Your mention of manual transmissions is interesting too. Because lot of my young relatives have no idea how to drive one.
If this was just a day or two ago, I saw that too. Can’t remember what channel/movie it was (I wasn’t watching, just glanced up at the right moment) and it jarred me. The light from outside the bedroom was conspicuously switched ON a heartbeat after the interior room lights had supposedly been turned off. TCM, maybe?
Wish I could help you ID the show, but it all went too quickly:
- Actor switches off bedside light; room goes dark…
[beat] - Gaffer switches on 900 Watt Kleig Light (with bluish “moonlight” gel and a grid pattern scrim)…
[beat] - I switch channel.
I have a lot of great “all-manual car” stories (sure kept my kids’ friends from asking to drive it). But not sure it’s really a “common on TV” thing anymore…
We just bought a 2021, and we found a stick! I think there were two in the entire Phoenix metro area. Manual windows, manual door locks.
In Back to the Future, Marty couldn’t open a bottle (if I recall correctly, he tried to unscrew the top, which would have cut his hand if he had really tried it, depending on how hard he gripped the bottle cap and how flared the edges of the cap were).
I’ve done that (and seen it done). It’s common in “leadership”/“management training”.
What was the time gap there? 1955-1985? the technology gap widens every year. The technology gap from 1955-1985 is not as great as 1985-2015.
I rode to work with a co-worker once who apparently did not believe in oncoming traffic. If there was a car in front of him, he would pass it - even if he was driving over a hill or around a corner where he couldn’t see any distance down the road. It was the most terrifying car ride I’ve ever been in (this was forty years ago and I still remember that ride).
I survived the trip. I asked another co-worker for a ride home and I never got into a car with the first guy again.
I was in a recent conversation with a younger friend and she was joking about how she would be confused by technology in fifty years. I told her she didn’t realize how true this would be.
I pointed out that the only technological media skill from my childhood that was still relevant in 2021 was how to turn the pages in a book.
Apart from the high body counts, certain towns tend to have an absurdly high concentration of really sordid and kind of freaky scandals, elaborate plots, and murders reflecting them. First episode, they’re all “This is a small town and nothing ever happens here.” and a month later, they’re on their third cult/posed body/stolen baby/masked kidnapper who holds people in a bunker/Munchausen by proxy/witness protection thing/murder with an ice knife in a room locked from the inside/hypnotized trained assassin who accidentally heard their trigger word and murdered someone.
It’s obviously good for drama. There would be no show if it were like “Yep, no murder again this week. Remember how we said it was rare?” But still a bit ridiculous.
Also, people standing menacingly in the middle distance. Like, not doing anything or trying to contact anyone or go anywhere, but just… standing still in a field or on a hill or across the street being intimidating. I would think you’d get tired and bored after doing that for a while. I guess there’s some kind of stalker zen going on.
I thought of this exact thing when the conversation turned to lights in space suits. Only, the part I was thinking of was that the lights and shadows in the space suits in this episode and a few others made the regular living people’s faces look kind of skull-like, too, which was very spooky. I can’t find a good example on a quick Google. I’ll keep looking.
The Good Wife made me crazy with a stupid plot device. Because there is no death penalty in Illinois, the writers kept sending the Good Wife to Indiana to consult on final appeals of executions. This happened like, three different times.
There are two things really wrong with it. There was only one execution in Indiana during the run of the show, that one just about a month after its premier, in 2009, well before the first death penalty case on the show.
In fact, only 20 people have been executed in Indiana since the national moratorium was lifted in 1977, and one of those was a federal execution (Timothy McVeigh) in Terre Haute, where the federal execution chamber is. So, 19 people executed by Indiana (and nine of those under one governor).
The second thing is no one would bring in a consultant in a death penalty case from another state, unless the person was one of the US’s top experts in the death penalty-- you want someone who knows your particular state’s laws. A top US expert would never live and practice in a non-DP state.
The show usually used a bit of hand-waving by saying that one of the named partners had been the convict’s attorney of record when he was originally arrested, and wanted to see the case through. If that were true, though, there’s an obvious problem with sending a junior associate to handle the case instead.
I couldn’t find it because I had the wrong episode. It was The Waters of Mars- here’s a screenshot and another … both sort of blurry, but you get the idea.
European call systems were manufactured by a different company than American call systems, so perhaps this was true – if you are young enough. But in Australia, until it was specifically changed, the call was controlled by the originating handset, and was not disconnected until the originating handset was hung up.
UK here. I can remember my Gran calling us and not replacing the receiver correctly. An hour or so later we went to make a call and there was no dial tone, just the sound of my gran singing to herself while doing her chores. We tried shouting down the phone but couldn’t attract her attention so I had to drive over there and get her to hang up properly! This would have been late 80’s
There was an emeritus professor at my school who came out to teach a 100-level physics (P105, “the physics of sound,” designed for students in the very prestigious School of Music) class when they didn’t have anyone else to teach it. All he did was give the lectures, though. The grading was done by his assistants, who were all seniors-- if they’d had a grad student assistant, he would be teaching the class. If you stopped by office hours, the professor might be there, or not. He very cheerfully helped you if he were there, but more likely, you got a senior physics major.
Of course, one of those physics majors taught me “unit analysis,” which is a great trick for people who don’t have a knack for science to get through science classes and pass.
Because the class was intended for non-majors, and wasn’t even accepted as a class toward the major for Physics majors, it was 3 hrs, no labs, instead of 4 hrs, lab section required. So, no grad students leading lab classes.
When you are a family of foreigners in Soviet Russia, but they do not actually consider you a threat, they put trainees on you to tail you. We got followed all over Moscow by The Bowery Boys, Abbot and Costello, the Three Stooges, Lucy and Ethel, and possibly Beavis and Butthead.
We’d be walking, and turn our heads suddenly, and the guy would duck around a corner, practically holding up a sign that said “Not KGB.” There was one guy who was standing under a tree when we turned around, and he reached up and pulled the small branches over his face.
They all had the same shoes, and they were rubber-soled, or something, and looked obviously different from men’s shoes that other people wore.
My father was so disappointed not to be treated like a serious threat.
One bit of worldbuilding in Larry Niven’s “Known Space” stories is that Belters tend to customize their suits with prominent artwork in order to individualize them. I suppose sports-jersey big numbers would work too, though that would be more likely in a big organization than for a bunch of independent operators.
The Master explains why car wheels sometimes appear to be rotating backward.
The hero’s partner is tied to a chair with mouth taped over. The hero finds the partner and immediately starts untying them, leaving the tape on. The hero is completely focused on this and all the while the partner is trying to shout “THE VILLAIN IS CREEPING UP BEHIND YOU” or “DON"T DO this, OR YOU’LL SET OFF THE BOOBY TRAP”
Forensic pathologists acting like detectives, running around talking to witnesses and suspects.
In 30 years time, a 20yo will boggle at the idea of using a tank full of potentially explosive hydrocarbons to power a car. Hell, their car won’t even have a steering wheel.