Then Vs. Now: The "Harry Potter" Cast At Their First And Last Premiere

Put on your Time-Turners, and be prepared to be blown away.

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter)

Fun fact: Radcliffe destroyed almost 80 wands throughout all of the films because he pretended they were drumsticks.

Getty / George De Sota / Ian Gavan

Emma Watson (Hermione Granger)

Fun fact: Hermione's last name was almost "Puckle," but was later changed (thank goodness).

Getty / Hulton Archive / Ian Gavan / Stringer

Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley)

Fun fact: J.K. Rowling was extremely close to killing Ron. In the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 DVD commentary Rowling said, "I planned from the start that none of them would die. Then midway through, which I think is a reflection of the fact that I wasn't in a very happy place, I started thinking I might polish one of them off."

Getty / Ian Gavan / UK Press / Mark Cuthbert

Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy)

Fun fact: Tom Felton's girlfriend, Jade Olivia, played Draco's wife Astoria in the film, but required some "arm twisting" by Felton to take the part.

UK Press / Justin Goff / Getty Images / Ian Gavan

---

View Entire List ›

Read More [...]

Posted in BuzzFeed, IFTTT

How Many Of The 95 Theses Do You Believe In?

#blessed (H/T Martin Luther )

Thinkstock

Via spurgeon.org

Read More [...]

Posted in BuzzFeed, IFTTT

The Surfer Turned MMA Fighter Running For Mayor Of Kaua'i

Will Chancellor, author of A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall , remembers his childhood home of Hawaii and the first time he met the man fighting to save the “Garden Island.”

Will Chancellor

Will Chancellor

I lived on Kaua'i, Hawaii, in the early eighties, before Walmart and traffic jams, when the biggest store was Big Save. Kaua'i is the Garden Island, and on the north shore it rains hard at least once a day. When the skies cleared, my mom and I would follow a rusted-out railing to the beach. Here I'd dig around the looping cursive of tree roots imagining the swamps of Dagobah from Star Wars, hunt for crabs on the rocks, or dive for creatures in the tidepools.

The Kaua'i my family moved to was wary of development. Locals seemed to realize that the arrow of "growth" only points one way, that no one ever undoes a big-box-store economy, no one de-develops. After a high-rise hotel went up in the sixties, residents passed an island-wide ordinance that "No building should be made taller than a mature palm tree." Kaua'i adopted a precautionary principle with respect to external development, saying in effect that there needs to be a clear benefit to local culture before anyone messes with paradise.

As such, Kaua'i was a remote place to live, and, like most other transplants back then, my family moved back to the mainland before I started elementary school. Even though it was only five years, living on Kaua'i shaped us. The first lesson I was ever taught was aloha 'aina, a reverence for the land that gets inside you — the same connection to the natural world stressed in ecofeminist literature, the same love for wildness found in deep ecology. That lesson stuck, and led me to major in environmental policy and work for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund. A love for the island stuck with my family as well and we went back whenever we could.

---

View Entire List ›

Read More [...]

Posted in BuzzFeed, IFTTT

15 Books You Hated Reading As The Only Black Person In Class

Class discussion? How about not, though?

These are all great books and the value of teaching them is vast, but discussing them in a class where you're the only black student is a much different experience. It can lead to embarrassment and moments where you become the teacher yourself, and may inspire unintentional aggression in defending your POV.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain

Any black student whose first introduction to literature also coincided with attending a predominantly white educational setting, more often than not meant they read Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. This would also be your first experience of a teacher asking people to read aloud passages so your classmates saying the n-word could be forever burned in your mind.

ebookbees.com

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer is basically a walk in the park compared to having to be the only black person in class when it's time to say "N****r Jim" all seven hundred thousand times it's in this book.

inthecactusgarden.com

Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Everyone loves a story about kind and gentle slaves! So much, that The Economist had to pull a review of “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” by Edward Baptist, because the reviewer stated: "Almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains."

It's really hard to talk about slavery in general in a class discussion, especially when books go to great lengths to whitewash its evils.

beinecke.library.yale.edu

---

View Entire List ›

Read More [...]

Posted in BuzzFeed, IFTTT

An Illustrated Guide To Writing People Of Color

(If you happen to be a person of another color.)

This post originally appeared at Midnight Breakfast, and is reprinted here with permission.

MariNaomi / BuzzFeed

Recently, a friend of mine asked for feedback on her manuscript. Her novel was filled with complex characters, a thought-provoking plot, and enough intrigue to keep the reader riveted. I did what any good editor and friend would do, honestly praising the good parts, and delicately noting which parts could use work. This part is confusing, I wrote. This part seems out of character. She nodded along while reading my notes, completely prepared for all of my comments, except for one: Where are the people of color?

When we discussed this later, she (a white writer) admitted she feels uncomfortable adding people of color (PoC) to her fiction, as it feels disingenuous. "Write what you know" and all that. How could she add, say, a Japanese person without it seeming like a token gesture?

MariNaomi / Via midnightbreakfast.com

---

View Entire List ›

Read More [...]

Posted in BuzzFeed, IFTTT

Tom Hanks Will Publish A Collection Of Short Stories

Write, Forrest, write!

whosay.com

Via knopfdoubleday.com

whosay.com

---

View Entire List ›

Read More [...]

Posted in BuzzFeed, IFTTT

13 Cabins That Will Make You Want To Run Away From It All

Philip Jodidio’s Cabins highlights all of the best rustic, minimalist, and low-impact sanctuaries around the world. Here are just a few.

Pasi Aalto / TASCHEN

Cabanas no Rio Huts by Aires Mateus (Portugal)

Nelson Garrido / TASCHEN

---

View Entire List ›

Read More [...]

Posted in BuzzFeed, IFTTT

14 Stages Of Your First Day Of National Novel Writing Month

30 days to write 50,000 words? No problem!

After signing up weeks ago, the day to start your novel has finally arrived.

Village Roadshow Pictures / Via reactiongifs.com

Then you sit down to your laptop and realize you have absolutely no idea what you're doing

NBC / Via reactiongifs.com

You don't even know where to start.

CBS / Via reactiongifs.com

You decide to take a peek on Twitter at #NaNoWriMo to see if everybody else is having as much trouble as you are.

Silver Pictures / Via reactiongifs.com

---

View Entire List ›

Read More [...]

Posted in BuzzFeed, IFTTT

Lena Dunham Responds To Accusations That She Sexually Abused Her Sister

Dunham went on a self-described “rage spiral” on Saturday, calling the accusations against her disgusting. UPDATE: Dunham’s sister, Grace, has issued a statement.

Kevin D. Williamson, a columnist for the conservative-leaning magazine National Review, accused Lena Dunham this weekend of admitting to sexual abuse in her new memoir Not That Kind of Girl.

Getty Images Stuart C. Wilson

Dunham writes of casually masturbating while in bed next to her younger sister, of bribing her with "three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds . . . anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying." At one point, when her sister is a toddler, Lena Dunham pries open her vagina — "my curiosity got the best of me," she offers, as though that were an explanation.

In one particularly unsettling passage, Dunham experimented with her six-year younger sister's vagina. "This was within the spectrum of things I did," she writes.

In the collection of nonfiction personal accounts, Dunham describes using her little sister at times essentially as a sexual outlet, bribing her to kiss her for prolonged periods and even masturbating while she is in the bed beside her.

---

View Entire List ›

Read More [...]

Posted in BuzzFeed, IFTTT

Are These Erotic Quotes From The Bible Or Victorian Poetry?

For every question you get right, an angel gets its wings.

Getty Images / iStockphoto / papa42

Read More [...]

Posted in BuzzFeed, IFTTT