Guns just make everything better.
https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1202961963137093632?s=19
I saw a tweet about this earlier. There were actually at least five instances of cops firing while taking cover behind occupied civilian vehicles.
And their bragging about no LEOs being harmed, it really goes straight to the cultural problems we have with police in America. The obvious one that is always discussed is racism, institutionalized and otherwise. The other one that we rarely talk about is this attitude that goal #1 is to make sure the police officers survive, come home safe, are never harmed, stay out of harm’s way, take no chances, etc. Like, that’s not the job. The attitude people have is that they are heroes and thus their safety is paramount. NO. They’re heroes BECAUSE their safety is NOT supposed to be their paramount concern.
The reason firefighters are heroic is not because their first goal is to survive fires. It’s because they run into burning buildings to save others. They put themselves in harm’s way to save others.
That’s what police are supposed to do, but now it’s like in any situation where an officer can possibly get hurt, fuck the innocent civilians, the cops have to protect themselves first and foremost. If they can save some others great, if some others die that sucks, but the primary objective is no injuries or deaths to LEOs.
Until we put that back into the proper perspective, we’re going to have more absolutely appalling police behavior that leads to innocent deaths.
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A friend of mine is a former cop. He left the police force after being injured breaking up some fight. The reason he quit was that his bosses criticized him for not using “superior force” or whatever the phrase is.
My friend had separated two guys when one of them threw something and hit him in the head with it. He was moderately injured and on disability leave for awhile. When he was ready to come back they said uh no. They explained that his disability leave cost the city lots of money.
The kicker was that they told him he should have shot the guy as soon as he picked up the thing that he threw. I can’t remember what it was, but it was an everyday object and not in any way a weapon.
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And we fetishize the police so much. Any chance that the civilian who died in that shootout will get a 3500 car funeral procession that lasts six hours blocking highways and sidestreets in major cities?
This is from 2008, but the conclusions seem deeply naiive.
“But that’s a call for public safety people to make. They are the stewards of their own culture. If a longer line of cars provides a comfort to a widowed spouse and grieving colleagues, let’s have the good grace to be patient with the resulting delays. Let’s trust police and firefighters to have the class to take no more time than they need and to give our streets back as quickly as they can.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/traffic/article237020509.html
I live near the area mentioned in the above. Were I to follow the advice below to get from a specific point A to point B that I needed to in the time frame mentioned, I would literally have had to drive about 40-50 minutes out of my way to circumvent the line made with the procession.
"Drivers are encouraged avoid that route from about noon through 3 p.m., with the CHP saying in a tweet that traffic would be “significantly impacted.”
It goes beyond normal grief into this same weird sense of obligation I feel when people recite the pledge of allegience.
I’m sorry an officer died in the line of duty, but thats part of the job. Maybe we should be paying them more for the risks incurred, but to shut down traffic for a large portion of a working day seems beyond the pale.
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The police can fuck right off about how dangerous their job is. Depending on which year’s stats you’re looking at, as many as three of of the jobs I routinely do make it into the top ten for workplace fatalities. Law enforcement usually doesn’t even make the top 20.
You know what’s 3x more dangerous than being a police officer? Being a trash collector. And the guys who pick up my trash every week have a much bigger positive impact on my life than the police.
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This is incredibly stupid and I probably shoudn’t admit to it, but for the first time in about 5 years I got shocked yesterday. 409 volts. It was pretty jolting. Being lazy and stupid.
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I love how Charlotte just emasculates gun bros by calling them sweetie.
https://mobile.twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1203047278757449728
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Gots to be careful, bro
Big deal, I got hit with ~20,000 Volts touching my doorknob today after walking on a carpeted floor.
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As they say, it’s the amps that git ya.
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I assume you’re ok? What is that like, if you don’t mind me asking? I was doing some light electrical work at my parents this week which is not something I’m proficient in and was wondering how badly I could hurt myself with 120v if I didn’t turn the power off or if I screwed up somehow.
Yeah, I’m fine. It was a strong jolt, but the problem was that it was a dangerous jolt. It stops your heart or gives you a heart attack or whatever to your heart or not and that depends on the current and where it goes through your body. Something like .1A can stop your heart, but they would put something like 10A through your brain in electroshock therapy. Depending on some other things you can get a burn or some other local injuries, but it’s mostly the risk to the heart in this kind of circumstance. (there are some conditions that make arc flashes that can kill you by setting you on fire or something) I think the current went from one of my hands through the other and thus through my body generally, so it was dangerous.
