An old friend of mine has a saying: "If you know why you're not supposed to stick a fork into a toaster to get a piece of stuck toast out, you're allowed to stick a fork into a toaster to get a piece of stuck toast out."
When i first started working in a lab, my boss told me i had to do safety training first, and then gave me a pile of documents explaining in detail how all the lab's methods worked. There was nothing in them about safety. But, he explained, if i understood all the materials and equipment i was going to use in miniscule detail, then i would naturally know how to use them safely.
On the other hand, wooden chopsticks are safer and work better. Similarly, I like my pizza slightly soggy after being bagged and refrigerated, though I don't always bother.
That doesn't protect from accidentally bending or damaging the heating elements, which can lead to shorts or malfunctions, which is much easier to do digging around with a pointy piece of metal than a blunt stick. Always frustrating when you realize why it has a hot spot, and that knowing your tools better should have led you to anticipate that failure.
That's a good (and pithy!) take, although it does seem like a bit of a Dunning-Kreuger tarpit. There's a lot of implicit context packed into that "why", depending on the subject.
The reason is that old toaster designs had unpolarized plugs and therefore a good chance of uninsulated live wires inside, even when off. Modern toasters don't anymore, but folk wisdom lasts forever. Although you make a good point that if your outlet polarity is reversed, you might still have a problem. I don't know if modern designs are robust to that...
I learned this from a video about old Sunbeam toasters that was unexpectedly fascinating: https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y
Depends on where you're touching on the resistor. Maybe you're lucky and touch the part closer to the null. Or you wear shoes and don't touch anything else.
