co-star

or, i am about to reveal what the stars/ai have told me, PLUS The Good Side of the Internet is getting a monthly spinoff!

Mar 18, 2023

this week’s Thought (singular)

is life just a series of catching colds and coughs?

a very warm welcome to all new readers. i love new readers so much that whenever i get an email about a new reader, i manifest that they reach their water-drinking goals for the day. thank you for joining us. may you have no need to take a tablet for a dehydration-related migraine tonight.

over the last few months, my favourite (only) astrology app that i use for very legitimate purposes (it looks very pretty and i like the validation) has given me some rather concerningly beautiful statements in the “Your day at a glance” section. i thought it’d be fun to share some of them. do with this information what you wish.

*this one was on my birthday btw. quaking in my boots*

in the spirit of concertedly keeping things a little light in this issue, i won’t elaborate on any of them. god knows i have too much to say about all of it, but i’ll refrain for today. do you also use co-star? does it also sometimes make you want to eat dirt and feel like a feral animal in the middle of the woods?

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Super-Fun One-Time Announcement Space

i’m very excited about this but i’ll try to keep things coherent. due to popular demand, and also because i wanted to, The Good Side of the Internet will be having a monthly spinoff! at the end of every month, you’ll receive a bunch of links in your inbox, starting from march. what makes it any different from the TGSotI section in thodi, you ask? more links and personal endorsements of them!! so many more links to so many more good sides of the internet!! it’s a monthly, bumper version of all the great stuff i came across. here’s the about page for the newsletter.

The Good Side of the Internet

now coming to you monthly :D. tell your friends!

English Recitation Competition

Moon Ghazal, Dorianne Laux

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I can’t remember the first time I saw it, seems it was
always there, even with me in the womb, the moon.

It must have been night, above the ocean, making a path
on the waves, gilded invitation, the parchment moon.

The Second Going, Philip Levine

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Again the
day begins, only
no one wants its sanity
or its blinding clarity. Daylight is
not what we came all this way for. A
pinch of salt, a drop of schnapps in our cup
of tears, the ticket to the life to come, a short life of
long nights & absent dawns & a little mercy in the tea.

Starlings in Winter, Mary Oliver

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I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

A Poll!

The Good Side of the Internet

Reading As Counter-Practice
It is easy to forget that writing is a technology, a tool for communication that was invented and variously iterated over time. Indeed, it is easy to forget that writing, and specifically alphabetic writing, is a relatively recent development in human history, and widespread literacy even more recent still. As Wolf puts it in her interview with Klein, reading is not natural. There is nothing about human physiology that would lead inexorably to the advent of literacy. Yet it happened. This thing that I am doing just now as I type and which you are doing, in turn, just now as you read is almost magical. My thoughts, some small bit of my interior life is transmitted to you in another time and place through an incredibly simple technique of arranging two dozen or so symbols on a page. And most of us who have grown up in a literate society take it utterly for granted.
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The Impotence of Being Clever
When did cleverness become such a nuisance?
The Sunset
There are plenty of reasons to see nursing homes as sad, neglectful places. There are also reasons to see them as something else entirely.
Of Grief and Book Tours
Silas House on the Power of Collective Mourning