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.
MOVIE IDEA!! imagine a movie that takes you all over Europe following a killer and thief . Stumping the best cops. I’m thinking sort of following a cops career looking for this person until it ruins his family and life. Like destroys him slowly until he has nothing left . Kills himself. Through out the movie is close up shots of all the times cotton swabs were used in testing DNA. Randomly scattered. Ending shot of some factory . Camera flies in to assembly line. Two women side by side packing cartons. One look over and says. ‘‘You’ll end up in the office if they catch you without gloves again’’.
The hell was she doing on the factory line to get her DNA on all the swabs?
Probably packing them with her bare hands.
Existing. People shed DNA all over. Most of the dust in your house is human skin and hair (or that of your pets). Non-sterile swabs are probably just packed with bare hands, by someone in their regular clothing.
She was shoving each and every swab up her ass. Her ass swabs she called them. In conversations it gave her the upper hand. Check your bathroom, inside? Her ass swabs. Something in your ear had been up her ass!
Is she married to the “ass pennies” guy?
What was she doing? Just creating the best alibi ever.
Criminal mastermind.
Probably not all the swaps. Maybe just packaging. That way her DNA would’ve only gone to some swabs and thus making it take longer to find the error.
That makes me think the based an episode of CSI:NY after this. An almost identical plot.
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.
Well. I’ve seen a video where a guy tried to put a pickle jar in his pooper and then a whoopsie happened where the jar breaks.
Classic. Also ew.
Did you know that his family was watching TV in the other room while he did that?
This just… example and such
“Rectum? Damn near killed him!”
whoopsie
Thats… one way to describe it.
Thats… one way to describe it.
Cracked in the crack.
Ah, 1 Man 1 Jar.
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
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.
Hehe. Sometimes it’s just the way it is. We all have boundaries and our personal limits. 😆
Wd40 isn’t lube at all, it’s a solvent. Though the wd40 brand does make a whole lot of lubricants too.
Yea, it’s called Water Displacement formula 40. A penetrating oil mixed with stuff. Not nearly as goid as grease
Grease isn’t always the right thing either. For plastic-on-metal, you definitely don’t want grease.
Hmm, most my door hinges have a little plastic ring on them I assume to reduce squeaking. Sounds like I should switch away from grease for those. Didn’t realize this
Didn’t know that. Turns out some lubricants cause plastic to swell or harden and crack. Recommended to use silicone or special lubricants. https://readingplastic.com/choosing-the-right-lubricant-for-plastic-parts/
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.
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.
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!
I had to look up dental dams, TIL.
I knew what they were but I am still not understanding the connection to WD40.
Glad to spread the word! They’re an important piece of PPE that a lot of people overlook
So… being one of those spouses who uses wd40 on everything. Do you have link to some easily understandable info on when to use the right lubricant?
Wd40 is good for preventing rust, and helping to get things that are seized moving again. If you want to lubricate a door hinge, something like 3 in 1 oil is a good choice.
Yeah it has uses but specifically people seem to use it as a catch all which is where the misuse comes in. I’ve used it to unfuck rusty screws before it is great at that
One easy rule of thumb is if you’re looking to lubricate something WD40 is never the correct choice. It’s not a lubricant, it’s for cleaning/breaking shit loose.
The only thing worse than people using WD-40 instead of a better product, are the mental gymnastics performed by people pretending a product which is 35% oil and sold as a lubricant, actually isn’t.
If you want to use it as a lubricant go ahead. Just be prepared to have to do it more often than you would with a more suitable product.
Mechanical stuff you’re looking at grease, oil, penetrating, or dry. I found this with a quick search for more info. Personally I’ve found white lithium grease to be the best general purpose one for my needs (squeaky hinges, drawer wheels) but it can be pretty messy if used in the wrong spots. For most fast moving things with fine parts (like a bike chain) I really like wax lubes but they can get gummy sometimes so silicone works well too.
For sex I prefer water based because it is easier on toys and doesn’t make me fear for my life when trying to wash off in the shower after. It isn’t usually as long lasting as silicone based but it can be ‘revived’ with some water or other fluids. Anal I prefer oil based (shout out to Boy Butter because the name and logo are ridiculous but it works amazingly) but it also damages condoms so like if you’re not using an insertable go for the protection and silicone combo. For oral I’ll concede that wd40 actually has a use case here.
Ive never used wd 40 during sex before. I’m sure it’ll be a surefire way to get an insurance covered vasectomy, also known as testicular cancer.
