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So, This Guy Got A Stone Cold Stunner At His Graduation

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The Attitude Era is very much alive.

So, here's Stone Cold Steve Austin delivering a Stone Cold stunner to The Rock:

So, here's Stone Cold Steve Austin delivering a Stone Cold stunner to The Rock:

WWE

Now, here's a graduate from the University of Miami (ironically, The Rock's alma mater) delivering a Stone Cold stunner to a fellow graduate at their graduation:

vine.co

At first, this dude was like, "THE CHAMP IS HERE!"

At first, this dude was like, "THE CHAMP IS HERE!"

vine.co

Only for another graduate come in and open up a can of whoop-ass.

Only for another graduate come in and open up a can of whoop-ass.

vine.co


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The 21 Most WTF Things Happening In The Animal World

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DISCLAIMER: this is not for the faint of heart. You may never want to leave home again. Can you get through it?

imgur.com / 4GIFS.com

The Penis Snake.

The Penis Snake.

Matt Roper

This glass frog whose organs you can see through his skin.

This glass frog whose organs you can see through his skin.

THOMAS MARENT/ MINDEN PICTURES/National Geographic Creative


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This Snoring Hummingbird Is The Cutest Thing You'll See All Day

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Precious little sleeping angel.

In Peru, a scientist captured this sleepy little hummingbird making a tiny noise that sounds much like snoring.

Although the sound may seem like snoring, it is more likely a side effect of the bird maximizing the amount of oxygen being taken in, a sign of the early stages of awakening from hibernation.

youtube.com

MUCH cuter than our thunderous human snores! But on that note...it's nap time!

MUCH cuter than our thunderous human snores! But on that note...it's nap time!

giphy.com

#PlusSizePlease Aims To Make Fashion Reflect The People Buying It

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Curvily’s Sarah Chiwaya encourages social media users to help change the clothing industry.

This is Sarah Chiwaya. She's pretty awesome (and it's not just that iridescent envelope clutch she's holding, either).

This is Sarah Chiwaya. She's pretty awesome (and it's not just that iridescent envelope clutch she's holding, either).

On her blog Curvily, Sarah writes about embracing your shape, shopping on budget, the latest developments in plus-size brands, and her own totally droolworthy fashion finds.

curvilyfashion.com

She's also the creator of #PlusSizePlease, a movement she hopes will inspire designers to become more inclusive by expanding their size ranges.

instagram.com

"The hashtag #plussizeplease was actually one I used spontaneously about a month before I started the hashtag movement," Sarah says.

"I was at Saks for a fashion event and I saw a perforated leather midi skirt from Tibi that was calling my name, but did not come in my size. I still loved the look of it, and snapped a pic for Instagram. When a follower asked if it came in plus, I responded 'Sadly, no :( #plussizeplease.'"

instagram.com


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In Defense Of "Vaguebooking"

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Dennis Huynh/BuzzFeed

We read them every day in our Facebook feed. “I can’t right now,” my former student proclaims. “I don’t understand the decision-making process,” a colleague writes delphically one morning. A famous writer tops quips with an ominous “Bored. Waiting on 10 things.”

Stripped of context, these status messages befuddle and intrigue readers at the same time. We have had a word for this: “vaguebooking.”

Defined by Urban Dictionary in 2009 as an “intentionally vague Facebook status update that prompts friends to ask what's going on or is possibly a cry for help,” the vaguebook is perceived as the needy, less hip counterpart to the “subtweet,” in which someone is dissed anonymously on Twitter, and the “supertweet,” dubbed in a recent story in The Atlantic by Ian Boghost as a tweet “meaning to be clear to everyone, but to feign concealment from its target.” Boghost cites Azealia Banks’ sidelong tweet about “Igloo Australia” (i.e., Iggy Azalea) in the wake of the Eric Garner and Michael Brown killings as “the most famous supertweet.”

Vaguebooking’s reputation has has reached rock bottom in the past couple of months. Unlike “shade,” celebrated in the New York Times as “the art of the sidelong insult,” vaguebooking has been met with almost universal revulsion. Tech blogger Dave Parrack shot one of the first salvos a couple years ago with “What Is This Imbecilic Art of Vaguebooking?” in 2012, and the anti-vaguebook has only intensified. The Tumblr Vaguebook.org (its tagline reads, simply, “ugh”) showcases screenshots with such vague classics as “Sometimes it’s not what you expect, but it’s ok,” “Feeling irritated and annoyed by certain people,” and that old chestnut, “Sometimes you have to learn to just walk away when things are not healthy.”

