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.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
85 points (98.9% liked)
Ask Lemmy
31715 readers
1373 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Click click clickety-click... I'm in! Click click click... okay, I've hacked the corporate security system and unlocked all the doors, click click... here's the floor plan.
Can you disable the cameras?
Hang on... click click... okay you're good.
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.
I said too it loud while watching it: “that shit’s over 100°C… and they’re going right in?”
I have not unlocked a single chasity belt, it doesnt even come up as a service they might need.
About anything to do with computers. Anything.
Nods and waves arms widely - the computers.
Which ones? All of them.
Retail workers spending the day doing shenanigans while barely doing any work, I'd kill for time to do some stupid time wasting shit.
Sorry I can't join your impromptu wedding for two workers whose name I forgot.
LOL or for that matter fictional characters doing ANY job. It's like they just screw around all day having wacky misadventures and somehow the company stays in business.
Right? I dunno how it was back in the old days but Clerks is maybe the worst representation of modern service workers I've ever seen. I've got a "hard labor" job and work about 1/4th as hard doing that than I ever did in service when I was younger
Superstore is the worst representation of retail work, I think they did about a week's worth of work max during the entire series.
One of the better ones is a British show called Trolled, they at least show them doing some form of actual retail work, still shenanigans, but they never leave the store to do them besides one or 2 episodes, plus it's a damn good comedy.
I don't think I've ever seen my job in a movie. The only place I could imagine industrial embroidery ever showing up on screen would be as the setting for a chase scene or something.
I wanna see the flight scene in one of those shops now where someone gets embroidered during the fight.
I also work with industrial embroidery machines (not directly, we just have them at work) so I know the like 10 seconds under a needle wouldn't be enough time to do anything really, but I'm imagining a room full of machines making military name strips, hero blocks a goons punch and shoves his hand under a needle while the goon yells in agony. Camera focuses on how horrified face as he lifts his hand to reveal "Maj. Payne" embroidered across his hand. The goon then faints.
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 almost never see accurate sword fights. If they last more than two or three swings, they’re likely wrong. And Achilles jumping at the beginning of Troy was just comical. Footwork is so vital to sword play that leaving the ground is insane. But realistic sword play would be boring as fuck. It would be over in half a second and you would barely see any movement.
It never occurred to me that cinematic/theatrical sword fights are to swordsmanship what gun-fu is to marksmanship lol
3d printing - it prints flawlessly and the first time.
It floats up from the print bed in 5 seconds and it's rotating.
And sticks without blue tape and glue stick
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.
+ All of physics. Especially anything involving characters falling, lasers, explosions, firearms, and any physics in space (sound, motion, temperature, black holes).
Not that it's known physics, but time travel falls into this category too. Not the time travel itself, that's just suspension of disbelief, but having time travel mechanics be internally consistent. It's difficult to do well.
Have you watched The Expanse? I've seen some physicists talk it up for realism. At least as real as a show like that can be.
Yeah, I love that show. They do a really good job staying grounded in real physics when they're not in the fiction side of sci-fi. IMO, their space mechanics are unmatched in sci-fi.
I love lots of franchises that also do it poorly, but I'm always pleased when they go the extra mile.
I think you really nailed it to the wall for all to see!
Call centers: that there is time between calls. That people have time off the phone to form friendships with coworkers.
Handyman: we have sex with clients.
IT: that we can just code anything we want regardless of standards, policies and best practices.
Isn't that second one just porn?
Edit: actually, nevermind. I've seen this in weekly detective shows, but now they make the handymen gay so it's different somehow.
But porn is a popular media format fitting the structure of a movie.
Gaming.
There is no way that this obvious secret wasn’t discovered until now. If there are as many gamers as you show, it would’ve been found within 2 weeks maximum. Looking at you, ready player one. Cringy McCringeCringe can’t be the only one who found these obvious secrets after literal years.
In the book the clues were different and more obscure.
