People have been cleaning their ears with cotton swabs for years. What other tools are being inadvertently used wrong?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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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.

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)

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.

Screwdrivers are not actually pry bars.

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.

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

a kitchen sink is not a storage place. wd-40 is not a lubricant. sex is not a weapon.

Hitachi Magic Wand.

I never use them to clean my earsz I use them to masturbate my ears. Nothing so good as a good ear scratching

Well, my youngest child saw me opening a can recently and yelled "THAT'S how you use it?!" They had apparently been holding it horizontally and thinking the can opener sucked.

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:

1. Mechanical damage, perhaps caused by accidental means
2. 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.

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).

Honing rods in the kitchen. People always try to use these to sharpen their knives but it never works and when their blade that's dull as a butter knife isn't any sharper they have a big hissy fit about it.

Most chef knives will form a burr (a deformation at the edge), even if sharp or very sharp, and this burr will reduce the cutting performance and it will feel "dull". You don't need to sharpen the knife again, it's still technically sharp so it is honed instead. The honing rod's grooves will realign the edge and the knife will be "sharp" again.

Toilet paper in your ahole.