But I am here to suggest that vaguebooking deserves a second look, not only as a valid way to communicate, but to keep our privacy. It’s already happening: Results from a study released this past March by the MRS Delphi Group revealed that teenagers, far from oversharing, now take an active role in safeguarding their privacy by “dirtying their data” with “social coding” such as in-jokes, false personal data or, yes, vaguebooking, all so their messages are understood only by their intended audience.

Perhaps because of its cryptographic approach to the airing of often raw emotion, vaguebooking practically begs ridicule. A recent video by the Above Average comedy network imagines a congressional hearing on “vague Facebook posts.” Committee members grill an iPhone-wielding witness, asking, “What’s the point?” and “Are the posts for just one person or for all of us?” The witness issues blank stares and vaguebooks answers into her phone: “I don’t want to talk about it,” “Don’t look back,” and “Quitting.” The representatives throw up their hands in frustration.

Salon Culture Editor Erin Keane told me over Facebook Messenger that she classifies vaguebooks as a “classic attention-getting device” and “the social media equivalent of pouting until someone asks, ‘What’s wrong?’”

But perhaps there's also a psychological benefit to vaguebooking. Vaguebooks can help navigate our need to take part in the social media circus through achieving blandness and provocation at the same time. Go on and screen-capture vaguebooks all day long: You can’t pin their meaning down. But that's not the point. Writing vaguebooks satisfies the need — some might say compulsion — to answer Facebook’s perennial question, “What’s on your mind?” with rage, sadness, frustration, anger, gratitude.

Indeed, I would suggest that hatred and ridicule of vaguebooking misses the point. We all struggle with our online personas, and in a digital world where each comment and like gets cached for future incrimination, it’s not just celebrities and politicians who live in fear of being called out. All of us would prefer not to land in a comment-war quagmire, or be taken to task by our significant other, or get fired from our job. For an idea of doomsday scenarios, look no further than Jon Ronson’s recent book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, which tells the stories of Justine Sacco and Adria Richards, who after ill-advised, irreverent social media updates, were then dragged out into the digital public square. The “smartest way to survive” in a world where an irreverent joke to 300 friends can turn into an angry mob of 300 million, Ronson concludes, “is to be bland.”

I can offer two personal examples. This past April, after a day of frustrating meetings at work, I wrote, “I have to get better at this careerism thing.” If I had written what I really wanted to write, not only would my head have exploded, I would have alienated a lot of co-workers. Instead, my vaguebook was followed by encouraging messages from friends and family that smoothed down the rough edges of my mood. Did anyone know what I was talking about? Not a chance, and that was my intention. During the recent Freddie Gray Baltimore protests, which I supported, I posted a news story about mostly white University of Kentucky students who rioted after their team lost in the NCAA Tournament. This update dog-whistled to those who also felt there was a double standard in coverage but left enough ambiguity that some would walk away scratching their heads. Why did I do this? I wanted to avoid arguments with old friends from my hometown who are stridently pro-cop and with my sister, who is married to a policeman.

In an age where the boundaries between personal and private communication are blurring, and with it the semantic noise that accompanies even the most direct exchanges, vague communication is a necessity. At their best, vaguebooks might qualify as their own literary genre, akin to Zen koan, aphorism, or even an advertising tagline.

“Vagueness can be purely diaristic and insipid, but it can also be musical, beautiful, and thought-provoking,” Michael Costello, a creative director for an ad agency in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told me. “I’d like it if people elevated vaguebooking to an aphoristic art form, or some modern form of Sappho-esque fragment.”

The perfect vaguebook, devoid of meaning and yet full of plausible deniability, works as an interpersonal Easter egg that invites readers to connect the dots: Is X separated from his husband? Is Y unhappy at her job?

There are many varieties of vaguebooking experience. In my feed, a poet’s status reads “four months today,” referring to her husband, who recently died. A bookseller recently posted, “The correct answer: No, knowing what we know now, I wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, obviously,” a dig at Jeb Bush’s inept campaign appearance. A former student wrote, “Boy oh boy that’s a mighty fine looking high horse...” (ending vaguebooks with ellipses, while common, seems to me a redundant gesture). Like many adolescents, my nephew is a master at crafting the vaguest of vaguebooks: “Time goes on and you make different friends, and you find out who’s real and who’s fake in the end,” reads one. I have no idea what he’s talking about, which was probably the point.

