Bright Side: It’s Erling Haaland Summer. Let’s Viking Row.
Welcome to the Bright Side, a weekly roundup of all the good news and ideas you might have missed from the past week.
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Bone Thugs-N-Harmony just got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. If you’re wondering what everyone was doing in 1996, they were listening to the hip-hop group’s hit “Crossroads” on repeat. Now you can snap a selfie with BTNH’s star in front of The Fonda Theatre. (Still holding out for Ginuwine to get a star for “Pony.”)
I’m also feeling floral vibes this summer. And casually thinking of starting a GoFundMe to afford the Jasmine Damask Rose candle from Los Angeles brand Flamingo Estate, which I accidentally fell in love with at White’s Mercantile in Franklin, Tennessee. It’s “spendy,” but smells exactly like the fresh-blooming star jasmine that makes even grimy Hollywood streets smell bougie and enchantingly “plantsy.”
I’ve always wondered how fragrance triggers such vivid memories. It turns out that, unique to our other senses, aromas skirt the thalamus relay station in our brains and go straight for the olfactory bulb, which instantly connects with the amygdala and hippocampus. In short, one sniff and you’re transported to the exact moment and feeling of the first time you smelled that smell. Just so I don’t sound like a total snob, I also get a scent-memory from Marlboro cigarette smoke, which reminds me of childhood vacations to the Jersey Shore. (Fuhgeddaboudit!)
The girl with Erling Haaland’s face
Newsflash: Most of us agree that a sense of humor is one of the most attractive traits. Capitalizing on comedy and genetics, Russian model Anastasia Kostromitina is totally leaning into looking like a man, no doubt a famous one: Norway’s star striker Erling Haaland. She’s taking a timely break from high fashion to pose like the goofiest memes from the World Cup.
Anastasia seems to be having fun with comments jokingly suggesting “Erling” get back to playing soccer, instead of focusing on a modeling career. The son of former pro baller “Alfie” Haaland, Erling has scored seven goals so far in the tournament, and Norway faces England in the quarterfinals on Saturday. In the meantime, even non-soccer fans have fallen in love with Erling’s fluttering lips, “zen celebrations,” kit-coordinating scrunchies, and “cyborg” walk.
When he’s not trying on cowboy hats and boots at Bill’s Western or doing the Viking row, he makes not having eyebrows summer’s hottest look. He deserves that World Cup trophy made of 1.36 million LEGO bricks, or no one does.
Wanna check the “sharkcast” for your next beach vacation?
This year’s super El Niño brings warmer tides and sharkier oceans. (Yeah, you’re gonna need a bigger boat.) It’s not yet fully functional everywhere, but a scientific alert system will allow surfers, swimmers, and sharks to co-mingle without reenacting “Sharknado.” The forecast “feels like” dolphins … right?
The “sharkcast” concept is long overdue, especially if you’re like me who went surfing — once — and spent the whole time thinking about lurky-loos under the surface as I tried not to look like a juicy seal in my head-to-toe wetsuit. With shark populations on the rise since the ’90s thanks to conservation efforts along U.S. coastlines, text messages about different types of shark sightings, ocean temperatures, and AI-powered SharkEye surveys of great whites could take some of the edge off the galeophobia you get from simply imagining sharks in the deep end of your backyard pool.
Get ChatGPT out of your head. Read that again.
We’ll never “cognitive surrender”! Well, we’ll do what we can while we can still think for ourselves. As AI becomes a ubiquitous life hack, let us preserve our most smartest minds.
Just like you wouldn’t hire a trainer to lift weights and run on the treadmill for you, the way you utilize AI matters, too. “The goal shouldn’t be to use AI to avoid cognitive effort, it should be to use AI to deepen it,” Anthropic researcher Judy Hanwen Shen advises. AI is awesome at summarizing, generating ideas, and streamlining tedious tasks. But our brains can stop braining and “fall asleep at the wheel” after relying on AI for just 10 minutes.
AI isn’t always right, but we’re biased toward thinking it is! Asking follow-up questions and excluding it from creative spaces such as conceptualizing and writing helps preserve our uniquely human executive function. “AI removes the productive struggle through which people develop not only accurate knowledge but accurate self-knowledge,” Carnegie Mellon University researcher Grace Liu notes. “Without opportunities to work independently, people never learn what they are capable of.” Here’s to keeping those robots on their toes.
A former homeless teen’s inspiring graduation speech
Prince Weeks used to pretend to be sick in the ER just to get something to eat. Now, at 19, he’s inspiring others to go for their dreams by graduating as valedictorian of his class.
After bouncing around between living situations all over the East Coast, Weeks earned his high school diploma equivalency in two months through the Pathways to Graduation-Staten Island program from the New York City Department of Education. “There’s many times where I could have done the wrong thing to make ends meet, but I didn’t want to go down that path,” he said in his speech. “You will always prosper when you put in the hard work and you show up.”
Now employed by LaGuardia Airport as a sanitation tech, he’s saving up for college. Emboldened by his natural love of learning, he hopes to get into science. “Stay determined and never falter,” Weeks told his classmates. “Everyone here has greatness inside of them waiting to be unleashed.”
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We’re not leaving here without animals! Here’s 30 seconds of baby Tibetan foxes that will have me booking a trip to Nepal by tonight, and Neil the Seal moves his 2,200 pounds surprisingly well on land. I love reading your comments and hearing your stories. Always feel free to email me and share the fun! See you next week — Lauren
This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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I am just an average American. My teen years were in the late 70s and I participated in all that that decade offered. Started working young, too young. Then I joined the Army before I graduated High School. I spent 25 years in, mostly in Infantry units. Since then I've worked in information technology positions all at small family owned companies. At this rate I'll never be a tech millionaire. When I was young I rode horses as much as I could. I do believe I should have been a cowboy. I'm getting in the saddle again by taking riding lessons and see where it goes.
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