Knock Knock

September 8, 2025

Remember the doorbell?

I know you still have one, or at least some sort of buzzer or doorknocker thing. It might have its own camera, maybe even an app so you can monitor and control your porch while sitting on your couch 20 feet away.

What I mean is, do you remember when the sound of the doorbell would ignite a kind of “who’s at the door?!” energy in the house? That ring used to trigger a chaotic family scramble, a sudden game of Let’s Find Out! — was it a friend coming over to hang out? A a neighbor dropping by with gossip? A murderer? Uncle Mick looking for your dad? Let’s find out!

Today, most of those encounters are handled via text or maybe a quick cell phone call, so friends rarely just drop by anymore. So when the doorbell rings now, that air of anticipation has been replaced by a cold “who the hell is at my door?!” dread.

Yesterday’s unexpected visitors were spontaneous and mysterious and often fun. Today’s doorbell ringers are trying to sell us something, lost, or (best case) a delivery guy.

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Last week I wrote about how my first remote coworker was a bird. That was a weird thing to admit but I’m proud to say that I’ve evolved way past birds — today my most regular workday in-person interactions involve people who bring me cardboard boxes full of shirts or air fryers or other surprises that I firmly believed that I needed a few days prior.

Amazon sends a different delivery person every time, so there isn’t much time to build a relationship there. But the UPS guy is the same guy most times, and the mailman is too although the Postal Service does have the habit of changing our carrier without notice (we try not to take this personally). I see these folks more often than I see most of my friends.

Dealing with people isn’t what it used to be anyway. Take customer service for example. Your grandma had to journey to a department store to talk to a person face-to-face about her defective quilt or whatever. That was replaced by a 1-800 help line, which was eventually upgraded to email customer service. Today our needs are handled by bots on our phones who think and blink their little dot-dot-dots until turning us over to a live person (finally!) who has no idea who we are or what we bought or why we are disturbing them.

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Modern conveniences allow us the freedom to interact on our own terms, or not at all. We only have to spend time with the people we like, watch the shows we planned to watch, read opinions we already agree with. It feels more comfortable this way, but we’ve lost something. Discovery — of new friends, new art, new ideas — has become harder.

Still I resent my doorbell and its rude interruptions, which is why I believe in a person’s right to choose whether to answer the door. If I’m busy or tired or pantsless it’s my right as an American to elect to leave the visitor ungreeted (often by hiding in the kitchen, obviously), just like I don’t have to answer the phone when I’m busy doing something else.

If you come to my house and I don’t open the door for you, don’t be offended. It’s nothing personal. (But if you have a delivery for me please shoot me a text and I’ll meet you on the porch.)

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Each week in Squirreled I’ll post links to four stories. The goal is that each story will be (1) useful, relevant, weird or otherwise interesting, (2) off the beaten path of the internet, and (3) free to read. Also, the longer the story is, the more captivating it will need to be to make the cut. We all have attention spans to manage.

This Week’s Links (click the headings)

1. No One Has Office Friends Anymore. Evidently delivery people don’t count as actual work friends after all, so we should do a better job of making and keeping work buddies. And it’s good for business.

   The technology we rely upon to make communication speedier and efficient carries the downside of making interactions more transactional. And workplaces increasingly emphasize individual performance over team achievement — another disincentive for employees to cultivate meaningful relationships.

2. The Surprising Truth About Lottery Winners and Life Satisfaction. You didn’t win the Powerball this weekend so I’m sorry to tell you: studies show that winning a billion dollars has a positive effect on your life. Sounds crazy! But it’s true. I had believed the myth that lottery winners all go broke or die (because it’s fun to imagine that super rich people are doomed), but it turns out that a pile of money can in fact make you happy, or at least less sad.

   All else being equal, money is associated with a greater sense of life satisfaction and well-being. Of course, money on its own may not bring happiness. Still, it provides resources to do other things associated with happiness and is a buffer against negative wealth shocks.

3. Marchetti’s Constant. No matter where we live, no matter what new modes of transportation we invent, humans will always settle into a 30-60 minute commute. It’s just math. Cars and trains didn’t shorten our commutes, they just expanded our job searches. I don’t know if this is cool or depressing, but clearly we are good at grinding down any new invention or convenience until we are just as miserable as we were before.

   The one-hour rule extends over the world and throughout the year; even the mean radius of villages in ancient Greece corresponds to this estimate.

4. You’re Probably Loading Your Dishwasher Wrong. In the early days of quarantine my wife and I would helpfully share ideas with each other about how to handle household tasks in a more efficient and less idiotic way. “Why do you do it like that?” applied to cleaning the counters, organizing fridge fruit, managing garbage cans, pretty much anything. The dishwasher was a particularly testy battlefield for us, and it turns out there’s a right way and a wrong way to load it, although it looks like we were each right (both wrong?) about the silverware¹.

   Spoons should alternate up and down, because you don’t want two spoons to nest. Knives should be placed in the basket with their blades down. Forks, on the other hand, should have their tines up.

OK, back to work.

But first, a few housekeeping items:

• Squirreled will be moving to Tuesdays. Evidently Mondays are a terrible day to get a newsletter? I’m learning so much about newslettering.

• If you have any stories you think would be good to feature on Squirreled send me the link at fauxpelini@gmail.com.

• I’ll also be writing over at my original Substack starting this week. You can check Mo’ Faux out here.

1. I don’t care, I will always be a “stems up” guy and I will die on that hill. I believe anyone who does it otherwise is psychotic, except for my beautiful wife who is not crazy but doesn’t mind exposing me to exposed fork prongs.