If you’re in Paris on Wednesday, keep your eyes peeled for a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale and/or Emma Watson ― the actress is bopping around the City of Lights with books in hand. 

The “Beauty and the Beast” star played bookish Belle in the live-action adaptation of the film, and her portrayal is clearly inspired by a real-life love of books. In partnership with the charity Book Fairies, Watson is wandering around the streets of Paris with 100 copies of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fiction. 

The Book Fairies project was launched in March by Cordelia Oxley and has more than 5,000 people sharing copies of The Handmaid’s Tale of across 100 countries, according to The Bookseller.

“We are thrilled to welcome Emma once again as a book fairy, this time in Paris,” Oxley told the publication. “We are having fun finding great places to hide ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and look forward to hearing from people who find them.”

Finders of Watson’s treasures have been excitedly tweeting all day:

And, truly, who wouldn’t be psyched to find such an influential book hidden by such an incredible person?!

Watson has gone on book-hiding adventures many times over the past few months, most notably highlighting books written by female authors. We can’t wait to see where she appears next!

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“I killed Sirius Black! I killed Sirius Black!” Bellatrix Lestrange chants with the cadence of a deranged preschool teacher butchering nursery rhymes for sport in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”

Bellatrix is high off murdering Harry Potter’s godfather and only living “family” member, but the real joy is rubbing it in. “You coming to get me?” she taunts Harry. “He knows how to play. Itty-bitty-baby-Potter.” Her words are punctuated with feral cackles, uttered through teeth caked in plaque, the residue of her time spent wasting away in Azkaban. 

When I read the “Harry Potter” books growing up, I had a strange affinity for Ms. Lestrange. Yes, she is a psychopathic Death Eater who worships the Dark Lord and reaps pleasure from the suffering of innocents. But Lestrange also embodies a combination of power, liberation and an unabashed lust for life (and death) I found enticing. Even while using the Cruciatus Curse to scramble the brains of noble wizards beyond salvation, she’s always having the most fun in the room. 

Lestrange is a villain, and a deliciously cruel one at that. And yet, in fables and fantasies, antagonists are often the female characters endowed with the most agency, freedom and style. As Leslie Jamison wrote of the “evil stepmother” figure that reappears in classic fairy tales time and time again: “She is an artist of cunning and malice, but still — an artist.”

There is something, if not admirable, at least enthralling about a woman who rebels against norms and expectations to feed her own delusions and desires, who embraces the inner “female monster” so many fight to suppress.

In the books and films, Bellatrix is a pure-blood witch born in 1951 to the House of Black, an established and powerful wizarding family in the Potterverse. She studied at Hogwarts in the Slytherin House and winds up serving Lord Voldemort as a Death Eater, his most fanatic and devoted follower by many accounts. 

Readers first learn about Lestrange through a flashback to one of her most heinous offenses. During the First Wizarding War, when Voldemort is in hiding, Bellatrix tortures Neville Longbottom’s parents while interrogating them for information on his whereabouts, tormenting them to such a degree that both lose their minds. The couple is then sent to St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries for the rest of their days. 

For her crimes, Bellatrix is sentenced to a lifetime in Azkaban, though she escapes after 15 years. Her incarceration is said to have wreaked havoc on her physical and mental states ― though her previous appetite for torture reveals her conscience was already nonexistent. In a cultural landscape that often supplies female characters with a specific motivation behind their cruel intentions (revenge! love! betrayal!) it’s strangely thrilling to follow a woman who was born vile without excuse or explanation. 

Physically, Bellatrix possesses the Black family line’s dependably handsome genes, endowed with long dark hair, heavily lidded eyes, long eyelashes and a strong jaw. Yet prison takes its toll on her good looks. Upon release, Bellatrix is described as having a “gaunt and skull-like face,” with hair that’s “unkempt and straggly.” In looks alone, Bellatrix exists between easy stereotypes or descriptions. She’s a beauty and a hag, attractive and repulsive, the hyperbole of a woman who, after spending years deteriorating in a magical penitentiary, has dared to “let herself go.”

Bellatrix is 30 years old when she is locked up; she breaks free at 45. The maturation she missed out on while incarcerated is evident in how she comports herself ― basically, like a big, evil baby. She is “incredibly infantile,” actor Helena Bonham Carter ― who played Lestrange in the film franchise ― said in an interview, as evidenced through her consistent baby-talk and predilection for sticking out her tongue.

