Any Redditors on here? I am, because in the enshittified web, it’s often the only place I can get a fairly simple question about cooking or styling or whatever answered. Because I don’t want to spend my whole life there, I’m not in many groups, but one I am in is Boomers Being Fools. For the comic relief.
Friends? Fellow boomers? We are not well-liked by the youngsters.
I believe I’ve said before what my answer is when I hear younger people accuse my generation of getting all the jobs and buying all the cheap houses and then pulling up the ladder behind them, etc. I tell them that I’m very sorry that happened, that I missed the generation-wide meeting where that was discussed and voted upon, and then, if I’m feeling puckish, I’ll mention that the guy who informed my newspaper that we were phasing out pensions and going to 401Ks was way older than me.
But I signed up for the 401K! Glad I did.
Anyway, Boomers Being Fools is a ridiculous Reddit group, with the tone of petulant children. I was on an airplane and there was this whiny boomer lady or I had to spend time in the hospital and the boomer in the semiprivate room turned on Fox News or a boomer cut me off in a parking lot, etc. It’s actually kind of fun to read, and realize how sensitive today’s young people are. I try to please and thank-you my way through life. I don’t recline my seat on airplanes. I return the cart to the cart corral. I try not to be a Karen, and now I have to try not to be a boomer. It’s no use, I fear.
So, we watched “Mountainhead” on HBO over the weekend. You might have heard about it — a feature film written and directed by the “Succession” showrunner, and dealing with the same subject matter, i.e. the ultrarich and the blithe path of destruction they leave in their wakes, as well as their utter lack of self-awareness. (True fact, not in the movie: Jeff Bezos’ $500 million yacht travels with another, $100 million yacht as a tender. It contains all the toys for the guests on the big yacht — the Jet Skis, etc. — as well as the helipad. It recently traveled to Cannes, where Lauren Sanchez, Bezos’ girlfriend, was to receive some sort of award for her “environmental advocacy.”)
It wasn’t a four-star movie, but I’d give it a solid three, three and a half. A lot of the surrounding publicity is about how fast it was written, filmed and produced, as so much of this world defies and outruns satire, but the punches did land. The outline: Four of these tech titans are having a boys’ weekend at the mountaintop home of one, the poorest of the lot as a mere $500 millionaire. In the background, the world outside is burning because the richest of the quartet, plainly an Elon stand-in, has released an updated version of his social network that allows for undetectable deepfakes that have plunged much of the globe into chaos. He doesn’t give a shit, of course. The one with the slightest trace of a conscience has an AI product that could help users tell fact from fake, but he won’t sell it because the longer he holds out and the world burns, the richer he gets. The fourth member of the group is the elder, has a cancer whose reality he hasn’t accepted because he’s convinced transhumanism is around the corner and he can be uploaded into immortality.
In other words, pretty much the kind of poker weekend you have with your friends, right?
Atlantic story about “Mountainhead,” in gift-link form.
Now our week begins. Supposed to actually get above 70 tomorrow, if you can believe that forecast.
Dorothy said on June 1, 2025 at 8:58 pm
I have not heard of Mountainhead; I tried to get into Succession but found the characters insufferable. I may try again someday as it has so many rabid fans, but not this month.
We did start Department Q on Netflix and it’s excellent. I’d binge it if I could but hubs has the habit of falling asleep in front of every single show we watch together. That’s no fun. I like to have a conversation about shows that we both enjoy. If he misses 40% of the show what is there to talk about? So we’ve seen the first two episodes (well, he saw the first one and maybe 70% of the second one) and I can’t wait to see the rest. Anyone else seen it?
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Jeff Borden said on June 1, 2025 at 9:32 pm
We watched the first episode, but didn’t find it engaging. I want to give it more time.
This season of “Dark Winds” has embraced a lot of supernatural elements related to the ancient beliefs of indigenous people. If you haven’t sampled it, the program has my recommendation. Zahn McClarnon is a riveting lead as a lieutenant in the Navajo police in the ’70s. The cast is almost exclusively indigenous actors.
