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21 Times You Found Serenity

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In Captain Malcolm Reynolds that is.

That time Malcolm Reynolds flexed his inner thighs like Beyoncé.

That time Malcolm Reynolds flexed his inner thighs like Beyoncé.

Fox

That time he looked deep into your eyes and complimented you.

That time he looked deep into your eyes and complimented you.

Fox

When Captain Reynolds made exploding seem like a good option.

When Captain Reynolds made exploding seem like a good option.

Fox

That time when he was the fastest draw.

That time when he was the fastest draw.

But only when you need him to be.

Fox


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How Misandrist Are You?

28 Things Mothers Understand All Too Well

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It takes one to know one.

When your child (at any age) needs your undivided attention.

When your child (at any age) needs your undivided attention.

Warner Bros. Television / Via gilmoregirled.tumblr.com

When your kid fakes being sick to get out of going to school because they’re just too tired to get out of bed.

When your kid fakes being sick to get out of going to school because they’re just too tired to get out of bed.

Paramount Pictures / Via dailyedge.ie

And you let them stay home anyway.

And you let them stay home anyway.

Warner Bros. Television / Via gilmoregirls.wikia.com

What it feels like to wake up five times in the middle of the night.

What it feels like to wake up five times in the middle of the night.

CBS / Via rebloggy.com


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Which "Revenge" Character Are You?

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How many secrets are you hiding in The Hamptons?

Photos via ABC.

24 Delicious Filipino Foods You Need In Your Life

Lea Michele Tweets A Heartbreaking Picture Of Her And Cory Monteith On His Birthday

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“The biggest heart and most beautiful smile.. In all of our hearts..”

I only have happy memories of Cory. He was not his addiction – unfortunately, it won. But that wasn't who he was. Cory made me feel like a queen every day. From the minute he said, 'I'm your boyfriend,' I loved every day, and I thank him for being the best boyfriend and making me feel so beautiful.

Monteith died in Vancouver last year from an overdose of heroin and alcohol.

LINK: Related: Lea Michele’s Song “If You Say So” Is About Cory Monteith And It Will Break Your Heart


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What I Wish I Could Tell My Dead Mother

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I can’t remember the sound of my mom’s voice, but there are so many conversations I imagine we would have had.

Chris Ritter for BuzzFeed

Here's what I remember about my mother, who died from breast cancer when I was 10: She smelled elegant, she had beautiful blonde hair, she made the most delicious cinnamon toast, she used to gently caress my head as I fell asleep, she was kind, she was beautiful, and she made me feel loved.

Here's what I don't remember about my mother: What she sounded like. But I used to. For years after her death I heard her voice every day. I would hear her calling my name, I would hear her laughing, and I would listen to her outgoing message on our answering machine for hours.

My family did their best to keep her alive in my memory. My aunt always told me how smart, funny, and quick-witted she was. My grandparents told me that she was endlessly compassionate, and couldn't bear to see an old man sitting by himself. And my father informed me that she loved to play craps.

But it feels like everything I know about my mom is a second-hand story. And as I've grown older, those stories are what I've clung to as clues of what she might have been like if she were still alive.

So even though not sharing milestones — like graduating from high school or getting my college acceptance letter or when my niece was born — is tough, the magnitude of her loss unexpectedly hits me most in the everyday moments. It's those times I wish I could remember her voice the most. I never got to run home and tell her I won Best Movie at my middle school's Film Festival, that I got an A+ on Mr. Sewell's crazy hard science test, or that I have a new outlook on Brussels sprouts — and that she was right about how delicious they are.

It's tough to know we'll never finish another crossword puzzle together, or see the Eiffel Tower at the same time, or share one last duet of her favorite song, Marc Cohn's "Walking in Memphis," as we drive down Route 10. (Although a small part of her is with me every time I sing that song today, as I'm fairly confident my tone-deaf musical abilities were inherited.) I'm sad that I'll never get to tell her that I'm gay. I'm sad that I'll never get to tell her I've been consumed by love, or rendered inconsolable by heartbreak. But I'm equally sad that I can't simply call her on a whim to ask, "Whatcha doing?"

I hope she would have told me that everyone hates high school and that college is so much better. I know she could have told me that buying a couch on Craigslist was a terrible idea.

I feel like she should have told me how much I would miss her.

I know our relationship wouldn't have always been perfect. I know we wouldn't have always seen eye to eye (can't imagine my tongue ring would have gone over well). I know that she'd stress me out and that I would disappoint her and that we would fight. I can almost hear her shouting, "Quitting college is not an option."