120v can kill you, but it’s not too likely and you’d have to be a pretty good conductor and give it a path through your heart. Some old electricians would even just test circuits with their fingers on 120, but the old electrician who told me that said he didn’t and you can/will get nerve damage.
Solar is current limited and the max current would have been about 10 amps in this case. 400v is pretty high and will push some current through you - but of course that depends on how conductive you are.
Anyway, don’t work on things that are hot (energized). I usually don’t. I was in an attic reconnecting a system that was partially removed for roofing work and I needed it hot to figure out how things were strung. I should have unplugged solar panels so nothing was hot, gone into the attic, stripped wires so I could test them, gone back on the roof and plugged panels in, gone back in the attic and tested, gone back on the roof and unplugged, gone back in the attic and wired it up, and then gone back on the roof and plugged things back in. But I was lazy.
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Glad you are ok. Thanks for the details. Don’t be lazy.
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I’ve been bit by 120 a few times. It will startle the fuck out of you. There’s a very good chance you will yell (or perhaps scream like a little girl). And if you’re like me it will also send you into a blind rage for about 30 seconds.
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I live in Florida. One time I was driving on 75. I was doing like 80 mph in center lane. There wasn’t a lot of traffic but there was a car in the right lane about 20 feet ahead of me.
It was partly cloudy but not raining or anything. All of a sudden, BOOM! A bolt of lightning struck the car in front of me. It was simultaneously the scariest and funniest thing I ever saw. The car obviously slowed down and as I passed I saw 3 people in the car screaming. I pulled over and everyone was fine. The 2 women were pissed I was laughing but it was so goddamn random I couldn’t do anything but laugh.
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Just the 120 isn’t likely to hurt you too bad if you’re not grounded. So if you touch it and and you’re wearing rubber soled shoes it will give you a good jolt but nothing too serious. It gives you that jolt because you’re isolated from a DC perspective but not isolated from an AC perspective because your body and the floor have a nonzero capacitance, allowing some current to flow. But even if you’re wearing rubber soled shoes you’re not totally safe because you can always touch the ground or neutral wire and then the hot wire. This will complete the circuit through your body and is very dangerous. You could easily be killed if you do that, even from 120.
I mean it’s always better to err on the side of caution, but…
If you really only touch the hot on a 120 and have rubber shoes and aren’t all wet everywhere and aren’t touching anything else, you won’t feel any shock at all. AC or DC both need a complete circuit. (by capacitance you might be talking about static shocks which is different - solar and batteries are DC and not stored energy based on capacitance). The insulation on typical wire or even a single layer of electrical tape will let virtually no current flow at 120v. (both are rated for 600v)
And “easily”? Not really. You could be killed, but most people get hit by 120 at some point in their lives and some people get hit by it many many times and it’s relatively rare to get hurt. But it could kill you. I’ve been shocked by 120 probably around half a dozen times, which I think is very low for an electrician/electrical contractor.
Question for @microbet :
I got home once years ago to a burst water pipe, but before I realised this I had touched the wall and got a huge shock from it.
Should I be dead (in relation to this incident only)?
Asking to find out how many of my 9 are left.
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Last year during a really bad storm here a tree in our backyard got hit by lightning and split the stree down the middle. Probably 60 feet tall and about 20 feet of it is still standing. Scared the shit outta me. I’d take a pic but it’s already dark at 4:45 here. Electricity is not something to mess with imo.
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If bare skin is touching both wires of 120 then it’s very dangerous. You probably won’t die but you certainly could. As you say 100 mA can kill you. The resistance of dry skin is like 100k ohm so if you’re not sweaty you’ll be ok and only get hit by a few milliamps. But if you are sweaty or have a cut on your finger the resistance can be 1000 ohm or less. It’s not all that likely but it happens all the time. So saying it might “easily” kill you might be the wrong word to use but it is definitely feasible and completing a circuit with your body on 120 V is very dangerous. Not at all something to be taken lightly. And I’m sure those electricians were not testing 120 v circuits with their fingers holding the neutral wire in their other hand.
By capacitance I mean capacitance. For AC, resistance isn’t the only thing to consider when determining if current will flow through a circuit. You have to look at impedance, which is determined by a circuit’s resistance, capacitance and inductance. So the rubber soled shoes might act as an infinite resistor between your body and ground but not as an infinite capacitor. So you can still get a bit of current through you even if you’re separated from ground by an infinite resistor. But certainly nothing dangerous at 120 V or even much higher. But if you’re working on a DC circuit at the same voltage it doesn’t matter if there is nonzero capacitance between you and ground. For DC resistance is the only thing that matters.
But I think that as a practical matter the only way to actually get electrocuted at normal voltages is through a resistive path to ground.
