Popular Comments Across MetaFilter

By zardoz in ""Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."" on MeFi

zardoz — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 23:40:31 GMT

goddammit I just want healthcare

By adamrice in "How to have a frank convo about money with therapist" on Ask MeFi

adamrice — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:38:02 GMT

Just call and say "hey, I'm afraid money is tight and I need to suspend our sessions for the time being." That's it. You don't need to explain anything else, you don't need to convince anyone of anything.

By stilgar in ""I have watched students abandon their altruistic intentions"" on MeFi

stilgar — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:03:32 GMT

If you want to get rid of business schools, you have to create a culture that doesn't value greed above all things, here are some laws you could pass to do something like that....just planting seeds here.

top marginal tax rate 150% (if you make too much money you have to start paying fees)

Use diplomacy to set up a big enough group of nations to sanction tax havens that no single nation or state will set one up.

Adjust step up in basis so wealth is fully taxed at death, and then again when your children inherit it (as income).

Massive spending on public housing

Universal health care.

5% tax per year on total wealth for anyone who has more than a billion dollars, this goes up 5% every year until we no longer have billionaires.

Free college option in every state.

Free child care

Double or maybe triple elementary school teacher salaries

Unions are mandatory for any business with more than 10 employees

Businesses are prohibited from spending money on lobbying as a requirement of incorporation, and lose their business incorporation under the law if they are found to have done so.

Capital gains are taxed the same as income.

If you have an unoccupied home for more than 3 months of the year it has to pay double property taxes.

CEO's are prohibited from making more than 10 times what the lowest paid employee at the firm is paid.

32 hour work week

Minimum wage tied to inflation, and automatically adjusted every year.

No means testing for food assistance.

Workers get automatic voting seats on the board of businesses (for profit and non profit)

Federal minimum taxes so that companies can't move to different states to get lower taxes.

Mandatory 2 year ecological restoration service after high school before you go to your free college.

Robust anti-trust enforcement

Federal fund set up to allow workers to buy companies from the owners if they re-incorporate as coops

End the cap on social security tax

Set a maximum wealth of 10 million dollars

I am sure you can come up with a few more.

By eustatic in ""Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."" on MeFi

eustatic — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 23:24:46 GMT

this is the kinda shit nazis come up with just as they are losing the war to socialists who can churn out decent $15,000 evs, for the people, at mass scale

By Ferreous in "You can lead a protest to Bluesky, but you can't make it leave Instagram" on MeFi

Ferreous — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 20:01:11 GMT

The enemy owns the commons; that's the issue, not that we're holding a meeting on the commons.

By turbowombat in ""Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."" on MeFi

turbowombat — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 23:33:21 GMT

this is the automotive equivalent of a 4chan comment but I can't explain why

By unambivalence in "The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives" on MeFi

unambivalence — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:57:53 GMT

In case anyone else can't access the film because of region locking on nfb.ca, it is also here thanks to RadFem Video Archive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEJO7n15PQw

(ps I joined MetaFilter after lurking for a long time so I could post this :)

By Pyrogenesis in "Liberte, Egalite, Uh-Oh" on MeFi

Pyrogenesis — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:25:21 GMT

from what I remember they have a terrible problem with pensions - some enormous part of the the state budget must go to pensions

To repeat something that apparently must be repeated over and over: whenever you hear "welfare state is poor because of old people [or insert another random culprit]" you are reading deliberate and knowing propaganda, and what you should be actually hearing is "the state refuses to tax capital and would rather let old people die instead."

By Smedly, Butlerian jihadi in "E Pluribus Income" on MeFi

Smedly, Butlerian jihadi — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:17:06 GMT

The premise that education is just an investment that should be optimized for financial reward is deeply problematic, and more or less assumes a world in which everyone is competing with each other for scarce opportunities to serve capital in order to meet basic needs.

The question of what fields of education best benefit society is completely ignored, and what best benefits the individual is flattened to the sole consideration of financial return. Ethics, beauty, enjoyment, quality of life and other such considerations are nowhere to be found.

Maybe I'm just a radial hippie weirdo, but it seems to me that maybe there's a better way to do things.

