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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2024

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  • Part of it is that there’s less hidden costs. I like it when it’s just “the total is $30” instead of “there’s $8 shipping and a $2 service fee and then $4 in taxes and…”

    I’ve also seen some online stores lure in a customer with a really cheap initial price and then on the last page just slam them with insane shipping and handling fees hoping that the customer either doesn’t notice or feels too invested at this point to cancel their purchase.

    But yes, part of it is also people are stupid when they see the word “free” as if the store wouldn’t move the cost somewhere else.



  • Sword fight? Fanning at each other, crossing and smacking swords. Maybe even walking around each other. I don’t think that’s how a real sword fight would look.

    In real life most sword fights would be over in seconds with no more than three moves. BUT obviously that’s not very visually appealing so we get insane sword clashes with lots of unnecessary movement and the infamous “sword lock” where the swordsmen needlessly press into each other for that dramatic tension despite that being something that is never, ever done.

    Interestingly enough, one of the BEST sword fights in cinema is in The Princess Bride. It manages to be dynamic and engaging and lengthy without giving into a lot of bad swordfighting tropes. This is a great rundown of the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0rkUbrPo3k


  • For real. Omg you just reminded me of another absolutely stupid scene from the Netflix series, Another Life. That series’ writing is so bad some people think it’s on purpose.

    So the ship needs to perform a gravity assist to avoid a cloud of dark matter or something. During the slingshot maneuver, they get so close to the star that they should’ve been absolutely vaporized. But you know what, fine. Flying unnaturally close to the star looks cool and the rule of cool applies. But their first attempt at the gravity assist FAILS and now they have to try again.

    That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.



  • Space Flight.

    I walked in on my roommate watching “Don’t Look Up” right during the space shuttle launch scene. Literally every single thing was wrong. The trajectory the shuttle took off the launch pad. It flying RIGHT SIDE UP as it did the gravity turn like a fucking airplane. The fact 50 other rockets were in formation with it despite that being stupidly dangerous, them all having different TWR ratios, there not being nearly enough launchpads anywhere in the world to do that, etc. Just everything.

    We have existing video footage of shuttle launches. It’s not some crazy mystery. This isn’t Gravity where they add a window that doesn’t exist on the ISS for dramatic tension. It’s not Star Wars where the X-Wings behave more like airplanes than spacecraft for visual appeal. This was deliberate negligence.

    A very common one is spacecraft seem to always launch in a direct line away from the planet. They just go straight up. That’s the least efficient way to get into space. But I usually let it slide because explaining orbital mechanics and Hoffman transfers isn’t necessary for good story telling.


  • In Criminal Minds, there’s a super hacker that can basically infiltrate any system at will and do impossible things (like simultaneously scanning every street cam to find a specific license plate). Government supercomputers with elite security are no match for her.

    Okay, I get it. This is a work of fiction and she’s basically a mechanism to speed up the plot.

    In one episode they find some kid’s password protected laptop. The super hacker goes “oh no, I can’t hack that. It’s running Anti-Hack OS! We need the password”. The password ends up being plain text password that a brute force dictionary attack could break in seconds.

    I’ve never facepalmed so hard.