Originally published at: Penny lick bowls served up ice cream, with a side of infectious disease | Boing Boing
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Yeck. Might as well have been licking actual pennies.
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If you’re in London, the Canal Museum near King’s Cross has some penny licks, and the history of ice and ice cream importing. It’s a very cool museum located in an old ice warehouse once owned by one of the earliest ice cream importers, Carlo Gatti.
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“Oh, ImageAI produce me an image of a wafer ice-cream cone (c1900 new york by an Italian immigrant) wearing a medical outfit, y’know with a stethoscope and such”
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It’s a pretty neat concept actually, if it weren’t for the complete ignorance of disease transmission in the users…
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Makes me wonder anew about some bars I’ve been in, where 'washing" glasses seemed to consist of sloshing them around a bit in some water. 
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Yeh, it’s a fair point, though I always assumed the opposite problem: that the water (and the surface of the glass as a result) is denatured organic matter and chemicals…
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In Amsterdam your drink at a bar comes with suds running down the sides to prove it’s been washed with soap.
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Yeah, I’m never drinking in a dark bar again. Gotta hold those glasses up to the light, just in case!
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What about sharing a joint?
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Ya gotta get your microbiome from somewhere! No one talks about the good bacteria. /s
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Oh yes, the 5-sided roachclip-o-fortune pharmacy companies in the '90s always < s type=retcon> used on the street to find out what drug helped the most people.
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Just drink something strong enough to use as disinfectant. Problem solved!
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That’s about as effective for sharing germs as a circuit party. Eww
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In our old B’klyn neighborhood, we kids would sometimes share a bottle of Coke or Pepsi. As the bottle was passed around, each of us would, with a single swipe, wipe the top of the bottle with the palm of our hand. Our interpretation of cleanliness. My parents put a stop to that (for me at least) once they found out.
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England too, since in general people don’t rinse dishes after sudsing them up. When I challenged my English roommates about this disgusting practice, they looked at as if I were mad…
Then there’s Canada, where they wash their dishes by pissing on them. And then don’t clean that off either!
Funniest spit take I ever saw happened while watching my brothers do this with their friends. Right after one nearly finished a large swig, somebody said, “Hey, no backwash now!” Soda sprayed on everyone across the room from him, which was definitely not sanitary - but hilarious. 
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