Someday, when I'm rich enough to turn eccentric, I want a pool filled with sting rays. They're wonderful creatures.

When I first saw this picture, I assumed it was fake. It's too beautiful and expansive to seem real. It's literally awesome.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 10:31 AM on July 1, 2008

I don't know why people hate this movie so much.

I never saw the original Indiana Jones films when I was a kid. I only saw them a few years ago, and, man, they involved ridiculous physics, horribly annoying sideplots, terrible one-liners, and unbelievable adventures. ....And that's exactly what The Crystal Skull keeps getting criticized for. It's led me to the conclusion that anyone who thinks this movie is a disgrace to the original Indiana Jones... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 9:55 PM on June 18, 2008

I'm confused. If this is a hoax or something, why were there newspaper ads?
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 6:06 PM on June 11, 2008

I know it probably won't get anything real accomplished, I know it's useless... But, dang it felt good to see it happen.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 8:42 PM on June 9, 2008

That was extremely painful to read, in places. But thanks for posting it.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 10:01 PM on June 6, 2008

I was wondering about the dehydrated babies.. Was that just a complete gaffe, or is there some reason why dehydrated babies should specifically be given hot water?
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 3:26 PM on June 5, 2008

A few years ago, back when my SO and I were first starting to date, he asked me to help him make a resume-like website. At the time, he didn't even own a computer, so the internet was a big of a strange thing to him. So, as part of the process, I got a picture of him, and I showed him how I was editing it to get it online. Basic things, like how I was going to edit the size. So, I opened photoshop and explained some of the different tools to him.

His eyes got wide.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 11:00 AM on May 30, 2008

Are they trying to make Orangina look like pee in that video?
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 9:48 AM on May 23, 2008

Your second link, the one by Stephen Crippen, disagrees with Martin Hoffman, an expert in the field whose definitions are pretty standard in the (limited) research I've done. Hoffman claims that empathy is both the understanding of another's condition and feeling something that is more appropriate to their condition than one's own (as in.. We use the words both ways, not that these must both occur for one to be appropriately described as feeling empathy). Sympathy, on the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 1:59 PM on May 22, 2008

Hey, folks! I was a totally obese 12 year-old. Well... I was a totally obese kid from grade 8 to about age 15. But 12 is the age I remember the best: when I was 12, I weight 180 pounds.

The thing is, when you are a totally obese 12 year-old, you don't need to be told. You know. Every single day, every single event of your life revolves around the fact that you take up more space than you're supposed to. Every single meal is punctuated by the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 9:12 AM on May 22, 2008

(There are some errors in what I said. First off, I meant "weighed" at that one point where I said "weight." Second, I don't know why I said "grade 8 to age 15." That should be "age 8 to 15." Huh.)
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 9:20 AM on May 22, 2008

I am completely against having different sizes of bills. When I've been in countries with bills like that, it drove me batty that I couldn't get them to all line up perfectly in my wallet or what-have-you. It wasn't neat and tidy. It rankled me. Rankled, I tell you!

But it really seems like some sort of change would be easy to manage.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 9:46 AM on May 20, 2008

What if I took a $1 bill, some scissors, and went to town? Would I then be able to convince any blind people that I was actually handing them a $100? The change would have to be something difficult to counterfeit.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 3:36 PM on May 20, 2008

There was some book I was reading several years ago (I forget all details beyond that). It was making the point, for some reason or another, that the English words for 'big' and 'small' are a bit backwards. In many languages, something akin to the i sound in "big" shows up in words meaning small, because it's a tiny, quick sound. And something akin to the a sound in 'small' shows up in words meaning big, because it's a very loooong sound. English just had to be quirky about it,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 9:55 AM on May 20, 2008

I wasn't too impressed with the lolmanuscripts, but Rhaomi's link to loltapestries is hilarious.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 2:31 PM on May 14, 2008

I really, very dearly hate the "It's [generic female experience] good!" commercials.

I'd like to spend some more time expressing just why I hate them so much, but that video pretty much explained it.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 11:20 PM on May 9, 2008

I widened my eyes as much as I could out of pure joy. I love Buttercup Festival so much!

Thanks for informing me of this -- it would've taken me forever to find out for myself.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 8:28 PM on January 28, 2008

Buttercup Festival has always filled me with a sense of youthful whimsy. The world of Buttercup Festival is one in which everything has a point of view -- the toast, the butterflies, the moldy strawberries. Usually, those points of view are joyful, showing appreciation just for the bare privilege of existing and thinking. Sometimes, those points of view are a little more depressing, but, even then.. It's just a depressed piece of toast, and it's okay for toast to sometimes feel a little down.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 9:29 AM on January 29, 2008

So, I had left for the airport around, hmm.. 7am. And I was in college at the time, when 7am was about five hours earlier than my normal wake-up time. I had to sit in the airport for a while, and then I got onto the plane.

And then The Oyster Man sat next to me.

He was a man whose job involved analyzing oysters. He loved his job. He decided he had to tell me all about the oysters. And then he had to tell me about his life, in the 60s, when... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 4:48 PM on January 7, 2008

"Men are programmed by nature to look for woman who are most capable of creating healthy babies - hence the immense interest in shapely women - the less clothes the less chance they are getting fooled. Women are programmed to mate with those who have the best potential for providing good dominant genes and supporting their offspring."

I just felt like pointing out that this is pretty closely related to highly contentious claims. The whole "coy... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 10:07 AM on December 30, 2007

Q: Does Sherlock Holmes smoke a pipe?
A: Of course not! Concepts don't have mouths!

Ahahaha!

Ha...?

Look, it's the best joke about the importance of context when discussing non-existent/fictional entities that I could come up with. Hmpf.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 8:29 PM on December 27, 2007

Woo-hoo! This game took a boring evening of watching SNL and turned it into a distracted evening of watching SNL while playing an online game!

I like it.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 11:03 PM on December 1, 2007

I read the thread until now and saw a lot of stuff I almost want to respond to, but really don't. However, I liked what madamjujujive said, so I thought I'd chime in.

There's no winning here. If I point out that the material is offensive whether or not it actually looks like a gang rape, and that it speaks to what it means to be a woman, and that it is inexcusable for many different reasons, then I'm easily dismissed: either I'm... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 1:04 AM on October 21, 2007

The heart, it breaks from all the awwwwww.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 9:21 PM on September 27, 2007

Huh. I didn't read the others, but I found the interview with Hitler really interesting. It's so hard to understand how a whole dang country fell in love with that horrible little man, and it's hard to remember that there was a time when his name wasn't associated with millions of deaths. That interview gave some good perspective into what people thought Hitler represented before he had made his name for himself in history.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 2:34 PM on September 20, 2007

People are free to be evil, cruel, sadistic. People are not free to take that out on others. They're souls are their own for whatever best they see fit to believe and feel. But they're bodies, in so far as they can affect other bodies, are not. I can sit here wishing for you to have pain inflicted upon you all I want, but the moment that I move from pure wishing to actually harming you is the moment that I have broken the most basic rules of society, of human interaction. I can be a person... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 12:13 PM on July 27, 2007

Norilskrussia.net would be a fantastically disturbing/intriguing description of the city if, you know, it provided even one citation or, maybe, fewer descriptions of beggars with "three arms and lizard skin."
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 10:43 AM on June 21, 2007

I fear a world where there are no options other than Wikipedia, The Awesome Source of Widsom and Truth, and three-armed, lizard-skinned beggars.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 10:57 AM on June 21, 2007

Oh, Descartes said no such thing! But he really can't stop you from thinking he did.
posted to MetaFilter by Ms. Saint at 1:57 PM on June 19, 2007