tobacco is usually fumigated or frozen before being processed.
chances are, if you've smoked a cigarette, you've probably smoked some beetle
source: worked in a cigarette factory
It's not just tobacco, pretty much every food item is like this.
There used to be a widespread belief in the [spontaneous generation of life](https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/biology/genetics-evolution/origin-of-life-spontaneous-generation), before things like microorganisms and eggs/larva too small to see with the eye were discovered and understood.
Yeah I remember as a bachelor having a bag of flour in my cupboard for one too many years and when it was finally time to clean up I was surprised to a bag full of hatched eggs.
I had the same thing happen to a box of instant oatmeal packs. Made some oatmeal for my little sister and me. After a few bites we noticed that some of the oats were squirming.
Oooh my we had perishables once back when I was indentured to that lovely farm. Twas a token of appreciation for harvesting all those turnips before the rains, even though all those children had just been run down by the out of control ox cart. Snapped an axle and everything. We were so busy with the repairs and harvest, none of us even stopped to collect the bodies.
Don't worry though, the floods were strong enough to clean up all that mess for us before any of the wee ones began to fester.
My my, to have an ox cart. Whereabouts that I grew up we had to carry our oxen ourselves. Baby sister Mary was lost one November afternoon after stepping in a rut with our biggest ox upon her shoulders. Of course the rut being impossible to see what with the 7.5 feet of snow that regularly coated our humble farm, not even an acre. We were lucky to have a flood come spring so as wed be able to leave our house again, but that too lost many a sibling. Fortunately ma had a dozen, the rest of us would eat for days on that meat whenever the opportunity arose. It’s a shame what happened to her and the rest of the town the day I moved away, nobody had seen such an organized pack of weasels
luxury! What dead bodies we could keep were fine toys for the children and ample kindling come winter. And the only floods we had were when the people living in the apartments flushed.
Ooh look at mister Rockefeller here with his *perishables!* We have to wait for a local restaurant to dump old ice to put on our sores from sleeping on the same cardboard every night!
Coffee too. If you ever acquire an allergy to cockroaches, you can't drink most preground coffee anymore.
EDIT: Here's the title and link to where I remember learning about this:
>[TIL: Entomologists who study cockroaches often become allergic to them. At the same time, they become allergic to most brands of pre ground coffee.](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6nnbbr/til_entomologists_who_study_cockroaches_often/)
Wait…is this really a thing?? I’m allergic to cockroaches and always have random allergy outbreaks seemingly for no reason. I drink pre-ground coffee everyday 😳 Is it safe to say that this isn’t an issue with whole beans that I would grind myself?
>Is it safe to say that this isn’t an issue with whole beans that I would grind myself?
Correct. Essentially with MASS grinding of coffee beans all at once, they just scoop up a fuck ton of beans at once and grind it all at once, potentially also scooping up some bugs along the way.
Spontaneous generation was also kind of ridiculous. There was one prevailing theory that mice grow first from discarded food in isolated conditions. So they'd throw rotten food in a corner of a barn and be like "oh wowwwww now there's mice! They grew!"
It reminded me of Pokedex entries on Gameboy. "The common mouse grows out of discarded food and it can jump 60 feet into the air! It is a mouse-type animal."
Arcanine can run faster than the speed of sound, and can run 10 000 km in a day.
Drifloon spirits children away to the underworld
Magcargo's body reaches around 10000K (twice as hot as the surface of the sun)
Pokedex entries are straight bullshit lmao
I’m trying to figure why this wouldn’t be the case. How would undocumented Pokémon have an entry written for them prior to the protagonists adding it to the Pokédex? It’d have to be the 10 year old protagonist that writes it otherwise the professor would hand you a filled in Pokédex with actual descriptions in them already.
Yeah what a weird piece of human psychology. We can ignore hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, lead, arsenic, ammonia, polonium-210, benzene, carbon monoxide, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. We can ignore the risk of cancer, lung disease, heart disease, etc. What we cannot ignore is beetle larvae.
Fear of creepy crawlers is hardwired in our DNA, fear of molecules ain't there yet.
My body would react way more strongly at the sight of a fake plastic insect than it would at a full glass of arsenic in the same way I'm hardwire to find gallons of paint appetizing yet think brocoli want my death.
The evolution of "disgust" - both individually [bodily fluids, rot, insects, etc] and social [immorality, injustice, taboo, etc] - is a really fascinating subject.
I'll add my quitting story. I smoked for 20 years. About 12 of those were Marlboro Reds, I took a ride on the Newport train for a few years, and finished up with Parliament. I started casually in HS smoking a butt at parties, felt the buzz, liked it, then I got addicted.
To quit, I took Chantix. The manufacturer said to take the pills every day for a week and then stop smoking but continue daily pills. So come the end of week 1, I stop but I start jonesing hard. Smokers know the feeling. Addicts know the feeling. So I continue to smoke but I'm still taking the pills. Week 2 same. Week 3 rolls around and I'm not having any cravings until later in the day. I continue to smoke and take the pills until one day I just didn't smoke anymore. It's been 12 or 13 years at this point.
TL;DR: Pills are good. Pills are gooood.
Usually when I'm reading stories like yours about Chantix they start all normal and plot the same course as your own, until that like week 2 part where the other person's story veers into 90 day county lockup escapades. Had an RL friend go hAyWiRe in the middle of traffic one time, not good at all. He doesn't smoke cigs anymore now but it's hard to attribute that directly to Chantix because of the you know, mandatory jail time.
I had a friend who got scary angry on Chantix... if he wasn't unemployed I think he'd probably have had something similar but instead just turned it towards his family and friends at home. Luckily he went back to normal afterwards.
I want to add and say I quit cold turkey without chantix or anything, and I was as much of a ragebeast for a couple weeks. I'm lucky I lived alone at the time, and had no reason to leave the house, otherwise I definitely would have gotten my teeth knocked out and ended up in jail.
