June ‘24
The Sixteenth Side
Hi! Welcome to the sixteenth 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 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!
TGSotI Reviewed
Loving Renee Back | Sarah Cavar, The Rumpus
I don’t know how to look a ghost, this ghost or any other, in the eye. I never learned. Instead, I see Renee––tall, bracelet-laden, jingling––with the rest of my senses. I smell her; she smelled the way every mom except my own smelled, like a stranger-woman whose hugs had teeth. She shared the often-grating accent my grandparents also possessed, situated as we were a mere mistake from Rhode Island, another moment from Massachusetts. I hear her walk through my grandparents’ door, jingling, fumbling with her keys and her handbag, crowing, “Saaah-raah!” with those long, Harvard Yard ahhs and I’d groan and ask for more orange juice. I feel the old chair sag slightly beneath her, the couch beneath myself and Grammy. There we sat, sometimes for hours––Renee crossing and uncrossing her pantyhosed legs, me sipping my Snapple, Grammy her black coffee––speaking of inane adult things until Grammy tired of my impatient foot at her ankle.
The Danger Of Superhuman AI Is Not What You Think | Shannon Valor, Noema Magazine*
The rhetoric over “superhuman” AI implicitly erases what’s most important about being human.
Fuel, Medicine, Pleasure | Krista Diamond, Longreads
What could it mean to give yourself the food you need to keep going? No punishing, no guilt, no withholding. Just nourishment.
The People’s YouTuber | Rohitha Naraharisetty, The Swaddle*
How 29-year-old Dhruv Rathee became one of India’s loudest dissenting voices.
Why Is Everyone on Steroids Now? | Rosecrans Baldwin, GQ
Across the internet and in gyms everywhere, body-modifying drug use has become ubiquitous, effective and... normal. Can this really be a good thing?
In-house Links
This section contains links to pieces from different Substack publications. Again, the ones with the asterisk are personal favourites.
That’s a wrap for June ‘24! 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 article, we’d be happy to have you over at
.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!