r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/DearEmphasis4488 • 14d ago

Video The process of making badminton shuttlecocks from raw feathers

24k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

662

u/iamintheforest 14d ago

is this a food industry waste product? I've never seen a feather tree.

ok. looked it up. Geese preferred, then ducks. And...preference for left wing. So fascinating.

355

u/Turbulent-Note-7348 14d ago

Back in the day, the right wing feathers were preferred for writing quills - I wonder if this is a grand fathered consequence.

251

u/iamintheforest 14d ago

For quills, left wing feathers were preferred for right handed writers. Made from the 5 flight feathers because of thickness of the shaft (hey yo!), where shuttlecocks are outermost wing feathers.

54

u/Turbulent-Note-7348 14d ago

Oh, sorry, didn’t realize I had gotten mixed up - I was going from my memory of the Horatio Hornblower books, but I read them quite awhile back. Thank-you.

12

u/Mack1305 14d ago

PHRASING! 😂

5

u/newuser336 14d ago

Love me a good thick shaft

for writing

6

u/Remarkable-Opening69 14d ago

Can we get back to the cocks now, boys?

1

u/Mack1305 13d ago

🤣🤣

2

u/iamintheforest 14d ago

really missing the "cock" part in there. Disapointing.

2

u/Mack1305 14d ago

PHRASING! 😂

1

u/Dangerous_Boot_3870 14d ago

Can we not get a "hey yo" after shuttlecock?

1

u/iamintheforest 14d ago

I really missed that opportunity.

1

u/Dangerous_Boot_3870 14d ago

On a side note, that place has more cock than a dildo factory

1

u/Rebel_XT 12d ago

Only thing I saw in your post was thickness of the shaft and shuttlecocks. Teehee
Yes I’m 9 lolzzzz

1

u/gunsandtrees420 9d ago

I prefer a thick shaft on my shuttlecock actually

1

u/AyPeeElTee 7d ago

(*aye yo!)

41

u/FFS114 14d ago

Most certainly a grand feathered consequence!

1

u/tootsmcgovern 12d ago

More like grand feathered

12

u/Ditka85 14d ago

Fascinating. Did it say why left wings are preferred?

31

u/Murky_Asparagus3455 14d ago

Because gees usually sit on their right feathers.

16

u/Ditka85 14d ago

Lol! No shit? Learn something new every day. Thank you.

13

u/iamintheforest 14d ago

lots on why they should be from the same side, but not left over right (the curvature of the feather is inverted on each side). I suspect that it's about spin direction preference, maybe connected to direction racket moves for right handed hitters...but...i'm just guessing why left vs right. Maybe it's just you gotta pick one so they all behave the same across shuttlecocks as well as within one.

37

u/BodaciousBadongadonk 14d ago

This vid kinda blew my mind. Not cuz of the machinery so much cuz ive seen how its made so i kinda get it somewhat, but moreso that theyre made with real feathers and not that shitty plastic webbing like we used in gym class lol. One of those things ya never think about but makes sense as soon as ya see it lol, "of course the pros arent using the same shit as lil jabronis like me!"

14

u/Taurmin 14d ago

The plastic webbing ones are the budget option, a bit like getting a plastic football. They are basically for kids and very casual players because they just dont perform as well as the feather ones. Their only advantage is that they will last for years, whereas the feather ones will wear out after a couple of games at best.

1

u/Wrong_Bullfrog_5598 13d ago

Bro plastic ones last for 2 sessions maxxx

152

u/028247 14d ago

Ah how could I miss that. It's China, ofc they prefer the left wings! /j

58

u/iamintheforest 14d ago

Everything on reddit ends up political! ;)

43

u/Advocate_Diplomacy 14d ago

It should. If complacency ended, we could begin saving this planet from ourselves today.

-2

u/iamintheforest 14d ago

Yeah...because all the problems with politics are the result of lack of discussion. Ahem...

6

u/Advocate_Diplomacy 14d ago

Almost any random person on the street will tell you they think politics is corrupted by money. What are they going to do about it though, miss work to go do something about it?

Besides that, I never claimed that complacency was the cause of the problems. I said the problems could be fixed if all the complacency went away.

1

u/iamintheforest 14d ago

No, you said everything on reddit should end on politics.

-17

u/[deleted] 14d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/VisualLerner 14d ago

oh shut up dude. it is true that if everyone’s complacency ended and they just all united under my personal beliefs, we could save the planet.

0

u/Viablemorgan 14d ago

Visuallerner 2028???

2

u/BodaciousBadongadonk 14d ago

F that, visuallerner forever! Our new king! Hope youre ready for some more responsibility bud! First job, solve that religious nonsense in the desert lol

0

u/noctalla 14d ago

It depends on which beliefs we all unite under. If we all ended up as libertarian anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers, I’m not sure we’d be saving the planet.

2

u/Advocate_Diplomacy 14d ago

Whoa, free cans of worms? In this economy?

0

u/Dechri_ 14d ago

Well, we would kill of humanity faster, letting nature start healing again sooner.