I’m supposed to get mine removed next year but insurance is giving me the middle finger. Hoping my WD40 habits get me into the doctors sooner and with insurance.
Thank you for that… thorough explanation. You really know your lubes :)
Simple. WD40 for most things, WD40 silicone for vinyl windows. Grease for bike chains.
My soul 😭
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.
Burns the ding dong
For real, those envelopes chemicals are no joke
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.
Don’t shove things into your orifices
Don’t tell me how to live my life.
Flared bases!
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.
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.
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!
-
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.
I’ve been cleaning my ears with an “ear syringe” for years. Just squirt some warm water from the faucet in there and you can hear again. Works great and is reusable. They are like 10 bucks at your local drug store.
I don’t like having water stuck in my ear.
Water only gets stuck in your ear if you have wax built up in your ear canal. Regular washing of your ear with warm water (and nothing else!) keeps the wax build-up under control and water will just pour out of your ear canal as soon as you level your head.
Pro tip if this happens, add more water.
Sometimes I need a couple of more passes to unclog my ear. If I do it once and there is water stuck in my ears, it means I need to do it again. If I do it a few more times so my ear is unclogged, water will no longer be stuck in my ears.
If your ears are clogged so severely that water alone won’t help, use something like Debrox or hydrogen peroxide first to loosen your wax plug. Leave it in there for a few minutes to let the wax soften. Then follow it up with mechanical disruption from water in the ear syringe.
If your ears are too clogged so that even that doesn’t work, your clog is probably so severe that you need to see an ear, nose, and throat doctor.
I’ve been doing this for a long time now too. So much better than anything else I’ve tried and you’d have to do something incredibly fucky to injure yourself.
I actually got advised by my doctor to use vegetable oil for my daughter’s clogged ear. A drop of oil and some massaging for 20 seconds three times a day did the the trick. Took a few days, but the clog was eventually dissolved.
Scissors and knives.
I used to sell high end stuff like that, and let me tell you, there’s a trope about crafters considering murder when someone uses their, say, fabric scissors or sewing scissors to cut paper or something that ruins them. For scissors, however, nothing is more expensive and delicate than a decent set of haircutting shears used by professional hair stylists. Fuck, some go into the HUNDREDS of dollars or more. And then some clown wants to cut some box open with them.
Knives, though. Good set of chefs knives goes into the thousands. Like the kind used by professional chefs. I had some chef clients who tell me horror stories about some kitchen yokel using a $350 hand forged Santoku to stab open a can of tomato paste or toss into a cutting board like a throwing knife.
But even basic knives. People using them as prybars, hammers, screwdrivers, and tossing them in a drawer with other metal rattling around.
“Never use a knife as anything but a knife or you’ll end up disappointed and with a broken knife.”
Not sure where I heard that first, but it’s stuck with me.
I have junk scissors that I buy for a couple of bucks and replace as necessary for all the things that I need to cut. I also have kitchen junk scissors for cutting open plastic that food gets packaged in. If I found someone using my poultry shears or kitchen knives for anything besides their intended use I would ask them to leave and never come back.
Don’t touch my tools. That includes the things in my garage, my kitchen tools (cookware, knives, shears, barbecue stuff, whatever), and my electronics tools. I can’t imagine someone using one of my instruments incorrectly, but don’t touch those either. If you want to touch anything, ask. Don’t be surprised if I try to make sure you know the right way to use it before I hand it over.
I’m using your tools right now, and there’s nothing you can do about it
This is why I keep a cheap shitty knife with my camping stuff and in my toolbox. Because if you’re going to abuse the hell out of it, a 10 euro knife is just as good as a 100 euro one
For scissors, however, nothing is more expensive and delicate than a decent set of haircutting shears
I have a very cheap pair of haircutting scissors. I’ve used them to cut thin aluminium sheet. Still work OK for trimming my beard. I’m an absolute monster🙃
As for knives, some 10 years ago I bought a cheap (I think 2 or 3 €) Swedish-made fixed blade with nylon grip—the kind contractors and builders use. Thing is pretty much indestructible, cutting open tin cans and splitting of splinters from logs for firestarter like it’s nothing. Has a nice carbon steel blade and used to have very nice hollow ground that has been long been downgraded to flat ground due to many, many sharpenings.
I was shocked once when my roommate decided that the best way to get the freshly chopped garlic into her pot was to knock the blade side of the knife several times until the garlic fell off.
