Could you explain the relevance? I asked why people don’t carry a tool for a problem they are bitching about. Phones have nothing to do with a tethered cap.
AFAIK, these tethered caps are mostly an EU thing (and at the very least are not widely used in my area of the US) and a lot of European countries are less knife-friendly than the US.
A lot of us don’t think of our knives as weapons, they’re tools.
It’s rare that I don’t carry a knife, and using it in self defense is the furthest thing from my mind every day when I put it in my pocket. I use it for things like opening packages, cutting string, sharpening pencils, use various other tools on the knife like screwdrivers, pliers, awls, I have a lot of outdoor hobbies like camping, hiking, fishing, and knives are kind of indispensable for those pursuits.
If I’m ever in a situation where I absolutely need to defend myself, and I don’t really foresee that ever being necessary, I’m probably not even going to think of using my knife in self defense, I don’t think of it as a weapon anymore than I think of my wallet being a weapon, it’s just something that lives in my pocket that I frequently need to use.
And knives make a shitty weapon, if you’re close enough to stab someone, you’re close enough to get punched in the face, or for your assailant to wrestle it out of your hands and stab you with it. You’d be better swinging around pretty much any larger object within arms reach to create some space. They say about knife fights that the loser dies in the street, the winner dies in the ambulance.
The knives I tend to carry especially aren’t good weapons, most need 2 hands to open, aren’t really designed ergonomically as fighting knives, most are fairly small so I’d have to get really lucky to hit anything vital and would probably just piss them off more and not stop the attack quickly, some of them don’t even have a pointy blade so not good for stabbing (I actually make it a point to choose less threatening looking knives for my EDC needs) some of them don’t lock open so they’d just as like close on my fingers as cause any harm to my assailant, and some of them actually lock in the closed position so definitely not good for a weapon.
I’m not saying that everyone who carries a knife has the same mindset. Lots of people do carry them as weapons, those people are idiots. And not everyone puts the same thought into the knives they carry and just get something that looks cool whether or not it’s functional for their needs.
I also don’t carry anything for self defense regularly and don’t own a gun (not opposed to gun ownership in general, but my thoughts on that are part whole ‘nother debate,) in general if I feel like I need to be prepared to defend myself if I go somewhere, I just don’t go there. There’s a bit of privilege to that, since I live in a safe area and can make that call, not everyone is lucky enough to live somewhere they can feel safe. The only exception is the pepper spray I keep with my dogs leash, since my wife or I often end up walking her alone at night, and that’s more of a precaution against loose dogs, coyotes, etc. than against people.
There’s a lot to say about Americans’ love of violence and weapons and the sort of mindset we have about self defense, and overall I tend to think that a lot of my country is absolutely insane when it comes to those matters. That said, I also think people who look at the little swiss army type knives, or Leatherman multitools I tend to carry and see a terrifying deadly weapon have their own issues to work out too.
Not really relevant to the comment you replied to and only tangentially related to some other comments in this thread. We’re talking about knives and soda caps here.
I think that’s mostly UK and France. As in: I have an Opinel lying around here, perfectly legal to carry in any situation as long as it’s not a protest or such, it’s a French knife, lots of tradition behind it… and it’s illegal in France.
Rules in Germany are quite simple: If the blade is longer than IIRC 14cm (palm of your hand), or it is a locking blade that’s designed to be opened with one hand, you need a good reason to carry it. Like, walking on the street towards the forest with an axe over your shoulder is fine because you have a proper reason, into a mall, not so much. Butterflies and some other one-handed opening mechanisms popular with notorious people are outlawed. Fixed blades with certain features, say, guards or more than one edge, are rightly classed as bladed weapons which you generally need to keep at home. Everything else is a tool you can EDC, and the only thing you need to buy a sword is your ID to show that you’re 18.