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alex said on June 1, 2025 at 9:47 pm
I have totally not been escaping into the escapism of TV and cinema or novels. I’ve been digging into the dirt of my garden, clicking through the bazillions of e-mails that clog my computer — without reading most of them, and planning getaways and respites from the tedium of my life turned upside down by Trumpism. Maybe I should just go back to being a chronic stoner like I was way back when life was relatively normal.
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Ann said on June 1, 2025 at 10:10 pm
Great piece about the evil tech bros and their stupid ideas here, https://biblioracle.substack.com/p/were-not-going-to-colonize-mars
I’m on reddit but there’s enough boomer hate there without me going looking for it. My latest favorite subreddit is r/askhistorians but I probably spend more time on all the wedding drama subreddits.
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Brandon said on June 1, 2025 at 10:18 pm
At this point boomer can mean any out-of-touch middle-aged or older person, regardless of their belonging to the actual Baby Boom generation. There’s a lot of grumbling now on Boomers Being Fools about Joni Ernst, who’s actually an Xer.
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basset said on June 2, 2025 at 5:53 am
I spend way too much time on a variety of Reddit subs, /r/antiwork being the one that would most likely resonate here, andthere’s always a good distraction to fall into when I should be doing something useful.
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Jeff Gill said on June 2, 2025 at 8:10 am
Seconding cousin Jeff’s endorsement of “Dark Winds”; the sixth episode of this past season was a tour de force of storytelling, symbolism, acting, staging, you name it. Surreal as a David Lynch piece, but in the larger arc of the season & show, it pays of in ways Lynch rarely was willing to concretize.
On yachts, burning worlds, and everyday people who are sometimes Boomers, I can only say: Carl Hiaasen. “Squeeze Me” & “Fever Beach,” his last two, touch often on current events in transmogrified but easy recognizable form.
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Dexter Friend said on June 2, 2025 at 8:55 am
18 months of smuggling in drones, waiting until it was all ready-set-go, and Zelenskyy showed Trump he sure as hell did have cards to play, as Russia’s air defense system airplanes were destroyed in great numbers this weekend. Political experts today are saying that war will continue long after Trump is dead or put to pasture.
I watch all sorts of programming, from a Robert Crumb interview from the 92nd Street Y, to the last MI movie with Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg. I watch Britbox, and anything that captures my imagination on any of the streaming services. I did not watch Entourage, Mad Men, or Mountaintop. I have seen a few Jon Hamm shows, the latest, about neighbors, is most excellent. Hamm’s character is fired and he takes up a new occupation…and shit goes bad, quickly.
But MLB rules the programming guide. Last night, Yankees-Dodgers, and always, any Guardians, Tigers, or Redlegs games.
People are always saying baseball is slow, dead, done-for. Yeah? Last night all decks at Dodger Stadium were packed, and ticket prices have skyrocketed. So while mid-week games played in cold rain draw sparsely, sun-drenched June games in Wrigley Field, as yesterday, draw overflow standing-room only crowds, and even the across-the-street roof-top bleachers were full. Well, to each your own, even spring football games are drawing 30,000 in St. Louis.
But if I had a time machine, I would go here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTXoTnp_5sI
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Suzanne said on June 2, 2025 at 9:33 am
We binged on HBO Max’s The Pitt this week. It’s a day in an emergency department in a Pittsburgh hospital. It’s excellent. It also turns out that the hospital it is loosely based on is the same hospital where my wonderful oncologist did his residency.
I watched part of Succession and while it is very entertaining, the people are all horrible and I know that these are the very people running our world today. I found it depressing.
I will have to try Dark Winds. I have been escaping reality by reading a lot, trying to find some sort of meaning in a world that is spinning out of control.
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Jeff Gill said on June 2, 2025 at 9:41 am
Warning on “Dark Winds”: it is set on the Navajo/Dine Reservation in the early 1970s, but other than the age of the police vehicles (which could in that desert setting just be old if not vintage trucks), they don’t spend much time giving you cues. You’ll figure it out, but I’ve had friends confused early on before that data point landed for them.
