Mastodawn

Matt Vestengen-Cox 2d ago

POV: Travelling outside of Europe

Source: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZCfUCzhHPR/ #video #reel #europe

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s10n 2d ago

@matt
So bottle caps are still an issue?

And am I now supposed to be for or against it? Also: Why?

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Aral Balkan 2d ago

@s10n @matt They do actually solve a real environmental issue.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/27/how-the-plastic-bottle-cap-became-a-parable-for-the-value-of-eu-regulation

Annoying as hell when trying to drink, though.

How the plastic bottle cap became a parable for the value of EU regulation

Supporters of deregulation want Europe to be more like the US. But that would serve only American interests, says Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU law

The Guardian

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Aral Balkan 2d ago

@s10n @matt (Mind you, the latter doesn’t have to be the case. So it does make me wonder how much of it is malicious compliance. If not, it’s just bad design. I refuse to believe that you couldn’t comply with the regulations and design a bottle that is ergonomic to drink from.)

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Charlie Stross 2d ago

@aral @s10n @matt I suspect a more ergonomic solution to the bottle-top problem hasn't happened because it would cost more than this minor irritant. Not necessarily in materials but in the cost of re-tooling production lines to use it.

Compare drink cans of today with those of 50 years ago and there's a night-and-day improvement in ergonomics *but* it needs whole different production lines to fill the cans that didn't require a "church key", and later a ring-pull, to open them.

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RealGene ☣️

@cstross @aral @s10n @matt
When I was a kid at summer camp, we all collected our pop-top ring pulls because they would be donated to a charity for kidney transplants or some other bullshit, in order to stop us dumping them on the ground.