I was foggy about some of the dates and looked them up too. It seems like everything I found at least checked out date-wise, although some were cutting it close (TV shows and movies released within a year or two of the first Stars probably had a lot of their ideas in mind before seeing the movie). Guardians of the Galaxy and Groot predate Star Wars, but as I understand it, Groot was a villian and not a laconic friend until about ten years ago. And while Blade Runner is based on Phillip K Dick's book, it does set out with a lot of its own style and themes.

I think the creator of the poster did do the straightforward research of looking up dates, but not the much harder of actually tracking down influences. I agree with Ted above, that it has some serious post hoc fallacy issues.

That depends on exactly what kind of plastic they use, and I haven't seen a version of the story that says that. There are various plastics used in ultrapure water systems, which can have some rather strict limits on stuff that leaches into the water.

The primary use for balls like this at most locations is to block light, because the light can induce reactions with chlorine and bromine added to treated water. They've been found to reduce evaporation even when black.

The distortion from tubes shouldn't be enhancing either parity of harmonics, and just having roll off with frequency. Solid state amplifiers can cancel out even harmonics in distortions, but it depends on the amplifier topology used. And a properly sized amplifier can be designed to not introduce any distortions.

It is one thing if one is producing music and wants to distort things to get a designed sound, but to me is another deal when trying to add distortion on top of stuff already produced instead of trying to reproduce it cleanly. Even so, there are many ways these days of modifying the signals, yet some of the ones chosen by audiophiles varies from obtuse to snake oil. I find it funny when when some way overpriced products are advertised with specs that are quite poor compared to cheaper electrical engineering tools that can handle signals far beyond what is detectable by the human ear in various ways (although not as cheap as the junk in typical big box stores).

I'm used to thinking of SWFL as just New New York, although the proportions of snowbirds from different states changes over the years. Regardless, I've lost count of the number of times explaining how some place could be too far south to be the South.

New?

I've driven cars as cheap as $100 used... and they drove about as well as a trying to ride a $100 appliance like a stand mixer or washing machine down the street.

Household income can add another factor of two. One example I can find is median household income for rural homes in Iowa 1949 is $2500, and in 1999 is $40k. A $400 1950s refrigerator would then be about 16% of the household annual income, which comes out to about $6k using the more recent income. That is still short of a new car, although a major investment (assuming the household bought a top of the line unit, and not one of the cheaper $100-200 ones). The toaster and sewing machines (~$20-$30) and vacuums (<$100) fall much shorter than that, as it is the refrigerators and washer/dryer combos that see to be the far more expensive end of appliances.

A quick search for prices of appliances brings up prices of $100-350 in the 50s for larger ones, with the top of the line fridge or range for $350, which is about $3500 now. A toaster was listed as $20-30 in 1950s dollars.

I've found slide rules quite useful to teaching and illustrating the properties of logarithms. It might not be useful for the type of student that can easily remember basic math rules and use them like Lego bricks to build more complicated operations. But for those that need some illustration of basic principles, especially ones that might not use the rules regularly, it is good to have something visual or even somewhat "practical," even if just historically.