But you dont really care 'bout voltage, do ya?
It goes like this, on the the 25th. A minor shock? No. Death madeshift.
Also known as a “nope rope”
I thought that was a snake…
Those are danger noodles
What what’s a safe danger noodle then? I thought those were nope ropes.
According to the google, non-venemous snakes are nope ropes. Venemous ones are danger noodles.
its not a danger noodle if its safe. its a safe noodle.
I wouldn’t plug both ends of a snake into the mains either.
We call them a Deadman’s cable up here, and sadly they’re still quite frequently used in the northern rural areas because it costs almost $2,000 to have a dedicated bypass switch installed(generator hookup) so nobody does it, they just throw the Main and hope they don’t put too much stress on the internal lines.
Is it legal? Hell no but they do it anyway
I did this.
Is it stupid? Yes. Did it work? Also yes. For the amount of time that we’d have power out, it was just way to easy to throw a breaker and connect it like this just to keep a small heater and a light running. If I had the money at the time I would have loved battery backup/ bypass but this cost $2 and an old cord.Especially considering that having a functional stove nowadays skyrockets your insurance. A lot of people used to use wood stoves as the backup heat source if the power went out, we still have one ourselves however it’s “non-functional” , it probably is to be honest it hasn’t been ran for a few years now but it was going to Skyrocket the insurance if we had it listed as a functional Appliance
There are way cheaper ways to have a safe interconnect then those second box systems. There are kits that install a plate next to the main breaker and prevent both the main breaker and the next closest breaker from both being on at the same time. You then setup the second breaker to be your generator inlet. Here’s a DIY version, but there are kits for all major brands.
The lord chord
Hymnnn
I thought this was an anti homosexuality meme until I read the top comment.
I’ve got to stop using Lemmy. It is changing me…
I too have developed into a very politically correct person with lemmy, I kinda miss being able to make gay jokes
I guess you’re too straight edge for that.
God, straight edge is so old I literally had to get a consultation to understand the insult
Joke not insult! Straight edge is like doing the right thing or something like that.
I need to befriend more gays
I use an app for that!
Or get a black friend ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Just make pro-gay gay jokes.
Oh can you tell me one?
Gay jokes as in just jokes making fun of gay people? Why do you miss making that? I can just tell you that especially when I was a gay kid, I would have wished no-one would make such.
That’s pretty gay.
deleted by creator
/shrug at least I’m not an asshole purposely hurting other people
Are you referring to me? Because I am not.
Lame. You’re not doing it right unless it hurts your asshole
I was gonna tell you a gay joke, butt fuck it.
I know so many gay and racist jokes as a result of my upbringing. I’ve only been able to convert a few. There’s alao a few I can still tell to the right crowd.
I’m not American, Christmas lights aren’t a thing here like they’re in the US, can someone explain?
Strand of exterior lights, one end male plug one female. Idiots start to mount the lights with the female end near their outlet. Get done, become confused, go to store for male to male cord to plug into female end.
The female end is for chaining multiple strands, not for supplying power (directly) from the power socket.
Aaah, gotcha! Thank you!
A strand of christmas lights resembles an extension cord, but they tend to be made of smaller gauge wire and obviously have little sockets for tiny light bulbs spaced along them. They typically have 2-prong male plug on one end, often with a 2-prong female pass through on the back so you could plug more than one strand into the same receptacle, and they usually end in a female plug so they can be daisy chained.
Sometimes, when installing them on a house or something, the person installing them may not pay attention to which direction is which, and end up installing them so that the female-only end is near where they intended to plug them in. So instead of pulling them down, or running a long extension cord, they go to the hardware store looking for a male-to-male plug adapter.
Power plugs and sockets are gendered for a very good reason; the female receptacle keeps the energized contacts protected inside, and the male plug’s contacts should only be energized when plugged in and their outer shells protect them. A male-to-male cable when one end is plugged in and the other is free now has exposed mains current just waving around in the open air ready to kill someone. And, on a smaller note with christmas lights, they usually have a fuse built into the plug, and plugging them in backwards bypasses this for at least the first strand, so it’s technically 102.7% unsafe to do this.
The other thing a male-to-male adapter or cable is sometimes used for is to attach a portable generator to your home’s electrical system by just plugging it into an outlet, especially during a power failure. They do make what are essentially special male receptacles I think mainly for the RV industry for attaching generators like that, most houses won’t have these. Plugging it into a normal wall socket will actually work, but 1. you have bypassed the breaker panel, so the breakers no longer provide over-current protection. You could overheat the wires in the walls and burn down the house. 2. there’s a possibility that you’re feeding electricity to the entire house through the breaker box and even out to the transformer, which means the lines could be energized for linemen working on them. Throwing the main breaker might prevent that? They make switching gear designed for buildings with their own backup generators that can either manually or automatically sever their connection to the grid when on internal power, but again a doofus trying to make one of these cables probably doesn’t have one of those.
Outstanding, thank you for this
I heard there was a secret cord.
you plug it in to meet the lord.
But you don’t really care for safety, do ya?
It goes like this, you plug it in,
And in a flash, the lights go dim,
The power’s gone,
and now it’s running through ya.You have been warned but you needed proof.
You hanged some lighting on the roof.
The spirit of the holiday overthrew you.
You climbed atop the kitchen chair.
You plugged the cord. It zapped your hair.
And from your lips you stuttered Hallelujah.kitchen chair, not chain
Thanks. Fixed.