At its heart, however, vaguebooking is a passive-aggressive enterprise. It makes sense: For so many of us, online and face-to-face interactions have become interchangeable, and in real life, we can’t just like and favorite everything we read. Some of us need to be left guessing. Not all of us have the guts to express how we feel and face the consequences. And that’s why vaguebooking is so annoying.

I admire unapologetic vaguebookers like Chelsea Biondolillo, a writer and teacher from Portland, Oregon, who shares vague Facebook statuses in “an attempt to legitimately share emotion without airing the actual dirty laundry.” For example, Biondolillo said she “might want my boyfriend to know that his behavior sucked in public, since my saying so in private didn’t change it.” Still, she dials it back. “Let’s say I have some friends who will get all vocally concerned if I’m being too negative or too sad. So I try to temper.”

Such is the power of the vaguebook.

In his 1930 book Seven Types of Ambiguity, British poet and critic William Empson outlined the different ways ambiguity works in poetry, among them metaphor, double meaning, puns, audience reception, and direct contradiction. “The strength of vagueness,” he wrote, “is that it allows of secret ambiguity.” Could Empson, who died in 1984, imagine a world where his so-called “cult of vagueness” would include in its ranks Facebookers looking to vent about the finale of Mad Men?

To this, I say: I just don’t know what to say. I can’t even.

17 Ways To Keep In Touch With Your Bestie Over The Summer

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BFFFFA = BFF from far away.

This is what happens when you and your friends separate:

This is what happens when you and your friends separate:

For even five minutes. Here's how to make the most of your time apart.

nbc.com

Set a specific time every week for Snapchat updates.

No matter where you are or what you're doing at 9pm Thursday night, you take a pic.

Use Rabbit to watch ~your stories~ at the same time.

Use Rabbit to watch ~your stories~ at the same time.

You can even live chat while doing it!

rabb.it / Via lifehacker.com

Use a countdown jar to keep track of the days before you see each other.

Use a countdown jar to keep track of the days before you see each other.

For bonus points, use a delicious treat. Find out more here.

woojr.com


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If "Game Of Thrones" Characters Were On Shaadi.com

Journalist Easily Crafts A Fully Functional Gun At Work Using 3D Printing

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Wired shows that making a DIY gun isn’t as complicated as you thought.

Wired senior writer Andy Greenberg made a "ghost gun" in his office. A ghost gun as Greenberg describes it is an "untraceable, semiautomatic rifle with no serial number."

Wired senior writer Andy Greenberg made a "ghost gun" in his office. A ghost gun as Greenberg describes it is an "untraceable, semiautomatic rifle with no serial number."

Wired / Via wired.com

Greenberg admits that he has no technical experience making firearms and no mastery of power tools.

Greenberg admits that he has no technical experience making firearms and no mastery of power tools.

Wired / Via wired.com

Ghost Gunnar


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Zac Efron Walks Into A Pool

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You’ll see.

Hey kids, listen up, I've got a joke for ya.

Hey kids, listen up, I've got a joke for ya.

Paradise / Paradise/Scylla/HiFly/FAMEFLYNET

What do you get...

What do you get...

Paradise / Paradise/Scylla/HiFly/FAMEFLYNET

When Zac Efron walks into a pool?

When Zac Efron walks into a pool?

Paradise / Paradise/Scylla/HiFly/FAMEFLYNET

WELP, YA GOT ZAC EFRON WALKING RIGHT INTO A POOL,THAT'S WHAT!

WELP, YA GOT ZAC EFRON WALKING RIGHT INTO A POOL,THAT'S WHAT!

Paradise / Paradise/Scylla/HiFly/FAMEFLYNET


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20 Spectacular Pride Parades To Add To Your Bucket List

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Lonely Planet’s Guide to Pride has the scoop on the cities with the greatest LGBTQ celebrations. Here’s a look inside.