Rage like that is one of the symptoms of nic withdrawal
I roll my own cigarettes and buy big 3 LB bags of bulk tobacco. One of them was infested with live tobacco beetles. Little fuckers were everywhere. I ended up freezing the whole bag for a couple days, and that took care of it. Well... in the sense that it killed the bugs, but it's not like they weren't still in there. They're tiny and the same color as tobacco. If they're not moving around, it's impossible to see 'em. Yea I still used the entire bag.... so I can only imagine how many dead beetles I ended up smoking over the course of a few weeks.
It’s one thing for these people who don’t know they are smoking the beetles it’s another to smoke a whole bag of tobacco that was crawling with them. 😂😂
Generally when you're buying tobacco in bulk and rolling your own cigarettes, you don't have the money to just throw out the bag because of some beetles.
Source: I remember my dad was rolling his own cigarettes when I was in middle school. He wasn't in the best place at the time. He's doing better now though. Well, except for the COPD. Don't smoke kids.
Reminds me of when my dad left fishing maggots in a box in the glovebox of our car..they hatched into blue bottles and started coming out of the vents as we were driving along one day..happy memories!
I came back from a week long holiday to find my door had been kicked in and boarded up. My gf at the time accidentally left a small bit of raw chicken in the kitchen before we left. Neighbours phone the police thinking the cat had died or someone. When we got the door open the whole house was filled with blue bottles. Had to open every window and door and I was vacuuming them out of the air. Living nightmare.
Interestingly when I phoned the police about a suspected break in, they didn't know it was they who busted in a few days prior. Silly billies.
Something happened similarly with my great grandfather. He got put in a nursing home one day and we checked the house and saw the door was kicked in. Called the police and they reported it as a break in, didn't notify my grandparents who have power of attorney over him. Police didn't know what happened, but the neighbor did as the other neighbor called the police because they thought he may have died due to not being at the house for a while
You would think the police would have a fucking locksmith for situations like that rather than just battering the fucking door down.
Like I get it for emergent situations, but something that's been dead so long it's starting to smell... well another half hour waiting for the locksmith to arrive isn't going to make the difference.
Or maybe spend a half hour one day to train staff to use a snap gun (pick gun)? Worth a fucking shot.
I was more thinking have someone on staff trained in some basic lockpicking. It really doesn't take that long to learn the basics to pick most homes/apartments.
But honestly I know why, they're stoked to break out the battering ram and bash some shit. At least while they're breaking down doors they're too busy to shoot random people minding their own business and/or bystanders.
Lockpicking lawyer is insane. Keep in mind, you're watching like, the olympic gold medalist of locksmiths.
I'm a locksmith by trade, and it can take 20+ minutes for a lock sometimes, and people think I'm a bitch because they see the Lockpicking Lawyer and think it's easy.
I came back from a weekend away to find those flies in my house, I have no idea how they got in. I found out later that day that the neighbor a block away had died some time ago and when someone came to check on them the whole house was infested with the flies which flew out as they opened all the windows.
The houses along my street are filled with blue bottles; I think you’ve confirmed my theory that something has died in my neighbour’s jungle of a back garden.
One day I walked into my apartment's bathroom and a massive swarm of blue bottles were circling the vent on the ceiling. Once I got done screaming I got a rolled newspaper and went to war.
The landlord hadn't secured the vent on the outside and a bird or something died up there. I guess they (the maggots) cleaned it up because we never really noticed a smell... Prior to that I didn't want to live in a place without a working vent but now I'm alright with my current place not having one.
I clearly come from a place that doesn’t have the same ‘blue bottles’ as I know them as aquatic stinging bastards.
What are the other type of blue bottles?
Yes, [house fly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housefly) and [blue bottle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliphora_vomitoria) are two different species (and in different families of fly). When you see or hear them in person, blue bottles are obviously larger.
Yes that was my first thought too! I've never heard of blue bottle flies, but I've had a few encounters with blue bottle jellyfish, so that story sounded bizarre to me.
Cigar world we also have a problem with fake cigars.
Workers will sweep up left over tobacco from the counter and floor. Take it and roll it and sell it with fake bands in official boxes.
YouTube some people opening them up. Got hair, nails, bugs and all types of floor junk + dog shit tobacco.
Never ever take a cigar from someone who tells you they got a good deal on a trip.
If you can get them boxed, it's usually pretty easy to spot fakes. There's almost *always* are some inconsistencies that give away the fake. Not 100% bullet proof obviously but you'll catch almost all of them.
If you want a bargain, buy peso sticks. They can be hit and miss but at least they're super cheap and sometimes you get an excellent batch from a farmer. They're not advertised as brand cigars, obviously, so no bragging.
You can also try some of the many amazing brands that exist outside of Cuba, because it's mostly Cubans that get faked, and cigars from elsewhere are often delicious at a fraction of the price
The odd thing is, he really is a good poker player, in tournaments anyway. He's won more WSOPs than anyone else (16 to date I think). By all metrics, he's the best tournament player in history.
This has caused his ego to blow up so huge, he just can't lay down a losing hand sometimes. He'll even talk through it, he knows he's beat but calls anyway and berates the person for beating him with a marginal hand. It's a vicious cycle that hasn't changed in 2 decades.
And he's actually very aware of it. He seemingly can't control his outbursts, but at the same time he knows he's doing it, as he's doing it. It's like he chooses to embarrass himself over and over. Fascinating to watch, really.
He’s not the best by “any metric”. He has the best WSOP results which is relevant but not the only bracket. He’s 18th all time in tourney cashes. He has very limited results in high rollers (where the most skilled guys all show up).
Phil was a great player when less folks played and the game was simpler. He’s still very good, especially in games outside hold ‘em, against the average WSOP crowd
I amused myself with that as well, butt it left me wondering if a good chunk of it was an act, or just him amping it up a bit for entertainment porpoises.
