Movies: “What? You’re making robots? But what if they become evil?”
Me: “No, actually you can prevent that easily by…”
Movies: “Ghost in the machine! Bugs! Hackers! Robot becomes self-concious and disables its safeguards! Evil!”
Me: “Our robots are not even that advanced. Also you can easily add an off switch and…”
Movies: “They’ve bridged their off-switch! Terminators kill all humans now. All robots become evil!”
Me: "Whether they become evil or not depends on how you implement it and also … "
Movies: “Evil robots! More evil robots! The downfall of humanity!”
Every. Damn. Movie. For once I would like to see a movie with robots that don’t turn into mindless “cuz evil” killing machines. It’s really annoying how widespread the fearmongering about robots is in movies.
Also, why the fuck do all robots have the worst possible speech synthesizers ever? Heck, even the announcements in subway trains and buses have better natural sounding computer voices than robots in movies.Movies always show engineers and tech programmers as being young asocial nerds. We’re not all young.
We’re also not all asocial, I mean, I am, but I’ve met programmers who are extremely social.
I’ve worked with programmers who actually look after their physical health too - it’s nuts!
I work in IT so basically everything
So two people typing in one keyboard doesn’t make the hack faster?
I loved that entire scene for all the wrong reasons
I believe that was what they were going for.
Aside from Mr. Robot, almost every show that features software or computers completely butchers the details. My favorite offender? Mythic Quest. The main cast supposedly runs a massive MMORPG, yet their day-to-day activities have almost nothing to do with how game development or even basic software work actually functions.
It is like if ER was about hospital staff moving random boxes labeled “coils” back and forth while claiming to perform life-saving surgery. That is how far off it feels.
What really gets me is that Mr. Robot proved it is possible to do it right. If you treat the subject matter with respect, you can absolutely make something compelling and realistic. But since it is all just “nerd stuff” to most writers, and none of them are C++ goblins, we get tech scenes written by people who probably think JSON is a fitness drink.
If any of the detectives from Law and Order come in to my bar I absolutely will not remember that random patron from five days ago.
I worked in toxicology. Likewise, if any detective showed up in my lab for results, let alone talked to anyone anywhere near their samples, they can say goodbye to their case.
Why’s that?
MRIs
Far too many movies and TV shows use the magnet to cover for their lazy writing by treating it like something that can be turned on and off like a light.
The magnet in an MRI is one of the coolest things in medicine, and writers get it wrong all the time. In the vast majority of cases, it’s always on.
In simple terms, an electromagnet works by running a current in a circle and creating a magnetic field. In an MRI, the current is flowing in what is essentially a closed loop of wire. However, in this case the wire is cooled with liquid helium so it becomes a superconductor.
They induce a current in the wire which creates the magnetic field (“ramp up” the magnet). Because it is superconducting, the current doesn’t stop. Once it’s ramped up, it no longer requires any external power. As long as the current is flowing the magnetic field remains.
There are only two ways to “turn off” the magnet.
One way is to “ramp down”. Essentially the opposite process that is used to get it running in the first place. That’s what they do if they need to stop it for service.
The other way is to quench the magnet. You hit the emergency stop and vent off the liquid helium. Without the helium, the wire warms and resists the current and the flow stops.
Quenching a magnet is a magnificently dramatic process. Someone hits the panic button, and there is a loud roar as the helium escapes. Clouds of condensation form around the exterior of the building as the cold gas escapes. In the event some construction crew screwed up and accidentally sealed the vents, there could be an explosion from the rapidly expanding gas.
If writers want to use an MRI as a plot device, have an accident and require someone to quench the magnet to save a life. You’d have the immediate drama from the accident and the quench, and then you’d have the long term drama of the hospital trying to figure out where the money to fix the MRI would come from.
One thing that bothers me, and what everyone should know, is proper placement for defibrillator pads if you’re using an AED.
It’s not 2 pads on the chest, it’s one pad on the upper chest (almost shoulder) on one side, and the other pad goes lower on their side. You’re trying to have the current go through their heart (not skip over the top of their skin).
The AEDs found in public locations are all very easy to use and all have pictures for the proper placement. Just open it up and it will tell you everything you need to do. Have someone nearby look for one at the same time you’re asking someone else to call emergency services.
They should all have razors if you need to get a little hair off (in case the person is especially hairy for one of the pad placements).
If they have a second set of pads with it; put the first ones on and rip 'em off quick, taking the hair off like a wax job. Then place the next set of pads
I was led to believe that shipping crates open up easily with one quick pry of a crowbar. In reality, those things are built with so many nails and screws that it takes more work to tear it down than to build it.
