Where Have All the Trick-or-Treaters Gone? Destination Neighborhoods. Maybe you’ve noticed fewer and fewer trick-or-treaters showing up at your door in recent years. There could be several factors contributing to this. Perhaps trunk-or-treats (a phenomenon I’ve never understood) are siphoning them off. Maybe the demographics in your neighborhood have shifted over the years, and fewer families with young kids live there. Ryan Allen offers another possible explanation: winner-takes-all markets. He argues that trick-or-treating has turned into a “destination” event. Families pile into their cars and drive to the “famous” Halloween neighborhoods — where many of the homes are decorated with elaborate spooky scenes and hand out full-size Snickers bars — while the streets in their own neighborhood sit dark and empty. Social media has only exacerbated this trend, as people share all the “hot spots” in town to hit. It’s a perfect little parable of modern consolidation. The neighborhoods rich in trick-or-treaters get richer, and the neighborhoods poor in trick-or-treaters get poorer.
The Dark Secrets of Adulthood. I had Gretchen Rubin on the podcast a while back to talk about her book Secrets of Adulthood and had a lot of fun discussing her short aphorisms for living well; it was one of my favorite episodes this year. In our conversation, she mentioned she had compiled a separate list of “dark secrets of adulthood” — more negatively-tinged pearls of wisdom — that didn’t fit the book’s more inspiring theme. She recently shared her dark secrets in an ebook available on her Substack, and they’re great to read through. Here are a few that stuck out to me:
- People who behave badly are more likely to become famous, because they’re more interesting; in this way, we reward their bad behavior.
- Some people get energy from being perpetually irritated.
- If we get our sense of purpose from being needed, we may need to feel needed. In fact, we may create need, in order to be able to fulfill need, and in creating need, we foster dependence.
The Wages of Fear. I recently finished this Henri-Georges Clouzot classic. Here’s the plot: four broke men are hired to haul trucks full of nitroglycerin across miles of rough South American terrain. One wrong bump means instant death. It’s such an intense movie, and it’s been a big influence on a lot of directors. You can see hat tips to the film in Sorcerer, The Deer Hunter, and even Mad Max: Fury Road. Besides being a thriller, the movie hits on a lot of existential themes. And that ending! Didn’t see that coming.
LMNT Chocolate Caramel. When you think of electrolytes, you typically think of drinking something fruit-flavored and cold. But LMNT has a line of hot chocolate-esque mixes that are perfect for the fall and winter months. I was introduced to them when LMNT sponsored the podcast way back when (they’re not currently a sponsor), and the drink has become a cold-weather ritual for me. My favorite is the Chocolate Caramel. The tasty flavor is rich and salty (of course!). I’ll sip it while sitting on the porch in the cold after stepping out of the sauna. The contrast between the hot drink and the crisp air, combined with that post-sauna glow, feels awesome. It’s hygge, and I’m getting electrolytes.
On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: The Saddest Epitaph and How to Think About Luck.
Quote of the Week
Laziness grows on people; it begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains. The more one has to do the more he is able to accomplish.
—Sir Thomas Buxton