São Paulo, Brazil

São Paulo, Brazil

When: The Sunday following the holiday of Corpus Christi (usually May or June)
Where: Avenida Paulista and Rua da Consolação
Estimated attendance: Five million

Spectral-design / Shutterstock

San Francisco

San Francisco

When: Last Sunday in June
Where: Market Street, from the Embarcadero to Civic Center
Estimated attendance: 1.7 million

Kobby Dagan / Shutterstock

New York City

New York City

When: Last Sunday in June
Where: Fifth Avenue, 36th Street to Greenwich Street
Estimated attendance: 1.5 million

Erika Cross / Shutterstock

Madrid

Madrid

When: First Saturday in July
Where: Puerta de Alcalá to Puerta del Sol
Estimated attendance: 1.5 million

Juan R. Velasco / Shutterstock


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A Drunk Russian Dude Demolished A Statue Of Lenin While Taking A Selfie

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It’s really a vlad and sordid affair.

Given his position in Russian history, there are several statues to Vladimir Lenin around the Russian Federation dating back to Soviet times.

Given his position in Russian history, there are several statues to Vladimir Lenin around the Russian Federation dating back to Soviet times.

Gramercy Pictures


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26 Vines That Could Only Have Been Made In Canada

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An entire nation summarized in 6 seconds.

The "I'm Polite But Not When It Comes To My Timbits" Vine.

vine.co

The "I'm Single Because Of Icy Sidewalks" Vine.

vine.co

The "And You Thought LA Traffic Was Bad" Vine.

vine.co

The "Yes Officer?" Vine.

vine.co


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Do You Even Know How To Spell These Famous People's Names?

Women Mostly Shut Out Of Directing Television's Most Popular Shows

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BuzzFeed News

Women have largely been shut out of directing the most popular television shows of the past several years, according to a BuzzFeed News analysis, underscoring the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent call for government investigations into the film and television industry’s hiring practices.

BuzzFeed News took Nielsen’s 23 highest-rated scripted shows for 2014 on broadcast and cable television and examined each episode since the series pilot. Of the 1,816 total episodes, 225 were directed by women — about 12%. The episodes were analyzed up to June 1. The final two unaired episodes of this season's Game of Thrones were also included. The analysis looked at Nielsen's data for total viewership.

NCIS, the show with the second-highest ratings in 2014, has been on the air for 12 seasons and aired 281 episodes. Of those, 19 were directed by women. For The Walking Dead, the highest-rated cable television show in 2014, women directed 11 of the show’s 67 episodes. And women directed 32 of 233 episodes of Criminal Minds, which has been on for 10 seasons. The director credits were sourced from IMDb.

(BuzzFeed News’ analysis excludes The Big Bang Theory, the most popular show on television in 2014, because Mark Cendrowski directed 160 of the 183 episodes — nearly 88%. This sets it apart from most other shows, which use much larger stables of directors. The remainder of The Big Bang Theory’s episodes were directed by men.)

“We have a hundred TV channels, and that doesn’t include Netflix and Amazon, so there should be enough work for everyone,” Tawnia McKiernan, who’s directed episodes of Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds, and The Librarians, told BuzzFeed News. “I don’t know how to fix that, but it’s absolutely a problem.”

The series are ordered by descending viewership figures for the 2013-2014 season, as reported by Nielsen. BuzzFeed analyzed every episode of each series from its pilot to June 1, 2015.

BuzzFeed News contacted the network for every show that was part of the analysis. ABC, CBS, and AMC declined to comment. NBC, TNT, FX, A&E, and History did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesperson for HBO said that among their current series, there are 11 female directors and the latest HBO Film Bessie was also run by a female director. “Continuing to grow those numbers further is a priority,” the spokesperson said.

On May 12, the ACLU sent letters to two federal agencies and one California state department asking for an investigation into why so few women are hired as directors. The letters detailed gender disparities in both film and television and highlighted the dominance of male directors in both mediums.

The letters were sent to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. A spokesperson for the DFEH told BuzzFeed News that the agency is “looking into” the claims made by the ACLU, but have not yet opened an official investigation. A spokesperson for the EEOC said they take allegations of systemic discrimination seriously and are reviewing the letter, adding that any investigation the agency does must be kept confidential by law.

The disparity exists even though roughly the same number of men and women are graduating from film schools, according to the ACLU, citing numbers provided by deans of several film schools around the nation.

The situation has reached a point where women directors are banding together in order to promote each other’s work and increase awareness and job accessibility. Destri Martino, an independent filmmaker, launched a website in May called The Director List that hosts a growing database of more than 860 women directors.

“There are a lot of female directors,” she told BuzzFeed News. “They do exist.”

Martino conducted research on the employment of women directors while working on her dissertation in London. “Year after year,” she said, “the statistics on the number of women directors being hired for film and TV projects remain depressingly low.”

