To the 1 in 8 deeply misguided men who think they could score on Serena Williams

Overconfident dudes, be humbled.

 Annie Reneau
07.23.19
Miss Representation/Facebook, @miri_iron/Twitter

Some people apparently don't understand just how unbelievably good Serena Williams is on the tennis court.

Why they don't understand this is unclear. She holds more open era Grand Slam titles than any other tennis player, male or female. She's set Olympic records, ranking records, age records, prize money earnings records—the woman is a record-breaking machine. (Fun fact: Williams is the highest paid female athlete of all time, having earned $86 million in prize money during her career. The next highest is Maria Sharipova, with $38 million in prize money. If that's not total dominance, I don't know what is.)

Her list of tennis championships is a mile long. You don't even have to follow tennis to know that Serena Williams is a freaking powerhouse of a tennis player, not to mention one of the greatest athletes of all time.

And yet, there are dudes who believe they could take her on.

Man exposes the absurdity of sexist marketing by creating shirts that label men like we do women

Not professional tennis player dudes, but average, sit-around-binge-watching-TV-shows-like-the-rest-of-us dudes. And more than a tiny handful of them, apparently. In a survey of 1,732 British men and women conducted by Yougov.com, a full one in eight men responded they definitely could score a point against Serena Williams if they met her on the tennis court.

That's 12 percent of the male respondents who are out of their everlovin' minds. Another 14 percent indicated they weren't sure if they could score against her or not. (Seriously? Not sure? Remember we're talking about Serena Freaking Williams here?) Thankfully a solid 74 percent understood they are mere mortals while Serena Williams is a tennis goddess. But what's up with the 26 percent who think they might stand a chance?

To the dudes who are convinced they could score against Serena Williams, please watch this video. The first minute is all in good fun, as three guys attempt to return one of Williams' wicked serves. (Spoiler: They can't.) But it's the second half that will shatter any delusions you have that you'd be likely to score against this G.O.A.T. tennis pro.

Megan Rapinoe says the best way to support equal pay is by putting your money where your mouth is

Watch Serena hit a tennis can off of a moving cart and a man's head. Watch Serena smash a not-even-full water balloon hanging from a string. Watch Serena swish a tennis ball through a basketball hoop from halfway up the stadium. This woman's power and precision are scary. She may have an infectious smile and an exuberant laugh, but you should be scared of Serena the Tennis Goddess, dudes.

Seriously. Watch and be humbled:

Serena Williams just being one of the greatest athletes of all time...

serena williams tennis mansplaining sexism feminism
Culture

Anyone with a slightly sick sense of humor will be enchanted by this twisted love story.

Image by Brent Connelly from Pixabay and sixthformpoet / Twitter

Twitter user Matt, who goes by the name @SixthFormPoet, shared a dark love story on Twitter that's been read by nearly 600,000 people. It starts in a graveyard and feels like it could be the premise for a Tim Burton film.

While it's hard to verify whether the story is true, Matt insists that it's real, so we'll believe him.

Keep Reading Show less
love story graveyard funny stories twitter
Culture

Left-handed people have one advantage over right-handed counterparts, study finds

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Approximately 10% of the population is left-handed, and the balance between lefties and righties has been the same for almost 5,000 years. People used to believe that left-handed people were evil or unlucky. The word "sinister" is even derived from the Latin word for "left."

In modern times, the bias against lefties for being different is more benign – spiral notebooks are a torture device, and ink gets on their hands like a scarlet letter. Now, a new study conducted at the University of Oxford and published in Brain is giving left-handers some good news. While left-handers have been struggling with tools meant for right-handers all these years, it turns out, they actually possess superior verbal skills.

Researchers looked at the DNA of 400,000 people in the U.K. from a volunteer bank. Of those 400,000 people, 38,332 were southpaws. Scientists were able to find the differences in genes between lefties and righties, and that these genetic variants resulted in a difference in brain structure, too. "It tells us for the first time that handedness has a genetic component," Gwenaëlle Douaud, joint senior author of the study and a fellow at Oxford's Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, told the BBC.

Keep Reading Show less
popular

A plant is learning to take selfies in the name of science

E & T

Pete the Plant is a maidenhair fern living in the Rainforest Life exhibit at the London Zoo, but Pete the Plant isn't like other plants. Pete the Plant is also a budding photographer. Scientists in the Zoological Society of London's (ZSL) conservation tech unit has been teaching the plant how to take selfies.

The ZSL held a competition in partnership with Open Plant, Cambridge University, and the Arribada Initiative for the design of a fuel cell powered by plants. Plant E in the Netherlands produced the winning design. The prototype cell creates electricity from the waste from the plant's roots. The electricity will be used to charge a battery that's attached to a camera. Once Pete the Plant grows strong enough, it will then use the camera to take a selfie. Not too bad for a plant.

"As plants grow, they naturally deposit biomatter into the soil they're planted in, which bacteria in the soil feeds on – this creates energy that can be harnessed by fuel cells and used to power a wide range of conservation tools," Al Davies, ZSL's conservation technology specialist, explains.

RELATED: This plant might be the answer to water pollution we've been searching for

Keep Reading Show less
Innovation