But I also know that she loved me unconditionally. And if I ever needed a literal or figurative shoulder to cry on, our issues would fall away and she'd embrace me while sharing words of wisdom.

I've found myself longing for those words countless times over the last two decades, but with each passing day they feel further and further away. That's why I've clung to the best piece of advice my mom ever gave me: "Close the windows when you sing in the car, sweetie."

Kanye Got Kim A Giant Rice Krispies Treat For Mother's Day


First Same-Sex Marriage License Issued In Arkansas

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The marriage license was issued a day after Judge Chris Piazza ruled a decade-old ban is unconstitutional. Kristin Seaton and Jennifer Rambo of Fort Smith were the first couple to be married Saturday morning.

Jennifer Rambo (right) kisses her partner Kristin Seaton following their marriage ceremony in front of the Carroll County Courthouse. Sheryl Maples, (far left) the lead attorney who filed the Wright v. the State of Arkansas lawsuit, looks on.

AP Photo/Sarah Bentham

The first same-sex marriage licenses were issued in Arkansas this morning, ending a constitutional ban on marriage equality that was put in place by voters a decade ago.

Carroll County Deputy Clerk Jane Osborn issued the license to Kristin Seaton, 27, and Jennifer Rambo, 26, of Fort Smith, the Associated Press reports.

The couple, who have been together four years, slept in their Ford Focus overnight, and were the first of about 10 couples to line up outside the courthouse before the doors opened.

A woman in a rainbow dress officiated their marriage ceremony on the courthouse steps. "Thank God," Rambo said when the license was issued.

Friday, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza ruled that the 2004 ban was unconstitutional. Courts around the U.S. have struck down similar bans since last June, when the Supreme Court ruled a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional.

Since judge Piazza's ruling did not include a stay, same-sex couples can begin applying for marriage licenses once most clerks' offices reopen their doors on Monday. The Eureka Springs office, where Seaton and Rambo were married, is usually open for marriage licenses on Saturdays.

State Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said he would defend the state's ban on same-sex marriages and appeal the ruling.

LINK: Arkansas Judge Strikes Down State Ban On Same-Sex Marriage

LINK: The Marriage Equality Map You Need To Know


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Ricky Gervais And Russell Crowe Got Drunk Together And Live-Tweeted It

There Are A Whole Lot Of Penises In “Neighbors”

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And with that comes plenty of homoeroticism. Stars Zac Efron and Seth Rogen and the men behind the movie talk about the plethora of penis jokes.

Teddy (Zac Efron) in Neighbors, half-naked, as is his wont.

Glen Wilson / Universal Pictures

Neighbors, which hits theaters Friday, features Zac Efron as tireless party boy Teddy, Seth Rogen as the tired new dad Mac who lives next to Teddy's frat house, and a lot of penis jokes.

"We're nerdy comedy guys, so we don't really think about it in terms of, Is there too much cock?" said Andrew J. Cohen, who co-wrote Neighbors with Brendan O'Brien. "It's more, What's funny? Right now, it's penises that are pretty funny."

"Sex and cock and farts," O'Brien added. "What do you laugh about?"

"There are a lot of dudes in fraternities, and therefore, a lot of cock," Cohen said. "In such close proximity, we assume that they see each other's cocks."

Seth Rogen, who plays the family man next door to the frat house, agreed. "Thirty dudes living in a house together? There's some dicks flopping around," he told BuzzFeed.

And Rogen knows that from rooming with other men himself. The actor used to live with Evan Goldberg, with whom he co-wrote Superbad, Pineapple Express, and This Is the End, and who is a producer on Neighbors. "We would be honest about it, and just be like, 'I'm going to go jerk off.'" Or, "'Be right back, I'm going to go jerk off,'" as Efron imagined aloud in response.

Teddy (Zac Efron) talks to Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne).

Universal Pictures

"We were writing together, and then there was a point where — just the sheer desire to conserve time — we realized it would probably be better if we just jerked off at the same time. As opposed to him doing it, then me doing it," Rogen recalled with his signature laugh. "And so we would kind of actually have coordinated jerk-off times. It's bordering on... It's homoerotic, I guess is what you would call it."

