Welcome to the 40th issue of The Renegade Coder update! This week was a rather big one for me. If you read my New Year update, then you know I have tons of changes happening in my life this year. Fortunately, I’m already making progress on one of those changes. Let’s just say I struck a pretty nice deal at work.
Table of Contents
Guy Fakes Shock
Before I dive into the big news, I want to share this video of a guy shocking himself with a taser:
When I first saw this, I didn’t really bat an eye. I figured it was just another idiot fishing for likes, so I moved on with my day.
Reading the Comments
That said, I did glance at the comments where I read the following:
He’s smarter than most people commenting. At least he knows that current only flows in a complete circuit. The current flows from one taser terminal, across the knife, and to the other terminal. Since he isn’t between the current path, he doesn’t get shocked.
So he makes a viral video by taking advantage of people’s ignorance and those people call him stupid. Irony.
And, that’s when I realized that this guy most likely didn’t get shocked at all. See, his body never once found itself in the path of the current. At least, that’s what I thought. Fortunately, someone confirmed my suspicions with video evidence (take a look at the comments).
The Theory
Being a natural skeptic, however, I couldn’t just side with my confirmation bias. I needed to find out more. See, I don’t understand circuits. It is one of those engineering subjects that I really struggle with. I can deal with all the electricity and magnetism concepts, but circuits are next level.
Fortunately, someone mentioned that you become the “ground” when you lick a battery. I’m not really sure what that statement even means. However, I do know that you simply complete the circuit
. That’s why you’re tongue feels tingly. You actually excite your nervous system by flooding it with noise. This is the exact same principle followed by a stun gun or taser. In fact, cops can touch people who are being tased since the current is limited to the circuit.
Of course, that concept made me wonder why you don’t feel a shock when you cross the terminals of a battery with your hands. As it turns out, human skin is a bad conductor, so the current between the terminals is pretty low.
That said, if we had a high enough voltage, surely we could pass a higher current over the skin. It’s Ohm’s law after all. Unfortunately, the path of least resistance still seems to be across the terminals. Why would the current ever travel up the knife when it could simply pass over the knife and to the other terminal?
In addition, there still seems to be a problem. How would the battery discharge if it wasn’t in a circuit? I suspect the chemical reaction to produce current couldn’t occur without a circuit, so I’m calling bullshit.
Funny Nonetheless
Regardless, the comments are hilarious either way. It’s so funny how quickly people can call this guy an idiot without once questioning the authenticity of the video. People are so quick to judge. Seriously.
That said, here are some of the funniest quotes (even funnier knowing the video is fake):
- “Real niggas” were in science class and wouldn’t do that shit. His boy played his dumb ass lol. Smh. Hopefully that jolt made him infertile so he can’t reproduce
- And this is the generation I’m supposed to have confidence in to take care of things when I’m an old fart???…..sweet God help us all
- People do some of the dumbest things I have ever seen and this is a perfect example of one of them..I hope he’s ok, but even more so, I hope his dumb behind has learned a lesson, he to Damn old to not know better…
- And natural selection taking place right before you. Allow the idiots of the world to weed them selves out so the intellectuals have a place to be!!!!!! Ignorance has to stop at some point.
Barring the obvious prejudice, I find some of these so funny. These people claim to be intellectuals, yet they can’t even properly form a sentence. Meanwhile, they have the audacity to call this guy an idiot.
It seems the Dunning–Kruger effect is in full force. Maybe I’ll start a blog series on that. I think I’ll start with all the people who think they know math but can’t understand the order of operations. Then, maybe I’ll move on to the Monty Hall Problem. People love to debate that one.
What’s the Deal?
At any rate, back to reality. As of Friday, I officially have an end date at my job: March 30th. It’s a bit later than I would have liked, but I managed to work out a nice deal for myself. I officially got out of B-Course which is a set of classes that were taking up my evenings, and I get to spend the remainder of my time preparing to leave. With the wedding in March, the extra money will be helpful.
The plan at this point is to either go back to school for a PhD in Computer Science or flee the country by Teaching English as a Foreign Language. While I haven’t heard from any of the schools yet, I did get an invite to an Open House at Arizona State University. So, I’m pretty excited about that. My flight is reimbursed, and the rest of the trip is covered by the school. I’m hoping this is my big ticket in! I just need to iron out exactly what I want to discuss with the faculty there.
Support The Renegade Coder
Remember a while back when I wrote an article about the 6 ways to support me? Well, as it turns out, that list is a bit outdated. In fact, I got rid of my Patreon ages ago. It became too much of a hassle to maintain, and I didn’t care much for offering special packages to all of my patrons. That seems like a ton of extra work for a guy who just wants to continue to create great content.
That said, if you check out that article, I updated it to replace the Patreon section with a PayPal section. Well, it still has the Patreon info for archiving purposes, but I made a special note for PayPal. Now, you can pay for my beer.
The Tax Scare
While we’re on the subject of money, it’s tax season. While in the process of doing my taxes, I panicked when I realized that I’m probably supposed to be collecting sales tax from my customers. Whoops! That was a huge oversight.
Fortunately, I did some digging and found out that digital goods are tax exempt in the state of Georgia, so I think I’m okay. I mean I’ve only sold one thing, but I stressed out anyway! I also believe that my tutoring services are tax exempt, so that’s great news.
Song of the Week
Last week, I bought a practice mute, so I could start playing trombone again. To celebrate, I want to share a song from my first District Jazz:
As always, here’s a link to the song on Amazon.
Coming Soon to The Renegade Coder!
As expected, my big engineering series is now being delayed. You can expect that to launch the day I leave my job. In the meantime, I’ll be filling the space with other content. By my birthday, I’ll have a fun post coming out. Also, I’m planning to write a few more Python articles.
In the short term, I’m looking to clean up my backlog. Maybe I’ll start releasing some the articles pending there.
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