You will either be amused or horrified by my discovery of the documents leading to the original sale of my mother’s house. My mom & dad bought this place in 1976, the first and only home they would own, for this amazing price:

That’s right $28,990, and they bought it with a $500 down payment. My father’s income at that time was, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of $10K, so it was a bit of a stretch for them.

This is the same house I’m selling for $435K now.

The housing market is stark raving nuts. Boomers had it relatively easy.

Matt Gaetz.

I think that’s a fake tweet — it comes off Twitter, which is a pretty unreliable source. But still, it’s a funny jab at the horrible Gaetz, who, if he actually used that formula would think it acceptable for him to date 14 year olds, and “almost never” anyone younger.

The joke did make me wonder about where that “general wisdom” comes from. Do people actually do simple algebra to figure out who they should date? Is there actually a formula floating about?

I found a source. To put it in perspective, the first thing on that page is a calculator to figure out the age difference between two people: you type in your age, and your date’s age, and it subtracts one from the other to get the difference.

The universal formula for calculating an age difference is:

Age Difference = |Age 1 – Age 2|

Now that we know how smart the audience for this calculator is, they explain the “rule of seven,” which is not a rule, but only a tool for rationalizing kiddie-chasing.

A common rule for the maximum and minimum age one is supposed to date is the so-called “rule of seven”. It sets boundaries based on the age of one of the partners, and can be applied both ways. It goes as such: to define the minimum age of a partner, half your age and add seven. E.g. if you are thirty years old, calculate 30 / 2 + 7 = 15 + 7 = 22, or an age gap of 8 years would be acceptable in this direction).

To find the maximum socially acceptable age for a partner, subtract seven from your own age, then multiply it by two. For example, if you are 30 years of age, calculate (30 – 7) * 2 = 23 * 2 = 46 years or an age difference of 16 years would be acceptable in this direction.

OK, Matt Gaetz (or whoever posted that tweet) got the formula wrong, unsurprisingly.

“would be acceptable”…there are so many assumptions built into that phrase. Acceptable to who? Shouldn’t the important thing be acceptable to each other, with a recognition that a large age difference opens the door to power imbalances, and that children do not have the judgment of adults? This is a complex issue that doesn’t lend itself to simplistic formulae.

The one useful thing on that page is that they have a table of actual age differences between American couples. About 35% of all married couples have birthdays within a year of each other — which makes me totally average, since my wife and I have a 6 month age difference. Over 60% of American married couples have an age difference of less than 3 years! That tracks, since most of us form relationships with people with whom we have a lot in common, and those relationships develop organically from common associations. Do I need a calculator to figure out who I’m comfortable talking to?

The Guardian has announced that they will no longer cite Twitter.

We wanted to let readers know that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X (formerly Twitter). We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.

This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.

Exactly right. Musk has destroyed the utility of the social media site he spent so much money on. You should flee the hellhole, too.

Now we just have to get the Guardian to quit putting up with transphobes…

You may recall that InfoWars’ stuff was going to be auctioned off. The auction is over! Guess who won?

The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones’s Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion US in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax, the families announced Thursday.

That’s, ummm, interesting. But what are they going to do with it all? I mean, old videos of Alex Jones raving about gay frogs are intrinsically comedic, but how do you use it on a satire site? I’d also be concerned that a lot of it is ugly and horrifying — children died at Sandy Hook — and I don’t see how to use it for humorous effect.

OK, the Onion does have one amusing article about their purchase. They’re going to need a lot more jokes, though.

I have changed my routine lately. I no longer read the news. There were a few blogs I read regularly, a couple of political YouTube channels I frequented, a podcast or two I’d listen to on walks. No more. I just can’t bear current events. I’m looking for distraction, and oh, what’s this? A movie review?

You see, I’m sick. I’m afraid it’s mortal but I don’t know–I mean, every second is a second I will never see again, so isn’t everything mortal? I have, for over a year now, watched Israel gleefully, defiantly wage genocide on the Palestinian people and consumed images of the human body in various states of dismemberment, violation, and humiliation that before this I had only glimpsed with horror in grainy photographs smuggled out of Nanking during WWII–that I had only imagined while reading war stories written by men destroyed largely by just the act of bearing witness. This is the shape of my astonishing privilege. If I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t have to. Something changed.