And though openly gay characters in Neighbors are only fleetingly on screen — there's a gay couple who checks out the empty house early in the film before the frat boys move in — homoeroticism abounds. Teddy, for example, grabs his friend's genitals and doesn't let go until said friend uses his ability to achieve voluntary erection directly into his hand. "It's super gay," Efron told BuzzFeed. "But it's not."

While the penis parade in Neighbors may seem carefree, for director Nicholas Stoller, there were some concerns: The one (prosthetic, enormous) penis you actually see in the film belongs to Christopher Mintz-Plasse's character, frat boy Scoonie, whose ample appendage is his dominant characteristic. And yes, it caused some trepidation.

"The rule that I heard was that you can show a penis in an R-rated movie; it just can't be above 90 degrees," Stoller told BuzzFeed. "So even if it's flaccid, like if you're flopping it around, if you flop it side to side, it's fine. If you flop it up and down you can get into trouble."


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The Hardest “Mad Men” Quiz You Will Ever Take

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Because the same thing that happened in Season 1 also seems to happen in Season 7 .

Mad Men creator Matt Weiner and the cast of his hit AMC advertising series have mastered the art of saying something, but revealing a whole lot of nothing. As have the people who write the show's episode descriptions. Just try matching the Mad Men episode descriptions with their titles to see how good they are.

Pour yourself an old-fashioned, because you're going to need it as you get increasingly frustrated each time you see the words "friend," "past," "trip," or "news." You've been warned.

AMC

Mean Girls Art History Snapchats Are Grool

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Get in loser. We’re going to the Art Institute.

That's why her hair is so big.

That's why her hair is so big.

We wanna invite you to have lunch with us every day for the rest of the week.

We wanna invite you to have lunch with us every day for the rest of the week.

I used to think there was just fat and skinny.

I used to think there was just fat and skinny.

But apparently, there's lots of things that can be wrong on your body.

But apparently, there's lots of things that can be wrong on your body.


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Zoe Saldana Settles Into The Driver's Seat

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From Center Stage to Rosemary’s Baby , the in-demand actress has always followed a path charted by her heart, even when it invokes controversy. Now Saldana is building a business based on this guiding principal.

Getty Images

As Zoe Saldana opens the grimy door of my even messier Hyundai Elantra — filled with errant gym socks, dozens of old receipts, and even a toaster — and slides into the passenger seat, I am mortified.

Conducting an interview with the star of Center Stage, Avatar, and Rosemary's Baby in my filthy car was not the initial plan. Originally, I was to chat with Saldana as she got her hair and makeup done before being photographed for Jeff Vespa's coffee table book The Art of Discovery. But the hair dryer required to achieve her flawless blow-out made a conversation impossible. With time dwindling at the shoot, and another obligation looming across Los Angeles, she suggests the unconventional interview environment. And off we go.

Before I know it, Saldana and I are driving down Los Feliz's Amesbury Road, her designer bag sitting atop a pile of old receipts and her feet wedged between discarded Starbucks cups. "I love it," she says as I profusely apologize for the shabby state of my vehicle. "I'm actually glad we're doing the interview like this."

The impromptu setting serves to reinforce how in demand Saldana's time is. She'd just returned from a digital presentation at the NewFronts in New York City (where she had debuted My Hero, a web series she is executive producing for AOL) and was squeezing a photo shoot, her interview with BuzzFeed, a Lionsgate retreat in Malibu, and her husband's art show into a tight 48 hours before flying back to New York to attend the MET Gala with Michael Kors on May 5.

"The older I get, the more difficult all this traveling gets," says Saldana, who married artist Marco Perego in July 2013. "Also, when you're happy at home, you don't want to leave home. That's the part that's been taxing over the last year in my life. Plus, I've been working back-to-back-to-back-to-back for the last four years, so it's not like I've missed out on seven months here and there — I've missed four years of my life. That's a serious issue."

In addition to missing time with her husband, Saldana says living out of a suitcase has begun to take its toll on her craft as well. "It's very important that I'm living and my fountain of happiness — the well that I pull from — needs to be a little fuller in order for me to take from that and give out on screen," she says with a sigh. "When I'm running on empty, nothing fulfills me. In the past eight months, I've really felt this yearning to be home. To live. To go to my office. To fix my closets. To walk my dog consistently every day. To not only see my partner in the morning but also at night. That is becoming a priority that's very needed."

Saldana in Rosemary's Baby.