The Directors Guild of America, a union representing television and film directors, analyzed the gender and ethnicity of directors across broadcast, basic cable, premium cable, and internet-only programming. The results were similar to BuzzFeed’s analysis.

Tawnia McKiernan, center, directing an episode of ER in 2007.

Nbc / Mike Ansell / NBCU Photo Bank

The DGA looked at more than 3,500 episodes of 220 scripted series from the 2013–2014 network television season and the 2013 cable television season. In all, 12% of the episodes were directed by women.

According to the DGA’s analysis, a woman will, on average, direct three or four episodes per television season. “It’s difficult for women to mount a career on that amount of work,” Elodie Keene, who has directed shows such as NCIS: New Orleans and Criminal Minds, told BuzzFeed News.

Many young women, Keene said, “just get two or three episodes of a show.” BuzzFeed News found few exceptions to that estimate. Season 10 of Criminal Minds was one, with eight episodes directed by women. But the previous season had three and the one before that two. While only five episodes of the first three seasons of Modern Family were directed by women, eleven episodes were directed by women in Season 4, ten in Season 5, and nine in Season 6.

“If a man gets four episodes per show, I think women should have access to four episodes also,” Martha Mitchell, who has directed more than 100 episodes of television, told BuzzFeed News. “I don’t think a job should be taken away from me.”

Several women directors told BuzzFeed News that most top shows have only male directors work on their first seasons. NCIS, Person of Interest, and Modern Family didn’t hire a female director until their second seasons, BuzzFeed News found.

A woman, Allison Liddi-Brown, directed one episode of Season 2 of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation — which didn’t crack the top 20 used in BuzzFeed News’ broader analysis but has the longest run, with 15 seasons. Women only started to consistently direct the show in its seventh season. Of CSI’s 335 episodes, 10 episodes — 3.2% — were directed by women.

The trend extends to cable programming. Of the 50 episodes of HBO’s Game of Thrones, a single woman — Michelle MacLaren — has directed four: two in Season 3 and two in Season 4. Women didn’t direct any episodes from the first two seasons. No woman has directed a single episode of American Horror Story in its four-season run.

The series are ordered by descending viewership figures for the 2013-2014 season, as reported by Nielsen. BuzzFeed analyzed every episode of each series from its pilot to June 1, 2015.

The DGA’s analysis shows that of the people directing their first-ever television episode in the 2013–2014 season, 18% were white females, 3% minority females, and 68% were white men.

“Young men seem to be hired on their potential and women are hired on their experience,” Mitchell said. “It’s a Catch-22.”

Another major issue, the ACLU pointed out in its May report, is that “only a small handful of women is hired over and over again.”

A director with nearly 30 television credits told the ACLU, “Though it is documented that 12% of episodic television is directed by women, when credits are examined by the name this number does not seem to represent how many different women are directing.”

“It appears,” the director said, “as if only about the same 15 to 20 directors are hired again and again.”

Michelle MacLaren in 2015

Frederick M. Brown

BuzzFeed News’ analysis found that nine women were credited with nearly half of all episodes directed by women.

Twelve episodes of Sons of Anarchy — which aired 92 episodes in its seven-season run — were directed by women. But the same woman, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, directed 11 of those episodes. In looking at The Blacklist, four episodes of the 48 that have aired so far have been directed by women — all four by Karen Gaviola. With Major Crimes, two women have directed five of the show’s 48 episodes.

Many directors BuzzFeed News spoke with defended the practice, though. Having the same person direct multiple episodes of a show, they said, guarantees consistency with visuals and tone. “It is important for televisions shows to remain visually and aesthetically consistent throughout the show’s run,” Stefania Marghitu, a Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts Division of Critical Studies, told BuzzFeed News. She pointed to shows such as HBO’s True Detective — where every episode of its first season was directed by Cary Fukunaga — as an example.

“It also allows series executives to work with the people they know and trust,” McKiernan said. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” she said, “but then there’s no opportunity for new directors — men or women.”

Every director BuzzFeed News spoke to said change in television hiring practices must come from the showrunner, one of the people responsible for hiring directors.

While the showrunner is oftentimes the creator of the show, it can also be the head writer or the executive producer. The showrunner is responsible for both the creative and managerial sides, including hiring, firing, and making sure things run on schedule. Marghitu likened the showrunner to a CEO of a company.

