Microblog post: "My son is only in 10th grade and look what he invented!! Harvard here we come!". Pictures of a frame that holds a cable that can be attached to the metal of a power plug

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[–] 340 points 2 days ago (1 child)
  • [–] 173 points 2 days ago (27 children)

    The perfect dorm-warming gift:

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  • [–] 79 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    My friend worked in a hardware store for a couple years and he said that around Christmas time you get about a dozen people asking for these.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 days ago

    My wife was stringing up lights on the garage wreath and had one strand turned around and wanted me to make one of these to “fix” it so it could plug in. It took a second to explain to her the other end was just going to be an exposed line voltage plug.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    Made one of these on accident.

    Threw one end of the cord out in the yard and put a new male plug on the other end. Went to plug my saw in and found a male end. Silly me! So I swapped the cord around the threw the other end in the yard. Went to plug my saw in and found a male end. Stood there a minute trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    I'm sure Freud would have something to say about that "mistake".

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    OK, that got a literal LOL over here. And that fact I tried to make it work twice!

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  • I did this with sausages on plates once. I'd laid out 2 for me, 2 for my wife. She said she only wanted one, I swapped one of hers for one of mine, but I couldn't work out why there were still two on each plate. I tried again, same result. Had to take a pause for a sec and and work out what exactly was going wrong 😂

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    I just recently did the same with a set of patio lights. Was shortening a set of lights which hang over my porch. Measured out the length I needed, cut the cord, attached a new female end. Went to plug the other end in… also female!

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  • [–] 10 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    There's a type of power cord

    You'll touch the end and see the Lord

    And you wouldn't want that current going through ya

    While male on male is usually great

    You'll find yourself in a sorry state

    You'll learn volts jolt but milliamps will kill you

    hallelujah etc

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    You’ll learn volts jolt but milliamps will kill you

    The whole volts safe amps kill thing is so stupid though, you can't have any serious amps without serious volts, unless you have near-zero resistance, which a human body does not.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago

    I find it similar to "the fall doesn't hurt, it's the sudden stop at the end".

    But it's not entirely accurate, because we can be exposed to thousands of volts. For instant, most ESD are between 2k and 10k volts. Van de Graaff generators can generate up to 1,000,000 volts, yet they are regularly used in school classrooms.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago (7 children)

    You see, if the device from the meme was ever plugged in, it'd blow the breaker immediately. This male to male cord, if plugged into two outlets would do nothing.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 days ago (6 children)

    That's not always true. If the two outlets are on the same electrical phase, you may be okay. If they are on different phases, it would be dangerous.

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  • [–] 32 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    Also after plugging one side in, the other side is a fun little cattle prod.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (5 children)

    If I’m not mistaken plugging this in to the same outlet won’t do anything. And as far as back feed problems couldn’t you just shut off the the main breaker, i.e. where the power comes into the house?

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  • People usually want them so they can run Christmas lights the wrong way, either because theyve already strung them up backwards or they're too dumb to figure out a better solution, but the end result if one end is left unplugged is an enormous amount of power just running loose at the exposed end. Even if you just wanted to plug it into the same outlet as a joke, if you plugged one end and touched the prongs on the other end while in the process of plugging the other side in, you're pretty fucked.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago

    It will either instantly trip the breaker or do absolutely nothing, depending on how it's wired internally.

    The real danger comes from when only one end is plugged in, though. With only one end plugged in, the other end becomes a 120V cattle prod.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (2 children)

    They're illegal and it's only safe IF the home owner remembers to turn off Mains.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

    There are legal ones for generators (especially small scale solar stuff) that turn off automatically when they detect no main power on the line, so grid workers can't get zapped. They are pretty common around here.

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  • [–] 65 points 2 days ago (7 children)
  • [–] 41 points 2 days ago

    What a genius! Has he sent his CV to Elon Musk already?

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  • [–] 33 points 2 days ago

    A sparkling future indeed.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 days ago (9 children)
  • [–] 13 points 2 days ago (3 children)
  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (4 children)
  • [–] 24 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Boy are they gonna be shocked when he doesn't make it.

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  • [–] 46 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    It'd be alright if made from plastic.

    And yes, I've chosen to disregard that something between the connector and the socket theoretically makes it more unsafe; US sockets are an awful design to begin with, so it doesn't make much of a difference.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (4 children)

    What if it was plastic and on top of the charger block?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    Then it just wouldn't be very secure. What would be holding it in place?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Love for its existence and purpose 💖 or maybe gorilla glue

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  • [–] 20 points 2 days ago (2 children)
  • [–] 18 points 2 days ago

    A little warmer for charging cables, neat!

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  • [–] 17 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Use this one simple trick to save on your electricity bill.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 days ago

    No lie, first time I read it, I thought I saw

    Heaven here we come!

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  • [–] 16 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    You know its good satire when you gotta think for a minute about whether this was serious or not.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 days ago

    She meant an interesting case of electrocution for Harvard medical students of course

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