His formatting leaves a bit to be desired, but that basically boils down to
Knives with certain features like a double edge, a handguard, butterfly knives and certain other one-handed opening mechanisms (I assume switchblades, maybe assisted openers, possibly gravity and flick knives) are weapons and can be owned but generally not carried
Otherwise…
Knives (and I assume this applies to other bladed tools as well since he mentioned an axe)with a blade length of less than about 5.5 inches are ok to carry for no particular reason, as long as either the blade doesn’t lock or it needs two hands to open it (from how he wrote it sounds to me like one or the other of those features is ok, but not both)
You can carry a bigger knife if you have a good reason that you need one, like if you’re going campings/hunting, or clearing brush with a machete (and from how he phrased it sounds like you could also carry a one-handed locking knife with a good reason)
You get carded to prove you’re an adult if you want to buy a sword (I assume knives as well)
Which is pretty straightforward, and actually similar to a lot of laws in the states (looser than some states I believe, and stricter than others)
This generalization is a problem. Assessing the whole life cycle, the carbon footprint of glass bottles is problematic and plastics is a viable alternative.
You have to consider the significantly higher weight of glass increasing carbon emissions from transportation.
While plastics bottles can only be reused about half as often as glass bottles, their production is far more energy-efficient (glass production is done at temps of 1400-1600 °C or 2500-3000 °F while plastics use temperatures from 160-300 °C or 320-600 °F) which also reduces carbon footprint in basically every country.
Of course recycling has to be taken seriously and properly organized to prevent plastics just ending up in nature. But we have to balance the micro-plastics problem against climate change. We need to solve both.
It used to be done a lot more before and some places still do it in Europe. You return the glass bottle intact, they reuse it as is. Only carbon spent is in transporting it.
Well, you also have to clean them which I assume also uses energy. And they need to be fulfilling “food-grade” cleaning requirements since you want to drink out of them, so that’s probably more energy needed than a simple wash in soap.
Yes (I actually live in Europe), but it cannot be reused indefinitely and needs to be recycled after about 50 uses (that’s why I mentioned the whole life cycle of a bottle). Also, glass breaks.
You have to consider the significantly higher weight of glass increasing carbon emissions from transportation.
If the transportation was electrical renewable sourced this wouldn’t be a factor.
their production is far more energy-efficient (glass production is done at temps of 1400-1600 °C or 2500-3000 °F while plastics use temperatures from 160-300 °C or 320-600 °F)
If manufacturing was electrical renewable sourced this wouldn’t be a factor.
I don’t want micro plastics in my nutsack. I don’t care that it’ll be a long time before we get there. We should start getting there now. I don’t want to hear perfectionist fallacy arguments about why I should be happy to have plastics swimming around with my sperm.
I don’t want to hear perfectionist fallacy arguments
You mean like the ones you gave if there was a 100% renewable power grid and transportation was 100% electrical glass would be carbon neutral?
Well, both aren’t and we are a long way from either, so that argument stands. You may care about your nutsack, as do I about my own, but climate change is the more critical problem.
There’s a good reason why many carbonated drinks stopped being sold in glass bottles. When you go over a certain volume, they become bombs. There are videos online or 2L soda bottles falling over and sending shards of glass flying everywhere. I’d rather not have that back.
Glass bottles are also great at starting fires when they’re left outside by trashy people. Looking at how often I still find plastic trash in the woods, I’m not sure if switching to glass would make that much of an improvement.
Plus, you’d still have the same problem with the bottle cap.
Have you ever heard about the Exota affair in the Netherlands? In 1969, journalists uncovered the glass bottles of Exota soda were explosion hazards and their scathing TV episode about it drove the company to bankruptcy. It became a whole ordeal after the journalists and broadcaster were sued.
I think what I saw was the full version of this segment: youtu.be/Z9PM14qKhe4 Although, I think it may have been about the 1.5L/2L bottle as well, and this video is about the dangerous bottles that remained after a bunch of them got off the market.
The shots in the video you linked seem rather fake (and kind of artsy, I love old Dutch television sometimes), the video I recall had bottles treated rather normally.
