate blockages depending on the consistency of your wax. If you have that issue that your ears get wax blockage periodically, q-tips ensure it happens even faster.
I have actually heard about the wax getting shoved in, so I know what you are referring to there. I have considered it but still think I’m better of continuing to use them. Everyone is different, though.
Apparently most Asian people don’t actually produce noticeable ear wax, it’s more of a caucasian thing.
Not sure about noticeability, but yes, Asian people have different earwax consistency to whiteys like me. :P