By lalochezia in ""Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."" on MeFi

lalochezia — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:08:42 GMT

(apologies to gil scott heron)

a rat done bit my sister nell
but whiteys got a fast saloon

her face and arms began to swell
now whiteys car got a plume

i can't pay no doctor bills
watch whitey's car go go zoom

ten years from now I'll be payin' still
while whitey's still a fascist goon

By antibillionaire in ""I have watched students abandon their altruistic intentions"" on MeFi

antibillionaire — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 23:48:41 GMT

Absolutely bonkers that universities have created parallel tracks of knowledge where on one side, the side that legitimizes the university, you have to conduct rigorous, graduate-level research and defend it before your peers, and another track where you buy a degree and pretend that what you're doing is education.

By Seven Deadly Gins in "Liberte, Egalite, Uh-Oh" on MeFi

Seven Deadly Gins — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 19:50:38 GMT

Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First

By GenjiandProust in "Pigeons' vs AI in Breast cancer screenings" on MeFi

GenjiandProust — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 10:09:07 GMT

People wouldn't complain about the noise of the cooling system; instead they'd object to noise of the cooing system.

By uncleozzy in "Big Mess in TLS" on MeFi

uncleozzy — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:35:10 GMT

That's the stupidest private key I've ever heard in my life! That's the kind of thing an idiot would have on his website!

By cortex in "Big Mess in TLS" on MeFi

cortex — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 15:52:11 GMT

time traveler rushing into Matt Haughey's office in 1999 to tell him it's vitally important that he implement his little hobby blog in ColdFusion

By Zalzidrax in "Liberte, Egalite, Uh-Oh" on MeFi

Zalzidrax — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 19:24:31 GMT

If crimes do not justify crimes, then the state needs to set an example and lock-up the people who are maiming demonstrators.

And if you cannot make a state that is capable of locking up the law enforcement when it breaks the law, you concede the point to anarchism.

By Flaffigan in "Overdose Offsets" on MeFi

Flaffigan — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:36:08 GMT

I'm sorry but does the author think this is ethical? It's borderline criminal.

They should be giving away the product at a loss to disrupt the current market. Then when they've scaled up their users and boxed out the competition, start charging more than they were originally paying so you can save even more lives.

This is like very basic, which makes me think the author is not serious. Have they even talked to investors yet?

By phunniemee in ""Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."" on MeFi

phunniemee — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 23:27:23 GMT

Yes baby you can trust the evil man's flying car. Oh look, a cliff. Go try it.

By Frowner in ""They were loyal Democrats. Then came Gaza."" on MeFi

Frowner — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:22:10 GMT

Okay, it's true that we often have to belt up and vote for truly terrible people. I voted for Harris the genocidaire, for more money for baby-sniping and doctor-raping, because I felt that a second Trump presidency would be much worse.

I know we're re-litigating here but if voters don't understand holding their noses and voting, the Democratic Party doesn't understand failure points. If you tell people to hold their noses and vote every election, eventually a critical mass of them will get sick of it, no matter how much you hector them. This may be because those people are stupid, who knows, but it will happen as sure as the world. So don't create that failure point.

The Democratic party relies on Black voters. It would be much smarter for the Democratic party at the state and federal level to do some work on issues that seriously impact large percentages of Black Americans, like access to healthcare, unequal schools, racist court systems, etc, so that they could lock in those crucial voters. But instead it's all lip-service and hectoring. That means that when there's a testing situation, like inter-community conflict, you have a failure point - you haven't locked in people's loyalty, so they don't stay with you when there's conflict.

That's the Democrats all over - a refusal to forward plan. When your message for forty years is "vote for us or it will be WORSE", you are setting yourself up for failure. In 2016 and 2024, there were people who said "huh, what if the Democrats are just crying wolf, what if it's not really worse" and decided to test things, or just to stay home. There will always be people in that position, because that's how humans are. At the population level, that is what will happen, so you can't just say "well dumb people you better vote blue even if the candidate is bad".

~~
I add that it is frankly vile and dehumanizing to say "well, these people's actual kinfolk and co-religionists are getting slaughtered with our tax dollars and under our political protection, but they are just big dumb dopes if they won't vote for us". Some vomit you can't make yourself eat.

By wafehling in ""I have watched students abandon their altruistic intentions"" on MeFi

wafehling — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:47:42 GMT

Worked in finance for one year and I coulda told you this a week in. The pursuit of money above all else has driven these people literally insane.

They sit in offices. staring at spreadsheets, memorizing numbers, moving things around for the rich to keep them getting richer. It lacks any and all purpose or soul, it is truly hollow.

It is behavior encouraged only in a deeply sick, corrupt, inequal society, nothing less