Can you show me an interesting conversation?
(Only 369 programming posts?? http://www.metafilter.com/tags/programming)
Front Page Post about Article about the Maintainers of old technology, and discussion https://www.metafilter.com/158685/The-Work-That-Keeps-This-W...
Ask Post about sites for Downtime that don't deal with current events
https://ask.metafilter.com/294568/Fun-distracting-websites-f...
Here's an ask I thought was useful, mentions SICP for programming.
https://ask.metafilter.com/293313/What-is-the-critical-book-...
I guess for me it's a passionate engaged community of smart people, including some moderately famous ones.
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
Various sub-reddits... /r/machinelearning, /r/artificial, /r/semanticweb, /r/libertarian, /r/guns, /r/metal, etc.
FORUM.WATMM.COM which is a forum for ambient electronica.
FORUM.BODYBUILDING.COM for the Misc for the l0lz
Also LessWrong, though it's pretty quiet recently.