NBC

The 35-year-old will have to wait a bit longer until she can enjoy the fruits of her labor. Following the May 11 premiere of Rosemary's Baby, an adaptation of Ira Levin's 1967 novel (on which Roman Polanski's film was based) on NBC, she'll embark on a global promotional tour for Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel's riskiest film to date, which stars Saldana, Chris Pratt, Glenn Close, and Benicio del Toro as the main players in an intergalactic race to save our solar system. Saldana plays Gamora, a green-skinned assassin in the film, a mix of outer space action and unexpected comedy.

Despite this being the third major franchise she's been a part of, the actress insists she's never looked at Guardians, Star Trek, or Avatar as smart business decisions. "I never make decisions from a strategic place," she says, as a tendril of her hair dances in the air conditioning. "I simply don't roll like that. I don't like to regret anything and the only time that happens is when I follow my heart. I'm a person who has to do what they want because if I do what I'm told to, you'll see it in my face. It's not that I'm unhappy, I'm just not motivated."

While Saldana concedes that a couple of bad independent films cemented this attitude earlier in her career, she says that she was taught from a very young age that honesty is always the best policy. "I was raised that most things are black or white and the truth is the best thing ever. Even if there are consequences that will gravely effect you, the truth is the truth and you have to fucking just make a show of faith."

Years studying ballet both tested and reinforced the lessons imparted by her parents, Asalia Nazario and Aridio Saldaña, the latter of whom died in a car accident when Saldana was 9. "The harshest mentors are ballet teachers," she says simply, like it was the truest fact in the world. "You either break because they made you feel bad or you learn to see life through their eyes. I learned to be very disciplined because of ballet; if I wanted to be the best, I needed to be there every day and be committed to it and respect it. Ballet was my first love affair, ever."


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How To Survive A Super Typhoon

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Photograph by Tammy David for BuzzFeed

Then comes the thunder a'rumbling,
Then comes the lightning flaring,
And then downpours the heavy rain.
But the lightning is my torch, the thunder beats
the cadence of my steps,
And for my walking cane the rain…!

– Traditional Ivatan poem

All over Batanes, the signs came days before the storm. The residents of the northernmost Philippine archipelago — even the ones without radios or televisions — could sense the typhoon’s approach. The hermit crabs began scuttling away from the beach. The moon looked full, but dull. Old folks complained of reawakened aches and pains in their joints. In Uyugan, a coastal town of 1,200 people, a friend called fisherman Alex Ibay with an urgent piece of news: The water buffalo was out.

Ibay, 49, remembered his grandfather’s simple warning about the islands’ severe weather: “Just be ready.” He taught Ibay to look daily toward the promontory called Disiay south of Uyugan, where the island’s main throughway, National Road, wrapped around a cliff. If a lone water buffalo looked out from Disiay over the water — forgetting, for a time, its grazing and its herd — a destructive typhoon was on its way to Batanes, one that would require the islanders’ best preparation. If the water buffalo was not there — if his friends were mistaken — Ibay could relax.

Ibay looked out toward Disiay on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. There it was: a brown water buffalo, unmoving, staring toward the ocean as if in vigil.

Ibay rushed to his motorcycle and drove north to the capital, Basco, the only town in Batanes with internet cafés. There he read that three days earlier, some 1,500 miles north, scientists at the Japan Meteorological Agency already had begun to watch a tropical depression roiling 800 miles east of Manila, the Philippines' capital. The weather forecast, sent by the JMA to the Philippine weather service, PAGASA, confirmed what Ibay suspected: An ominous blue and red mass spun west toward Batanes. Its international name was Usagi. PAGASA named the storm Odette.

The Philippines has long been at the heart of the Pacific’s typhoon belt. Now, with the warmest decade ever recorded in human history, the seas east of the archipelago have experienced the highest degree of sea level escalation in the world: 60 centimeters, or three times the global average. With more water at the ocean’s surface, pushed by stronger, hotter winds, typhoons are becoming more monstrous. By day's end, Typhoon Odette, which was rapidly intensifying, would be reclassified as a super typhoon.

Alex Ibay motorbiked from the internet café home to Uyugan. He and his fellow fishermen met near the port and agreed; they would bring their wooden fishing boats ashore, and, using the protective methods of their forebears, cover their hulls with the thick, heavy fronds of coconut leaves. Local officers at Batanes’ branch of the National Council of Indigenous Peoples have given a name to the indigenous methods of reading the arrival of a storm, one passed down through generations: ethnometeorology.

