u/DoublePreparation241

This has happened enough times now that I know it's not just a fluke, but I've never told anyone because it sounds made up. Right at the peak, for maybe a second or two, everything goes quiet, like someone turned down the volume on the whole room. Sometimes I get a faint high-pitched tone right after. It doesn't hurt and isn't scary, it's just strange, and it only happens sometimes, not every single time.

​Is this an actual thing that happens to people? If this happens to you too, why does it happen, and is it random for you too?

There are no lines painted on the ground and nobody organizes it out loud, but two streams of people walking in opposite directions regularly split into lanes that just work. It happens with a completely random mix of strangers in train stations, crosswalks, and hallways all over the world. What is actually going on that makes a crowd behave like organized traffic without a single person deciding it?

Rewatched Ferris Bueller's Day Off last week and ended up more locked in on the background than the actual plot. Old Chicago storefronts, the mall, cars nobody makes anymore, a downtown skyline that looks different now. None of that was the point of the movie, it just happened to get filmed in 1986 and decades later that's basically the most interesting part of it.

Got me thinking about how many movies do this completely by accident. Not deliberate period pieces, just ordinary movies where the boring background stuff, a food court, a payphone, whatever people happened to be wearing that day, ends up being the part that actually holds up as something worth studying.

What movies do this for you? Doesn't have to be some classic either, even a movie from the 2000s probably already has background details that are gone now.

This was sophomore year, some gen ed English class I only took because I needed the credit. My professor, I will just call him Dr. H, was known across the whole department for being insane about formatting. Not the normal MLA or APA stuff, he had his own extra rules stapled onto the syllabus on top of that. Font, margins, spacing, where the page numbers had to go, all graded completely separate from the actual writing.

About three weeks into the semester someone asked what happens if you do not follow the formatting rules exactly. He said, word for word, because I wrote it down out of spite, that if you follow his instructions exactly as written you get full formatting credit, no exceptions, no partial credit for close enough.

Cool. Noted.

So that weekend I actually read the formatting section of the syllabus line by line instead of skimming it like everyone else did. Two things jumped out. First, it said the title needs to be centered. It never said what the title had to say, just that it had to be centered. Second, it said your name needs to appear in the header. It never said how many times.

For the next essay my title was just the word "Essay," centered, huge font because there was no size limit listed either. My header had my name in it eleven separate times because technically that still satisfies "your name needs to appear in the header." I also put page numbers on every single page, including a blank works cited page that had nothing on it except the number seven.

Turned it in feeling pretty proud of myself honestly.

Got it back and he had docked me formatting points with a note that just said "unprofessional presentation." Next class I raised my hand and asked him to point to the specific rule I had broken. He couldn't, because I hadn't broken a single one, I had just followed them further than anyone expected anyone to. Then I brought up his own quote from a few weeks earlier, in front of the whole room.

He was obviously annoyed but couldn't argue with his own words without looking ridiculous in front of 40 people, so I got the points back. By the next essay the formatting section of the syllabus had basically doubled in length and every loophole I used was individually closed.

10/10 would exploit a poorly written rule again.

TLDR: professor said follow formatting instructions exactly for full credit, I took that way more literally than he expected, he couldn't dock me points without contradicting himself, syllabus got rewritten within a week to patch every hole I found.

I know this probably sounds completely ridiculous, which is why I am asking it here. I always think of digital data as just invisible code or abstract numbers. But when you download a huge game or a movie, it takes up actual physical space on your hard drive or SSD.

​Does storing that information actually add physical mass to the device? Are we physically trapping new electrons inside the drive when we download something, or are we just rearranging the microscopic stuff that is already in there?

I was rewatching a few older movies recently and noticed a pattern. Sometimes the writers put all their best character work into the side plots. The main plot is usually busy with standard hero stuff, but the B plot gets to explore something weird, funny, or genuinely emotional.

​A strong example is The Devil Wears Prada. The main plot about Andy doing her job is fine, but Emily Blunt trying to hold onto her sanity and get to Paris is much more compelling. Every time she was on screen I cared more about her stress than whatever Andy was doing with her boring friends.

​What are some other movies where the secondary storyline completely overshadows the primary one? I am looking for examples where you found yourself just waiting for the film to cut back to the side characters.

Everyone groans about getting up at 2:30 AM to catch a 5:00 AM flight, but it is the ultimate travel hack and undeniably the best time to fly.

First, the airport is empty. Security lines take five minutes, and TSA agents are usually too tired to be overly strict. Second, your flight will almost never be delayed, because the plane has been sitting at your gate all night. Finally, you get to sleep on the plane because you’re genuinely exhausted, and you land at your destination with the entire day ahead of you. It’s absolutely worth the one rough morning.

I feel like everyone has that one specific meal they crave when they are just totally burnt out. Do you cook something special, or just order takeout?

I love watching movies where the main character gets stranded on a deserted beach and has to figure out how to survive. But sometimes the little details drive me crazy and ruin the fun.

​For example, a character will be stuck on an island for months, yet their hair stays perfectly short and styled the whole time. Or they are running through the jungle and manage to avoid perfectly dug bamboo pits that would take a whole construction crew weeks to build. It just pulls me right out of the story.

​What are some movies that actually show the gritty, realistic side of surviving in the wild? And on the flip side, what are the most ridiculous or fake survival moments you have seen in a film?

​I understand that software monitors temps and throttles performance to stay under wattage limits, but how does a flat piece of silicon actually measure its own physical heat? Is there a tiny physical thermometer baked into the chip, or is it calculating it based on electrical resistance?