Given that this is a story about British Airways, I read that as the British meaning of the word “pants”. Which would make the story even more bizarre.

That XKCD person is clearly both of us :)

On tone - I wasn’t policing your tone, I was just surprised by your reaction so I wanted to make sure we weren’t misunderstanding each other. I still think you don’t really get where I’m coming from, but I also don’t really think you particularly care to. Which is fine. You do you. I’ll have another shot at explaining…

I hope I’m reading your tone wrong, but I’m detecting some hostility that I promise I do not share. If I’ve come off as dismissive or hostile myself, then I have failed to communicate in the tone I intended.

A Serious Man was very much about Jewishness, which I’d say counts as being about race. In that instance, I’d say the ethnicity of their casting choices mattered a great deal. To a lesser degree, I’d say the same of Fargo (where everyone’s Scandinavian heritage seemed to be a big theme).

Most of the other working writers.

Sounds like we’re on the same page. This is a big reason why I prefer foreign movies in general - people from different places tend to write different kinds of stories with different emphasis and different cultural baggage. So American movies tend to tell mostly a specific kind of American story - other countries…

Diversity is good. But it is also good to write what you know. The Coens are white, and so it is no surprise that they are better at writing from that perspective. That’s not a problem. The problem is that all the other writers in Hollywood have a very similar background.

I know it was lifted shamelessly from (the terrible movie) Enemy At The Gates, but the Crossing The Volga scene in the first CoD was one of the first times a game brought me to tears from the senseless waste of it all. Particularly the bit when you charge up the hill with no weapon after the artillery barrage.

Plus Tim Schaefer shamelessly squandered the budget away on the game

There’s also a selection bias going on here - many developers would go for a traditional publisher funding deal if they could get it. Publishers (generally) aren’t idiots - and often they have good reasons not to fund an idea.

He is the LAW!

Ireland had two female presidents in a row; both called Mary.

I would like this more if were science based and 100% dragon. Also an MMO.

I know this sounds a little like “why don’t you think of the men involved for once”, but really Planned Parenthood is good for everybody who is poor and wants to have safe sex. When I was a promiscuous-and-penniless student, I was able to go to Planned Parenthood for STI screenings and condoms.

I used to work on the solar panels on Satellites (for an American company, as will become obvious). The surface area of the solar panel was measured in square centimeters, but the thickness was in thousandths of an inch.

It later turned out to not be a stroke - but this video is something that should evoke concern, not mockery.

Given that old Joey Rats is basically Palpatine/Snoke with less power and more bling, I can see how conservative Catholics might take offense.

That’s what she gets for marrying the director.

I’m sorry, but if you’re seriously going to claim you expected some of the twists in there ahead of time, I’mma have to call shenanigans.