September '24
The Nineteenth Side
Hi! Welcome to the nineteenth 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
The Flipbook Experiment | The Pudding
For a few weeks in the Spring of 2024, readers took turns tracing the previous person’s drawing to make a flipbook-style animation. The result was 22,454 drawings.
The Eras Tour Changes Taylor Swift’s Legacy as an Artist | Vasudha Narayanan, The Swaddle*
She could have shifted the paradigm of feminist art. Instead, she’s a monopoly in the business of selling women their own feelings.
Thoughts about loneliness | Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files*
Personally, I find that feelings of loneliness dissipate when I take time to focus on the sacred, the imagination, beauty, nature, the soul – those unmeasurable and mysterious wellsprings of meaning that reside outside the scientistic and the rational. Here, I feel connected to something universal, eternal, truthful and righteous and, therefore, less alone.
I drove a Cybertruck around SF because I am a smart, cool alpha male | Drew Magary, SFGATE
I got to drive a Tesla Cybertruck for a day this spring. You jealous? You should be, because Elon Musk’s Boy Scout project is the kind of virile, powerful spacetruck that should be owned and driven only by our largest, wealthiest, whitest men. The kind of men who use speakerphone on airplanes. The kind of men who talk big about colonizing Mars as if it’s a realistic scenario. The kind of men who are training artificial intelligence to not only take your job but also steal your wife. Real can-do American men.
I am one such man. That’s why SFGATE asked me, someone who knows precious little about how cars actually work, to test-drive a Cybertruck. I fit the customer profile for one to a T. I am tall. I am white. I am loud. I don’t really have many friends where I live. Most important, I desperately want people to think I’m cool. You can see my thirst from the f—king moon, so why not drive an equally conspicuous truck?
Pop Culture Is in its Feudal Era | Rohitha Naraharisetty, The Swaddle*
It’s not so much the extravagance of the affair that stands out as particularly new; it is the mawkish praise and awe with which the culture has interpreted this gilded excess.
In-house Links
This section contains links to pieces from different Substack publications. Again, the ones with the asterisk are personal favourites.
Be Unfocussed from
A Year of Gratitude from
Boyhood Is Trending from *
That’s a wrap for September ‘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 micro-essay, 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!