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.
The hell was she doing on the factory line to get her DNA on all the swabs?
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.
Probably packing them with her bare hands.
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.
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?
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.
Greetings from my wife. She wanted me to send you this picture:
I never use them to clean my earsz I use them to masturbate my ears. Nothing so good as a good ear scratching
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.
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.”
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!
-
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
Why on earth is it designed this way though?
No clue but god it’s a pain or at least it was
Hitachi Magic Wand.
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.
