[HN Gopher] Ghosts in the Machine
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Ghosts in the Machine
Author : gmays
Score : 57 points
Date : 2024-11-02 02:41 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daily.jstor.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (daily.jstor.org)
| supermatt wrote:
| > Forty years ago, Hollywood made gremlins loveable--portraying
| them as adorable, furry creatures.
|
| Did the author even watch the movie?
|
| The fluffy lovable creatures are mogwai, and they transform into
| the not-at-all furry or loveable gremlins if fed after midnight.
| They arent gremlins until they transform.
|
| This inaccuracy invalidates the entire "Hollywood gremlin"
| discrepancy that is being made for much of the article.
| dundarious wrote:
| Read the first paragraph, the author knows. Perhaps the editor
| and staff did not.
| supermatt wrote:
| They just say they become vicious after midnight but still
| refer to the mogwai as gremlins, even drawing a parallel with
| furby later in the article.
| emmelaich wrote:
| The linked Atlas Obscura article is probably better.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-are-gremlins
| supermatt wrote:
| That's a much better article overall.
| surprisetalk wrote:
| In the author's defense, the mogwai were advertised as
| gremlins:
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUI891ejeYc
|
| The magnitude of the Gremlins bait-and-switch still baffles me.
| They marketed it as a family/kids' film; it was a horror/comedy
| for adults. How did the studio think that was going to play
| out?
|
| Anyway, unless you've seen the film or heard people like us
| rant about it, it's a pretty easy mistake to make.
| supermatt wrote:
| That's definitely confusing. Is it a real product commercial?
| I can see parents not wanting the actual gremlins on the
| packaging lol.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > How did the studio think that was going to play out?
|
| Well, it was the 80s. Studios got away with that kind of
| stuff all the time.
|
| On the author's defense, the GP seem to have overlooked the
| remaining of the paragraph. But if he actually insisted on
| that, widely citing a movie without even watching it wouldn't
| deserve that excuse.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >How did the studio think that was going to play out?
|
| I'm hoping they thought it was going to be a big hit earning
| a couple hundred millions of dollars and with a very
| profitable toy line otherwise they would have been sorely
| disappointed.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I never really understood this. Isn't 10am ten hours "after
| midnight"? What exactly is the safe range of feeding for a
| mogwai?
| t-3 wrote:
| I always understood the limit as being from midnight to dawn.
| Midnight should probably be understood as the lunar zenith
| rather than the clock time as well.
| jon_richards wrote:
| Lunar zenith isn't midnight. It can happy at any time,
| including during the day.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| If someone said that Mogwai are the stars I would not object.
| If the stars had a sound it would sound like this
| Sardtok wrote:
| Mogwai literally means devil in Cantonese.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| > This wasn't the first case of attributing unexpected mechanical
| defects to invisible pests. The popular term "bug" to describe
| technical glitches was used as early as 1876.
|
| I always thought the term "bug" came from people finding a
| literal bug stuck in the machinery of an early computer [1], TIL
| that Edison was using the term in the 1800s.
|
| [1] - https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/worlds-
| fir...
| hprotagonist wrote:
| nope! https://www.computerworld.com/article/1537941/moth-in-
| the-ma...
| knome wrote:
| it always surprises me when people have this takeaway, as
| "first actual case" clearly indicates prior not-actual cases,
| where the term was merely used as a metaphor for errors.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| Yeah I didn't pick up on the phrase "first actual case" in
| the handful of references to the anecdote I'd seen over the
| years.
| openrisk wrote:
| For the longest period machinery involved wooden components
| (wheels, shafts etc). Maybe the term "bug" originates from
| wood-eating bugs that were literally eating parts of the
| machinery or at least affecting its function?
| meindnoch wrote:
| Machine parts were already made from metals by the time the
| English language had developed.
|
| So no.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Is it your contention that by the time the English language
| was developed no machines had any wooden parts? And if so -
| just when do you think the English language was developed.
| Although it seems wrong to speak of a language as being
| developed.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Let's also ask if they think the word "bug" only exists
| in whatever modern form of English they are referring
| to...
| meindnoch wrote:
| I was referring to Early Modern English, aka the 1700s.
|
| The earliest written evidence of the word "bug" used in
| this context is from the 19th century. By that time, most
| machines were made from metallic parts.
|
| Of course, more primitive machines were still using
| wooden parts, as they do today! Of course, the word "bug"
| might have been used in this context centuries earlier,
| without producing any written records!
|
| But let's not kid ourselves. OP had no evidence of their
| theory whatsoever. They just made up a story.
|
| I can make up an equally "likely" theory: maybe people
| were often saying "oh, I've made a big mistake", and "big
| mistake" turned into "bug mistake", which was then
| shortened to "bug".
| openrisk wrote:
| What a vitriolic and absurdly pseudo-scientific reaction
| to the mere suggestion that the concept of bugs breaking
| machines _may_ have been more literal in past, wood-
| dominated eras...
|
| The probing question is whether such failure modes (from
| bugs) were indeed common in pre-industrial machines (so
| as to warrant popular expressions). Thats something an
| actual expert could opine on with some impact.
| meindnoch wrote:
| No, dude, it was _you_ who put forward a Joe Rogan-tier
| pseudoscientific theory about the usage of the word
| "bug" with no evidence backing it whatsoever.
|
| It needs to be called out, before people start misquoting
| it as fact, like how people ran with the 100%
| pseudoscientific glove-knitting theory for Roman
| dodecahedrons, which some people still quote on this
| board as if it had any scientific merit at all.
| cam_l wrote:
| More likely, the word bug itself had different
| connotations at the time.
|
| No surprise that the word bug itself is etymologically
| linked to goblins or ghosts in the time period referred
| to. And fits perfectly with the usage in the quoted
| paragraph.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/bug
| prettyStandard wrote:
| I distinctly remember a Rob Ager/Collative Learning YouTube video
| on Gremlins. It was very enlightening on how deep the Gremlin
| mythology goes, but alas I can't find it right now.
|
| He does list three videos on his page. An 8-minute video, 30
| minute video, and 93 minute video. You might have to buy them...
|
| Even if you/I can't find the gremlin video, I highly recommend
| you watch any of Rob Ager's videos on movies you think you
| already know. He does do a lot of work on Stanley Kubrick. He
| will insist The Shining isn't his favorite movie, but that's hard
| to believe with how much he has focused on it. Anyways, Collative
| Learning is an excellent rabbit hole to fall down.
|
| https://www.collativelearning.com/FILMS%20reviews%20BY%20ROB...
|
| Edit: Okay I'm a doofus, on mobile I needed to scroll
| horizontally to find the watch links. I don't recognize the
| 8-minute video or 30 minute video, so it must have been the 93
| minute video that I saw.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| The articel mentions gremlins in the context of WWII but neglects
| to mention the animated cartoon "Russian Rhapsody" which I
| vividly remember from childhood, wherein Hitler personally flies
| a bomber which is disassembled in flight by gremlins:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Rhapsody_(film)
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