Amazing, I got like two lines in on my own and gave up but you did it you beautiful mind
/But hardware stores don’t want to sell it tooooo youuu…/
/…tooo ya…/
Practical IQ test with binary result (“pass”/“fail”).
My dumbass made one by accident. Plugged it in, walked to the other end, picked it up my saw, “Shit. How did I throw the wrong end out here?” Whatever, we’ve all strung the extension cord backwards before. Here come the IQ test.
Walked to the other end of the cord, yanked it and threw that end back out into yard, plugged it in. Went back to my saw, “Oh for fuck’s sake!”
bruh moment
I’ve used a suicide cord before in some rare instances. When I was finished I immediately took it apart.
I used to use one to get power into my popup camper…
Where was the power originally suppose to come in? They make power “Inlets” for that sort of thing. This one is designed with an Interconnect Switch for hooking into a system with Mains, but a camper with outlets should just have a inlet somewhere.
Fuck if I know… I bought the thing used from a buddy like 12 years ago and that was the cord he’d always used … Plugs into a regular outlet on the outside of the camper and then the outlets inside have power.
/me shrugs
You didn’t do it right…
Just use 2 paper clips and some duct tape, problem solved!
as someone who has strung a ton of lights the wrong way around on more than one occasion… I can understand the desire for some magic solution that doesnt require undoing and redoing your work…
but fuck, You don’t mess around with electricity.
People also make these stupid suicide cables to plug generators into houses during disasters, often backfeeding power into the lines that may be down and can cause serious injury to workers trying to restore power.
FYI, you can just turn off the main breaker of the residence to prevent backfeeding into the power lines.
If someone can’t make the own cord, what’s the chance they know how vital it is to flip the breaker?
You can, but if forgetting to flip a switch can result in death, then you need a stronger safety control
Someone incompetent enough to forget to shut off the main shouldn’t be operating a generator anyway.
That’s not the point. Normal, sensible people make mistakes because they are tired or stressed or got distracted or just plain unlucky, so things have to be designed so that people can make a mistake and it not instantly create a potentially lethal situation
I don’t think you completely understand what’s being discussed here.
Someone who’s not competent enough to install a proper transfer switch (or at least hire a professional to do it) shouldn’t be operating a generator.
… Except the breaker only interrupts the connection on the “hot” line…
Yeah, there is a reason why proper installations require actual transfer switches or at least a manual interlock to prevent both feeds being connected at the same time. I’m also not sure what would happen if your generator was out of phase with the grid when it reenergised, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be good
If your generator was connected to mains when they came back on it would probably just kill your generator. It is the least robust device in the chain. The next step is blowing up the transformer on the pole which is a spectacular light show. It is also very expensive, and will piss off your entire neighborhood who were just about to get power back and now have to wait for the power company to fix the transformer you blew up by being a dumb ass. Finally it is possible that you would trip out the switch yard which is going to make even more people angry. The biggest risk is you putting power back on the lines that people are working on. That transformer on the pole works both directions. It drops the usual 13.8kV on your local power lines to the 240/120V in your house. It will also turn the 120/240 from your generator into 13.8 on the lines that are being worked on. 13.8 will kill you before you even know you touched it. That is why line workers go through multiple tests before they get near lines they are working on. They will notice there is power on lines that are supposed to be dead. They will find where that power is coming from. They will fine you lots of money. There may be criminal charges.
You gotta lick it after you plug it in so you know it’s working.
Teehee, it tingles!
It’s also good to backfeed a generator into an outlet
… but you don’t really care for logic do ya?
I don’t really get it. Sure, the exposed prongs would be energized once you plugged one side in, but if you plugged the other side into a second outlet (assuming you didn’t cross live/neutral), nothing would happen. (those two outlets were likely tied together anyway)
You don’t work around dangerous things assuming you’ll never make a mistake, you work around dangerous things assuming you’ll never make three mistakes at the same time.
You are not immune to making one (or more) mistakes, no matter how careful you think you are.
Correction: you don’t work around dangerous things assuming you’ll make a mistake long
Well, maybe it’s because you may die if you accidentally touched touched the prongs? The purpose of female plugs is among other reasons to prevent accidentally touching them.
I guess the fact that it can kill you easily is not enough to call it a suicide cable lmao
Yeah, let’s call it a self defence cable instead. Like a corded taser.
The problem really is the super exposed hot prong you now have once you plug one end in
In addition to the exposed prongs, it also means you are passing current into a circuit of unknown capacity without using a safety breaker. You may also be back feeding into your neighborhood power grid and can kill people in the street/other houses that were not expecting the lines to be energized.
50-50 chance whether those two outlets are on the same phase or opposite phases; if it’s the latter, congrats, that’s a 240V short.
Besides, if there’s an outlet at the far end of your string of lights, you don’t need this, you just plug it in there
Two things: 1: there’s a high chance you do cross live and neutral, or even live and live on different phases. 2: using it to plug in a generator to power your house can kill electrical workers who are trying to restore a power outage. (If you fail to open your circuit breaker.)
Why would you “need” one of these if you could plug in the other end into a second outlet? The point is that idiots don’t plan out their christmas light layout and end up with the wrong end at the outlet. They decide that they would rather drive to the hardware store and buy/build a suicide cable rather then just taking the lights down and rehanging them or running an extension cord to where the male end of the lights are.
Darwin cable.