The people of Batanes, like Ibay and his grandfather, are the Ivatans. The Ivatans rarely fear or deny the storm. They have built their lives around their preparation for nature’s unpredictability. They know how to read nature's messages and have minimized risk by building strong homes, always having a month’s worth of food on hand, and obeying commands to evacuate or remain inside for typhoon warnings. Their history and mind-set show that the people of Batanes are of the storm, shaped by the storm’s demands, rooted to their soil even as strong winds and rains buffet their fates. With lives made near unforgiving waters, Ivatans’ stories of unbelievable survival are far more common than unspeakable tragedies. For the Ivatan people, to die in a storm is so unnecessary, it’s nearly shameful.

That tradition of self-reliance is largely a product of the islands' sheer isolation. Only recently has Philippine Airlines begun flying to Basco once a day from Manila, and flights are frequently canceled due to severe weather. Fuel, imported food, and new clothes are triple the price they are elsewhere in the Philippines. To supply the islands with necessities, ships must pass through the Luzon Strait, where the biggest waves in the world form underneath the ocean’s surface.

“We are as one,” says William Agsunod, the mayor of Mahatao, a town in Batan, the archipelago's largest island. “We understand nature. Nature cannot live with us. We have to live with nature.”

As citizens around the world find themselves coping with more vicious and unpredictable weather, the centuries-old practices of the Ivatans offer modern lessons in disaster preparedness. While the rest of the Philippines — and the world — debate the practicality of adapting versions of the Ivatans’ best practices, the people of Batanes themselves may be growing away from the customs that have enabled them to survive for so long.

Photograph by Tammy David for BuzzFeed

Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

Batanes appears on a map like tiny footprints making their way to Taiwan. One of the most remote archipelagos in the greater Philippine archipelago, it has a population a little under 17,000. It's a tropical Ireland by way of the Pacific: an undulating green, hilly, limestone-cliffed panorama — coastal grandeur in every shade of blue. The beauty of the oceanside commute from the capital of Basco to the southern towns of Batan Island defies all hyperbole. Small goats leap from rock to rock on the hillsides, some wearing sweaters; families of carabaos graze on cogon grass and regard passersby peacefully. Fishermen and farmers leave their doors unlocked; small children startle visitors by taking their hands and asking, respectfully, for the traditional blessings of their elders.

Justine Zweibel / BuzzFeed

According to the latest statistics, Batanes has one of the lowest crime rates of any province in the Philippines, and its physical landscape may be its Ivatans’ best law-enforcement method: “If you commit a crime here,” Mayor Agsunod says wryly, glancing toward the rough seas outside his office window, “there’s nowhere to run.”

Foil this with life in the Philippines' capital. Manila, 400 miles south, is a 12 million-person megalopolis, where residents live 3,400 times past its rate of sustainability. Most of the city’s paltry green space has been overtaken by private corporations, and scenes of poverty are matched only by surreal shows of wealth. Manileños often cultivate a self-protectiveness, a simmering fear about theft, car accidents, random crimes — cruel realities constructed by the country’s income inequality, overpopulation, and poor urban planning. In Batanes, visitors often shed their wariness. To leave the region is to mourn.

On Sept. 20, as Typhoon Odette approached, Batanes Congresswoman Henedina Abad was in Manila texting every official that the storm coming would be a strong one. Local Batanes leaders went town to town to perform the bandillo, a town-crying tradition from the days of Spanish control. They traveled to each town’s square, calling out for locals to gather and listen, making sure the citizens without televisions and radios knew what was coming. Residents readied their monthlong stores of canned goods and local food: sweet potatoes, dried fish, rice, sardines, corned beef. They secured their roofs with fishing nets and tied strong ropes around the walls of their homes. If they had the room, they brought their pigs, goats, and chickens inside with them; cows and carabaos would be heavy enough to withstand the outdoor gales. None of these measures were enshrined into law; everyone obeyed their memories and traditions. Around 2 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 21, Abad’s iPhone woke her up. Versions of "Ma’am, please pray, the storm is here" buzzed in from different numbers, over and over.

In Uyugan, William John Nanud, 29, sat with his father and his wife in the house his overseas wages had helped them to furnish. He had returned home safely from a job in Afghanistan, where he’d taken shelter from missiles; he and his family prayed now against the assault of Odette. Jhing Umal was at Nanud’s side, pregnant with their first child. She clutched her belly as she listened to Odette’s wind in the dark morning hours. It did not seem to merely blow; this wind screamed from all directions. She was sure it signaled the end of the world. In Jhing's home region of Bicol, 500 miles south, storms less intense would kill untold numbers of people. "Don’t be scared,” he said. “Here in Batanes, a strong storm is normal.” They could not yet know that Super Typhoon Odette was the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful storm to hit Batanes in 25 years.