And if you know the Tony Hillerman novels that are the basis for Leaphorn & Chee, gently set them aside. These stories use the same context, but very much make their own choices. Hillerman’s daughter Anne, who has continued the series and really helped develop Bernie into a more well-rounded character, comments from time to time on Facebook as the episodes air. As she says, the credits may say she’s an executive producer, but some of the twists surprise her just as much as we are. Anne is a supporter of the new directions they’re going . . . but interestingly they chose not to update the time frame, and are working things out in a c. 1971 context.
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Dorothy said on June 2, 2025 at 9:44 am
Dexter on BritBox I recently discovered the very old Prime Suspect series with Helen Mirren. We watched each one when they were new in 1991 (!!!) and beyond. She did 8 seasons – a ‘season’ was just 2 episodes. They hold up. The sexism against Jane Tennison when she came on board to lead a murder investigation – I’m happy that seems to have resolved in most places. I have some minor quibbles with it but I’ve watched 6 episodes (seasons 1, 2 and 3) and they’re still as good as they were 30 some years ago.
I’m glad I knit, or stitch something on a quilt, while watching tv. Otherwise I could never just sit and watch. Multi tasking is ingrained in me. For some shows, though, I have to just watch. Department Q is one of them – the looks between characters speak volumes, and those Scottish accents are hard to follow so the closed captioning helps. And you can’t knit and also watch good t.v. So that kind of watching happens at night when I’m probably tired from other stitching during the day.
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Deborah said on June 2, 2025 at 9:47 am
I watched the first 2 seasons of Dark Winds but now I can’t figure out how to stream it. I don’t have HBO Max, I thought I watched it on Hulu before but can’t remember. I’ll keep trying.
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alex said on June 2, 2025 at 9:53 am
Just got off the phone with some Zoomer at the power company and I’m fucking appalled that anyone so stupid could be a customer service rep there or anywhere. I was trying to report a dead tree on my property overhanging a transformer and power lines. I just noticed it last night when looking up at the night sky and the tree no longer has any foliage on it and it freaked me out. Very big, tall, old tree and I’m sorry to lose it but it’s an imminent hazard and I’m sure no arborist is going to touch it. The power company’s web site says as much — if it’s in close proximity to lines, only the power company should handle it.
This kid sounded like he was fucking stoned, insisting that I need to call an arborist and not fully grasping what I was telling him. After a bunch of going around in circles, he finally agreed to report it and said someone would be out to inspect within 10 business days. Then he recited a report number which I wrote down. A few seconds later he said he’d forgotten whether he’d given me a report number. I’m thinking he’s as big of a hazard to public safety as that fucking dead tree.
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Julie Robinson said on June 2, 2025 at 11:21 am
It took five years and multiple calls for them to take care of a similar wire, Alex. No one would touch the tree until it was fixed. So frustrating.
I’m the queen of not watching shows with unrelatable characters, but I loved Succession. The music, the acting, even the story lines felt Shakespearean. I had to watch it by myself, though.
My only watching suggestion is The Quilters, on Netflix, a short documentary about men in maximum security prison who create quilts. Mostly they sew for kids in the foster care community. I would defy anyone to watch and not get a little misty eyed.
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Heather said on June 2, 2025 at 11:22 am
I’ve been binging Dept. Q too. If you like science fiction, MurderBot on AppleTV (about a sentient security cyborg who is not a murderer, so far at least) is also good.
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Mark P said on June 2, 2025 at 12:02 pm
I have to remind myself (and others occasionally) to judge a thing for what it is, not what it isn’t. But I still am not watching “Dark Winds”. I saw a couple of episodes, but couldn’t get into it. Part of the reason is that I liked the Hillerman novels and the characters so much, and I prefer to leave them back in that world. It was different for “The Lord of the Rings” movies. I read the books and liked them, but I wasn’t really invested in them. I appreciated the movies for what they were. I never really got the complains from people about this or that character not being the same, or this or that event being different. Maybe I should take another look at “Dark Winds.”
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Jeff Gill said on June 2, 2025 at 1:32 pm
Mark, I had the same problem at first, and my wife found it odd. Finally I somehow flipped the switch to tell myself “these are similar people who happen to have names you’ve heard before, but are different” and I can enjoy it. But in season 3, some of the interactions between Joe & Emma pinged those memories of the Tony Hillerman version. Still, you can get past it — they just are new characters in the same universe.