“Even if the networks are willing to give it a shot with female directors, a lot of showrunners are reluctant,” Diana Valentine, who has directed episodes of shows such as Nip/Tuck and NCIS: Los Angeles, told BuzzFeed News.

Television series that have female showrunners tend to have a higher percentage of female directors and a more diverse crew, said Marghitu, who studied women showrunners in television for her Ph.D.

Diana Valentine after winning at Independent Filmmakers Showcase Film Festival in 2012.

Albert L. Ortega / Getty Images

For example, Pretty Little Liars, an ABC Family show that has aired five seasons since 2010, is run by Marlene King. Four women star as the lead characters in the teen drama mystery-thriller and nearly half of the directors hired so far have been women. Those 14 women directed 40 of the 120 — 33% — of aired episodes.

Marghitu said some women have created their own shows, partially so they can hire themselves and other women as directors.

As previously reported by BuzzFeed News, Colette Burson, the creator of the HBO series Hung, set a goal to hire 50% women directors for the show. She succeeded. “I believe that part of the solution has to come from the showrunners,” she said in May.

A number of female directors pointed to Lena Dunham, the creator and star of the HBO show Girls, as an example of a female showrunner creating directing jobs for women. Twenty-two of the 42 episodes that have aired were directed by women — 15 by Dunham herself. Of the seven directors who have worked on the show, five are women.

Additionally, Shonda Rhimes, the creator of popular series on ABC such as Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy, and an executive producer of How to Get Away With Murder, has given several women opportunities to direct. While the percentage of total episodes of ShondaLand shows directed by women remains low — approximately 20% for each of the three shows — eight different women have directed 16 episodes of Scandal, and three episodes of the first season of How to Get Away With Murder were directed by two different women.

“People have to start looking at women’s abilities and capabilities and judging them on that,” McKiernan said. “Not everyone is going to be able to do everything, but gender shouldn’t be part of the discussion.”

LINK: ACLU Demands Investigation Into Hollywood’s Lack Of Hiring Women Directors

LINK: Women Directors Share Stories Of Discrimination In Hollywood

A New Airbnb Tool Will Help Hosts Make More Money

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Using data around travel trends and local availability, Airbnb will help hosts figure out how much they can charge and still fill their vacancies.

Starting today, Airbnb will help hosts get the most money for their listings by harnessing data around pricing. This is thanks to a new product called Price Tips, which will crunch numbers on local availability, travel trends, and specific amenities and then deliver advice on setting rental rates directly to host calendars.

The news was announced by Mike Curtis, Vice President of Engineering for AirBnB, on stage at OpenAir 2015, the company's annual conference for engineers.

"If you have an apartment in San Francisco, it could be worth twice as much what it is normally when Dreamforce is in town and the entire city is booked out," he said at the conference. If the algorithm works as intended, Price Tips will help hosts set their prices as high as possible — without making them so high that would-be renters are turned off and go elsewhere. In other words, it's opt-in surge pricing for Airbnb.

Curtis said there are hundreds of signals incorporated into the algorithm that determines what the ideal price for a property is.

"If you're traveling to Bali on Airbnb, you may want a swimming pool. If you're traveling to San Francisco, you definitely want wifi. If you're traveling in the summer, you want air conditioning; if you're traveling in winter, you want heat," he said. The presence — or lack thereof — of these amenities are included in the Price Tips calculation.

Historically, Curtis said, "deciding on a price to set has been a game of looking at hotels and seeing what they charge." With Price Tips, hosts can use a slider to automatically set the price that the algorithm suggests is most likely to result in a booking; with just a few clicks, they can optimize their listing for an entire month.

AirBnB

The announcement is bad news for companies such as Beyond, which is working on a similar product — though one that operates externally to Airbnb and without the company's vast quantity of proprietary data.

In trials, Curtis said, hosts who set rates within 5 percent of the Price Tips suggestion were four times more likely to get their places booked.

Helping hosts make more money and streamlining the management process is a good strategy for Airbnb in that it improves the user experience and will bring more hosts online. But if the new feature results in rising prices, travelers who enjoy using Airbnb for the savings over hotels might be disappointed — or maybe even encouraged to just book a hotel, where you don't have to put up with sharing space with a stranger.


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12 Emmys "Jane The Virgin" Deserves

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It deserves a bunch of Emmy Awards that exist in real life. And also these.

And it has inspired us, because it really will be a crying shame if Jane The Virgin does not get proper Emmy props this year.

