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Sexism in Hollywood is rampant, and Emma Watson says her career proves it.

It's difficult to dispute these facts.

Let's just cut to the chase: Emma Watson is a badass.

Photo by Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images.


At 25, she's already built a killer, A-list acting career for herself...


Here she is accepting the 2013 MTV Trailblazer Award. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images.

"Harry Potter" (x8), "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," "The Bling Ring," "Noah" ... shall I go on?

She didn't let fame influence her into thinking she's too cool for school...

It's easy to forget that Watson went back to college after raking in millions from her acting chops and graduated from Brown University in 2014.

And, arguably the most badass resume item of all: She's become a champion for women's rights around the world.

Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images.

Since July 2014, Watson has been a UN Women goodwill ambassador, leading the United Nations' HeForShe campaign. The initiative is focused on global gender equality and specifically targets men in becoming better advocates. (I'll say it again: badass.)

On Sept. 28, 2015, she spoke out on her feminism again, unafraid to take on the industry that made her a star.

In an interview with The Guardian, Watson used her own experiences to highlight the inexcusable gender gap that persists in Hollywood.

"I have experienced sexism in that I have been directed by male directors 17 times and only twice by women. Of the producers I've worked with 13 have been male and only one has been a woman. But I am lucky: I have always insisted on being treated equally and have generally won that equality. Most of the problems I have encountered have been in the media, where I have been treated so incredibly differently from my male co-stars. I think my work with the UN has probably made me even more aware of the problems. I went out for a work dinner recently. It was 7 men … and me."

You can read her whole interview here.

Watson's experiences aren't an anomaly. Sadly, they're to be expected.

Women accounted for a measly 1.9% of directors who created the top 100 grossing films of 2014, a study by USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found. And that figure gets even more disappointing when you look at top films from 2007 to 2014 (excluding 2011) and consider race.

Out of 779 directors, just three were black women. And one was an Asian American woman.

Chart from "Inequality in 700 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race, & LGBT Status from 2007 to 2014" via the Media, Diversity, and Social Change Initiative at USC Annenberg.

Seriously, pathetic.

At least we have leaders like Watson using their voices to demand more from the industry.

And, as the report noted, those voices may finally be heard: Films in 2015 showed modest improvements on the diversity front from recent years.

Films created by and featuring women like "Pitch Perfect 2," "Spy," and "Fifty Shades of Grey" had blockbuster success in 2015, and the number of female directors of top films is on pace to beat 2013 and 2014.

Still, more is needed.

"While the economics are encouraging, long‐term solutions and further monitoring are required," the report reads. "Only with sustained effort and change can Hollywood move from an industry of inequality to one of inclusion."

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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