I work in IT so appearently i can just type override to get into any computer system. Cool…
I work at a bank. Every bank heist scene makes me fucking cringe lmao. Why would only one person know the code to something??? Why are safety deposit boxes treated as some super special thing? Daredevil just pissed me off with this so much lol
Because it’s a movie trope. And if people did it the ‘right’ way people wouldn’t believe it.
Like, phones sound like ‘phones’ because we have the tech to make them sound crystal clear, but people don’t want that they want the phone sound.
Every bad connection in the year 3453 still sounds like analogue static. Every dodgy video connection from a FTL spaceship gets VHS tracking lines as it breaks down.
Honestly that’d be funny as fuck.
If you broaden it a little from job/hobby to living in the real setting of a movie, you’ll notice characters going places that make no sense at all. Like if it’s Seattle they might start a boating scene on Lake Union and ends up at Mercer Island, swinging by Alki beach on the way.
As a kid watching Miami Vice, except for a few external shots I was like “Umm… that’s not miami…”
And the few shots that were kind of just had Sonny and Rico walk-talking past buildings that were like eight blocks apart from each other in the same conversation
The amount of cultural energy Americans have put into the old west cowboy era is amazing when you realize it only lasted 25 or 30 years, between the Civil War and the 1890s. All the classic westerns are set in that brief window of time. I think many people have the impression that whole generations lived and died during that era.
the traitor south lasted shorter than the reign of the Playstation 2 and they build statues and run social clubs about it still
Good point. To be fair they’re also celebrating a culture that was in place for quite a while before the actual war, which the war was trying to preserve.
Yes and no
There had been a cultural mentality among the elite that ‘slavery was the backbone of their way of life and a moral gift to those enslaved’, but that didn’t extend to the non-elites till after wartime propaganda convinced the poor white men to adopt the same mentality. Up till that poing there was a staggering lack of racism between poor people of any race, and part of what motivated ‘the south’ was breaking that ‘poor vs rich’ mentality
So while the culture of the elites had always been racist, it wasn’t the case for the common man till the war was well underway.
there’s a scene in “Silo” where a character needs to repair a massive steam-powered turbine that is off-balance, scraping at the housing, and heading towards collapse. all fine and we’ll, it’s sci-fi, so whatever, they can make magic quick fixes to move the plot along.
what really bugged me, for some reason, is how characters started touching the internal components immediately after it powers down - I have to wait for significantly smaller motors to cool off before handling them, especially if they’re rotating poorly with a bad bearing, and burning from friction.
You act that way because you work in a career that can dismember you if you are careless, so you’ve trained yourself in ways that almost no actor could ever capture, and certainly no screenwriter would ever consider
Or it would be boring to watch them sit around and wait for the thing to cool off
TL:DR: Everything? Like, literally everything.
If it’s about driving? They’re looking everywhere except the road in front of them
Computers? It’s cringe, all I will say
Flying? Not even close
Brushing teeth? Put some tooth paste FFS!
Sex, perhaps? As bad as porn videos are at showing realistic sex situations, movies and especially TV shows are typically way worse with all the requirements to not accidentally show a nipple, omg!
Martial arts and fighting? The worst offenders. After twenty punches to the chest that will have broken half of the ribs, the protagonists now suddenly finds the strength in thinking about keeping his little girl safe and now he beats up 20 guys with those broken ribs
Being punched unconscious or getting some chloroform and they wake up the next day? Lolololollll. Humans are notoriously hard to keep them “out” without killing them, it’s why anesthetists are paid so well, it’s a very complicated job. When you’re out from an impact to the head, you need medical attention, you likely have a minor amount of brain damage. If you’re out for more than ten seconds, it’s brain damage for sure. If you’re out for over a minute, you’re likely not waking up with full abilities, you’re likely going to be a vegetable at best
Okay, doctors then? Saving a patient’s life with the buzzer? Yeah no. When the heart stops, that defibrillator won’t make it “go” again, the defib actually stops it in case of heart rithm problems. Also, CPR outside a hospital will result in death for about 90% of the cases, give or take, and Har % goes up by another 2 after 3 weeks later. The tiny % that does survive likely will have issues ranging from benign to being a benign vegetable.
Brushing teeth? Put some tooth paste FFS!
They can’t really do that because the make-up would fall off. Also they never actually eat anything.
Being punched unconscious or getting some chloroform and they wake up the next day?
“They would either be really angry or I would kill them”
- Bill Bailey.