The place I lived before this would only recycle the bottle, not the cap… made this mildly infuriating as I had to do extra work every time I wanted to recycle them. Glad I can just toss the whole thing in the recycle bin now.
The bottle itself is usually made of PET which is very recyclable. The cap is made of polypropylene for its strength to prevent the bottle from leaking.
You cannot recycle PET and PP together - you need pure resin for production. So this captive closure actually hinders recycling.
Personally, I’ve never seen many caps lying around without their bottle and think the EU solved a non-existent issue.
That’s what I thought, too. I’m sure it’s a problem SOMEWHERE, but did we just get slapped with a global solution to a locally inexistent issue?
I’ve heard that there’s a measurable effect, though, even in Europe, so I guess it’s okay. The extent of that effect? Probably comparable to non-plastic straws. Meaning almost none, just political.
Right, the previous place required them to be removed because they’re different plastics. I assume the new one just automatically cuts the top of the bottle off and discards it… probably because the people using the service couldn’t be counted on to follow directions anyway. In fact that was the reason they actually gave up on city wide recycling. Too many people trying to throw non-recyclable items in the bin (like whole ladders and baby seats and greasy pizza boxes and all sorts of stuff.) They had a line literally catch fire because someone threw a lithium ion battery in the bin.
I’m not sure how they’re doing it but in Germany all those PET bottles go into a centrally-managed recycling stream (because 25ct deposit) and I bet they have some technical norms around that kind of stuff. The bottles are all crushed to save space, incl. the caps, which at least in the case of the water bottle next to me is HDPE. Judging by the haptics the label is PET, a flimsy banderole glued (fused?) on at the seam.
Either they’re doing it chemically by breaking up the PET and then fishing out the rest from the soup (is that possible?) or what would also work I guess is shredding and mechanical sorting – the label is flimsy, the bottle always transparent, the cap never transparent. Such stuff.
The issue I had with them at first was that I thought you had to rip it off halfway, then it was annoying as hell, but if you just unscrew it and fold it open untill it locks open it works great!
To close you just have to pull it up slightly to get it over the opening and then srew it closed
Maybe they make them better here in Denmark. Plus we have “Pant” where you pay more for the bottles but get money back when you return them so it’s a “belt and braces” approach I guess!
True, true it is just a deposit, but it certainly helps. Compared to England where I lived until I was 38 there are far fewer bottles littering the streets here in Denmark, although a lot of that can be put down to general public attitude probably. Never had a bottle stab me! Sounds like a case of bad quality control.
How to say this in a non aggressive, non condescending way…
You’re stupid.
The thing stay open and out of the way. If it’s in your face when you drink from the bottle, it means you lack the ability to rotate a loose plastic ring 90° (or even the whole bottle). If it’s in the way of your pour, same thing.
They are as unobtrusive as it gets; and you going out of your way (with rage, it seems) to do something tedious like forcibly ripping them off or cutting yourself on smooth plastic instead of looking at it and moving it, effortlessly, in any position that would not hinder you, is the paramount of silliness.
my dad is disabled. had a stroke, shaky hands & stuff forever. he fuken h8’s these new caps. i personally don’t care much, unless i’m drinking yoghurt out of a bottle.
Caps attached to the bottles is very important to the recycling industry, so they can be more cheaply and efficiently shipped to China and thrown into the sea.
Source on that? As far as I know China stopped importing plastic waste as they realized it was too expensive for the state as they are burdened with the externalities, i.e. cleanup.
I think a few years ago it was China. Now it will be anybody else who wants Western money and doesn’t mind burning plastic. Malaysia and Turkey seem popular for the UK. Not sure where the US sends it. It sure as shit isn’t recycled in any way that people would think of as recycling.
I’ve no idea why we make plastic bottled drinks when aluminium cans exist.
They should make it so the cap doesn’t come off at all, so you have to buy a glass bottle with a metal cap that are both recyclable and won’t give you erectile disfunction.
mildlyinfuriating
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.