“Letter of Recommendation: Segmented Sleep” by Jesse Barron in The New York Times
A nice, short combination of education and entertainment about the history of sleep routines. A lot of people are vaguely familiar with the argument that sleeping for six to eight hours straight is a modern invention. Barron accidentally made waking up in the middle of the night a routine, and started looking into the history of the practice. The historical trivia is good, and so is Barron’s humility and reflection.
Back when segmented sleep was common, this period between “first” and “second” sleep inspired reverence. The French called it dorveille, or wakesleep, a hypnotic state. English speakers called it “the watch.” I had usually approached the post-midnight hours full-sail, by staying up. Waking into them is different, childlike. The time feels freer. The urge to be busy abates. Conversation has a conspiratorial intimacy, as if you’ve sneaked behind the tent to find the only other smoker at the wedding. Though I preferred the name dorveille, because it sounded glamorous, “the watch” was technically more accurate during those early weeks, when I mainly got up and watched Netflix.
“Do People Need Small Talk to be Happy?” by Stephanie Hayes at the Atlantic
Hayes investigates the role of small talk in society, with a well cited article. She notes that substantive conversations are very important to our happiness, but small talk has a few important roles in our mental well-being in its own right.
…researchers eavesdropped on undergraduates for four days, then cataloged each overheard conversation as either “small talk” (“What do you have there? Popcorn? Yummy!”) or “substantive” (“So did they get divorced soon after?”). They found that the second type correlated with happiness — the happiest students had roughly twice as many substantive talks as the unhappiest ones. Small talk, meanwhile, made up only 10 percent of their conversation, versus almost 30 percent of conversation among the least content students.
“Gabbin’ About God: What’s the Devil’s Deal?” By Nicole Cliffe and Mallory Ortberg at The Toast
I still can’t believe the Toast has stopped publishing. The cheery, erudite, constant-dumb-joke-cracking voice they wrote in is one of my favorites.
The earliest mention of the Devil in the Bible that I can think of comes from the book of Job (which is actually one of the oldest books in the Old Testament, even though it’s buried somewhere toward the middle, which I think is rather unfair), and there’s very little of the Devil that we know today in him. He’s God’s weird, murdering ombudsman, and spends the entire narrative trying to convince God that Job (and by extension, humans) don’t really love him unless they get what they want. And that’s it! He doesn’t get punished or thrown out of heaven at the end. He’s like Ralph and Sam, that wolf and sheepdog who spend a whole episode trying to kill each other, then punch out their time cards at the end and have a coffee break together.
“Humans and Neanderthals had sex. But was it for love?” by Brian Resnick at Vox
I don’t want to bury the lede — we know Neanderthals existed the same time as modern humans, and we know humans had sex with them, and they had hybrid offspring and you are most likely descended for them. Resnick tries to get more insight into what that means — for science, history, and love. It’s a remarkably interesting and strange investigation.
Since Boule’s analysis, our view of Neanderthals has shifted, from a caricature of a caveman to a remarkably sophisticated species. We’ve learned about how they built tools. That they made jewelry. That they, at times, buried their dead. We learned they were possibly stronger than us, and maybe just as smart…
There’s a common misconception that Neanderthals were our ancestors, that we evolved from them. We did not. Neanderthals and modern humans are believed to have diverged from a common ancestor in the genus Homo sometime around 500,000 years ago. The Neanderthal ancestors moved up to Europe before us, and continued to evolve there.
We’re Back and Everything is Scary Now — Samantha Bee
It’s not something to read, but it’s an exceptionally good five-minute comedy clip about the last few weeks of the election.