“Dear Bellatrix, who likes to play with her food before she eats it,” Dumbledore says, referring to her penchant for torturing her victims before killing. The script for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” refers to her as a “mad child.” After being imprisoned during a woman’s “peak years,” Bellatrix exists simultaneously in the before and after, scrambling the usual categories that separate a woman from a girl. 

Women are used to being infantilized; we’re assumed to be juvenile, then patronized and underestimated as a result. Bellatrix takes this gendered stereotype to its monstrous extreme, becoming part-girl, part-hag, who will giggle like a giddy schoolgirl as she inflicts unbearable pain onto her victims. She collapses the space between what men desire and what they fear, the appealing young girl and the undesirable old woman, leaving her allies and enemies torn between desire and horror. 

“She can be scary, definitely kids are scared of her,” Bonham Carter said when describing the character. “But also has a part of her that they wouldn’t mind being her, in the sense that she’s really naughty, she gets away with everything ... She’s very liberated. It was really fun to play her because she is just completely abandoned. I just let go, really.”

Because of her traditionally feminine attributes, as a reader I sometimes found myself empathizing with Bellatrix. She is known among magical circles, for example, for being a bit on the batty side, as psychopathic Death Eaters ― and powerful women ― can be. Despite being one of the most powerful wielders of Dark Magic in the “Harry Potter” universe, she is still constantly undermined and overlooked by her fellow Death Eaters, written off as a hysterical woman. Bellatrix plays up her unhinged persona, again contorting a weakness into something so fearful it becomes a strength.

The most glaring example transpires when Bellatrix desperately tries to warn her fellow Death Eaters not to trust Severus Snape, believing him to be loyal to Dumbledore over Voldemort. Of course, she’s right, as Snape reveals only after Bellatrix is dead. If heeded, her intuition could have uprooted the entire course of the story, though instead she’s just laughed off. 

Bellatrix is killed in the final battle at Hogwarts. Aside from Voldemort himself, she’s the last Death Eater standing. Molly Weasley eventually does the job, screaming “Not my daughter, you bitch!” as she strikes her with a fatal curse. It’s a battle between a loving mother of seven and an unruly girl-hag embroiled in an unrequited love affair with a noseless Dark Lord ― or as Molly put it, a “bitch.”

“I really enjoyed killing Bellatrix and I really enjoyed having Molly do it,” J.K. Rowling said in an interview. “You have two very different kinds of female energy there, pitted against each other.” Not surprisingly, love wins out over a bottomless lust for human suffering, and probably for the best. But Bellatrix dies with a “gloating smile” still frozen on her face, perhaps preferring death over Molly Weasley’s domestic bliss. 

“She just doesn’t act the way a mother is supposed to,” Leslie Jamison writes of the evil stepmother. “That’s her fuel, and her festering heart.” Yet even a malicious stepmother has more maternal instinct in her bones than Bellatrix, who murders her own niece without hesitation. 

With Bellatrix Lestrange, Rowling creates a monster whose attributes are culled from feminine tropes and stereotypes both desired and reviled. She’s the femme fatale, the hysterical woman, the mad child and the hag. Her inherent contradictions ― intelligence and flightiness, power and subservience, beauty and repulsiveness, childishness and decay ― contribute to her fearfulness.

Rarely are women, fictional or otherwise, given the space to embody paradoxical selves at once. This, in part, is what makes Bellatrix so menacing, along with her unquenchable thirst for torture, murder and Dark Arts. 

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The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C. (GMCW) didn’t let an unfortunate surprise stop them from sharing their inclusive message in Tennessee this weekend. 

Members of the chorus were boarding a bus outside the Knoxville Civic Coliseum June 17, where the city’s Pride festivities were taking place, when they encountered a group of about eight anti-LGBTQ protesters. Though the bus was ready to depart for a nearby hotel, Artistic Director Thea Kano told the driver to stop. At that point, the men stepped off the bus and began singing in unison, effectively drowning out the protesters, local CBS affiliate WVLT-TV reports. 

