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Here Are Some Women Who Make The 'Frozen' Princesses Look Pathetic. Will They Make The Big Screen?

Jason Porath spends his days researching women whose lives would be amazing movies (that won't ever get made). Historical and folklorical, their stories are fascinating. Let's hope there are some studio executives following his work and rethinking what makes a blockbuster.

Jason (who is apparently kind of camera-shy?) used to be an effects animator for DreamWorks Animation. "Rejected Princesses" grew out of a joke when he challenged his coworkers to come up with princesses who would be even more inappropriate as role models for little girls than Anna and Elsa, of "Frozen" fame. His inbox overflowed with a binder fulllist of awesome women.


Like this one, for example: Ching Shih took over her husband's shipping fleet upon his death and turned to piracy.

Not only that, but she became a leader of a huge fleet of pirates. You think pirates are famous for raping and pillaging? She laid down the law — anyone who raped a female captive would be beheaded! BOOM. (She was still down with pillaging.)

When she was done with piracy, she convinced the Chinese government to pay her a substantial amount of money and make her second husband a lieutenant in the navy. She retired in style, feared and respected by all.

To be fair, Ching Shih did have a crappy minor appearance in the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. I think we can all agree that that doesn't begin to count.

How about this one: Lady Hester Stanhope, a British aristocrat, left behind a life of luxury (and social pressure to get hitched) to gallivant around the Middle East by herself, ignoring approximately 100% of what people thought she should do with her life.

She was a princess in the only way that matters, which is that people in the Middle East assumed she was. As Jason writes, "[S]he strictly adhered to the old Ghostbusterian adage: 'if someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes.'"


She went anywhere she damn well pleased, including the all-male monastery of Saint Anthony. After deciphering an Italian treasure map, she conducted the first modern archaeological dig in the Levant, unearthing an ancient city.

Would any one of her accomplishments not make one hell of a movie?

Some of the women Jason features were actual, literal princesses.

Take Khutulun, the Mongolian wrestling princess, for example.

Her dad wanted her to get married, but she wasn't feeling it. She offered to wrestle any man who'd like to be her main squeeze. If he won, he'd get to marry her. If he lost, he had to give her 100 horses.

She ended up unmarried, with 10,000 fine horses in her stables.

I could go on and on. I've learned so much from Jason's posts. Go check them out for yourself, and report back (tweet me @howletswing) with your favorite one.

EVEN BETTER NEWS (how does it get better, you ask?): There's a "Rejected Princesses" book coming out in 2016. I can hardly wait.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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A woman looking at her phone while sitting on the toilet.


One of the most popular health trends over the last few years has been staying as hydrated as possible, evidenced by the massive popularity of 40-oz Stanely Quencher cups. The theory among those who obsess over hydration is that, when you pee clear, you’ve removed all the waste in your body and are enjoying the incredible benefits of being 100% hydrated. Congratulations.

However, according to Dr. Sermed Mezher, an NHS doctor in the UK, peeing clear isn’t always a sign of being healthy.

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A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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