Outstanding Voice Work That Singlehandedly Restored Your Faith In Voiceover


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How Heartbroken Are You That "Degrassi" Has Been Cancelled?

A Longtime Hawaiian Activist Defends "Aloha" Amid Race-Based Backlash

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Makapu'u, May 1994

John Kirkley

HONOLULU — Panned internally long before it even saw the light of day, Cameron Crowe's latest movie Aloha — a film set in Hawaii that cast a white actress to play a Chinese-Hawaiian pilot — ignited a fresh round of negative reaction after it debuted over the weekend.

Accusations of white-washing got so loud that Crowe on Tuesday issued what he called a “heart-felt apology,” but for the local Hawaiian activist and community leader who actually took part in the film, none was needed.

Wearing rubber slippers, a Quicksilver T-shirt, and a black fanny pack, Dennis "Bumpy" Kanahele looked out over the 45-acre sanctuary that was used as a location in the film as he recalled his community’s years-long struggle to reclaim their sovereignty.

All the criticism over the movie, he said, was frustrating, given the megaphone platform Crowe had afforded the Hawaiian rights movement — an inclusion that came with the director allowing the 60-year-old to appear in the film as himself.

“This big screen thing is really going to be helpful for us," Kanahele told BuzzFeed News, noting that Crowe’s history with the Village goes back 10 years. “That’s why I couldn’t understand why everyone is so upset, he has a relationship with us.”

Aloha follows military contractor Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper), who returns to the Hawaiian islands to fulfill a deal for his evil billionaire boss (Bill Murrary), and finds himself in a love triangle with his ex (Rachel McAdams) and the mixed-race fighter pilot Allison Ng, who was — controversially — played by Emma Stone.

But for Kanahele, that criticism overshadows a more important message in the film. He recalled introducing Crowe to Pu'uhonua O Waimānalo also called the Kingdom, but most often referred to simply as the Village — back in 2005.

“My family, we had a gathering, and they were playing music and having food, and I invited him to stay," Kanahele said of Crowe’s initial visit.

In an email to BuzzFeed News, Crowe said that, “not unlike the movie,” there was a band playing at the Village, and described it as “a magical night."

Makapu'u, May 1994.

John Kirkley

The film crew spent three weeks at the Village, where about 20 small homes have upside-down state flags hanging in their windows, just like in Aloha. The first week was dedicated to building the pavilion where the luau scene is set. The structure was left behind and now sits at the top of the Village.

Michelle Broder Van Dyke / Via BuzzFeed News

Kanahele has a cameo in Aloha but he is not really acting he talks in Pidgin in real-life and said he was genuinely pissed off in the scene where he’s negotiating with Gilcrest. He wasn't initially set to play the role Crowe had written based on his experiences in the Village, but the director told BuzzFeed News that Stone and Cooper "fell in love with Bumpy" and so he decided to include him in the film.

Crowe gave Kanahele room within the script to mention the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.

"My time with Bumpy made me want to reference his struggle," Crowe said in his email.

Michelle Broder Van Dyke / Via BuzzFeed News

In Aloha, Kanahele wears his own shirt, which reads “Hawaiian by birth” on the front, and “American by force” on the back.

For Kanahele, the shirt means that to avoid violence, Hawaiians have to accept — to an extent — the past: “We are forced to do the things we don’t want to do for the sake of peace."

That said, he's proud of Aloha, "because we can say we are under military occupation — and that’s the truth.”

Michelle Broder Van Dyke / Via BuzzFeed News

Kanahele's history in the Hawaiian rights movement goes back to the late 1980s, when he started occupying on Oahu and trying to help the homeless find places to live.

In 1993, on the 100-year anniversary of the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, Kanahele returned to occupy Makapu'u, but this time, with 300 people who stayed for 15 months.

Michelle Broder Van Dyke

They built a tent city and used the same gate that now fronts the Village to claim the area. Kanahele was armed with the 1993 “Apology Resolution,” the first time the U.S. government acknowledged the illegal overthrow.

The protests in Makapu'u were part of a Hawaiian rights movement that had started in the 1970s. The first big milestone was the occupation of Kaho'olawe, which the military had used as a testing ground for bombs since the 1940s. The island was eventually transferred to the State of Hawai'i in 1994, and is held in trust for a future Hawaiian sovereign entity.

The story of Kaho'olawe inspired many Hawaiians, and sovereignty movements, including the Nation of Hawai'i and the Hawaiian Kingdom.