I have special sewing scissors, AND I have special haircutting scissors, as well as us having just regular everyday scissors of course. Can confirm after a couple of “incidents” my husband is now very very careful to pick up the right ones!
the tea bag was originally just a cheesecloth bag containing a loose leaf tea sample, and you were supposed to remove the tea from the bag
That might’ve been the case originally, but it’s definitely not today.
lol we know
What?? I’ve been cutting my teabags open all these years! So much wasted time and effort…
Meanwhile modern teabags leach microplastics into your tea when used.
Don’t buy brands that use plastic. Paper or loose leaf all the way.
I see people put fqdns into search engines all the time.
Stop searching for things like “espn.com”, just put it in the address bar.
My old boss would type google.com into the chrome search box (not the address bar) then click the link for Google, and search for Gmail.com.
My wife works full time remote and had to have IT take over her computer and she watched him type google into the search bar.
what do you do about googles ‘omnibar’? its the most infuriating combination of address and search boxes, and there is absolutely no way to turn it off.
oh yeah, one way: firefox.
its still triggers me to this day as the last straw for me and google
Firefox has omnibox and it’s not as easy to turn off as you think. The immediately available settings do some things like add the “search” box back but the “URL” box still functions as the omnibox. Have to play around with about:config and even then I haven’t figured out how to change it turn back time to the before times.
I have never had firefox mistake a url for a search, though.
I have plenty of times, which is why I went hunting for a way to disable it.
huh. did you remember to feed the fox all the cookies websites give you? that normally keeps her happy.
Begrudgingly yes.
I’m out of ideas. Best to bury your computer in the back yard.
FYI, the magic about:config key that you need to set to false is “keyword.enabled”. After that Firefox will finally stop using any non-url string as a search query and will instead say say “Hmm. That address doesn’t look right. Please check that the URL is correct and try again.”
Thanks!
Settings -> Search -> Add search bar in toolbar?
Yes that is the setting to turn on the “search bar” but it doesn’t revert omnibar to only URLs.
the most infuriating combination of address and search boxes
From a UX perspective, those are both ways to start a navigation to a new page, and it’s almost always clear from context which is intended (is the string formatted as a URL? Treat it as such. Otherwise, treat it as a search string). The only hiccup is when actually searching for strings that look like a URL (no whitespace, includes periods), but that happens rarely enough that I’m perfectly happy to manually go to a search engine for those cases. Otherwise, Cmd+L-“type my thoughts”-Enter works smoothly for me in both cases (on Firefox for personal laptop, or Chrome for work one).
What are the issues that you experience with this combined flow?
omnibox is one of the biggest QOL improvements browsers ever got IMO. Frees up screen real estate and is very intuitive. If you don’t want to navigate to your domain-like search string just add a space and a comma or something similar.
the worst for this is any browser for Android tv. most of the reason I’m using a browser on the Android TV is because I’m doing something sketchy that’s going to have a weird URL ending, so pretty much 100% of the time it interprets my URLs as searches
Would you believe that there is some browser malware that breaks this and makes you actually have to go to a Google search to get to a website?
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
Oh god, please for the love of god use a spoon and not a knife tip, though
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=VliJZhEqWzc I’m a robot, beepboop
Based robot
Why on earth is it designed this way though?
No clue but god it’s a pain or at least it was
Screwdrivers are not actually pry bars.
Says you. I have a set of old, cheap screwdrivers specifically for use as tiny prybars.
A screwdriver and a hammer together make a great tiny wedge.
And you can use a flathead on Phillips heads, if you have enough gumption.
Multi-tools psh. The flathead is a multitool.
You’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands!
“Your offer is accepted!”
But combined with a torch, they make quick and dirty soldering irons.
Blasphemy!
Q-tips were very clearly designed to clean ears. They just have to cover their ass now, and tell people it’s not safe. (I do not personally have very gooey ear wax and don’t use them much at all)
As someone with wax issues in the ears, no, q-tips suck at cleaning ears. You’ll end up pushing the wax into your eardrum and causing the impacted wax that you were trying to avoid in the first place. That’s why I use those tiny screwdrivers. /shrug
Ah, much less risky, I’m sure.
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.
a kitchen sink is not a storage place. wd-40 is not a lubricant. sex is not a weapon.
You should extrapolate on these. especially the Kitchen sink one.
No, I clean my ears with warm water. I dry them with cotton swabs.
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.
And they’re only $50 for the actual Hitachi model. Always assumed it would be far more expensive.
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).
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 salting 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
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.
