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.

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.

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

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 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:

It’s not something anyone can just do. America’s borders are more open than a lot of countries’. You have to apply, and it can be a multi-year process even if you do get accepted. It can cost money too.

The women in my life also say that it depends a bit on where. For instance, most just don’t want to be hit on at the gym.

Which is why so many women hate talking to men they don’t know: there’s so often that request for a date after even the most innocuous small talk.

This is a very cool and interesting list. Interesting enough to read from top to bottom, but in bite-sized chunks for people with limited time or short attention spans. Thanks for sharing!

The BBC and Reuters have both gone way, way downhill in recent years, but the concept is reasonably valid. AP and NPR are still good. Aljazeera is actually pretty decent for US news, though I’m not sure if that’s true for US news related to the middle east.

Reportedly he has a very worth of $50M. If that was just in investments getting 4 percent a year, that would be $2M annually for doing nothing. Kind of gross to stoop to that level for money when you have so much.

Courting the same demographic

No, some whoppers end up with the inside not all whipped and crunchy, but a little chewy. They’re great.