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upworthy

She's OK with the lines in her face. Here's what this actress figured out.

For 58-year-old actress Frances McDormand, getting older (and showing signs of it) isn't such a bad thing.

Actress Frances McDormand sees growing older as a gift. But it seems she's in the minority there.

Frances McDormand is pretty much Hollywood royalty. She's starred in classic movies like "Fargo," "Almost Famous," and "Raising Arizona" and has more than a few awards (ahem, an Oscar and a Tony) to show for her lengthy career. But the other thing that comes with a long career is age. And what Frances has learned is that our culture isn't too keen on getting old.



Image via Yahoo!

Honestly, the quote is so good you kind of need to see it twice.

“We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species. There's no desire to be an adult. Adulthood is not a goal. It's not seen as a gift. Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 — sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally. Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face." — Frances McDormand, "A Star Who Has No Time For Vanity"

Although Hollywood and our youth-obsessed culture bothers Frances, she's human. So sometimes she has her moments of insecurity about the lines in her face or neck. But for her, a laugh line isn't just a laugh line. It's much more.


GIFs via Yahoo!

When I saw this clip I thought, "Wow. I've never thought of my face like that."

Now I'll let you in on a not-so-secret secret. I'm 31 years old. Deep breaths. Actually, my 30s have been awesome so far, but I'm very slowly being consumed by thoughts of "OMG, I'm starting to look old!" I've got a bunch of unruly grey hairs framing my face (of course they're right up front), and sometimes I stop myself from scowling for fear of "getting stuck that way." I know these are pretty irrational worries, but even I have been affected by the world of injectables, anti-aging creams, and HD smartphone cameras.

I'm one of those feminists who thinks, "If a woman wants to change her face, she should go for it! Do you!" Everyone should be happy with how they look, even if that means makeup, face exercises, or going under the knife to do it. But I also like the idea of a culture that doesn't bat an eye when a woman does absolutely nothing to her face at all.

Frances McDormand and her natural 58-year-old face is refreshing because it feels completely foreign by Hollywood standards.

But just by being honest about her journey and insecurities, she's having an incredible effect on young and not so young women. Myself included. Here's hoping by the time I'm in my 50s, seeing aging women's faces on our movie and TV screens won't be such a big deal. And by then, I'll have my own road map with awesome stories to tell.

Check out the full clip where Frances shares with Katie Couric how her husband helped her see aging differently.

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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