And I have noticed, from the first day to the 370th, that I can look at decapitated children now, held in the arms of parents maddened by grief and the tacit complicity of the United States and most of Europe, without looking away. I am a shell. I don’t sleep well anymore. I am hollowed-out and empty. I understand T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, his warning about the apocalypse, for the very first time. “Our dried voices, when/We whisper together/Are quiet and meaningless/As wind in dry grass/Or rats’ feet over broken glass/In our dry cellar” and “Paralysed force, gesture without motion,” and “Remember us–if at all–not as lost/Violent souls, but only/As the hollow men/The stuffed men.” I understand who the “eyes I dare not meet in dreams” belong to now; I know where the “twilight kingdom” is, where the dead land “[u]nder the twinkle of a fading star” is, because I live there now. We live there together. The noise of us together sounds like the noise you make when you try not to make a noise. The dry rustle you hear is all our voices mouthing prayers to broken stones.

I understand Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp character, with his too-small hat and too-large shoes, the immigrant and eternal outsider who good-naturedly demonstrated the inhumanity of others through his interest in the weak and championing of the powerless. I understand why The Tramp appeared in the space between the mechanized mass slaughter and dismemberment of WWI and the rise of fascism and murder camps of WWII and fast became the most famous personality on the planet. Chaplin would play little tricks on despots and middle-managers, sly kicks and sleights-of-hand, and smile and wave if caught in the act. “You got me,” his grin says, which maybe has a dash of Bugs Bunny’s “Ain’t I a stinker?” as well. And I know why, at the end of his film The Great Dictator, Chaplin breaks character and the fourth wall, addressing the audience directly to plead with them to care again about the suffering of others. He spoke of a world rapidly tilting into totalitarianism: the best filled with despair and the worst locating that seam in the sheer rockface of our sense of righteous morality that allows them to find purchase, take root, spore. He begged us to remember who we were when we could still weep, when we had to look away.

How long has it been for you? How far has it progressed? I know. I’m sorry.

That’s from a review of Terrifier 3. I’d seen a bit of the first Terrifier movie, didn’t like at all, and didn’t even know they were already making sequels of the thing, but of course they are. Maybe if I gazed into the abyss a little harder, I’d be desensitized enough to witness more of the fascist state of America, but I’m not. If anything, I’ve become hypersensitized. I find refuge in science and work and my day-to-day routine, I’m afraid to look up and see the catastrophe coming.

That article gives me hope — more than hope, a sense that it is inevitable that someday my privilege will be bled away, that I will stop caring and can look on the horror without feeling battered and eviscerated, because my heart will have been burned out and meaning will have been murdered. Join me in the twilight kingdom, where the darkness waits for us all.

Isn’t that a happy thought? Don’t you want to chitter and murmur and rustle in the decaying attic of our dreams, together?

The last time I was in Washington, we had cleaned out a lot of my parent’s old stuff, and I was leaving after having booked a real estate agent to sell off the property. There were boxes and bags of miscellaneous papers that were going to be thrown out or destroyed, and I scooped up a luggage bag full of it without looking closely at it — I just didn’t want to abandon some piece of family history. I haven’t dug into it yet, but I had a moment free and plucked out a few random bits to see what treasures I had rescued.

Here are my parents, sometime in the late 1980s/early 90s.

Here’s Mom’s 5th grade report card (my grandmother also saved everything.)

That’s pretty good, young lady, but we’re going to have to have a little talk about that C in writing. Also, what’s the difference between writing and English?

I didn’t get any further in sorting through the collection because then I discovered she had saved all the mother’s day cards we had sent to her. Aww, Mom. You cared? Now I feel bad for not sending one this year. I am a terrible son.

I’m in the mood for some self-abasement, and also to nod in the general direction of the Xmas season. I’m going to tell you about the most horrible, embarrassing moment of my life so far. Maybe it’ll inspire you to mention your moment of humiliation in the comments to make me feel a little better.