Michelle Broder Van Dyke

In 1994, John Waihe'e, the first governor in the state with Hawaiian ancestry, finally intervened in Makapu'u and asked the protesters to vacate in exchange for the 45-acre parcel in Waimānalo for what would eventually be known as the Village.

Kanahele's group signed a lease at a cost of $3,000 a year. Under the terms of the deal, the land would be transferable to a future sovereign Hawaiian nation, if and when it is established.

Mike Hikalea, Bumpy Kanahele, and Liwai Kaawa in May 1994 at Makapu'u.

John Kirkley

When the activists first arrived at the Nation of Hawaii, it was overgrown with invasive eucalyptus and albizia trees. They have since reworked the land and grow traditional Hawaiian crops, such as dry and wetland kalo, or taro, and have lined their terraces with ti leaves. They are also experimenting with aquaponics for cultivation that use tilapia and non-native plants, such as cacao.

The community, Kanahele said, has yet to reach its goal of becoming self-sufficient.

Michelle Broder Van Dyke / Via BuzzFeed News

Still, the land is an important resource for helping Hawaiians connect with their history, supporters say.

Brandon Makaawaawa, a relative of Kanahele who also appears as an extra in Aloha, said the Nation of Hawaii has helped him and others learn about traditional practices.

“In Hawaii, we grow up in the Homestead," said Makaawaawa, who grew up in Waimānalo. “We’re not used to growing up in the mountains, and surviving like Hawaiians used to, so this is all new to us too. We’re learning how to plant, how to fish, how to hunt.”

Makaawaawa works regularly in the Village, and his cousins have been teaching him to hunt. He recently trapped and killed a wild boar.

“It was the first time I caught it," he said.

Michelle Broder Van Dyke / Via BuzzFeed News

Rolf Nordahl, the press secretary for the Nation of Hawaii, said he hoped the Village would be used as a blueprint for other sovereignty movements around the world.

The group still has big plans for the Village, which hopes to build a second commercial kitchen to process the agriculture plants that are being grown.

youtube.com

Kanahele, meanwhile, said he has a reality show in the works that is being pitched to multiple networks. He’s excited about the prospect because he said he would mostly get to talk about sovereignty, and get paid to do it.

The 'aina — or land — the community lives on represents the injustices that have happened to the Hawaiian people, Kanahele said, which is why it’s so important for the community to protect it.

“We’re not just protecting this village,” he added. “We stand and protect all national sovereignty.”

The Definitive Ranking Of The "Entourage" Movie's Celebrity Cameos

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From Gary Busey to Warren Buffett. Warning: Light spoilers ahead!

Calvin Harris

Calvin Harris

He plays a character WITHIN Hyde — Vince's (Adrian Grenier) directorial debut — WITHIN Entourage.

Robyn Beck / Getty Images

Alyssa Miller

Alyssa Miller

Miller is Vince's date to Lloyd's (Rex Lee) wedding, but all she does is pose in a group picture. Literally, her only job is to stand next to Vince and smile. If she had a line, I didn't hear it. And her scene sadly comes during the credits! Also sadly, she's one of four women on this list of 35.

Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images

Saigon

Saigon

In anticipation of Hyde's release, Vince decides to have a small screening for some close friends and family. But the event turns into a massive party in Turtle's (Jerry Ferrara) backyard/private beach. It's a star-studded, athlete-filled affair, and rapper Saigon, who Turtle wanted to sign in the series, is there... according to the credits. I don't remember seeing him, so I'm going to put him high up on the long list of cameos in this one scene.

Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

David Arquette

David Arquette

The Scream star is also in attendance.

Gabe Ginsberg / Getty Images


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27 Things Guys Who Are 5-Foot-10 Know To Be True

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Average, yet awesome.

You can never find your size clothes on sale.

You can never find your size clothes on sale.

imgur.com / Via reddit.com

Sometimes people think you are shorter than you actually are because you slouch a lot.

Sometimes people think you are shorter than you actually are because you slouch a lot.

NBC / Via giphy.com

Sometimes bartenders take a while to notice you when you're trying to get a drink at the bar.

Sometimes bartenders take a while to notice you when you're trying to get a drink at the bar.

Warner Bros Television

You get freaked out when high school kids are taller than you.

You get freaked out when high school kids are taller than you.

Sony Pictures Television / Via giphy.com


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