I too read the HN title and the contents of two comments as meatballs and was confused. I open the article and immediately "meta" jumped out from the heading (likely the larger font made it more clear), go back to check comments and they now read metaballs. My brain then crapped itself.
My brain was too busy trying to remember a movie released in 2017 titled "Meatballs" to crap itself.
Every time I see a graphics demo involving metaballs I read it as meatballs. Every. Time.