My wife and I moved into our first house together on Halloween, 1995, so that night we drank a bottle of champagne, watched Young Frankenstein, and handed out candy. Every year since then we’ve done the same thing to celebrate our anniversary of living together, though sometime a different movie. This year, we couldn’t find our DVD, so decided to stream it and found what you did. Apparently Disney bought it and for some reason decided not to make it available. Very frustrating.

For those wondering, this appears to be true. Most sites that say it all reference the same person, whose study doesn’t seem very scientific, but I found this much more controlled study that did indeed replicate the conclusions.

That’s a good theory. It’s long been held that the more population dense area of the country skew liberal because diverse people jammed together learn to understand and get along with each other. You could make an argument that growing up on an internet with unfettered voices expressing themselves would be similar.

But the underlying racism that seems to fuel modern conservatism seems to be growing in all areas. I’m in California, which is about as blue as it gets, but like 40 percent of people voted for Trump.

I’ve been saying here for ages that the perception of boomers being overwhelmingly right wing and younger generations being overwhelmingly left wing is far, far from accurate. You can look at the demographic data from the prior two elections and see that, yes, there were more conservative boomers than liberal, but it’s not a big margin, and for younger generations it was flipped. Now it appears the younger folks are more conservative than liberal.

As a very liberal boomer, it’s been frustrating to get so many truly hateful responses, even recently, based on nothing other than the year I was born. I kept feeling like that level of intolerance didn’t bode well, and now I’m thinking that concern was validated.

What do you want to bet it’s like dimensions in Rift?

I read quite a bit, though it’s notched down a bit since my wife and adult son got me back into playing WoW in the evenings (we used to be away into it, then stepped away for some years). Like others have said, my book reading is 100% for pleasure, and I don’t feel bad if I don’t read, except that I feel reading is healthier downtime than WoW or TV.

A key for me is having some consistent times that I read. Most important for me is that I read in bed for about half an hour before going to sleep, and I find that that routine helps me go to sleep (I have trouble shutting my brain off). I take the dogs for a jog/walk on weekend mornings, and also consistently read for a while after I get back.

I read almost exclusively science fiction with a dash of fantasy. I’m an older guy, nearing retirement, and the only factor there is that our kids are grown and I can afford a gardener, so I have more free time than when I was younger.

Yes, Leckie writes SF. If you’re interested, I would start with Ancillary Justice, her first novel. It’s really good, and the first of a trilogy that’s all excellent.

I think you saw a post by me long ago where I posted my short notes about the books I’d read in that time frame. If you’d like me to pass along those notes for any of the books we talk about, like Leckie or the more recent Gibson novels, I’d be happy to.

And thanks for the offer. I’m good now, but who knows. An interesting time of change for me coming up: I retire in January after 39+ years at the same company, and sometime after we’re going to move from an area of southern California, where I’ve lived my whole life, to northern Washington State. Will be odd for sure.

Oh, good call, I did read those books and liked them quite a bit. Martine’s writing reminds me a bit of Ann Leckie, who I’ve read a lot of and like very much.

Hey, in know I’m just a guy on the internet who you talk about books with, but if you need to talk about more, I’m happy to listen. You might already have a good support network, which is great, but I know not everyone does.

Why does “gruntled” sound even more unhappy than “disgruntled?”

I’m sorry to hear life is having challenges for you at the moment, I hope that resolves soon. A nice thing about a book is that you can put it down for days, weeks, months, whatever, and it’s still waiting for you when you feel like coming back to it.

I’ve been reading more Gibson lately. I read the first two books of the Jackpot trilogy (the third hasn’t come out yet) and the first in the Blue Ant trilogy. They’ve all been very good.

You take care and I hope things get better for you.

That seems high, though I guess if they’re doing it in a state with high renewable energy, that’s what they’re using. It uses a crazy high amount of energy though.

I wonder what fraction of Bitcoin mining energy comes from renewable sources. I bet it’s teeny tiny.

Farting as you relax and when you bring your knees up towards your chest (common when you sleep on your side) is pretty normal. It might also be a timing thing based on when you go to bed relative to when you’ve eaten.

You might look into why you fart so much if it’s excessive. For instance, I have an odd food intolerance called fructose malabsorption - excess fructose doesn’t get digested, so it just ferments in my intestines. If I eat a lot of it, I’ll get massively painful diarrhea, but usually I just get some gas.

The same thing happens with people who are lactose intolerant: they can usually have some amount of lactose and they just get gassy, so some people don’t even realize they have it.

Other things can also cause unusual amounts of gas.

I used to think Elon was just an idiot for buying Twitter and running it into the ground, but now I wonder if he was completely successful in buying a giant megaphone and making sure it only broadcast his pro-Trump propaganda. What does he care if it’s not making as much money?

I admire your optimism, but what do you think will turn people away from Trump in 2026 that didn’t turn them away this year? It’s not like we haven’t already seen a Trump presidency.

Why without you think I didn’t?

For people who have 401Ks or other investments, the likely deregulation pushes up stock prices (which is why the stock market had a big bump this week). Oh, sure, those regulations help protect the environment, workers rights, worker health and safety, etc., but:

Hey, I’m completely on board with the fight. I 100% believe no one but the person and their doctor should be involved in any healthcare decisions, and I’m an advocate for women. I just think that this particular approach will accomplish nothing. The only people it will impact are the people who are already like-minded.

More women voted for Harris, but there was still a giant number of women who voted for Trump. The women who voted for him won’t do this and the women who didn’t vote for him wouldn’t have dated been who did anyway.

I know what neoliberalism is, but where does it suggest it applies to the majority of boomers?