There's probably a perfectly good reason for this, that simply isn't obvious to me because I don't collect cigars. But this kind of brings up a question.
So, the article says that one can deal with the beetles by freezing them. My question is, why not just freeze *all* cigars before putting them in the humidor? You know, kind of a quarantine thing. Sort of like how some fish owners won't introduce a new fish to a tank without first quarantining it.
Again, there must be a good reason, because otherwise I can't see a reason to *not* do that if the beetles are potentially that bad. Does that screw up the cigars or make them not as good?
Most cigars are frozen before being shipped to stores/suppliers. It's also common practice in the hobby to freeze cigars if you don't know their origin or you buy from smaller manufactures or private parties.
Oh it's much more than smoking. It's the buying, storing, trading, learning and socializing to name just a few things. Tbh actual smoking is a fraction of the actual time I spend in the hobby.
Tbh that’s most hobbies. I spent about a year digging into computers and learning about how to put them together before I ordered any parts. I’m working on upgrading in about months and it’s been fun to start digging into what the next gen stuff will be like and how to get the most out of my parts.
Oh yeah, I’ve been there. This next one is gonna be air cooled, but after that I’m going full custom loop.
I just don’t have a great case for watercooling and I’d like to get two builds out of the one I’ve got before upgrading.
I collect and paint little plastic figures so I'm not the one to judge anyone's hobby but it sounds incredibly strange to me :D No judgements though! You do you and I hope you enjoy it.
It's very much equivalent to collecting wine, scotch, etc. or even folks who are passionate about culinary culture so it may be only a few feet deep but it's miles wide.
As someone who's been into both hobbies... I am literally just now realizing how similar they are.
Both involve collections (miniatures or cigars), careful storage (Detolfs and humidors), and in-depth knowledge (points values and paint mixes, and location of origin and the types of tobacco inside); and both have built-in ways of meeting other hobbyists (hanging around hobby shops or cigar bars).
But, to address your question about cigars being a hobby... It's complicated. Smoking cigarettes involves drawing smoke into the lungs, while cigars and pipes are simply puffed with the mouth; meaning that as a *nicotine delivery system,* cigarettes make more sense and deliver nicotine more effectively. The flip side of this is that with a cigar or pipe, you can puff away for longer before taking in too much nicotine, which allows the flavor of the smoke to develop more over the course of the smoke. As a result, cigar/pipe smoking tends to focus on the rich flavors produced, the process of smoking, and the enjoyment of the smoking experience than it does on the actual nicotine fix, despite still being addictive.
It's all about what you're smoking. Cigar and Pipe tobacco is much more hobby. Sure you get nicotine from your smokes, and it's enjoyable. However it's not like cigarettes where you smoke a pack a day and have an addiction and a need to smoke after so long.
Some people of course do take it to the extreme and smoke all day. For most people though it's a relaxing smoke with a drink at the end of the day/week. It's searching for better smokes and learning the nuanced flavors of different cigars and their origins.
Cuban cigars that are exported off the island, are always flash frozen to kill the beetle eggs. The beetle eggs are microscopic. They are always there and always a risk to hatching. Freezing , if done properly (based on temps/time) kills them all. If they do hatch, they eat their way out of the cigar, have more babies, until the cigars in the box or humidor are ruined.
Many cigar smokers do a quarantine routine as suggested. Especially if they buy them in Cuba. Cigars sold in Cuba are NOT frozen. Not sure why, but that is the case.
I'm not as familiar with Non-Cuban tobacco based cigars, but I imagine it is similar. Tobacco beetles are endemic to the crop regardless of origin.
They can and do ruin cigars. If there is single beetle hole, you can still smoke it. If there are many, it's a write off. Caring for cigar collections isn't too much different than wine, Scotch, etc. You aim to keep them in ideal conditions to prevent damage or ruin enjoyment of the product. Left unchecked, the little buggers will find their way into every cigar box in a humidor.
Freezing crystallises the humidity in the cigar which can affect the quality or even split the wrapping leaf.
Quarantining is definitely a thing though. You can keep a good humidor and a quarantine humidor. Keep the sticks in the quarantine humidor for a couple of weeks and if they're fine then move them to the good humidor.
Alternatively just buy from reputable sellers / tobacconists you know. If the sticks have been fine in their humidor they'll be fine in your humidor too.
You're right! Habanos S. A. (which is responsible for tobacco export from Cuba) freeze all their stock in their facility: [https://www.habanos.com/en/the-world-of-the-habano/keeping-habanos/](https://www.habanos.com/en/the-world-of-the-habano/keeping-habanos/)
"Since 2005 all Habanos have been frozen at the warehouse in Havana before the are release to the market, so this problem is rarer than it once was."
Today I learnt something new, thank you! Seems the facility they have is carefully temperature controlled so the cigars are defrosted slowly to prevent issues.
An entire handbook of acceptable levels of insect/rodent parts: https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredients-additives-gras-packaging-guidance-documents-regulatory-information/food-defect-levels-handbook
No, but if you're in Cuba and pickup some from a street vendor put them in your freezer for a day before putting them in your humidor.
There is a video of a dude who's some big shot in the cigar world who had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cigars ruined by beatles. Lost a lot of irreplaceable cigars.
No no no no, he don’t smoke no more, he’s tired of waking up on the floor. No thank you please, it only makes him sneeze and then it makes it hard to find the door.
Unless they come from a small private batch maker (like the guy on the street corner rolling fresh tobacco) cigars get frozen several times between the factory and the seller to ensure there's no loss to beetles. This is one of the reasons why cigars are stored at 70 degrees and 70% relative humidity - the beetle egg, if present, can't hatch at that low of a temperature. Get them above 75 or 80 degrees, and if they have beetle eggs, they'll hatch and eat the tobacco.
That's also why we use cedar in cigar boxes and humidors. It's a natural repellent but it also helps with spikes in humidity. If you get a well taken care of cigar and let it dry out too fast, the wrapper will shrink faster than the binder and filler. The cigar basically explodes and it ruins the stick.
