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. *** Welcome to the Bright Side, a weekly roundup of all the good news and ideas you might have missed from the past week. Winning advice for anyone’s next chapter I’m existing on commencement speech inspiration as we wrap up “Maycember” and head into Memorial Day weekend. Here are a few standouts for students of life. “The way you overcome a 99.7% chance of losing in the biggest moments of your life is to harness the confidence you built, and the lessons you’ve learned, from a lifetime of failing at things that you’ve cared about.” — NFL GOAT Tom Brady to Georgetown University’s graduating class of 2026  “When you’re the driver of your own thoughts, you have a belief and a conviction that you can do anything. When you work on yourself, you see the world through your own unique lens. In a world of copycats, you become an original. Your unique fingerprints come to life.” — SPANX founder Sara Blakely to Florida State University’s graduating class of 2026 “[Family] is the string that makes you feel like you’re not alone in a room. I want to warn you about something. You’re about to get busy in ways that feel important, and many are professionally ambitious … building the life you’ve been pointed toward for years. And family, because they love you with a grace you will spend most of your life trying to deserve, will rarely demand your time. They’ll tell you they understand, and they’ll mean it. Do not take them up on it.” — country music star Eric Church to the University of North Carolina’s graduating class of 2026  “The Golden Girls” makeover If guys are always thinking about the Roman Empire, I’m constantly preoccupied with how the cast of “The Golden Girls” looked so much older than grandmas today. At the start of the series, Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose were in their early-to-mid fifties, and Sophia was 79. I know exactly no one that age now who looks like the GG’s did then. The 50-year-olds I know are kicking my butt at CrossFit. Maybe they secretly wear beaded chains on bifocals at home. The Golden Girls, but with today’s hair and styling. From big 80s perms to sleek, fresh looks, Blanche is out here serving main character energy, Rose looks like your cool aunt who does Pilates, and Sophia and Dorothy still delivering one liners with the best of them. Do you… pic.twitter.com/9ClQMsYlvI — CeCe (@cecegkh) May 20, 2026 With a little A.I. magic, the Golden Girls got a makeover that took their characters into 2026, ditching the 1980s grannycore for layered bobs and flattering jackets. Would the show be as iconic today if it looked like this? Who knows. But I love the style refresh — except for Estelle Getty, who I want to believe looked exactly like Sophia the day she was born.  Canine comfort at the dentist Sign me up for a mouthful of crowns. A San Francisco dental office staffs a therapy dog (a French Bulldog named Xylo, short for the dental anesthetic Xylocaine), who greets clients when they enter and is available to lie in your lap while Mr. Thirsty and Mr. Bumpy (just trying not to trigger anyone who hates the dentist like I do) get to work on your pearly whites.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by SFGATE | California’s largest news site (@sfgate) Xylo belongs to owner Dr. Brian Baliwas, and she can be found under “Team” on the company website, along with her stellar credentials. She’s an American Kennel Club-registered, rabies-vaccinated, snorting, fetching bundle of love. And her presence represents a growing hospitality trend in dentistry, where a patient’s comfort is just as much a priority as his or her medical care.  A garden of lilies where blooms last one day I have the opposite of a green thumb, and I wonder if plants can tell that they’ve landed on death row in my apartment. (“For my last meal, I’ll have compost, Miracle-Gro, and water for once,” my fiddle leaf fig seems to say.) I have kept a jade plant alive for years, mostly because it’s cat-level independent and needs no one and nothing. All that to say, I’m beyond impressed with a luscious garden that’s been going for 30 years.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Southern Living (@southernlivingmag) Judi and Paul Aucoin grow lilies galore at their Birmingham, Alabama, home. It’s been their thing ever since a neighbor bequeathed them her lily collection back in the ’90s. The gorgeous blossoms from more than 600 daylilies last less than 24 hours, but something about their fleeting beauty makes me sentimental about the meaning of life. A diamond in the rough Well, this is one smart strategy for getting people outdoors! Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas, invites families to dig for natural diamonds in a field over the surface of a volcanic crater. Sound too good to be true? One woman just plucked a three-carat uncut diamond straight outta the dirt.    View this post on Instagram   A post shared by The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) Keshia Smith had just lost her 22-year-old son and her father before making the trip. “I was under a lot of pressure … Pressure makes diamonds,” she said. “I had my two angels right there with me.” As for the rock, which she named Za’Novia Liberty Diamond after her son’s two kids and America’s 250th anniversary, the value might be priceless for Smith. Still, her raw gemstone could go for $5,000 to $10,000 just as it is. Marking Punch the baby monkey as safe Have you been following Punch the monkey’s blockbuster story of survival at Japan’s Ichikawa City Zoo? He’s just nine months old, but he’s already a viral sensation. And animal lovers are breathing a sigh of relief that he’s made it this far — and that he’s doing great.   Ver esta publicación en Instagram   Una publicación compartida por The New York Times (@nytimes) I think everyone’s heart broke when we first discovered how Punch was abandoned by his mother and he struggled to integrate into his tribe of macaques. He found comfort in a stuffed monkey from IKEA that was twice his size and was cared for by zookeepers. (Scroll to the third slot in this carousel from the New York Times to see him leap onto a staffer’s leg for an adorable mealtime ride-along.) Now, he’s living his best life doing normal monkey stuff like making friends, frolicking around his habitat, and eating as many sweet potatoes and apples as he likes. Go, Punch, go! I love our Bright Side crew! Always feel free to zhuzh up the comments section (you can email me too), or share this list to brighten someone else’s day. Hope you have a wonderful weekend! —Lauren