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0 votes
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The maverick pioneers of rocketry outside government programs
6 votes -
A new wave of positive-impact experiences in northern Finland is finally allowing the Sámi to benefit from the tourism boom
8 votes -
Russian Civil War, Winter 1917-1918
4 votes -
Dubai Creek Tower | Abandoned
3 votes -
The origins of Dwarf Fortress (Episode One)
22 votes -
What game invented jumping on enemies?
15 votes -
We finally know why ancient Roman concrete was so durable
17 votes -
Butter vs. margarine: One of America’s most bizarre food battles
18 votes -
The most effective weapon on the modern battlefield is concrete (2016)
7 votes -
Race against the regime: The 1936 Olympics, and the Nazi rise to power
7 votes -
Book review of Robert Ferguson's fascinating history of the experiences of the Norwegians during the five years of German occupation
6 votes -
Race to save lives and ancient artefacts in South Korea as wildfires rage
7 votes -
"EPIC 2014" / Googlezon - an alternative history of media evolution
9 votes -
Yemen's ancient, soaring skyscraper cities
24 votes -
Europe's undeciphered prehistoric tablets
9 votes -
Conspiracy
19 votes -
Review: Cræft, by Alexander Langlands
4 votes -
How 'Steel Grandpa' Gustaf Håkansson pirated Sweden's toughest bike race
8 votes -
Dive into 125 years of Audubon magazine covers, bird by bird
13 votes -
The history and economics of frozen orange juice
9 votes -
From polar night to midnight sun, Finland's deep connection with light and dark has inspired a century of pioneering lamp designs
9 votes -
US John F. Kennedy files expose family secrets: Their relatives were CIA assets
21 votes -
Thor Bjørklund's ostehøvel, a popular cheese slicer which developed into an important Norwegian export, celebrates 100 this year
21 votes -
The obscure world of competitive Ultimate Chicken Horse
13 votes -
Animation on the Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen
6 votes -
Modern rhetoric from 1998 movie American History X
11 votes -
Party City | Bankrupt
14 votes -
Comics: Old-school distance-learning tools
4 votes -
The hidden history of hand talk
2 votes -
A history of the San Francisco bouncy ball TV ad
12 votes -
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
3 votes -
Former Lenin Museum in Tampere, which opened in 1946 as a symbol of Finnish-Russian friendship, has rebranded amid Ukraine war
12 votes -
Denmark's state-run postal service is to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025 – cites a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century
37 votes -
Inspiring Jim Henson: Jim Henson built an imagination empire, but what built Jim Henson?
15 votes -
The history of S.u.S.E.
7 votes -
The classic 1972 concert film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii gets restored and will soon hit IMAX theaters
10 votes -
The story of Chespirito, a Latin American comedy legend
5 votes -
ACCESS.bus: The forgotten USB competitor
12 votes -
An unlikely survival story in the depths of the North Sea inspired a documentary and now a thriller
9 votes -
Here's how they finished Gladiator after Oliver Reed died
8 votes -
The Japanese mayor who built a floodgate no one wanted — and saved his town from a massive tsunami after his death
41 votes -
AI chatbots are people, too. (Except they’re not.)
10 votes -
Of trains and tanks. Or does the German political class actually know how bad things are?
21 votes -
Cheomseongdae: the oldest surviving astronomical observatory in East Asia
8 votes -
How the 4% rule would have failed in the 1960s: Reflections on the folly of fixed rate withdrawals
18 votes -
A room full of stars: The world's oldest (and most beautiful) planetarium
15 votes -
Trying cocktails from the USSR
10 votes -
I've been enjoying a few tropes in 1970s TV shows
I've been watching some TV shows from the 1970s recently. I've noticed a few tropes that I find pretty amusing. One of tropes is how often someone "slips a mickey" to someone else in the show. By...
I've been watching some TV shows from the 1970s recently. I've noticed a few tropes that I find pretty amusing.
One of tropes is how often someone "slips a mickey" to someone else in the show. By this, I mean that someone is given a drink that has a drug in it that causes the character to pass out. There is always a certain way this is portrayed by the director. The screen gets out of focus and then the camera tilts in strange directions.
In the first 3 episodes of The Rockford Files, this scene happens twice. Once it is done by Rockford himself (well, his client does it for him), and the next time it is done to him by one of the other characters.A variation of this is getting hit on the back of the head with something, usually a handgun. This always reliably knocks out the person without long term injury.
Another trope is the scene of a character driving up to a location, getting out, and walking into a building. In a modern show, this would maybe be done in a few seconds just as an establishing shot. But in 1970s television, this shot could last a few minutes. It's very obvious that they are trying to fill some time. These scenes are very noticeable in shows like Columbo when they went to a 90 minute format.
A variation of the "person walking" trope is when we only see the legs and shoes of the person who is walking. This is so that the audience doesn't know the identity of the person walking yet. It usually turns out to be a bad guy and there will be a crime done by the end of the scene. Sometimes we continue looking at the feet while the crime is in progress, and sometimes we zoom out to see who is doing it.
24 votes -
LA races to save a vital piece of history – Ernest A. Batchelder tiles found amid wildfire ash
6 votes