Bright Side: Air Horse One, Pricey Parm, And Why Terrible Cell Service Might Be A Blessing

Welcome to the Bright Side, a weekly roundup of all the good news and ideas you might have missed from the past week.

***

Air Horse One

This week, I met up with friends at the bougie Herban Market (aka “Nashville’s Erewhon”), where the conversation flowed from children’s horseback riding lessons to a friend’s imported filly from Denmark. Well, I was today years old when I realized they fly horses around the world for the right price. Having just watched the Netflix mini-doc about how the Secret Service shuttled the president onto a decoy plane in a catering van, I imagined horses flying first class and munching on toasted hay and caramel apples, watching “Seabiscuit.” 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by The ARK at JFK Import/Export Center (@arkjfk)

I had to know more. Accommodations are comfy, with lots of room for horses to stretch their legs. They get a lounge, a disinfectant foot bath, a vet check, a private concierge (their groomer), and unlimited snacks and water. These posh stallions don’t fly on regular passenger jets, but now that I know this is a thing, I can’t help picturing every plane cruising along at 35,000 feet, full of horses. Sure beats hoofing it on land.

A friendship test

Have you ever heard of the “two beers and a puppy” test? It’s a theory developed by Ross McCammon in his book “Works Well With Others” to vibe-check your feelings about someone else. The concept goes like this. There are 1) People who you’d happily have two beers with, but wouldn’t dream of leaving in care of your dog, 2) People whom you’d totally trust with your pet, but never your happy hour, and 3) People you’d toast any day of the week, who would also love your pup like a second mother. When you find them, stick with ‘em like white on rice. 

Of course, you can make up your own benchmarks (two matchas and a goldfish, two Diet Cokes and grandma’s diamond ring, two hot cocoas and wherever you buried the body — just kidding). For the record, I would happily sip a couple beers and let my dog play with this pelican who regularly swooped in for playtime at a daycare in Japan, back in the ‘80s.  

In 1989, a pelican started visiting a daycare in Japan every day, where it happily played with the kids pic.twitter.com/yCCvGe9YV4

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) September 4, 2026

His name was Katta-kun, and he was the first pink-backed pelican born in Tokiwa Park in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture. He was raised by hand in an incubator, which made him fearless around humans. Especially the little ones, whom he quietly joined for piano lessons. He inspired at least two books and a movie before he flew off into the heavens. 

Cash, card, or cheese?

One of my little treats is quickly becoming a luxury investment. A door stop-sized wedge of parmesan cheese at the grocery store (the kind with the rind because je ne sais quoi) suddenly costs $20 — if I can even find it. My spidey sense told me something was sour in Cheeseville, so I did a little recon and found that Italy’s heat wave is reportedly ruining our cheese … or something. This kind of crisis can only be solved by charcuterie.   

Still, upon further investigation, social media sensationalists had the story totally wrong. It wasn’t the heat. (My case remains active.) Real Parmigiano Reggiano has to come from a certain place, from certain cows eating special things, and age for at least 12 months. So where do purveyors keep all these glorious wheels until they reach their prime? In banks. And boy howdy is this cheese worth some cheddar. 

Italian banker-owned Magazzini Generali delle Tagliate currently stores 500,000 wheels of cheese worth a cool $350 million. Forget about exchanging cash for physical gold, I’m putting everything into Parm wheels. And yes, for anyone who’s asking, I’ll be cooking my pasta in it too.

@foodporn Have you ever had truffle pasta cooked in a cheese wheel? ????????????????‍♂️ We’re at @osteriapastella to try it out! ???? #fyp #foryou #pasta #cheese #foodporn ♬ original sound – Foodporn

The beauty of a dead zone

I’m pretty sure no one likes waiting for a Pinterest feed to populate or for ChatGPT to respond. What was life before hotspots and Starlink? But this poem has me seeing freedom in bad cell service. In the spirit of intentional screen time and prioritizing life offline, I’ll be memorizing a few lines of “Places with Terrible Wi-Fi” by J. Estanislao Lopez:

The Garden of Eden. My ancestors’ graves. A watermelon field in Central Texas where my father once slept. Miles of rivers. The waiting room of a hospital in which a doctor, thin-looking in his coat, shared mixed results. A den of worms beneath the frozen grass. Jesus’s tomb. The stretches of highway on the long drive home after burial. The figurative abyss. The literal heavens. The cheap motel room in which I thought about praying despite my disbelief. What I thought was a voice was simply a recording playing from another room. The cluttered attic. Most of the past. The very distant future, where man is just another stratum in the ground. The tell of Megiddo. The flooded house and the scorched one. My favorite cemetery, where I can touch the white noise distorting memory. What is static if not the sound of the universe’s grief? Anywhere static reigns.

Next time my iPhone goes on the fritz, I won’t be so quick to ask, “Can you hear me?” Maybe it’s the moment of quiet I didn’t know I needed.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Brittany Johnson (@hillsidehighland)

Last one: My coworker sent me a photo of a tree with brown fall leaves, writing, “Thank God the colors are changing,” since we’re all feeling hopeless about the heat in Nashville. But on closer inspection, the “fall colors” were the brown needles of an evergreen tree, caramelized by the sun. It was like seeing a mirage in the desert leading only to more sand. But it still makes me laugh. I’m so desperate for sweater weather, I don’t even care if this baby goat greeting his human sister in three feet of snow is AI. See you in the comments (or pop by my email). Hope your weekend is as chill as possible! — Lauren

More from this network:
Domains for Sale · GOTPeople.org · TheDSAPlatform · The Truth About Socialism

Donate to GOTPeople.org