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The Plumber Problem

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Re: The Plumber Problem

#91

Post by mosselman »

dragontamer wrote: post #80
ta573957294 wrote: post #54

In the movie 300, after Leonidas and the 300 decide to march North towards Thermopylae. The valley & mountains in the background are REALLY from Sparta, Grecet. The producers made had sent crews to take enough photos and videos of the valleygt to accurately portrait the landscape. It was eerie to watch the movie (I grew up in Sparta) and see the mountains all around as they really are. BUT (big but here) they march S…

Honestly, my brain turned off the moment I remembered that Spartains were known for their heavy armor and not for dressing up like Chippendales dancers / male strippers.

To be fair, I bet a lot of minds turned on for that.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#92

Post by WalterBright »

sublinear wrote: post #27
AlbertCory wrote: post #8

As a writer myself: I have actual experts review what I write. That's about the best you can do. I think I read that The Big Bang Theory makes sure all the science is accurate. I wouldn't know.

It's too bad then that the rest of the show was so awful. How can writers focused on scientific accuracy create such ugly and unlikeable caricatures for their cast and embed so much anti-intellectualism in every episode?

Mr Spock was "on the spectrum", too, but it ways that were fun.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#93

Post by dale_glass »

JohnMakin wrote: post #73

Every computer movie with a hacker ever: hacker opens an excel spreadsheet and types in a bunch of gibberish "I'm in the mainframe."

Hackers is surprisingly realistic, though.

A lot of what they do is social engineering, a lot of stuff references things that were actually part of the culture, and if you ignore the fancy graphics a lot of what is done is quite plausible even if not exactly as depicted.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#94

Post by WalterBright »

dmurray wrote: post #79
appleflaxen wrote: post #19

In the Matrix humanity is enslaved to use them as an energy source. But the 2nd law of thermodynamics requires that any energy harvested would be, by definition, less than the energy of the food required to sustain their bodies. Therefore the plot makes no sense, because they should just shovel the food directly into the computer and skip the humans.

We use cows for the same purpose - we eat them instead of shoveling grass straight into our mouths, even though in some strict sense the grass contains more caloric energy. Or, we eat vegetables even though the energy in them is less than all the solar energy that falls on them. But of course the calories in grass and sunlight aren't accessible to us. It's not impossible to imagine some parallel situation where human…

Carnivores are essentially thieves - stealing the energy concentrated by plants instead of doing the work ourselves.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#95

Post by WalterBright »

nonameiguess wrote: post #13

This seems to be the case with virtually any profession. You have to just learn to live with it, mostly, maybe even laugh at it. It was damn near a pasttime when I was still in the Army to make fun of how the military is portrayed in film and television. Basic as fuck shit like almost no one even has a haircut that meets regulations. It also makes you doubly appreciate when someone gets it right. We all loved Band of…

> no one even has a haircut that meets regulations

That's a sop to the actors who don't want to have their hair cut that way.

You'll see the same thing in historical dramas. The hairstyles betray the time when they were filmed.

And Star Trek had 1960's hairstyles and miniskirts.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#96

Post by munificent »

ballenf wrote: post #45

The technical faults with movies don't bother me anymore, because my expectations are basically zero. What bothers me immensely more is the same but with human choices, motivations and character. There's no reason to try to understand characters as they increasingly make the most superficial or arbitrary decisions, pulled along by plot necessities rather than driving the story. The humans in recent movies feel like w…

Marvel movies are the worst about this for me. The adult characters use adult mannerisms and delivery, but the actual dialog and what they're saying is so cartoonishly simple and childlike that I can't suspend my disbelief when watching grown adults talk and act that way.

It's easier for me to believe in superpowers than to believe in people that have the psychological complexity of houseplants.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#97

Post by hprotagonist »

greedo wrote: post #74
ever1337 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former fencer, this is what a lot of HEMA bouts look like to me

Also as a former fencer, I've realized that fencing has so little to do with most "blade" warfare, whether in real life or in the movies. Epee might be the closest to reality for parts of Europe with duels etc, but I think all three forms diverged pretty quickly since the death of an opponent kind of kills the sport.

olympic/sport fencing has very little to do with killing people with sharp metal. the same goes for kendo, of course …

Re: The Plumber Problem

#98

Post by derbOac »

msla wrote: post #77
JohnMakin wrote: post #73

Every computer movie with a hacker ever: hacker opens an excel spreadsheet and types in a bunch of gibberish "I'm in the mainframe."

Oh, for the days when you could run a murderous android with a 6502! https://www.pagetable.com/?p=64

This is an interesting example of a broader phenomenon to me. I'm not sure if there is a name for it or not but it goes something like this:

Sure, there's 6502 assembly on the screen but the fact that it's some kind of valid hardware code invokes a kind of gritty realism to me. It might break immersion but it does it in a way that then brings me back in even more so at some level.

Imagine for example that it was Visual Basic or PHP. That would be hard for me to deal with in a way that 6502 assembly isn't? Especially given the time period of the film.

I think there's a kind of "atmospheric accuracy" that some details can invoke even if they're not strictly realistic. That is, I might know something is sort of unrealistic at some level (it's unrealistic that they'd be using 6502 assembly that far in the future, with machinery like the Terminator unit) but also feel like it's realistically grounded at another (there's some actual low-level hardware code involved).

A plumber might know that a certain type of pipe wouldn't be used in a specific setting in the film, but also know and appreciate that the pipe in the film is a sort of obscure pipe that is closely related to what would be used, and itself might be used in a very similar scenario.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#99

Post by scotty79 »

munificent wrote: post #96
ballenf wrote: post #45

The technical faults with movies don't bother me anymore, because my expectations are basically zero. What bothers me immensely more is the same but with human choices, motivations and character. There's no reason to try to understand characters as they increasingly make the most superficial or arbitrary decisions, pulled along by plot necessities rather than driving the story. The humans in recent movies feel like w…

Marvel movies are the worst about this for me. The adult characters use adult mannerisms and delivery, but the actual dialog and what they're saying is so cartoonishly simple and childlike that I can't suspend my disbelief when watching grown adults talk and act that way. It's easier for me to believe in superpowers than to believe in people that have the psychological complexity of houseplants.

Well, it's an adaptation of a comicbook. They didn't have believable personalities there either.

Re: The Plumber Problem

#100

Post by thedanbob »

dbrueck wrote: post #83
ballenf wrote: post #45

The technical faults with movies don't bother me anymore, because my expectations are basically zero. What bothers me immensely more is the same but with human choices, motivations and character. There's no reason to try to understand characters as they increasingly make the most superficial or arbitrary decisions, pulled along by plot necessities rather than driving the story. The humans in recent movies feel like w…

Yes, this drives me crazy. I particularly hate the trope where the plot hinges on two characters having a huge misunderstanding that would be resolved by a 5 second conversation.

Or the "problem that would be resolved by a 5 second phone call" trope. I always thought it was funny how long it lasted even after cell phones became ubiquitous.
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