Hi! Welcome to the twenty-fifth issue of The Good Side of the Internet! Happy two years of TGSotI! 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.
All of these come Highly Recommended (by me). Please do heed the trigger warnings if they’re present.
Happy reading!
PS: For (mostly) weekly micro-essays on growing up, poetry, and song recommendations, I’d be happy to have you over at .
PPS: Happy two completed years of TGSotI! Here’s to many more 🥳
TGSotI Reviewed
I don’t wear makeup but my wedding is coming up – can I go bare-faced? | , The Guardian
I agree with you: it is radical to get married without makeup in 2025. It’s radical to choose embodied freedom – your ability to “cry, laugh and hug” without regard for running mascara – over performance as a bride. It might be hard for your community to understand, but 200 years ago, so was marrying for love! People did it anyway. I think you should do this, too. You want to. Your partner loves you as-is. Go for it.
If it makes you feel more comfortable, tell your celebrant, family, friends and wedding party that you’ll be makeup-free ahead of time to help them gauge their own glam level. Let them adjust to your preferences, not the other way around.
Sure, there’s a possibility that you’ll regret looking “underdressed” at your own wedding. But I think there’s just as good a chance that you’ll feel “8/10 happy” as you, unenhanced – no Substance-level transformation required.
Traveling At The Speed Of The Soul | Nick Hunt, NOEMA
Of course I hadn’t come home from a war, but I was struck by a similar sense that, during the time I’d been gone, the place I’d left had been in a state of suspended animation. Nothing had changed, and yet, confusingly, nothing was what I remembered. It was a geographical version of the “uncanny valley” effect, in which ostensibly normal things take on an alien quality. It was as if my body had arrived but some other vital part of me had not. I seemed to have dropped it on the road to Istanbul.
From The Gut | Will Boast, VQR
A Literary History of Indigestion
How Cheerleading Became So Acrobatic, Dangerous and Popular | David Gauvey Herbert, The New York Times Magazine
Over the decades, cheerleading has evolved from a sideline activity at a sports game into a televised main event. Audiences see smiling and exuberant faces, incredible acrobatic maneuvers, and talented, high-spirited teams showing their stuff. David Gauvey Herbert’s deep dive into the cheer world, however, reveals a dark side: a culture that encourages families to overspend; very alarming injury statistics; and toxicity and sexual abuse. At the heart of it all is a billion-dollar company, Varsity Spirit, that controls the cheer industry, and one man, Jeff Webb, who “pioneered the gravity-defying acrobatics of modern cheer” and grew the sport into what it is today.
The Shrouded Sinister History Of The Bulldozer | Joe Zadeh, NOEMA
From India to the Amazon to Israel, bulldozers have left a path of destruction that offers a cautionary tale for how technology without safeguards can be misused.
Taking Flight: How Birds Learn to Fly | Willem Defebaugh, The Overview
When we think of birds, we are often enamored with ideas of them as emblems of grace and the glory of gliding midair. We gaze in awe at the way they sail the sky, but rarely do we reflect on what it took for them to get there. No bird is born knowing how to soar, nor does it know when is the right time to leave the nest. The journey from fledge to flight consists of countless falls and failures, leaps and learnings—and most of all, courage.
Madness, Melancholy, or Murder: An Ancient English Farm’s 50-Year-Old Mystery | Andrew Chamings, Longreads
Andrew Chamings returns to his childhood farmland to investigate the mystifying deaths of the Luxton siblings. What really happened down that dark country lane?
The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age | Thea Lim, The Walrus
Why are we letting algorithms rewrite the rules of art, work, and life?
How Concerned Citizens Drove a Neo-Nazi Out of Rural Maine | Mira Ptacin, The Atavist Magazine
The first step in establishing a neo-Nazi compound is to clear and level the land. These sites tend to pop up in rural America, which means that there’s brush to hack down, tree stumps to pull up, and piles of debris to burn. All this work is done to make room for the barracks, kitchens, and meeting halls where modern-day devotees of Adolf Hitler will live, work, and train together.
When Christopher Pohlhaus moved to the forested lot where, like other neo-Nazis on other forested lots before him, he planned to start a fascist revolution, he brought two RVs with him. That meant he had somewhere to bunk down at night. But he didn’t have running water. I can’t say how he bathed when he first arrived; as for other matters of hygiene, perhaps he used the woods.
The Rise of Last Chance Tourism | The Swaddle
As environmental changes and rapid climate change impact collective realities, a niche trend has emerged where people are travelling to visit destinations as a bid to see endangered animals and natural landscapes for the last time.
This Is What Happens When You Unleash 500 Singles on an IRL Date | Kassondra Cloos, Outside
Done with endless swiping on dating apps, more people are looking for love through in-person events. I traveled to one in the Alps with a group of rowdy singles in search of love.
In-house Links
This section contains links to pieces from different Substack publications.
A Stretch from
How are you being? from
That’s a wrap for March ‘25! Had a piece you absolutely loved/hated? Let me know!
For weekly micro-essays on growing up, poetry, and song recommendations, 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 whom you think would enjoy it. I am deeply passionate about telling people what to read.
Thank you for reading, and see you next month!
thank you for the beautiful feature. <3