Popular Comments Across MetaFilter

By an octopus IRL in "Can breaking bread together help bridge political differences?" on MeFi

an octopus IRL — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 12:55:36 GMT

could you persuade someone with different views?

Idk man, I'm transgender and the idea of having dinner with someone so I can try to convince them to respect my basic human rights feels pretty demeaning. I think stuff like this is well-meaning but misguided; I'd love to believe that sitting around a table for a nice meal will lead to meaningful interpersonal connection and the healing of division but I am 100% not going to cede any ground on my rights and dignity and if they're not willing to respect that we don't really have much to say to each other.

By EndsOfInvention in "Binface vs Fascist dumpster fire: it is on" on MeFi

EndsOfInvention — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:30:00 GMT

With Count Binface being the only challenger, the people of Clacton face a stark choice: a gimmick candidate of questionable political skill, or a man with a bin on his head.

By AlSweigart in "Can breaking bread together help bridge political differences?" on MeFi

AlSweigart — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 12:51:50 GMT

We could avoid a lot of the ugliest aspects of politics if liberals would just hear out the people they disagree with and the media would sanewash right-wing perspectives. Have we ever tried that before?

By Pope Guilty in "Three Hundred Fifty-Four Fireworks per Second" on MeFi

Pope Guilty — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:09:47 GMT

All I know is that the Reflecting Pool is so full of toxic chemicals it's killing ducks and I gotta say, a misfire that sets the Reflecting Pool on fire like Lake Erie in the 70's would be the icing on the cake of this whole monthlong drama.

By EmpressCallipygos in "Biohacker Bryan Johnson Diagnosed With Incurable Autoimmune Gastritis" on MeFi

EmpressCallipygos — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 19:31:04 GMT

I think it's pretty distasteful to make fun of a guy who discovered he has an autoimmune disease. So he's kind of a weirdo and a little off-putting, we're gonna celebrate him getting a disease?

He is more than just "kind of a weirdo and a little off-putting". He is using his vast wealth - which he could be using to benefit the rest of humanity - to buy himself immortality in a literal sense. It's already obscene that he has as much money as he has, and that he is trying to extend his own lifespan by harvesting blood from his own son; the use to which he has put his money is not possible, and he is thus wasting that wealth because of an ego-driven need to exist, instead of helping others.

I and others in here have nothing but sympathy and support for anyone else suffering an autoimmune disease. In the case of this particular person, it seems like a just-deserts outcome.

By axiom in "Schism!" on MeFi

axiom — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 04:21:03 GMT

You got your popes and your antipopes, sure, but then we discovered up, down, charmed and strange popes. Top and bottom, too, but they only appear in the really liberal Catholic ~~sex~~ sects.

By an octopus IRL in "Three Hundred Fifty-Four Fireworks per Second" on MeFi

an octopus IRL — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:11:34 GMT

The people who are going to get screwed the most by this are of course residents of DC who have absolutely zero choice in the matter including no voting representation in Congress. They have no way to do anything to stop this abomination. I really appreciate the analysis here because I hadn't realized just how bad it's going to be, and I say that as someone who typically loves fireworks, but once again the largely Black very liberal (or at least Democratic) population of DC is suffering so the worst people in the country can feel special.

By The Bellman in "Schism!" on MeFi

The Bellman — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:43:31 GMT

Liam Hogan @ Bluesky:

Ad Rock: you can disagree with the current
All: POPE
MCA: but if you push his buttons then you're a
All: DOPE
Mike D: ordain yourself a bishop and you're
All: SCHISMATIC
Ad Rock: excommunication is
All: AUTOMATIC

By phunniemee in "75 Days to Challenge Yourself" on MeFi

phunniemee — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 16:00:28 GMT

READ 10 PAGES A DAY!

Some women at work got into 75 hard a couple years ago and started posting about it in our women in tech (i.e. all the women in the company) chat, which I found personally annoying. So I said something like hey I love hearing about things folks have done that have improved their lives, maybe we could all share a few things we're doing?

And then shared some things that I do, like make an effort to try one new thing every week even if it's silly and inconsequential, and to read or listen to at least one nf audiobook a month on a social justice topic, and to try and add one additional source of fiber to my meals. And a bunch of previously silent in chat women threw me heart reacts and started talking about their journaling projects or their pottery class or how they made a snack for the first time using chives they grew themselves, and suddenly this chat that had honestly sounded miserable and vaguely threatening became extremely positive. Women checked back in for months with things like "I read that book you recommended, Vicky!" and "who told me to use coffee grounds in my garden, I forgot but I love it!"

By AzraelBrown in "Free Thread: What are your crowd-pleasing party foods?" on MeFi

AzraelBrown — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:36:37 GMT

should this be in Ask Mefi?

Every Free Thread is an AskMeFi -- but without the rules!

Happy birthday DOT!

I have a cheeseburger recipe which is pretty much just hamburger, garlic and Worcestershire sauce, and they're always requested when people come over, and we have them roughly weekly just us at home because they're easy and tasty. Are they the best? Eh, I don't know, but I'm thinking that they're different enough from most other recipes, which lean heavier on pepper and onion, that they get the Seal of Approval from everyone who's had one.

