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The Disappearance of the Ashtray

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Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#341

Post by bambax »

chongli wrote: post #208
csomar wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But subs get deployed for 6 months at a time. Unless they banned smokers from getting into subs??

You don't have to ban smokers to ban smoking on a sub. Smokers don't have to smoke, they merely choose to do so.

That's untrue. You (maybe) choose to start smoking, but once you have started, choice is entirely taken away from you.

Incidentally, that's precisely what helped me quit (a long time ago): I realized I was a slave to the cigarette and the only way to be free again was to stop it altogether. It was one of the hardest thing I ever had to do. I stayed in bed for four days trying to think about something else and sleeping it through. And then it wasn't over for a couple of weeks.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#342

Post by Tor3 »

klyrs wrote: post #138
rippercushions wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, those are pretty much gone. An ashtray in airplane lavatories, though, remains mandatory by law, right next to the "no smoking" sign.

To be fair, I haven't flown since 2019, but the armrests still had ash trays. But yeah, new airplanes won't. Wild about the lavatories though.

The lavatories have them because occasionally some people will smoke there, and you don't want them to drop the cigarette in the paper trash and kill everybody in the plane when it starts a fire (which apparently has happened, in the past). http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/RiskManagement/... But if you google a bit there appears to be lots of fires still, when cigarettes are dumped in trash cans.. so either not all planes have ash trays in the lavatories, or some are too stupid to use them, or maybe they want to hide that they smoke by stuffing the cigarette deep down into the paper trash..

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#343

Post by dieselgate »

noduerme wrote: post #245
camillomiller wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smoking on planes is absolutely something I can't wrap my head around in any possible way. How the hell someone EVER thought it would be a good idea to let people smoke while packed inside a flying metal cylinder?

[flagged]

Nicotine pouches/gum (or chewing tobacco but can’t recommend it) are all great alternatives for smoking while traveling.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#344

Post by scrollaway »

noduerme wrote: post #335
scrollaway wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you not understanding that they didn’t “cut filter expense by 80%”, but simply they get 1/5th as dirty? If not less. My educated guess is they used to get changed more often than required due to clogging, and now they’re just changed based on some minimum required. Have you ever lived with a smoker? My grandmother’s house used to have to be repainted every other year before her death. Do you think we just “gr…

They get less visually dirty, but the same amount of human breath passes through them. It's not just that; the airlines cut the fresh air intake as a portion of circulated air. By not being as visually noticeable, they didn't need to change the filters as often; yet that meant that the filters would have 5x the viral load when they were finally changed out. They used the elimination of smoking as an excuse to save mo…

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Where did you even hear about this specific number in how often they used to change their filters vs now? Do you have any idea what the reasons are for them changing filters, how they decide? What the minimum is? How they measure it?

You seem to not really even understand how air filtration works.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#345

Post by Tor3 »

jeffbee wrote: post #67

That Gallup survey doesn't really scan for me. If you had told me in 2001 that 35% of my generation were smokers I would not have believed that. There must be a huge regional component to those survey responses.

The number of smokers back then was always vastly under-reported, because it was all about self-reporting. In my school nearly everybody smoked, at least women and girls did - I counted them. 87% of the girls in my school smoked. There would be one or two in each class who didn't, but everyone else did. Still, most of them would say they didn't smoke, if you asked them - because they didn't smoke all the time. So the official number was something like 30-40%, a completely fake number.

(These days things are different, fortunately. I don't see many young people smoke anymore, but the mentality was completely different back then, around the time when it was still allowed to smoke indoors everywhere)

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#346

Post by rwmj »

bambax wrote: post #327
j_m_b wrote: post #7

It's tough to portray just how ubiquitous smoking was to a modern audience. You would go to a restaurant and the first thing your hostess would ask is "smoking or non"? I remember standing in a checkout line in the 80s as a child and being fascinated with the billowing clouds of smoke an old lady blew. I remember coming home from bars reeking of smoke, even though I didn't. Even teachers had their own lounges that re…

In France in the 80s and 90s there was no such thing as a non-smoking section in restaurants. You could smoke anywhere, everywhere, anytime, all of the time. In high school our teachers would smoke, not in class but in the corridor leading to the classroom, and they would drop their cigarette buts on the door sill. People would smoke in cars continuously, including my parents when we were toddlers. It was forbidden t…

My primary school teacher chain-smoked in class. (She did later die of lung cancer while we were still school age.)

