Stupidly wrong but persistent tropes in books, plays, comics, movies and TV

We just finished it. And indeed, lots and lots of things which just don’t work like that. Not only at the fysics part.
But a great re viewing nevertheless. :slight_smile:

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Also: poison gas you can counter partially or completely by holding a piece of cloth over your nose and mouth.

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If there’s no personal drama or conflict, is it a story at all? If I want to know about what we know and don’t know about the universe I’ll watch Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Brian Cox telling me about it — or become a scientist myself — but if I want to know about people, then watching someone giving a lecture about how people react to personal crises isn’t going to cut it the same way.

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Trope: Fire sprinklers that set off all the other sprinklers.

Regular fire sprinkler heads have mechanisms that release when they are heated above a certain temperature. Each individual sprinkler has to be triggered by heat separately.

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My dad’s an electrician, and worked on a lot of fire alarms, and that one never fails to piss him off. Along with the water coming out not being the most fetid, awful shit water from sitting in the pipes stagnant for years.

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(If you haven’t seen the movie Chef, don’t read this post. Spoilers galore and it’s too good a movie to spoil.)

Chef is the only movie I can think of where diagesis was a mostly upward curve of personal growth and self-realization. Mostly. To your point, there is a critical, plot-redirecting incident early in the movie that sets up an interpersonal conflict that remains unresolved until the very last few minutes of the film. It’s the biggest ‘feel-good’ moment of the movie and why you’re still smiling even after the credits have been rolling for two minutes.

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Trope: “Keep them on the phone long enough so we can trace the call.”

As far as I know, this hasn’t been true since the 70s, but it’s been a persistent trope on tv for decades and still shows now and again.

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In that case, you’re completely wrong about everything. Completely delusional and misinformed.

You’re welcome.

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Brute-force decryption.

In the latest Marvel movie (Civil War), the villain goes through the files leaked in Winter Soldier, and finds some that are Hydra files, so he decrypts them.

And this is in so many otherwise-good shows, like Person of Interest.

The thing about properly-implemented encryption is that it’s nearly impossible to break without the key. Like, “the Sun will burn out before you succeed” impossible.

And, I mean, if they said, “Oh, I guessed his password,” or “I found the key in an old email,” then maybe, but those progress bars that show how close you are to actually cracking the code are idiotic — you can’t know how much of the password/key is right until you have the whole thing.

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Sorry, but I gotta pick a few nits with you & @Skeptic on “getting knocked out” - of which there are three? primary ways:

  1. disruption of blood flow to the brain
  2. disruption of air supply
  3. electrical shock to brain (disruptive nerve impulse, tho sometimes inaccurately referred to as “pressure points” - which is something else)

Re: choking on food vs getting choked out.
When a person is choking on food - typically- it is because a piece of food has become lodged in the wind pipe. This causes the person to take gulping breaths where only a fraction of that air reaches the lungs. They are still breathing, just very poorly & eventually they will pass out.

Conversely, getting choked out (particularly) via #1 above (the proper way to “choke out” an opponent) takes much less time (varies, but usually less than 20-30s) because you are directly starving the brain of O2.

ETA: this example, with poor form but proper fundamentals (i.e. he’s disrupting blood flow to the brain) takes about ten seconds:

@Skeptic re: knockout hits. To the back of the head, you’re right, to the front, specifically the jaw - everyone has a nerve cluster behind their jaw that boxers refer to as “the button”. You push anyone’s jaw against that with even a modicum of force and it’s lights out.

There are also nerves around the head which cause the same - admittedly counterintuitive - “knock out” result. Demonstrated here by two Marines:

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Lots of THIS. :thumbsup:

What the “beeeeeeeeepp” usually means is that some muppet has pulled a line out which needs re-connecting. And the monitors don’t go bleep-bleep-bleep IRL coz the nurses get pissed off with that and switch the sounds off. :smiley:

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Related: Hacking is not something you can force unilaterally. You need some sort of vulnerability on the target side. Sure, these days many systems are complex enough that you can’t realistically rule out weaknesses, but you still have to find them. No matter how mad your NSA/MIT/NCIS skills are, if you don’t find any, then your input is just harmless ones and zeroes.

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We don’t. We tend to use a pentatonic or blues scale, because it resonates and we like it when people can sing along. NEXT!

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…Or just an Admin on the other end who has a phone and a pleasant disposition.

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  1. Being allergic to metal
  2. A metal band’s slow ballad which becomes their greatest hit
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Agree. I’ve seen people go dark in past jujitsu classes because they didn’t want to tap out. It happens quick.

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You left out the part where they get up in a few moments and are perfectly able to continue running down the bad guy instead of throwing up and being dizzy for days or weeks.

Jim Rockford was also in fistfights every week and somehow never lost a tooth. In fact no TV character ever loses teeth to weekly facial violence.

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Some people don’t like Dr. Horrible.

Those people are wrong.

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I haven’t read any of his SF yet just the Weird West/Steampunk books and one of the Hard Boiled Urban Fantasy books.

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