In my youth, I was a regular church-goin’ kid. Sunday school every week, choir every Wednesday, confirmation every Thursday. I was not a believer, but it was the only club that would accept me, and I also liked the music–I was attending more for the choir than anything else. I had a few friends in the group, although…we weren’t good friends, I guess. We never socialized outside the church.

One year we were organizing for a giant Christmas concert involving dozens of churches in the Puget Sound area. We had to do multiple practices every week, and it wasn’t just walking down the street to my local Lutheran church. We were rotating among various churches, a different one every time, to practice together. It was a huge effort, my parents were ferrying me all over the region for a few months ahead of time. I didn’t mind. I had zero patience for the religious nonsense, but if you’ve ever been in a choir, you know that the feeling of singing in harmony with a large group is an almost primeval, inspiring sensation.

The day of the Christmas concert, we loaded up in vans and busses and journeyed to the site of the event: the Kingdome. I told you it was big. The stadium was filled up. All the Washington state choirs were seated in a vast array in the center. When we started singing, we made the whole place vibrate.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling my best. In the hours we were there, I started feeling a little woozy. Then I was trembling. Then I had a cold sweat. Was I nervous? Not really. It’s not as if I had a solo, I was one among many hundreds.

Then it was time for my church group to sing their special song. We stood up, and we started singing the song we’d practiced so hard: “O Come O Come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.” Maybe you know it; I still remember the lyrics because damn, we repeatedly sang that thing so many times before the concert. I stood with my church group, raising my voice before the entire Kingdome audience with cameras aimed at us to record the event.

“O COME O COME…” I sang, wobbling and sweating, and then, suddenly, I felt Satan rising up in my body, like a greasy bubble of demonic filth, then “EMMANUE…” and it hit me, unexpectedly and irresistible, and I started vomiting. Projectile vomiting. A horrific geyser of godliness was instantly purged from my body in an terrible public display.

I did immediately feel better, with one regret: the girl in the row in front of me had a lovely cashmere sweater folded over the back of her chair, and I destroyed it. Sorry.

Our choir director, Mrs Whalen, was incredibly nice and gracious, given that all anyone was going to remember of our hard work and our performance was the kid in the middle who grossed out the entire Kingdome with his horrifying expulsion of bodily fluids. She was one of my favorite people, and she treated my ghastly spectacle with nothing but kindness. I continued on with the choir for maybe a year afterwards, before my inability to reconcile my complete lack of faith and aggressive skepticism with the whole goofy church scene drove me away.

That memory still comes back occasionally these many years later, usually around the holiday season, and I can never hear that hymn without being triggered. I also don’t sing anymore.

So what psychic scars do you all still carry?

If all of us take little steps to deprive billionaires of some of their power, maybe we can eventually make them care about us little people. Here are some simple things that could make them sting a little bit.

• Obviously, get off Twitter. There’s no excuse anymore — tweeting enables fascists.
• Unsubscribe from any big, national newspapers. They’re all bought and paid for. Subscribe to a local paper. Alternatively, read The Guardian, it’s not American and it’s totally free.
• No more books from Amazon. This one is going to be tough: we don’t have a real bookstore in town (the University Bookstore is a joke, selling only the necessary textbooks, and most of the floor is dedicated to t-shirts and souvenirs). The nearest bookstores are 45 minutes away, but I guess they’ll get more of my business. Here’s a good list of alternatives to Amazon. Added complication: Amazon has been buying up competing vendors aggressively.
• Even better, use your local library.
• Don’t buy anything else from Amazon. That’s difficult here in small town America, too — we rely so much on ordering things from Amazon because we can’t get them here. Huh…I wonder why local availability has been drying up?
• Just generally buy local. It deprives the massive rich stores (which are usually owned by assholes) of money, and is better for the environment, too.
• And finally, never ever vote for a Republican, no matter how nice they may be and how much they promise you.

Teeny tiny steps. It’s not much, but it’s a way for me to cope.