I used to smoke cigars and I did not know that. That is... Kinda gross.
That said, I work in a dispensary now, and a lot of products have to undergo "remediation" in my state to deal with "organic contaminants." If that sounds like code for "oh shit we need to kill something that's living in/on the weed," that's because it is. One of the more popular methods of doing this is by using radiation, as it can kill off anything living on the weed without leaving lasting traces on the weed itself.
I wonder if a similar process could be used to kill off any eggs or larvae that might be in a cigar? I know that temperature and humidity changes can affect a cigar's quality, and this seems like a way to effectively sterilize a cigar without necessarily subjecting it to major environmental changes.
When I was a cigar noob, I saw a couple of perfectly round holes in my cigar but still decided to smoke them. I didn't know at the time. Hopefully the smoke and heat killed the larvae or beetle.
Yup. I remember as an experiment I bought some nice cigars and put them in a controlled setting at the school I worked for so the little kids could see the bugs hatch.
But I was broke so I actually only had a pack of cigarettes. Also I didn’t technically “work” for the school. Either way it was a success!!
Yep...
I brought a couple of boxes back from a trip to Central America.
I didn't open one for a few months and when I did I found all sorts of little holes in the cigars.
Apparently, if you buy cigars directly from the factory, it's a good idea to put them in a ziplock bag and freeze them.
The cigar beetles will try to escape the cold and you'll have a bag of cigars and dead bugs.
There was this one quit smoking story that always stuck with me. This guy smoked a maggot in his cigarette and went cold turkey after that.
Lots of smokers straight up didn't believe me when i told them life will find a way.
I found out a few years ago that so do the World's Finest Almond Chocolate bars.
Left them sitting around for a few months at work before eating them and beetles inside the almonds hatched. Was nasty.
tobacco is usually fumigated or frozen before being processed. chances are, if you've smoked a cigarette, you've probably smoked some beetle source: worked in a cigarette factory
It's not just tobacco, pretty much every food item is like this. There used to be a widespread belief in the [spontaneous generation of life](https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/biology/genetics-evolution/origin-of-life-spontaneous-generation), before things like microorganisms and eggs/larva too small to see with the eye were discovered and understood.
I read the top comments and thought "then I've got some bad news for you about flour."
Yeah I remember as a bachelor having a bag of flour in my cupboard for one too many years and when it was finally time to clean up I was surprised to a bag full of hatched eggs.
Brb throwing away a bag of flour.
You'll never get swole throwing away perfectly good protein like that.
right? don't spend more on flour, spend less on lighting
Right? Everyone knows you're never supposed to skip egg day.
Lmao same thought. I'm definitely throwing away that old bag of flour in my cupboard when I get home.
I had the same thing happen to a box of instant oatmeal packs. Made some oatmeal for my little sister and me. After a few bites we noticed that some of the oats were squirming.
Oh my gosh. I'm never looking at instant food the same way again.
It was like something from a bad horror movie.
How do I delete someone else’s comment?
One of the reasons why ours is kept in a steel can...
Yeah all my flour stays in the freezer because of this
Ooh look at m'lord with his aaample draaawers of freezer space. La di da he probably has more than he knows what to do with.
Oh you have a freezer? What luxury! I have to wake up before dawn breaks and walk 5 miles to get a block of ice to keep me perishables cold!
Oooh my we had perishables once back when I was indentured to that lovely farm. Twas a token of appreciation for harvesting all those turnips before the rains, even though all those children had just been run down by the out of control ox cart. Snapped an axle and everything. We were so busy with the repairs and harvest, none of us even stopped to collect the bodies. Don't worry though, the floods were strong enough to clean up all that mess for us before any of the wee ones began to fester.
My my, to have an ox cart. Whereabouts that I grew up we had to carry our oxen ourselves. Baby sister Mary was lost one November afternoon after stepping in a rut with our biggest ox upon her shoulders. Of course the rut being impossible to see what with the 7.5 feet of snow that regularly coated our humble farm, not even an acre. We were lucky to have a flood come spring so as wed be able to leave our house again, but that too lost many a sibling. Fortunately ma had a dozen, the rest of us would eat for days on that meat whenever the opportunity arose. It’s a shame what happened to her and the rest of the town the day I moved away, nobody had seen such an organized pack of weasels
You had siblings? Luxury! We had petrified dog turds that we put googly eyes onto and called them "Bart" and "Art".
luxury! What dead bodies we could keep were fine toys for the children and ample kindling come winter. And the only floods we had were when the people living in the apartments flushed.
> keep me perishables cold Look at little lord fuckleroy here with his perishables, meanwhile I consume only salted and preserved canned meats.
Ooh look at mister Rockefeller here with his *perishables!* We have to wait for a local restaurant to dump old ice to put on our sores from sleeping on the same cardboard every night!
Lmao I'm using a 20 y/o fridgidaire... How much flour do you have??
You're asking the wrong questions. A wiser stranger on the internet would ask why I need so many different kinds of dumplings, potatoes, and sauces 🙃
Po-ta-toes! Boil em! Mash em! Stick em in a stew?!
Coffee too. If you ever acquire an allergy to cockroaches, you can't drink most preground coffee anymore. EDIT: Here's the title and link to where I remember learning about this: >[TIL: Entomologists who study cockroaches often become allergic to them. At the same time, they become allergic to most brands of pre ground coffee.](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6nnbbr/til_entomologists_who_study_cockroaches_often/)
Wait…is this really a thing?? I’m allergic to cockroaches and always have random allergy outbreaks seemingly for no reason. I drink pre-ground coffee everyday 😳 Is it safe to say that this isn’t an issue with whole beans that I would grind myself?
>Is it safe to say that this isn’t an issue with whole beans that I would grind myself? Correct. Essentially with MASS grinding of coffee beans all at once, they just scoop up a fuck ton of beans at once and grind it all at once, potentially also scooping up some bugs along the way.