A local grocery store operates by candlelight.

Photograph by Tammy David for BuzzFeed

A few streets down from Nanud, Alex Ibay settled into his storm routine. He was well-stocked with food. Ibay had anticipated the power would go out, so he readied his radio with batteries. While the storm exploded around him, he rested in his one-room, limestone home, a narrow, ancient plank of wood set in two holes across the doorframe for protection.

Decades ago he had slept on the wood floor next to his grandparents during storms, as was the Ivatan way with small children. Now he rested in his own bed. His black cat, Ming, kept him company, curling on an old blanket near his feet. He warmed his throat with Matador brandy and listened to his favorite American country singers, Tim McGraw and Dan Nelson. He listened, too, to Odette’s wind; whenever it slackened, he emerged from his room, struggled the few yards to his boats, and replaced the blown-off coconut leaves.

The tail and eye of Typhoon Odette moved through Batanes from Friday into Saturday, the 21st. In Ivana, the town just northwest of Uyugan, Narciso Cabas, a 68-year-old farmer, watched in disbelief across the street as the second story of the home he’d renovated only five months before was sucked into the sky. Odette’s winds blew from the north; his green, galvanized iron roof smashed to the National Road. Odette’s winds blew from the south; his home’s wood frame scattered like matchsticks. Before he ducked into a neighbor’s concrete and limestone home, Cabas watched the destruction in disgust. He had purchased his building materials from Manila, and nature had undone his home in hours.

The storm lingered until making its way toward China early Sunday. The city of Basco and surrounding villages were without power and water. Water pipes and bridges were demolished. Concrete roads washed away. The windows of Batan Island’s only air traffic control tower were blown out. The wind and rain measuring equipment of the local PAGASA weather station were ruined. The roads that remained were covered with fallen fruit trees: Local avocados, coconuts, and bananas would take years to grow back.

Congresswoman Henedina Abad reached Basco on Monday, Sept. 23, riding a Philippine Air Force C-130 military plane filled with food packs. She met with local officials to assess the aftermath. The storm reports calculated massive destruction: nearly $43 million USD in Batanes. One hundred and seventy-four houses were totally destroyed, largely made of inexpensive lumber and aluminum from Manila. The list of injuries? Three men, cut by flying glass and aluminum. None were knocked unconscious.

Odette held the title of 2013's largest storm to date until, in early November, even stronger Super Typhoon Haiyan would kill 6,000 Filipinos and displace many thousands more. After one of the strongest typhoons in the history of Batanes, no one went missing, and no one died.

Photograph by Tammy David for BuzzFeed

In the Philippines’ brutal history, Batanes was the last region to be subdued. Dominican missionaries arrived in 1686, over a hundred years after the largest Philippine island, Luzon, where Manila would be built, had been colonized. The Spaniards did not like the Ivatan homes built of planks and boughs atop natural precipices in the mountains. The roofs of the precolonial homes were set low, for wind resistance. The average Dominican priest could not stretch his long legs in such structures, and the structures also abetted the tribal warfare that characterized early Ivatan life. So Spaniards forced every Batanes resident down to settlements on the coast for easier governing. They imposed Catholicism, the orders of the Spanish king, and large-scale limestone harvesting for the homes lining the coasts today. It was a mixed inheritance, as the results of colonization often are: The Ivatans lost their low-roofed settlements in the mountains, which were safer locations from storm surges and tsunamis. But they gained windproof, stone homes that would last centuries.

The limestone house is traditionally planned with walls a meter thick or more.

Photograph by Tammy David for BuzzFeed

The limestone house is traditionally planned with walls a meter thick or more, depending on the wealth of its owner, and is built through the cooperation of the local community. The roof is a thick, woven net of cogon grass that can last for decades. No limestone home is ever built facing the north, the direction from which the wind typically roars strongest. The windows, equipped with tough wooden shutters, face the oceans at the east or west. The following centuries saw other invaders, other influences: a United States military installation after the Philippine–American War, a Japanese occupation during World War II, the Marcos dictatorship, and, now, modern democracy. The land has never been easy to till; the seas have always been rough to maneuver. But the Ivatans’ deep regard for nature’s offerings, and nature’s dangers, has remained throughout.