Late-In-Life Film Student Update (Dramatically Long):

I've probably mentioned the old vaudeville theater turned movie theater cum nonprofit arthouse cinema here in town before; I volunteer there as an usher and help with their Big International Film Festival. My parents took me to see my first movie there, The Muppet Movie. It's also my sister's first movie memory, The Princess Bride. Our son's best memory of it is when we took him, at about age 13, to a midnight showing of the banned and uncensored The Interview. Its name is the same as the city it's in, so its sign has become the de facto logo for the area.

Last Friday I was there at 11am, not a normal time to be at the cinema, to be one of three people in the entire building.

But, let's go back a bit: last winter I took an online cinematography class through NYU-Tisch. One assignment was to shoot a dialogue-free short film of someone looking for something, trying to get something, or otherwise on a quest. I called up my professor-actor-friend who is always down for being in a student movie, and we spent an hour filming him looking for his car in a parking ramp, having forgotten where he parked.

The assignment didn't require actually making the film, just shooting it, so I didn't even record audio on set. I thought it turned out pretty good, so I thought maybe someday I'd feel like editing it into something more.

Then this spring came a different Local Film Festival, a small, scrappy one held in a small art gallery, where everyone who helped set it up, all six of us, got a few minutes to show something of our own, not for award or anything, just to have a free audience. I decided, hey, I should finish the Lost Car film. I edited it, just four minutes ten seconds, and since I didn't get any sound during filming I foley'ed everything. Eh, I thought it turned out fine.

The audience reaction at the scrappy film festival was much better than I expected. I hadn't realized how universal the experience of forgetting where you parked your car is and how funny it'd be to see it taken to an illogical extreme. This encouraged me to submit to some real film festivals, you know, ones I'm not working for.

So, we're back to 11am at the ex-vaudeville theater. I was one of the three people there; my professor-actor-friend was the other, and the third was the projectionist.

See, real theater movie projectors don't play any MP4 or Youtube link you give it. It needs a "DCP", a specially formatted file designed to get the best output on these professional projectors.

I took a SMPTE class on creating DCPs, technically I'm certified in the format, I did all the homework but had never made a real one outside of class.

But -- Lost Car got accepted to a film festival! Like, one I'm not even involved in! So I needed to make a DCP! By July 7th! Which I did -- but had no real way to be sure I did it right.

I called in a favor with my favorite movie theater: can I preview my DCP? They said, send it over, we'll put it up on the screen for you to see how it turned out.

So, there I sat, in the dark, in the theater I was first in almost 50 years ago, watching something that I MADE up on the big screen. My film's star also said something surprising: he'd never seen himself on a big screen either. He's mostly done stage and television and student projects and voiceovers, nothing where you'd see him in a movie theater.

We sat and laughed and reminisced about the shoot day, and we even heard the projectionist laugh a few times. A private show, just for us, of my first film to get accepted to a film festival.

(The DCP file looked great; the projectionist had some advice, things I hadn't thought of, so the new one I made should work well going forward).

By AlSweigart in "Can breaking bread together help bridge political differences?" on MeFi

AlSweigart — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 15:55:33 GMT

I Tried to Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends.

PARKLAND, Fla. — My first interaction with Nikolas Cruz happened when I was in seventh grade. I was eating lunch with my friends, most likely discussing One Direction or Ed Sheeran, when I felt a sudden pain in my lower back. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of my 90-pound body; tears stung my eyes. I turned around and saw him, smirking. I had never seen this boy before, but I would never forget his face. His eyes were lit up with a sick, twisted joy as he watched me cry.

The apple that he had thrown at my back rolled slowly along the tiled floor. A cafeteria aide rushed over to ask me if I was O.K. I don't remember if Mr. Cruz was confronted over his actions, but in my 12-year-old naïveté, I trusted that the adults around me would take care of the situation.

[...] I am writing this because of the disturbing number of comments I've read that go something like this: Maybe if Mr. Cruz's classmates and peers had been a little nicer to him, the shooting at Stoneman Douglas would never have occurred.

A year after I was assaulted by Mr. Cruz, I was assigned to tutor him through my school's peer counseling program. [...] Despite my discomfort, I sat down with him, alone. I was forced to endure his cursing me out and ogling my chest until the hourlong session ended. When I was done, I felt a surge of pride for having organized his binder and helped him with his homework.

Looking back, I am horrified. I now understand that I was left, unassisted, with a student who had a known history of rage and brutality.

I think about the recent photo of a young black woman sitting in the train surrounded by dozens of masked Patriot Front members going to DC. Should she try to engage them in conversation? Try to win over hearts and minds?

Y'all are talking about chatting up the KKK, a terrorist group responsible for numerous murders over the course of a hundred years, often with the support of law enforcement and judges?

Why is it that I never see journalist outlets and well-meaning liberals advocate for a lunchtime sit down with Al-Qaeda or ISIS? Oh, is it outrageous for me to put the KKK in the same circle as them? Why is that?

Until they are under the threat of prison, subpoena, or at least social ostracism, they aren't going to give you dialogue, they'll give you a cruel smirk.