The chorus’s four-song set was politically tinged, featuring the national anthem, “We Shall Overcome” and “Make Them Hear You,” from the Broadway musical, “Ragtime.” Participants and passersby captured the impromptu concert on their phones, as seen below. 

Additional footage of the performance has since been viewed over 5 million times since being uploaded to NowThis News’s Politics page. It’s also been shared by the likes of “Will & Grace” star Debra Messing on Twitter. 

GMCW is currently in the midst of its six-city Southern Equality Tour, visiting states that have enacted “discriminatory laws against the LGBTQ community,” such as North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee, according to their website. Given the inclusive mission of the tour, Executive Director Justin Fyala told HuffPost that the decision to sing out against the public display of homophobia in Knoxville was a no-brainer. 

“GMCW never backs down when an opportunity to share our mission of equality and justice for all presents itself,” he said. “In my mind, we had no choice... We also did it to empower the people attending Knoxville Pride to raise their voices and as a way of thanking them for the powerful work they are doing on the front lines.”

Ultimately, he hopes the chorus’ performance will send the message that “love always wins over hate.” 

“Until the day when all people are respected as they come, [the chorus] will continue to raise our voice,” he said, “for those who are going through a difficult time, for those who have been bullied or harassed into submission, for those in fear of their jobs or, worse, their lives, and for those who are doing the work where it is needed most.”

Find ways to celebrate Pride by subscribing to the Queer Voices newsletter.   

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Anyone who has sat through a high school biology lecture on genetics understands the basics of dominant and recessive alleles, which explain, among other things, how two brown-eyed parents can have a blue-eyed baby.

When you start talking magical ability, however, things become more complicated.

That was the topic of one panel at Future Con, a convention “where science meets science fiction,” held this past weekend. In “Harry Potter and the Genetics of Wizarding,” Duke University professor Eric Spana discussed the intricacies of wizard DNA.

Fans of “Harry Potter” know that, while two magical parents will likely have magical children, that’s not always the case. Occasionally, an all-magic union will result in a squib, or non-magic, child (think of poor Argus Filch, tasked with cleaning all of Hogwarts without so much as a wand to help him out). On the flip side, Hermione Granger — one of the finest witches of all time, IMO — was born to two muggle parents. Throughout the series, we learn that students like Seamus Finnigan had one magical and one muggle parent. So how the heck is magical ability passed on?

According to a summary of the panel from Live Science, Spana debated whether magical ability was a recessive trait (much like the Weasley family’s red hair), meaning it’s possible for an individual to carry the gene and potentially pass that gene onto offspring without expressing its traits. He ultimately decided it wasn’t, though — thanks to one Rubeus Hagrid. 

You see, Hagrid was born to a giant mother and a wizard father. This meant Hagrid was born a wizard with only one copy of wizarding DNA in his blood (giants are non-magical). Thus, Spana concluded, magical ability must be a dominant trait.

If that’s the case, how did Spana explain children like Hermione, who are the first in her family line with magical powers? A good, old-fashioned genetic mutation, possibly occurring in a sperm or egg cell, or after the egg is fertilized. (Yeah, don’t you wish you’d remembered more from AP Biology now?) As for squibs, Spana posited that parents could carry a mutation of the wizarding gene and pass it on to their child.

Science, man. It’s pretty magical.

From June 1 to 30, HuffPost is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the very first “Harry Potter” book by reminiscing about all things Hogwarts. Accio childhood memories.

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On the first day of summer, “Game of Thrones” is here to give you chills.

With less than a month until the Season 7 premiere, HBO has dropped a second trailer for the beloved series. 

Set to the ethereal “Light of the Seven” tune that accompanied Cersei’s (Lena Headey) path of destruction in Season 6′s violent finale, the trailer reminds us of the only thing Westeros has ever truly had to fear: the White Walkers and their army of the dead. 

In a voiceover, Jon Snow (Kit Harington) delivers that timely lecture: “For centuries, our families fought together against their common enemy, despite their differences ― together. We need to do the same if we’re going to survive, because the enemy is real. It’s always been real.”

Things are about to get very real, indeed: We see Dany (Emilia Clarke) arriving in Westeros, Jon fighting in the North, Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) using his sight, Sansa (Sophie Turner) looking pretty cold and Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) going to town with a lance. Oh, and fire. A lot of fire.

