The other answers that Comparison takes place before Boolean are 100% correct. As an alternative (for situations like what you’ve demonstrated) you can also use this as a way to combine the conditions:

if socket.gethostname() in ('bristle', 'rete'):
  # Something here that operates under the conditions.

That saves you the separate calls to socket.gethostname and makes it easier to add additional possible valid values as your project grows or you have to authorize additional hosts.