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How can gender roles hurt daughters? This heart-wrenching ad sums it up.

It's everyone's responsibility to #ShareTheLoad.

Does this family sound familiar?

Mom cooks dinner, does the laundry, and takes care of the kids' mess, often after a long day at the office...

GIF via Ariel/Facebook.


...while dad rests comfortably in his favorite spot on the sofa.

GIF via Ariel/Facebook.

For many of us, the answer is "yes" — it could be a snapshot of a typical Tuesday in our own homes. But, come to think of it ... how backward is it that this is the norm?

A new ad by an Indian laundry detergent company is drawing praise around the globe for sparking a much needed conversation about gender roles.

The ad by Ariel (which, fair warning, may necessitate a few dabs at the eyes) is narrated by an elderly father who's visiting his adult daughter and her family. Throughout the video, he's reflecting on how he raised her, and regretting some of his decisions — particularly when it comes to gender roles.

GIF via Ariel/Facebook.

GIF via Ariel/Facebook.

"Sorry on behalf of every dad who set the wrong example,the father continues in the ad, which you can watch below.

By the end of the video, you learn that the narration is actually a letter he wrote to his daughter, apologizing for his wrongdoing and promising to do better.

"I will make a conscious effort to help your mom with the household chores," the letter reads. "I may not become the king of the kitchen, but at least I can help out with the laundry. All these years I’ve been wrong. It’s time to set things right.

The ad touches on an important topic that doesn't get addressed enough: how time poverty disproportionately affects women.

We tend to overlook the critical work that needs getting done in any society in order for life to move onward, like caring for children or preparing meals. Around the world, this unpaid work is, more often than not, done by women

Image from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, used with permission.

The sexist double standard of time poverty — which affects women in the developing world far more than it does in North America or Europe —  was a focal point of Bill and Melinda Gates' annual letter, released earlier this week.

"Unless things change, girls today will spend hundreds of thousands more hours than boys doing unpaid work simply because society assumes it’s their responsibility," Bill and Melinda wrote in the letter.

It's this injustice that's inspiring many to applaud Ariel for its ad, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. 

"This is one of the most powerful videos I have ever seen – showing how stereotypes hurt all of us and are passed from generation to generation," she explained in a post

It's time we stood up to the sexist double standards that hold women back.

And it can start by just watching a two-minute video. Check out Ariel's ad below.

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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Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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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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