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Deborah said on June 2, 2025 at 1:40 pm
One of the reasons I like Dark Winds is that most of it is shot in northern NM. The Abiquiu area is in a lot of the shots, it’s very camera friendly.
The characters in this series are not at all how I pictured them in my mind while reading the books, but that’s ok.
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Sherri said on June 2, 2025 at 1:42 pm
My only complaint about Murderbot is that the episodes are only 30 minutes, and we only get one a week. The books are good, too.
Loved The Pitt. I also love Hacks, with Jean Smart, though I would suggest starting at the beginning because the development of the characters is important.
The Residence is a fun Knives Out style murder mystery.
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tajalli said on June 2, 2025 at 1:58 pm
Heather, Martha Wells wrote a series of Murderbot novels, which I really enjoyed. If I wait long enough for memory to dim, the TV series may not be a disappointment.
Since movie/TV remakes of novels tend to disappoint, my plan is to go through Hillerman’s novels rather than watch the TV series.
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Dexter Friend said on June 2, 2025 at 3:06 pm
I like Zach M, who is Gary Farmer’s replacement, sort of, of the Native American to appear in all shows from that genre.
He was fatherly, managing “The Shit-asses” in Reservation Dogs,
I loved S1 + S2 of Dark Winds, but man, so much quiet angst in S3. I thought Emma was going to give Joe up to the fed woman….
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Jeff Borden said on June 3, 2025 at 11:59 am
A couple of acquaintances who attended Indiana University are expressing fear and outrage at the full frontal assault on the school by Gov. Mike Braun and the Hoosier GOP. tRumpism has spread across the land and won’t stop even after Taco King succumbs to arteriosclerosis. It’s staggering to consider how long it will take to erase this pernicious movement.
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Julie Robinson said on June 3, 2025 at 2:52 pm
JeffB, I’ve been following this through the IDS, which they are also trying to shut down. With Braun’s appointment of three MAGAs, there are no elected trustees anymore. I weep for what my school was.
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Deborah said on June 3, 2025 at 6:58 pm
Are we all having Taco Tuesday today? This evening we’re having nachos which is as “taco” as we’ll get. We have chorizo, jalapeños, black beans, cheddar cheese and black olives broiled on tortilla chips. Close enough, I’d say. There’s a really good food truck that has excellent Tacos but they’re only open for lunch and we had a bunch of stuff going on then so we missed it. I wish we had pickled red onions too, that would make it perfect.
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Julie Robinson said on June 3, 2025 at 8:09 pm
Sloppy joes, homemade so no sodium. We don’t cook too many sophisticated foods these days on account of the 92 year old. Stir fry is about as far as she’ll venture.
Deborah, we’ve got some pickled red onions in our frig, come on over!
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tajalli said on June 3, 2025 at 8:19 pm
Turkey meatloaf and steamed veggies for me. Although I admit to using a Trader Joe’s habenero and lime tortilla with cottage cheese and cheddar melted and then wrapped for breakfast sometimes.
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Deborah said on June 3, 2025 at 9:06 pm
I hear that Trump is livid about the Taco designation. I’m going to make a sign when I’m back in Chicago that’s got something to do with Tacos for the protest on his birthday and parade day, the 14th. I figure there will be lots of Taco signs though, so I might draw something with a birthday cake with something snide on it and a jillion candles.
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tajalli said on June 3, 2025 at 10:25 pm
Deborah, you could dress him as a Mexican troubadour with a taco for a hat labelled 86-47 and salad fixings in a word balloon (word salad).
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susan said on June 3, 2025 at 10:57 pm
Deborah, like this.
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Little Bird said on June 4, 2025 at 1:44 am
I still think Tacocardia is the funniest thing I’ve heard in weeks. I want that on a T-shirt for future protests.
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Jeff Gill said on June 4, 2025 at 7:26 am
Julie, I made so much Stove Top stuffing & mashed potatoes over my four years of caregiving I may never make either again.
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