January '25

The Twenty-Third Side

Hi! Welcome to the twenty-third issue of The Good Side of the Internet! Super glad to have you here. For a brief run-down on what all the hullabaloo is about, please visit the About page for this publication.

This newsletter has been split into two sections. The first is external links that I truly adored, sometimes with my own little endorsements. The second is similar, but within Substack. There once was a third, compiling all the recommended readings on

thodi

over the last month. I’ve since discontinued the mini-TGSotI, so all links can be found in one place, right here.

The ones with the little asterisk next to them come Highly Recommended (by me). Please do heed the trigger warnings if they’re present. For access to paywalled essays, feel free to reach out. I’m always open to discuss/debate/listen to your opinions about any of these links and would probably ascend to a higher plane of joy.

Happy reading, and happy new year!

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TGSotI Reviewed

1. Jude Law’s beautiful disappearing act | Sam Parker, GQ Magazine*

   For decades, he’s captivated audiences as a certain kind of character: charming. Handsome. Beautiful, even. So much so that people saw him that way, too. Now 51, and with a run of prestige talked-about projects, Jude Law is casting that aside, and embracing roles that are darker. Gnarlier. It might just set him free

2. Moon | Bartosz Ciechanowski

   In the vastness of empty space surrounding Earth, the Moon is our closest celestial neighbor. Its face, periodically filled with light and devoured by darkness, has an ever-changing, but dependable presence in our skies.

   In this article, we’ll learn about the Moon and its path around our planet, but to experience that journey first-hand, we have to enter the cosmos itself.

   Let’s take a look at the Moon as seen from space in all its sunlit glory. You can drag it around to change your point of view, and you can also use the slider to control the date and time.

3. The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age | Niall Firth, MIT Technology Review

   We’re making more data than ever. What can—and should—we save for future generations? And will they be able to understand it?

4. The Forever Park | Michelle Liu & Tristan Liu, The Rumpus Magazine*

   

5. Friend of Faux? | Josh Dzieza, The Verge

   Millions of people are turning to AI for companionship. They are finding the experience surprisingly meaningful, unexpectedly heartbreaking, and profoundly confusing, leaving them to wonder, ‘Is this real? And does that matter?’

6. My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done | Jessica DeFino, The Guardian

   Girls are born into beauty culture. Your father, freshly exposed to it in his fifties, isn’t there yet.

7. The Ghosts in the Machine | Liz Pelly, Harper’s Magazine

   Spotify’s plot against musicians

8. Does Vogue Hate Text Now? | Jess Carr, Github*

   Contemporary philosopher Carrie Bradshaw once said, “When I first moved to New York and I was totally broke, sometimes I would buy Vogue instead of dinner. I felt it fed me more.” Indeed, Vogue Magazine has been nourishing and cultivating the discourse on fashion, lifestyle, and beyond since before the beginning of Time. While the magazine has steadfastly retained its cultural relevance, its cover aesthetics have not been immune to transformation—particularly the amount of text on the cover.

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In-house Links

This section contains links to pieces from different Substack publications. Again, the ones with the asterisk are personal favourites.

1. Matthew Siegel’s “How Am I Doing?” from

   Ordinary Plots: Meditations on Poems + Verse

   Matthew Siegel's "How Am I Doing?"

2. don’t forget your lotion from

   prashasti's corner
   *

   don't forget your lotion

3. what haunts you? from

   little notes in reverie

   what haunts you?

4. The color of 2024: every shade of refusing green from

   Color Stories
   *

   The color of 2024: every shade of refusing green

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That’s a wrap for January ‘25! Feel free to make me the happiest person alive by reaching out to discuss any of it. For weekly poetry and song recommendations, plus a sometimes-nonsensical-sometimes-profound-sometimes-toopersonal micro-essay, we’d be happy to have you over at

thodi

.

If you’d like, please share this with your friends. Or your mother. Or on your Instagram story that you share a Spotify link on once in six months. Or anybody who you think would enjoy it. I am deeply passionate about telling people what to read.

Thanks for reading, and see you next month!

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