"Drive backwards on the track"
That's literally the first thing people do in racing videogames. That would have been SECONDS
Yes it was way better than watching him play Atari Joust for 30 minutes but still!
I'm actually pleasantly surprised by how much movies get right with rowing and sailing in movies.
The one that does make me roll my eyes is the scenes where characters are chilling in the galley or bed and then suddenly run up because they hear/see a problem through a porthole. I always get pretty grumpy with the idea of folks being actively under sail and simply 'tying' the wheel or tiller and going under the deck. Only the incredibly expensive sailboats can truly get away with that. A small, affordable to a middle class type, yacht will have that with a motor, but sails are not so forgiving. If the wind changes you could have a pretty bad day, and even a perfectly 'straight' tiller will likely have you turning circles ere long. That's not even considering how poor of a decision that would be unless you were a military ship in the middle of the ocean and others would get out of your way. Just because collisions are super de duper unlikely doesn't mean they're impossible.
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.
I used to install and maintain MRIs (as well as some other medical imaging modalities) and this seems to be wrong any time I've ever seen it in media.
- people will be shown in the magnet room with steel wheelchairs/patient tables/chairs/etc. or even their phones. None of that should be entering the room at all.
- the images shown on the diagnostics will be like a radiogram or PET or something that would not show from an MRI.
- the scan only takes a minute for a "picture", when in reality having an MRI scan can easily take an hour. You may have some people taking only 15 minutes or so, but those are the quick ones. Clinicians will order a whole list of scans and each one takes several minutes.
Years ago where I work a resident decided to be helpful and move a patient into the room with the MRI.
Of course, the patient was supposed to be transferred off the ferrous metal gurney before coming into the room. The resident didn't know that.
The MRI pulled the gurney into the room and it slammed into the scanner. Luckily it didn't actually flip up and crush the patient.
They told the patient to stay where he was and they loaded the gurney down with a bunch of full five gallon water bottles. Once they had enough weight on it, they transferred the patient off the gurney. A bunch of guys pulled the gurney out of the room, amazingly without any damage to the scanner.
Yes I had two separate occasions of having to remove a ferrous table from a magnet. One was able to be removed with 5 of us pulling (using a tie strap for safety to make sure it didn't fling when we repositioned it), but the other we had to ramp down the magnet to remove from the room.
It wouldn't be nearly as fast, but why would you not just stop the condenser pump so the helium stops cycling through, causing the freezing, instead of venting it off? Sure, venting it off would be faster, but in the lack of an actual emergency, you'd think you could wait like 5 minutes.
If it's not an emergency, then you let the vendor follow the procedure they have in place for shutting down the magnet.
Edit:
For example: We had a flood in an MRI room. The vendor was called out to ramp the magnet down so that they could deal with the flood.
I had no idea that once the current was in the magnet, no more power was required to keep it going.
load more comments
(1 replies)
(IT, sort of sys-admin/remote help)
No, I'm not a programmer even though I sit by the PC. Also I can't magically fix any and all your computer related problems in a second I look at your PC.
Sure you can! Just turn it off then on again.
I worked in support for a company that had 20.000 employees back in 2013. We were 150 people handling calls and tickets, and there was an average of 30-40k calls/tickets a month.
10% was resolved by restarting. How many man hours is not wasted because they haven't restarted? It baffled me when I saw the actual numbers.
Pretty much everything. See "Bee Movie".
Fiction: Daddy bee goes to work in the honey factory every day.
Fact: Daddy bee has glorious sex once and immediately dies. Bachelor bee is booted out of the hive by his sisters in the autumn and dies.
using a red-tailed hawk call whenever a bald eagle is shown
also I like to try and figure out where they filmed based on the birds I hear in the background
load more comments
(5 replies)
I am so used to seeing movies or shows depicting someone playing a video game on the screen that is for one system, but the controller in their hand is for a totally different system.
You ain't fooling anyone when the dude is playing Super Mario with a Genesis controller. 😬
Bonus points if two characters are playing together, frantically mashing buttons, and the game on screen is single player.
view more: next ›