16

u/SWgeek10056 14d ago edited 14d ago

Ah yes the notoriously liberal China where freedom of expression is encouraged, everyone has a voice on government action, workers are under strict protections, and the less fortunate have an expansive safety net.

Edit: For those that don't think left = liberal you should really check a dictionary or wikipedia on the origin. Left has meant liberal for a hundred years.

17

u/Ok-Mushroom-6530 14d ago

Do you think left wing means liberal?

9

u/SWgeek10056 14d ago

That's literally what it means, yes. It originated in France for the liberal "party of movement" and was adopted by the US and that is its current modern usage.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/left

definition 3

11

u/Jimmykingwillruleyou 14d ago

Makes you wonder is this why the us education system has been getting defunded for 50 years.

Then you go back and realize "actually even in the 30's schools were teaching kids that unions and progressives were actually the bad guys

1

u/pass-me-that-hoe 13d ago

No wonder boomers can’t tell apart socialism is literally how they are getting their social security and Medicare.

11

u/xrimane 14d ago

I'm not saying that this isn't common usage, and both words are quasi synonymous in the US. In other countries, though, liberal means rather what is called libertarian in the US.

By all means, communism is the extreme left, and is anything but liberal, as it can only work when everybody renounced important personal freedoms to the community.

3

u/Falco_Lombardi_X 13d ago

This is the problem with compressing everything into a left-right spectrum.

1

u/favorite_time_of_day 13d ago

The reason they have multiple definitions is because words have multiple meanings. If you're going to try and make a pedantic claim like this then you should really be using the word "progressive" which has a much more consistent meaning than "liberal."

You'd still be wrong, since "left" and "progressive" may be related but are not synonyms. But you'd be less wrong.

3

u/zmbjebus 14d ago

Unironically people there have much more of a voice on government action than in the EU or USA.

People can have a voice in the drafting of legislation. It is far more direct than a parliamentary system.

Also left =/= liberal

4

u/SWgeek10056 14d ago

Left has always meant liberal since left/right started in France. Please, by all means fact check me.

4

u/zmbjebus 14d ago

Liberalism is on the left side of the political spectrum but the spectrum goes further to the left than that. I'd say its more center left than anything.

Socialism is further left than liberalism and they have some strong points in which they disagree.

Principally Liberalism focuses on

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law

I could say a lot about liberalism but one of the key tenets is the right to private property. The rights for an individual to have private property are protected legal rights, but nothing or little, is done to actually ensure that people get to enjoy those promised rights. Embracing market capitalism is the backbone of liberalism regardless if you are a left leaning liberal or right leaning. Perhaps if you are left leaning you are in favor of regulating markets so they do less harm, but socialism argues that capitalism inherently creates inequalities no matter how you regulate it and collective ownership is the only way to truly enact social equality.

So yeah, left means more than just "liberal"

"Left" has always mean supporting social equality and while Liberalism attempts to regulate "an equal playing field", further left movements attempt to actually create structures so that inequality can't propagate.

0

u/brown_felt_hat 14d ago

People can have a voice in the drafting of legislation

What do you think ballot initiatives and referendums are

1

u/zmbjebus 13d ago

I vote on maybe 1 or 2 pieces of legislation every 2 years? It's only local/state though. 

How do you think national legislation is passed? When is there ballot measures for that? 

1

u/028247 14d ago

The art is in the ambivalence - "they love left wings" and "they like to torture left wings". I honestly don't know which but someone will explain it kindly and I can always get away with that

1

u/Aliencoy77 14d ago

South of the equator they use right wings so that it spins in the other direction.

1

u/momjeanseverywhere 14d ago

China couldn’t be more right wing than you can get.

2

u/zmbjebus 14d ago

Lolwut? That makes zero sense? They are the furthest left of any of the major powers.

2

u/momjeanseverywhere 14d ago

Let’s see: their regime exercises strong authoritarian control, enforces strict social and political order, promotes heavy nationalism, and relies heavily on a state-capitalist market economy that embraces private enterprise, making large parts of its governance functionally conservative or right-wing.

1

u/350zedSS 14d ago

Interesting. Can you expand more on preference for left wing?

2

u/HeIsSparticus 14d ago

The geese are heavily unionized, so makes sense they'd prefer left wing policies.

1

u/Sad_Tank_411 14d ago

imagine killing geese for badmitton

1

u/iamintheforest 14d ago

Meat, down for pillows/comfortoers/jackets, badminton, quills, im sure many other things.

1

u/throwaway716159 14d ago

No definitely not. Usually a co-product.

1

u/iamintheforest 13d ago

"i feel ok about this duck soup knowing it's also enabled a round of badminton"

1

u/infoidea 13d ago

So, geese are the first preference and secondly are duck’s?

1

u/iamintheforest 13d ago

Yeah, that's what I read as I went down the rabbit hole. Plastic of course is probably the most common in volume (which probably actually kills more ducks and geese!)

0

u/Environmental-Ice319 14d ago

Make all the geese into these