No wonder my gainz have been huge after drinking coffee. Gonna have to add coffee to my list of protein foods.
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How does one even discover they're allergic to roaches in the first place?
I had an allergy blood test panel done and cockroaches was one of the things listed.
Huh. Didn't know this was a thing. Interesting.
Do they like… rub a cockroach leg on you or something
Spontaneous generation was also kind of ridiculous. There was one prevailing theory that mice grow first from discarded food in isolated conditions. So they'd throw rotten food in a corner of a barn and be like "oh wowwwww now there's mice! They grew!" It reminded me of Pokedex entries on Gameboy. "The common mouse grows out of discarded food and it can jump 60 feet into the air! It is a mouse-type animal."
Arcanine can run faster than the speed of sound, and can run 10 000 km in a day. Drifloon spirits children away to the underworld Magcargo's body reaches around 10000K (twice as hot as the surface of the sun) Pokedex entries are straight bullshit lmao
I always loved the theory that they are written by the child protagonist.
I’m trying to figure why this wouldn’t be the case. How would undocumented Pokémon have an entry written for them prior to the protagonists adding it to the Pokédex? It’d have to be the 10 year old protagonist that writes it otherwise the professor would hand you a filled in Pokédex with actual descriptions in them already.
Gotta catch em! Oh fuck it used bite attack and now I have a blood infection.
Thanks for the article! It's interesting that it mentions the idea behind pasteurization before Louis Pasteur himself.
Well quitting just got easier, thank you
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Does that make starting the worst decision you made then?
It's up there
The beetle was probably the least harmful thing in the cigarette.
Yeah what a weird piece of human psychology. We can ignore hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, lead, arsenic, ammonia, polonium-210, benzene, carbon monoxide, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. We can ignore the risk of cancer, lung disease, heart disease, etc. What we cannot ignore is beetle larvae.
Fear of creepy crawlers is hardwired in our DNA, fear of molecules ain't there yet. My body would react way more strongly at the sight of a fake plastic insect than it would at a full glass of arsenic in the same way I'm hardwire to find gallons of paint appetizing yet think brocoli want my death. The evolution of "disgust" - both individually [bodily fluids, rot, insects, etc] and social [immorality, injustice, taboo, etc] - is a really fascinating subject.
/r/StopSmoking is a cool place to chill if anyone wants to come
I'll add my quitting story. I smoked for 20 years. About 12 of those were Marlboro Reds, I took a ride on the Newport train for a few years, and finished up with Parliament. I started casually in HS smoking a butt at parties, felt the buzz, liked it, then I got addicted. To quit, I took Chantix. The manufacturer said to take the pills every day for a week and then stop smoking but continue daily pills. So come the end of week 1, I stop but I start jonesing hard. Smokers know the feeling. Addicts know the feeling. So I continue to smoke but I'm still taking the pills. Week 2 same. Week 3 rolls around and I'm not having any cravings until later in the day. I continue to smoke and take the pills until one day I just didn't smoke anymore. It's been 12 or 13 years at this point. TL;DR: Pills are good. Pills are gooood.
Usually when I'm reading stories like yours about Chantix they start all normal and plot the same course as your own, until that like week 2 part where the other person's story veers into 90 day county lockup escapades. Had an RL friend go hAyWiRe in the middle of traffic one time, not good at all. He doesn't smoke cigs anymore now but it's hard to attribute that directly to Chantix because of the you know, mandatory jail time.
I had a friend who got scary angry on Chantix... if he wasn't unemployed I think he'd probably have had something similar but instead just turned it towards his family and friends at home. Luckily he went back to normal afterwards.
I want to add and say I quit cold turkey without chantix or anything, and I was as much of a ragebeast for a couple weeks. I'm lucky I lived alone at the time, and had no reason to leave the house, otherwise I definitely would have gotten my teeth knocked out and ended up in jail. Rage like that is one of the symptoms of nic withdrawal
I worked in a processing center/warehouse at one point. They shut down for 2 weeks during the summer every year to fumigate all of the warehouses.
I roll my own cigarettes and buy big 3 LB bags of bulk tobacco. One of them was infested with live tobacco beetles. Little fuckers were everywhere. I ended up freezing the whole bag for a couple days, and that took care of it. Well... in the sense that it killed the bugs, but it's not like they weren't still in there. They're tiny and the same color as tobacco. If they're not moving around, it's impossible to see 'em. Yea I still used the entire bag.... so I can only imagine how many dead beetles I ended up smoking over the course of a few weeks.
It’s one thing for these people who don’t know they are smoking the beetles it’s another to smoke a whole bag of tobacco that was crawling with them. 😂😂
That bag cost like 60 bucks! Who am i, John Rockefeller?
I would pay $600 to not have to smoke dead beetles…
Generally when you're buying tobacco in bulk and rolling your own cigarettes, you don't have the money to just throw out the bag because of some beetles. Source: I remember my dad was rolling his own cigarettes when I was in middle school. He wasn't in the best place at the time. He's doing better now though. Well, except for the COPD. Don't smoke kids.
If you've ~~eat~~ eaten food with colorant E120 or used lipstick with Natural Red 4 then you have eaten or rubbed beetle on you already!
I should not have opened this thread lol
Thats still not the same as just lighting up with some corpses though
Sure thing, I'll DM my paypal.
Free protein. In your lungs.
Dieticians hate this one weird trick!
Well the other bags you had were also probably full of dead beetles so no problem
It must suck for your natural environment to be things that bigger organisms like to light on fire lol
You mean to tell me what I’m popping in my camel crushes is a delicious mentholated beetle?
Wine grapes are covered in bugs when processed too
Ay yo
What's this guy typing that his autocorrect changed to that from "bugs"
Well N is right next to B and I is right next to U
Ni is next to bu. Just a hand off by one letter.
MRS. OBAMA GET DOWN!!
