March '24
The Thirteenth Side
Hi! Welcome to the thirteenth 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, but I’ve 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
Could you point out three single words that you like the most and explain why?* | Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files
Three of my favourite words, and ones I find myself using more and more these days, are ‘Having said that’. I am also fond of saying ‘On the other hand’, and Seán O’Hagan tells me that the word I use most in our book, Faith, Hope and Carnage, is ‘However’.
TGSotI Review: I adore Nick Cave’s music, and I was so very delighted to find out that he has a habit of regularly replying to questions with lovely, poignant answers on this website. It was a challenge to pick just the one (I highly recommend just subscribing to the website). Highly Recommend!
A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld | Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker
After Zac Brettler mysteriously plummeted into the Thames, his grieving parents discovered that he’d been posing as an oligarch’s son. Would the police help them solve the puzzle of his death?
What really caused the sriracha shortage? 2 friends and the epic breakup that left millions without their favorite hot sauce* | Indrani Sen, FORTUNE
Sriracha’s success grew from the firm ground of Underwood and Tran’s business partnership: Underwood supplied all Huy Fong’s chilies, and Tran was Underwood Ranches’ only pepper buyer. By 2012, Tran had built a gleaming 650,000-square- foot factory less than two hours from Underwood’s Ventura County headquarters. On a tour of the site, he told Underwood that together they would fill it with chilies.
TGSotI Review: Fascinating, in-depth reporting that I was hooked onto throughout the piece. Highly Recommend!
Life is hard. Art helps. | Liana Finck, TED Talk
Cartoonist Liana Finck's drawings hold our hands through life's predicaments, big and small: dating, breakups, what to make for dinner, how to leave a party without being rude, how to think about our relationship with God. In a funny, moving talk, she shares some of her drawings and shows how she uses creativity to navigate false starts and cluelessness in the search for belonging.
The text file that runs the internet* | David Pierce, The Verge
For decades, robots.txt governed the behavior of web crawlers. But as unscrupulous AI companies seek out more and more data, the basic social contract of the web is falling apart.
TGSotI Review: It’s tempting to hope that the foundations of the internet as laid out here would hold in the current super-sped-up era of technological ‘progress’, and disheartening to see all the ways in which they don’t. ‘Good faith’ seems like a utopian concept in the mainstream technological landscape at the moment, and this piece should tell you why. Highly Recommend!
A Country Shaped By Poetry | Nina Strochlic, Noema Magazine
Somaliland’s poets have toppled governments and ushered in peace.
Susan Sontag on Being a Writer: “You Have to Be Obsessed” | Emily Temple, Literary Hub
And other insights on craft from the legendary critic and novelist
Uncovering the Higher Truth of Jay Shetty | John McDermott, The Guardian
Celebrities call him ‘amazing’ and fans pay thousands – but what exactly do they get from this self-help guru with an iffy origin story?
What Happens When We Stop Remembering?* | Heidi Lasher, Orion Magazine
Confronted with her parents' dementia and teenagers' climate anxiety, one woman considers how our baselines shift in the face of personal — and global — loss.
Bonus: The Pixel Painter
Hal Lasko, who was better known as Grandpa, worked as a graphic artist back when everything was done by hand. His family introduced him to the computer and Microsoft Paint long after he retired. Grandpa would spend ten hours a day moving pixels around his computer paintings. His work is a collision of pointillism and 8-Bit art. Welcome to the world of Hal Lasko, The Pixel Painter.
In-house Links
This section contains links to pieces from different Substack publications. Again, the ones with the asterisk are personal favourites.
- *
Laundry Day from *
Vision Con from
That’s a wrap for March ‘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!
thank you for the feature! 💜