“Disaster preparation is not just a construction style or a choice in architecture,” says Dorian Merina, an American Fulbright scholar of Ivatan heritage. "It also means creating and maintaining a culture of resilience."

Electricity reached the most populated island, Batan, only in 1987; Sabtang and Itbayat nearby still have limited hours of electricity. The region’s biggest employer is the national government; no private industry can support the islands’ entire population yet. Government employees have second jobs as small-scale farmers and fishermen for their basic needs. There is no movie theater, no chain store, no fast food restaurant.

"Being so remote has certainly caused the people of Batanes hardship over the years," Merina continues, "but it has also meant that people had to choose cooperation, honesty, and integrity in order for the community to get through the current disaster, whether a typhoon, lack of food, or other problem. These qualities, developed over generations, are not always so easy to transfer.”

Florencio "Butch" Abad

Laurel Fantauzzo / BuzzFeed

Henedina and Florencio Abad have overseen Batanes for the past two decades. (It’s not unusual in the Philippines for congressional representation to be occupied largely by one family.) Henedina has served as the congresswoman of Batanes twice in the past 10 years; before that, Florencio was congressman from 1987 to 2004 (he is now budget secretary of the Philippines). Both earned their master's in public administration at Harvard University. The couple are known locally as Dina and Butch, and when they travel to Batanes, crowds gather to greet them and gift them with choice catches of bluefin tuna.

Henedina Abad

Laurel Fantauzzo / BuzzFeed


How Many Of These Classic Science Fiction Novels Have You Read?

29 Times We Wished We Could Trade Wardrobes With Olivia Palermo

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Seems like a fair deal.

This time when she was wearing this crazy yellow dress with doodads on it.

This time when she was wearing this crazy yellow dress with doodads on it.

Steve Mack / Getty Images

Or this time when we couldn't even choose what we wanted to "trade."

Or this time when we couldn't even choose what we wanted to "trade."

Arun Nevader / Getty Images

Yep, this whole thing too. Plus the dog.

Yep, this whole thing too. Plus the dog.

Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Image

This purple dress, please.

This purple dress, please.

Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images


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21 Problems All Sarcastic People Will Understand

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Yeah, good one .

Your sense of humor could be described as an "acquired taste."

Your sense of humor could be described as an "acquired taste."

NBC / Via gifhell.com

Sarcasm slips out of your mouth so often that you often forget you're doing it.

Sarcasm slips out of your mouth so often that you often forget you're doing it.

FOX / Via dont-worry-hayley-is-here.tumblr.com

You have to tell people when you're being serious, because they're so used to you making jokes.

You have to tell people when you're being serious, because they're so used to you making jokes.

Chuck Lorre Productions / Via dancingmonstermermaid.tumblr.com

And since your default is sarcasm, you have a hard time turning it off when others need you to.

And since your default is sarcasm, you have a hard time turning it off when others need you to.

NBC / Via youfoundme815.tumblr.com


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The One Thing You Somehow Didn’t Notice In "Mean Girls" Will Blow Your Mind

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Here’s proof that Gretchen Weiners really DID live happily ever after.

OK, so remember how Regina George told Gretchen Weiners that hoop earrings were her thing and Gretchen couldn't wear them and she was very sad about it?

OK, so remember how Regina George told Gretchen Weiners that hoop earrings were her thing and Gretchen couldn't wear them and she was very sad about it?

Paramount Pictures / Via huffingtonpost.com

BUT at the end of the movie, the Plastics have split up and Gretchen is now sitting with the Cool Asians — with one important change to her look.

BUT at the end of the movie, the Plastics have split up and Gretchen is now sitting with the Cool Asians — with one important change to her look.

Paramount Pictures / Via iamthatonewhohatesbacon.tumblr.com

That's right, Gretchen is finally able to wear her hoop earrings, and she lived happily ever after.

That's right, Gretchen is finally able to wear her hoop earrings, and she lived happily ever after.

Paramount Pictures / Via iamthatonewhohatesbacon.tumblr.com


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The 27 Most Powerful Photos Of Guy Fieri Pointing At Things

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The man, the goatee, THE POINTER FINGER.

At a paper bag:

At a paper bag:

Michael Tran / Getty

At you:

At you:

Michael Kovac / Getty

At an old man:

At an old man:

Michael Kovac / Getty

At the sky:

At the sky:

Michael Buckner / Getty


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