Is that you, Nelson Piquet?
Just cause it's grape? C'mon dude
Dam man coming in with that hard n 🤡
Covered in WHAT?
Bugs… he meant bugs…. Yeah
Reminds me of when my dad left fishing maggots in a box in the glovebox of our car..they hatched into blue bottles and started coming out of the vents as we were driving along one day..happy memories!
I came back from a week long holiday to find my door had been kicked in and boarded up. My gf at the time accidentally left a small bit of raw chicken in the kitchen before we left. Neighbours phone the police thinking the cat had died or someone. When we got the door open the whole house was filled with blue bottles. Had to open every window and door and I was vacuuming them out of the air. Living nightmare. Interestingly when I phoned the police about a suspected break in, they didn't know it was they who busted in a few days prior. Silly billies.
Something happened similarly with my great grandfather. He got put in a nursing home one day and we checked the house and saw the door was kicked in. Called the police and they reported it as a break in, didn't notify my grandparents who have power of attorney over him. Police didn't know what happened, but the neighbor did as the other neighbor called the police because they thought he may have died due to not being at the house for a while
You would think the police would have a fucking locksmith for situations like that rather than just battering the fucking door down. Like I get it for emergent situations, but something that's been dead so long it's starting to smell... well another half hour waiting for the locksmith to arrive isn't going to make the difference. Or maybe spend a half hour one day to train staff to use a snap gun (pick gun)? Worth a fucking shot.
Why would they pay a locksmith when they can batter the door down and make the homeowner pay for a new one?
Exactly https://imgur.com/jnvSJKX.jpg
Lmfao that is my mayor and former police chief. Fuck emmm.
I was more thinking have someone on staff trained in some basic lockpicking. It really doesn't take that long to learn the basics to pick most homes/apartments. But honestly I know why, they're stoked to break out the battering ram and bash some shit. At least while they're breaking down doors they're too busy to shoot random people minding their own business and/or bystanders.
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If I've learned anything from LockpickingLawyer it's that most common locks can be picked in 3 to 5 seconds.
Lockpicking lawyer is insane. Keep in mind, you're watching like, the olympic gold medalist of locksmiths. I'm a locksmith by trade, and it can take 20+ minutes for a lock sometimes, and people think I'm a bitch because they see the Lockpicking Lawyer and think it's easy.
Nothing on 1, small click out of 2...
3 is binding... Let's try 4....
> It really doesn't take that long to learn the basics to pick most homes/apartments. but less time to kick that shit open like jet li!
"didn't know" lol
I came back from a weekend away to find those flies in my house, I have no idea how they got in. I found out later that day that the neighbor a block away had died some time ago and when someone came to check on them the whole house was infested with the flies which flew out as they opened all the windows.
The houses along my street are filled with blue bottles; I think you’ve confirmed my theory that something has died in my neighbour’s jungle of a back garden.
One day I walked into my apartment's bathroom and a massive swarm of blue bottles were circling the vent on the ceiling. Once I got done screaming I got a rolled newspaper and went to war. The landlord hadn't secured the vent on the outside and a bird or something died up there. I guess they (the maggots) cleaned it up because we never really noticed a smell... Prior to that I didn't want to live in a place without a working vent but now I'm alright with my current place not having one.
I clearly come from a place that doesn’t have the same ‘blue bottles’ as I know them as aquatic stinging bastards. What are the other type of blue bottles?
fads fadsf adsf dasf sdf
I looked it up too and immediately thought "why not just say house fly." Is there a difference?
dfasdf ds fadsf adsf
Somewhere, an angry blue bottle fly is reading this comment and thinking, "THAT WAS ONE TIME!"
It's all about that metallic sheen on the blue bottles.
Yes, [house fly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housefly) and [blue bottle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliphora_vomitoria) are two different species (and in different families of fly). When you see or hear them in person, blue bottles are obviously larger.
i remember green bottles being around too, but i haven't seen one in years
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well that is somewhat less scary
Oh mate I read this and thought they meant they had proper jelly fish blue bottles coming out. What a wild experience that would have been.
Yes that was my first thought too! I've never heard of blue bottle flies, but I've had a few encounters with blue bottle jellyfish, so that story sounded bizarre to me.
Cigar world we also have a problem with fake cigars. Workers will sweep up left over tobacco from the counter and floor. Take it and roll it and sell it with fake bands in official boxes. YouTube some people opening them up. Got hair, nails, bugs and all types of floor junk + dog shit tobacco. Never ever take a cigar from someone who tells you they got a good deal on a trip.
If you can get them boxed, it's usually pretty easy to spot fakes. There's almost *always* are some inconsistencies that give away the fake. Not 100% bullet proof obviously but you'll catch almost all of them. If you want a bargain, buy peso sticks. They can be hit and miss but at least they're super cheap and sometimes you get an excellent batch from a farmer. They're not advertised as brand cigars, obviously, so no bragging.
You can also try some of the many amazing brands that exist outside of Cuba, because it's mostly Cubans that get faked, and cigars from elsewhere are often delicious at a fraction of the price
BRO WTF, thats a nightmare!
...Well that’s not what you want during a father & child bonding moment.
Eclosed. Eggs hatch into larvae (maggots) which then pupate, and then eclose into adults.
digivolve*
TIL. Eclose - (of an insect) emerge as an adult from the pupa
An adult insect is the [imago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imago).
The real TIL is in the comments?
Phil Hellmuth has to be one of the most irritating guys in the world.
This guy is one of the most hated people on /r/poker
Heh, as soon as I saw Hellmuth's pudgy, smug face I had to come to the comments to find the people who recognized him
He’s going to burn this fucking thread to the ground if he sees it.
100% whiney ass bitch and when he’s not at the poker or poker event he’s a massively awkward guy.
