Best Of MetaFilter

"there's 2 ways I usually remove movement from dead characters ..." Member 5_13_23_42_69_666 answers DirtyOldTown's Ask Mefi question about techniques used for hiding the breathing of "dead" characters on TV and film.

Photo by Ellen Klages This is a sort of follow up to the post about how people are handling possessions in their twilight years. But this post is about a single possession, a ham. It had been hanging in a basement for 20 years and with the passing of the "owner", decisions had to be made what to do with it, as seen in this post by davidmsc. Fair warning, there are photos of the "scary ham"!

Photo by manuel m. v. on Flickr

nouvelle-personne has an extremely helpful and in-depth answer to the question of how to talk with kids about the end-of-life stage of an elder loved one.

Photo by Sergey Nikolaev on Unsplash

Interesting conversation on Kitteh's post We Need to Rewild the Internet, about the desiccating corporate "pathology of command and control" that has choked, flattened and ravaged the once-lush sprawl of online diversity.

Hydropsyche created a post about life after running and how athletes cope with age. In the comments, gmatom shared the moving story of her and her wife and how they fell in love with running through the course of their marriage. This love continued through the awful arrival of cancer and dwindling health to cross a personal finishing line of their own making.

gentlyepigrams posted "My Parents Are Dead: What Now?", a resource with useful advice and links for folks who are working through one of the awful parts of adult life.

Greek and Roman epitaphs can be touching. They can also, in the case of Allia Potestas, even be risqué. But they can also be horribly, incredibly embarrassing -- as in the case of Aphrodisios of Alexandria Troas ... Mefites discuss an ancient death — and odd elegy.

paduasoy has posted the London Medieval Murder Map to scratch your 14th-century murders-most-foul demographics itch

Slow dancing: No music, no partner by brendan ó sé

So I'm a family doc and I've spent the last ten years doing addiction & HIV medicine out of a syringe exchange in a large city on the east coast. Fentanyl has been the predominant street-obtained opioid for several years here, often combined with xylazine ... Expect this to spread much more widely. A heartfelt and incisive comment, in which, point by point, Richard Saunders addresses the bleak situation surrounding the Fentanyl crisis.

Queen Elizabeth coronation ceremony, 1953

Queen Elizabeth illness and death discussion is here

Snorkel en Rojas by almirot (cc by)

Scuba and snorkel instructor here. I have had reservations about the full face masks since they came out: danapiper comments in the Drowning in three feet of water thread.

Travelling through magic(Le voyage enchanté) by PATRICE OUELLET (cc by-nc-nd)

There's not a lot of research on this, because it can't be monetized and grief is hard to quantify in order to measure ... Lyn Never with some extremely insightful commentary on understanding grief in lab.beetle's Ask Metafilter post Can you help a friend with how hard and confusing grief can be?

Memento Mori Acte (1630-1685) - Acte I _DDC6273.JPG by Abode of Chaos (cc by)

Filthy light thief explores the history, art, tradition, and evolution of the obituary.

Two women pose with their skeleton friend by simpleinsomnia (cc by)

Have you felt it? It's been creeping up on us for some time now: Memento Mori October, a month worth of spooky posts by filthy light thief and Johnny Wallflower.

Robin Williams (21 de Julio de 1951 - 11 de Agosto de 2014) -"Prefiero morir como hombre, a vivir una eternidad como una maquina". -"Como el gran Andrew Martin solía decir, UNO se alegra de haberlo conocido". El Hombre Bicentenario #robinwilliams by BlackAdegan (cc by)

Among many stories and reminiscences, some members recall their IRL experiences with Robin Williams, "mensch, great talent... genuine soul"¹:

PareidoliaticBoy: "I drove Robin Williams from Whistler to Vancouver in my limo days , and can testify to the man's utterly non-stop manic creativity. This happened on a day when the entire infrastructure of the ski-tourism transport-business, continent-wide, had been struck a massive blow; with a snow-storm which had closed airports from Denver to New York for most of the day, with the resulting missed connections, and badly-snarled plans of anyone unlucky enough to be attempting to travel that day. ...Where other celebrities might have pulled a fit, Robin Williams made everyone he encountered on that chaotic day happy just to be alive in that place, at the time."

kanata: "He came up to us to play the "what breed are your dogs" game that everyone plays with rescue mutts. He came across as such a down to earth guy and later went out of his way to sign autographs for people at the nearby coffee shop."

Malla: "My husband was making a little video for a coworker goodbye party ... Williams not only agreed to be in the goodbye video, he was hilarious and sincere and very charming. A true gent."

Durhey: "my first job in the gaming industry was as phone tech support for EA ... After the executives told us about the plans for the coming year, they brought out a surprise special guest, none other than Robin Williams. He came out and just went off on a long improvised comedy routine about playing Medal of Honor, cocaine, and maybe hundreds of other topics. It was a real treat after talking to irate customers on the phone all day..."

Oneswellfoop: "Pointing straight at me, he said, in his most formal announcer's voice: "Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Tilden!" It wasn't the biggest laugh of the evening, not a familiar enough cultural reference, but I made sure to laugh, then I whispered to my date, who'd laughed like she got the joke, "Who's Bill Tilden?""

goofyfoot: "The club was right next to my bus stop and had plate glass windows. I could watch, but not hear. One night he faced me and made an aside to the audience, then gave me an exaggerated wave while the audience busted up. I curtsied, and have always wondered what he said."

essexjan: "Weirdly, today at around noon I was driving through Pennsylvania on my way back from Boston to Ohio when I thought of him. We were driving near the town where a friend of mine used to live before he moved to Virginia. A few years ago a movie had been made about my friend's life and Robin Williams played my friend in that movie."

too bad you're not me: "Someone at the hospital where my brother was being treated got us in touch with the Make A Wish foundation. My brother's wish? To meet Robin Williams. ... During lunch, I remember how nice Robin was to my brother, and to my parents. He didn't treat my brother like a sick kid--that's what sticks out to me the most. That, and how unimpressive the on-set catering was. But hey, I was ten, and I think I expected caviar and frog legs or something."

macrael: "The house we ended up moving to was in the Castro, it's previous tenant: one Robin Williams. ... In the yard, there was a little play house that I went over to and he immediately came up to the window and started pretending like he was a city health inspector and that I was selling bad burgers. Or something. I don't know any of the details but my parents remember him being just hilarious, doing a little bit at the drop of a hat, joking with a 2 year old about health code violations."

psoas: "... on the day I decided I first wanted to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge I either didn't bother asking anyone to join me or couldn't find any takers. I was about halfway across when a large sky-blue blur whizzed past me and I felt myself almost lose my balance..."

kinetic: "she said, 'Robin Williams is here and he's hanging out and I don't know, maybe he's gonna go on.' So I tore down to The Improv and sat with my sister and her friends as a few hacks got up there and did their bits. ... And then Robin Williams ran onto the stage and I HAVE NO WORDS..."

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