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#347

Post by chrisco255 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #308
chrisco255 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid exists, it always will at this rate, and the rest of us won't be suffering for your insecurity about your own immune system. You wear a mask if you like. If it works, you have nothing to worry about.

It's a basic courtesy to wear a mask if you know you have a respiratory issue (whether it's a cold, the flu, or Covid doesn't really matter). Masks work much much better when the sick person is wearing them. I think it should also be something that cabin attendants can force you to do - if they notice you have cold/flu/Covid symptoms, and you are not wearing a mask, they should be allowed to bring a mask to you and a…

No, it's a basic courtesy to stay home if you are sick. Airborne diseases cannot be prevented by mask wearing between sips of your courtesy peanuts and soda.

And plenty is lost about a society that focuses more about preventing illness than just staying generally healthy. Smiling is good for you, engaging with your fellow humans, with full facial expressions available for communication and connection, are absolutely essential to a happy and fulfilling life.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#348

Post by weberer »

ch4s3 wrote: post #48
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #5

The plummeting rates of smoking in the US is one of the rare areas where this country really shines when it comes to social welfare. Even many European states that have what I'd consider much more progressive social welfare systems have smoking rates that are appalling, often 3x or more the US rates.

Yeah it’s really quite something. I end up having to increase my dosage on asthma meds for a week or two every time I go to Europe. Some of the cooler places to go are sadly a bit smokier than I like.

That may also be due to the heavy use of diesel cars in Europe and their higher emissions of nitrates and sulfates. It is very noticeable when walking along a busy avenue in Sweden compared the USA.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#349

Post by andyjohnson0 »

michaelhoney wrote: post #276
camillomiller wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smoking on planes is absolutely something I can't wrap my head around in any possible way. How the hell someone EVER thought it would be a good idea to let people smoke while packed inside a flying metal cylinder?

You could smoke on the Hindenberg . Yes. On a dirigible held aloft by hydrogen, they had a smoking room:( https://www.airships.net/hindenburg-smoking-room/ .

> You could smoke on the Hindenberg. Yes. On a dirigible held aloft by hydrogen, they had a smoking room

Seems insane, but I guess they didn't want homicidal nicotine-starved passengers. The article does however go on to say "The smoking room was kept at a higher pressure than the rest of the ship so that no leaking hydrogen could enter the room, and the smoking room was separated from the rest of the passenger section by a double-door airlock." So the designers seem to at least have been aware of the risks.

Re: The Disappearance of the Ashtray

#350

Post by johnwalkr »

Tor3 wrote: post #306
petre wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, some of them. Everyone was fed up with the smoky places. Actually some bigger places were both smoking and non smoking before. I had a friend who was a smoker. He always chose the non-smoking part and then he moved to the non smoking part whenever he wanted to smoke. The previous law was useless as only places with over 60 square meters were required to have a non smoking part, so most bars were smaller and excl…

Hotels used to have smoking and non-smoking rooms around here until some years ago. Now they are all fully non-smoking, and if they notice that a room smells of smoke after you leave your credit card will be charged (a lot ), for cleanup. All written up front when you check in.

I used to work with a chain smoker and the first thing he would do when checking into a non-smoking hotel is call the front desk and complain that his room smells like smoke from the previous customer, but refuse to change rooms. Then he smoked continuously during his stay.

In Japan hotels still have smoking rooms, and when I was working there I would get stuck in one about 10% of the time. I would wake up with dry eyes and throat, and a hangover-like headache.

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