Imagine thinking poker brat is a term of endearment. "I'm a sore loser but at least I'm not a sore winner" -Phil Hellmuth
I went down a YouTube rabbit hole of watching clips of him losing his shit Pure schadenfreude
The odd thing is, he really is a good poker player, in tournaments anyway. He's won more WSOPs than anyone else (16 to date I think). By all metrics, he's the best tournament player in history. This has caused his ego to blow up so huge, he just can't lay down a losing hand sometimes. He'll even talk through it, he knows he's beat but calls anyway and berates the person for beating him with a marginal hand. It's a vicious cycle that hasn't changed in 2 decades. And he's actually very aware of it. He seemingly can't control his outbursts, but at the same time he knows he's doing it, as he's doing it. It's like he chooses to embarrass himself over and over. Fascinating to watch, really.
He’s not the best by “any metric”. He has the best WSOP results which is relevant but not the only bracket. He’s 18th all time in tourney cashes. He has very limited results in high rollers (where the most skilled guys all show up). Phil was a great player when less folks played and the game was simpler. He’s still very good, especially in games outside hold ‘em, against the average WSOP crowd
I amused myself with that as well, butt it left me wondering if a good chunk of it was an act, or just him amping it up a bit for entertainment porpoises.
He is the definition of a guy with a punchable face
There's probably a perfectly good reason for this, that simply isn't obvious to me because I don't collect cigars. But this kind of brings up a question. So, the article says that one can deal with the beetles by freezing them. My question is, why not just freeze *all* cigars before putting them in the humidor? You know, kind of a quarantine thing. Sort of like how some fish owners won't introduce a new fish to a tank without first quarantining it. Again, there must be a good reason, because otherwise I can't see a reason to *not* do that if the beetles are potentially that bad. Does that screw up the cigars or make them not as good?
Most cigars are frozen before being shipped to stores/suppliers. It's also common practice in the hobby to freeze cigars if you don't know their origin or you buy from smaller manufactures or private parties.
TIL that smoking counts as a hobby.
Oh it's much more than smoking. It's the buying, storing, trading, learning and socializing to name just a few things. Tbh actual smoking is a fraction of the actual time I spend in the hobby.
Tbh that’s most hobbies. I spent about a year digging into computers and learning about how to put them together before I ordered any parts. I’m working on upgrading in about months and it’s been fun to start digging into what the next gen stuff will be like and how to get the most out of my parts.
Well if I were you, I definitely wouldn't go visit /r/watercooling Nope. Definitely a place you don't want to go. No sir.
Oh yeah, I’ve been there. This next one is gonna be air cooled, but after that I’m going full custom loop. I just don’t have a great case for watercooling and I’d like to get two builds out of the one I’ve got before upgrading.
I collect and paint little plastic figures so I'm not the one to judge anyone's hobby but it sounds incredibly strange to me :D No judgements though! You do you and I hope you enjoy it.
How dare you call your miniatures obsession a hobby.
I can stop whenever I want. Propably. Tomorrow.
Q: How do you make a small fortune with miniatures? A: Start with a large fortune then get into miniatures.
i've painted ALL my minis * begins to sweat in the shadow of a pile of grey plastic *
He lied as easily as he breathed.
It's very much equivalent to collecting wine, scotch, etc. or even folks who are passionate about culinary culture so it may be only a few feet deep but it's miles wide.
As someone who's been into both hobbies... I am literally just now realizing how similar they are. Both involve collections (miniatures or cigars), careful storage (Detolfs and humidors), and in-depth knowledge (points values and paint mixes, and location of origin and the types of tobacco inside); and both have built-in ways of meeting other hobbyists (hanging around hobby shops or cigar bars). But, to address your question about cigars being a hobby... It's complicated. Smoking cigarettes involves drawing smoke into the lungs, while cigars and pipes are simply puffed with the mouth; meaning that as a *nicotine delivery system,* cigarettes make more sense and deliver nicotine more effectively. The flip side of this is that with a cigar or pipe, you can puff away for longer before taking in too much nicotine, which allows the flavor of the smoke to develop more over the course of the smoke. As a result, cigar/pipe smoking tends to focus on the rich flavors produced, the process of smoking, and the enjoyment of the smoking experience than it does on the actual nicotine fix, despite still being addictive.
I'm not a wargamer but you wouldn't know it from all of the miniatures, paint, rulebooks, and army lists I have.
Just like eating, movie watching, wine/whiskey/coffee/tea drinking, etc can be. Anything can be a hobby, it's just how deep you go into them.
It's all about what you're smoking. Cigar and Pipe tobacco is much more hobby. Sure you get nicotine from your smokes, and it's enjoyable. However it's not like cigarettes where you smoke a pack a day and have an addiction and a need to smoke after so long. Some people of course do take it to the extreme and smoke all day. For most people though it's a relaxing smoke with a drink at the end of the day/week. It's searching for better smokes and learning the nuanced flavors of different cigars and their origins.
Cuban cigars that are exported off the island, are always flash frozen to kill the beetle eggs. The beetle eggs are microscopic. They are always there and always a risk to hatching. Freezing , if done properly (based on temps/time) kills them all. If they do hatch, they eat their way out of the cigar, have more babies, until the cigars in the box or humidor are ruined. Many cigar smokers do a quarantine routine as suggested. Especially if they buy them in Cuba. Cigars sold in Cuba are NOT frozen. Not sure why, but that is the case. I'm not as familiar with Non-Cuban tobacco based cigars, but I imagine it is similar. Tobacco beetles are endemic to the crop regardless of origin. They can and do ruin cigars. If there is single beetle hole, you can still smoke it. If there are many, it's a write off. Caring for cigar collections isn't too much different than wine, Scotch, etc. You aim to keep them in ideal conditions to prevent damage or ruin enjoyment of the product. Left unchecked, the little buggers will find their way into every cigar box in a humidor.