By nebulawindphone in "should we allow links from...monsters?" on MetaTalk

nebulawindphone — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 04:55:34 GMT

So I'm a trans woman, and I think I've done my share of arguing against transphobia on this site, and I feel pretty strongly that we shouldn't be expecting anyone to google "Is X a transphobe" about the author of everything they post here. The sort of site where everyone feels required to do that is not the sort of site I want to be on, and pushing everyone to do it is not a kind of allyship that feels helpful or supportive to me personally. This is obviously an issue where reasonable people can disagree, but my own personal take is, no, let's not do that.

By runsrealgood in "Can breaking bread together help bridge political differences?" on MeFi

runsrealgood — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 14:11:29 GMT

I was at a table last night, ostensibly with allies, and someone raised the old "both sides" canard and I became the observably heated person at the table. Then they're talking about cat litterboxes in classrooms and I kind of lose it.. How quickly, people repeat total garbage just because someone they know (a daughter in this case, who "heard it from a teacher in Calgary") shares some total Facebook lie. This is the 2nd time someone has said to my face that we're putting catboxes in classrooms, at the dining table, and I despair.

And the Overton window just keeps shifting, so even the most tepidly reasonable "let's just not hate and persecute other groups and maybe slow down how we're heating the planet and stop genociding" becomes the radical left position. And we're supposed to break bread with the brainwashed and the gleefully hateful monsters?

I do not have a solution. At this rate, I'm among those they'll round up for being antifa. Laughable, I'm 1970s conservative Canadian for all intents.

By yellowcandy in "Would cops ever stop doing wellness checks for long distance relatives" on Ask MeFi

yellowcandy — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 01:24:40 GMT

I had a friend who went through this. She documented everything, then filed a formal police report and made sure she used the phrase "false reporting to police" several times, and had a lawyer send a copy of the report to her harasser. The checks stopped immediately.

By Fidel Cashflow in "Biohacker Bryan Johnson Diagnosed With Incurable Autoimmune Gastritis" on MeFi

Fidel Cashflow — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 19:12:03 GMT

I think it's pretty distasteful to make fun of a guy who discovered he has an autoimmune disease. So he's kind of a weirdo and a little off-putting, we're gonna celebrate him getting a disease? People need to touch grass.

By phunniemee in "75 Days to Challenge Yourself" on MeFi

phunniemee — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 14:24:43 GMT

Currently I'm practicing 75 Sips of This Iced Coffee

By Wordshore in "Binface vs Fascist dumpster fire: it is on" on MeFi

Wordshore — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:33:40 GMT

Guardian Politics Live: [The Chancellor Rachel] Reeves has now confirmed that she will go ahead and accept the resignation [of Farage]. She is ignoring the Liberal Democrats, who want her to become the first chancellor since 1842 to block the process.

In a post on social media, Reeves says:

I will accept Nigel Farage's request to be appointed Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.

It is a farce and a desperate distraction, and the people of Clacton deserve better.

But if he wants to spend the summer arguing with a bin, I won't stop him.

By hal9k in "Schism!" on MeFi

hal9k — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 07:28:48 GMT

The society rejects central changes that emerged from the Second Vatican Council... including allowing mass to be celebrated in local languages. Until then it had been said only in Latin.

However, the live stream of Wednesday's ceremony, carried out in French, was translated into English, German, Italian and Polish. During the offertory, a QR code appeared on the screen so that those following remotely could make donations.

They reject Second Vatican but accept major credit cards.

By entropone in "Heat vs. cold" on Ask MeFi

entropone — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 11:49:10 GMT

Far more people die of freezing than overheating.
---
Heat is uncomfortable, but it has to get extraordinarily hot to be hazardous to someone's health.

Lots of incorrect stuff in this thread!

In the USA, more people die of heat than of all other natural disasters combined.
In my major US city, heat contributes to 3% of all deaths during warm season.
In Chicago in 1995 there was a heat wave that killed nearly 1,000 people in a few days.
Most heat-related illnesses happen during hot (80s) but not extreme (90s+) temps.
Feel free to DM me if anybody would like citations!

I think the answer to the OP's question is because for much of human history, stuff like this was not really the case, and attitudes are slow to change. Dangerous cold temps are more common than dangerous hot temps in many places, and many societies are built around mitigating dangerous cold temps (buildings! heating! clothes!). Dangerous cold is a very solved problem: stay inside, and your landlord isn't allowed to cut off your heat.

The problem is that:

The needle is moving in many places. Dangerous hot temps are getting more common, and crucially -
It's not a solved problem! Indoor temps can kill people as readily as outdoor temps - faster, even, because buildings can heat up and retain heat, and the most vulnerable people often stay inside - but we don't have society-wide building cooling as effectively as we have building-heating.

By phunniemee in "Biohacker Bryan Johnson Diagnosed With Incurable Autoimmune Gastritis" on MeFi

phunniemee — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 19:50:54 GMT

You guys don't understand. This guy's diet is already 80% vitamins and supplements, and you want him to take another vitamin or supplement to manage this??? It's simply too much!