Cave Giants, Why I Didn’t Answer Your Email, and How the Movie ‘Jaws’ Could Solve a 1974 Cold Case Murder.

J.L. PattisonBlockedUnblockFollowFollowing

Feb 1

This is the second installment of a new monthly series where I share an eclectic assortment of articles and essays I discovered the previous month — all worthy of your time.

This month’s selection features eight essays covering such subjects as Facebook stealing a page out of the NSA’s spy book, the Golden Age of television, and how clutter and depression go hand in hand.

So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Life Lessons I Learned From the Great British Baking Show

by Garrett Miles

“The British managed to hold an empire that at one time spanned the globe but have no concept of air conditioning.”

Lovelock Cave

by Ron Morehead

“In a story told by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, around 1880, the Paiute Natives in the Lovelock area warred with the Si-Te-Cah, who were cannibals and had red hair. The story goes that they fought until they had killed all but a few who hid in a cave. When the cave was being mined in 1911 the remnants of these red haired people were reportedly found. Most of the artifacts were lost over time due to lack of interest from science. Some reports indicate they were gigantic in size. Some of the remaining artifacts showed a sandal that is 15 inches long.”

The Real Reason There Was a Golden Age of Television

by James Perloff

“What began modestly as rabbit ears on top of family TV sets are now satellite dishes and antennas pridefully dominating the skyline, replacing crosses on top of churches.”

The Demographic Time Bomb That Could Hit the United States

by Catherine Rampell

“In 2017, the United States saw the fewest babies born in 30 years, a stat that produced a lot of hand-wringing. But it turns out things could be worse — a lot worse. We could be Japan, whose unfolding demographic crisis provides some lessons for where America might be headed.”

A Tantalizing Threory from Stephen King’s Son: Shark Thriller ‘Jaws’ Holds the Clue to an Unsolved 1974 Murder

by Isaac Stanley-Becker

“Two astonishing things happened on Cape Cod in the summer of 1974 . . . . One is that Steven Spielberg filmed Jaws, and [the] other is that someone murdered this woman in the dunes outside Provincetown and got away with it.”

Clutter and Depression Go Hand In Hand

by Becky Mansfield

“If you are thinking about how your house is cluttered … this is the time that you aren’t spending living your life. Once you are able to free yourself from the burden of these extra physical things, the ones that seem [to] tie us down, we can let them go and have more time to spend on enjoying life.”

How Facebook Borrows from the NSA Playbook

by Trevor Timm

“In hiding what it was doing from its users and in the underhanded ways it has justified its invasive actions after the fact, Facebook seems to have drawn directly from the NSA’s playbook.”

Why I Didn’t Answer Your Email

by KJ Dell’Antonia

“I snuggled my youngest son at bedtime . . . even though your email was calling, and some part of me wanted to pull away from the tedium of bedtime and reply. Replying would have felt fresh and new, while bedtime felt old and stale, although it has grown far less demanding of late, with no more reading out loud and no more splashing baths, many of which I spent answering emails, which was fine, because there were so many bedtimes and so many baths, so very, very many of them, until suddenly there weren’t . . .”

For more great articles, see last month’s selection: Nazis, Bad Books, and Birds That Steal Your Children.