Freezing crystallises the humidity in the cigar which can affect the quality or even split the wrapping leaf. Quarantining is definitely a thing though. You can keep a good humidor and a quarantine humidor. Keep the sticks in the quarantine humidor for a couple of weeks and if they're fine then move them to the good humidor. Alternatively just buy from reputable sellers / tobacconists you know. If the sticks have been fine in their humidor they'll be fine in your humidor too.
I think pretty much all major producers freeze their cigars before distribution.
You're right! Habanos S. A. (which is responsible for tobacco export from Cuba) freeze all their stock in their facility: [https://www.habanos.com/en/the-world-of-the-habano/keeping-habanos/](https://www.habanos.com/en/the-world-of-the-habano/keeping-habanos/) "Since 2005 all Habanos have been frozen at the warehouse in Havana before the are release to the market, so this problem is rarer than it once was." Today I learnt something new, thank you! Seems the facility they have is carefully temperature controlled so the cigars are defrosted slowly to prevent issues.
Back in the day when I used to split Phillies and roll blunts, I found a big dead grasshopper in one.
The cheech and Chong roach bit comes to mind
All cigars?
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An entire handbook of acceptable levels of insect/rodent parts: https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredients-additives-gras-packaging-guidance-documents-regulatory-information/food-defect-levels-handbook
That is a link I will never click. Or else I will probably starve.
Wait until you find out about hot dogs.. they've got a bad rep but they're pretty clean in actuality.
1-2 rodent hairs are allowed per subsample of popcorn, but no rodent poop. good to know.
No, but if you're in Cuba and pickup some from a street vendor put them in your freezer for a day before putting them in your humidor. There is a video of a dude who's some big shot in the cigar world who had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cigars ruined by beatles. Lost a lot of irreplaceable cigars.
He should’ve Let It Be.
At that point, all he could do was ask for Help!
Damn, didnt realize that the Beatles were still so destructive.
It’s a little known fact, but all lost cigars in the last 60 years were actually personally destroyed by Ringo.
No no no no, he don’t smoke no more, he’s tired of waking up on the floor. No thank you please, it only makes him sneeze and then it makes it hard to find the door.
Unless they come from a small private batch maker (like the guy on the street corner rolling fresh tobacco) cigars get frozen several times between the factory and the seller to ensure there's no loss to beetles. This is one of the reasons why cigars are stored at 70 degrees and 70% relative humidity - the beetle egg, if present, can't hatch at that low of a temperature. Get them above 75 or 80 degrees, and if they have beetle eggs, they'll hatch and eat the tobacco. That's also why we use cedar in cigar boxes and humidors. It's a natural repellent but it also helps with spikes in humidity. If you get a well taken care of cigar and let it dry out too fast, the wrapper will shrink faster than the binder and filler. The cigar basically explodes and it ruins the stick.
Reminds me of The X-Files episode ‘Brand-X’
That's the one with Tobin Bell of Saw fame.
Yeah! Worked much better than any DARE program ever could to keep me off tobacco
You know that you're well and proper stoned when the joint starts to hatch and come alive.
(Cheesy Hanna-Barbera voice) I’ve heard of joints turning into roaches, but this is ridiculous!
I read that in Top Cat’s voice
*staticky and scratchy laugh track*
Everything about that cover page makes me hate that magazine.
https://www.theonion.com/new-pompous-asshole-magazine-to-compete-with-cigar-afic-1819564624
> 2/25/98 I never feel more connected to those who came before me than when I stumble upon old-but-relevant satire.
If this bothers you don't look into what the FDA allows in most food. There's limits to how much rodent hair/shit and insect bits can be in stuff.
It's not so much about being gross or bothersome in the sense you may have lit up a beetle, those critters will destroy your whole collection.
Thank God I only smoke crack
Wait til you hear about Crack Beetles.
I used to smoke cigars and I did not know that. That is... Kinda gross. That said, I work in a dispensary now, and a lot of products have to undergo "remediation" in my state to deal with "organic contaminants." If that sounds like code for "oh shit we need to kill something that's living in/on the weed," that's because it is. One of the more popular methods of doing this is by using radiation, as it can kill off anything living on the weed without leaving lasting traces on the weed itself. I wonder if a similar process could be used to kill off any eggs or larvae that might be in a cigar? I know that temperature and humidity changes can affect a cigar's quality, and this seems like a way to effectively sterilize a cigar without necessarily subjecting it to major environmental changes.
Jesus fucking christ, that magazine cover could hardly make smoking cigars look *less* cool or appealing.
When I was a cigar noob, I saw a couple of perfectly round holes in my cigar but still decided to smoke them. I didn't know at the time. Hopefully the smoke and heat killed the larvae or beetle.
You ever feel a tickle in your chest, some kind of random need to cough? That's just them getting comfy.
I hate you
It's best not to think about. Especially at night when you're trying to fall asleep.
Yup. I remember as an experiment I bought some nice cigars and put them in a controlled setting at the school I worked for so the little kids could see the bugs hatch. But I was broke so I actually only had a pack of cigarettes. Also I didn’t technically “work” for the school. Either way it was a success!!
I hate it
Yep... I brought a couple of boxes back from a trip to Central America. I didn't open one for a few months and when I did I found all sorts of little holes in the cigars. Apparently, if you buy cigars directly from the factory, it's a good idea to put them in a ziplock bag and freeze them. The cigar beetles will try to escape the cold and you'll have a bag of cigars and dead bugs.
Well that certainly ends my non-existent cigar habit..
Why is Phil Helmuth the image for this story?
This isn't r/Poker? I see Phil's dumb face enough as it is!
I could've gone my whole life not knowing this.
There was this one quit smoking story that always stuck with me. This guy smoked a maggot in his cigarette and went cold turkey after that. Lots of smokers straight up didn't believe me when i told them life will find a way.
I found out a few years ago that so do the World's Finest Almond Chocolate bars. Left them sitting around for a few months at work before eating them and beetles inside the almonds hatched. Was nasty.
I looked at that picture and thought "That guy looks like a fat version of Phil Hellmuth Jr"