In the end, Sansa offers a tormentingly vague hint about the legacy of the Stark clan: “When the snows fall, and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.”

Fingers/paws/tails crossed for you, Sansa.

“Game of Thrones” returns July 16 to HBO.

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For Nia Long ― and the rest of black America ― “Love Jones” will forever hold its place in her heart. 

Last Tuesday, the actress spoke at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “In the Mood for ‘Love Jones,’” a celebration of the romantic film’s 20th anniversary. Long said that her role as Nina Mosley in the 1997 movie was the most relatable character she has played to date. 

In the movie, Nina falls in love with Darius Lovehall, played by Larenz Tate, through their shared devotion to art and poetry. 

“When I’ve looked back on all the women that I’ve played, in this beautiful career with these wonderful opportunities, Nina is probably the most like myself,” said Long alongside Tate, both of whom are still foine. 

What she also appreciates about the movie is its representation of black love and the significance that has maintained to this day. 

“Black people were so excited to see ourselves like this,” she said. “But I think when the film was released, because there was no formulaic process to follow, it sort of got lost as this hidden gem and I’m OK with that...because we’re all here today celebrating [it].”

The movie made $4 million on its opening weekend and has only grossed about $12.4 million worldwide. But Long said if it weren’t for the small-scaled premiere, which allowed the movie to become what she describes as a “cult classic,” it may not have made its mark in black cinema. 

“When you have staying power and the story is relevant and we’re all given permission to show black love on film, then I’m doing my job,” she said, inviting emphatic nods of agreement. 

What saddens her about the flick is the lack of movies that followed suit. 

“The only disappointment I have is that we have not seen a film like this since,” she said. 

Nineteen years after “Love Jones” premiered, producer Melvin Childs recreated the love story last fall as a musical that starred Tony Grant and Chrisette Michele. The play wasn’t met with the best reception given its stark differences from the film, but nonetheless, the mere production of the play spoke to the movie’s cultural significance. 

Watch Nia Long reflect on her Nina Mosley days below: 

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Cassie Gee started painting at 3 years old. Now 5, the pint-sized painter has sold close to 200 pieces and donated hundreds of dollars to charities from her sales. 

Based in Sydney, Cassie is known as Cassie Swirls online for her swirl paintings. Linda Gee, Cassie’s mom, told HuffPost her daughter mainly uses acrylic mixed with water on canvas for her art. She has also experimented with resin and ink.

According to Linda, Cassie ― who has been grabbing headlines lately ― has sold 60 paintings in the past week alone and is currently working on more.

Aside from adding a bit of color and swirls to people’s homes, Cassie also gives some of the money she makes from her paintings to charities. Linda told HuffPost Cassie has donated more than $750, as well as original paintings, to various charities to aid their missions, which include supporting women who are homeless, fighting cancer and helping people who are blind. In August, she helped YourAid install a rainwater tank for Cambodian school children with a $250 donation.

Cassie’s work, which is available on Etsy and Society6, also reflects her cheerful personality.

“She likes to add glitter and holographic stars to make her paintings ‘happy,’” Linda said. 

See more of Cassie’s work below and learn more about her on her site and on Facebook.

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It’s been nearly 20 years since Carlos Santana made us fall in love to the sound of his guitar as we learned about Maria. But the essence of the 1999 hit was recently revived by DJ Khaled just in time for the summer.

Khaled dropped “Wild Thoughts” on June 16, featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller. The new single samples heavily from Santana’s own “Maria Maria.”

The Mexican guitarist and music icon gave his thoughts on Khaled’s single in a statement to Billboard on Tuesday. 

“There is a reason that the infectious groove/theme that Wyclef [Jean] and I created on ‘Maria Maria’ still resonates today,” Santana told the site. “It speaks to the heart. DJ Khaled, Rihanna and Bryson take that vibe and bring it to a new dimension with ‘Wild Thoughts,’ but the groove and essence of the song is still intact.”

Khaled’s new single will be a part of his upcoming album “Grateful,” which is set to be released on Friday. As “Wild Thoughts” begins climbing the charts, some fans on Twitter have pointed out that younger generations may not be aware of the single’s roots.

Selena Gomez is another artist to recently sample from a classic in her new music. The singer’s new single “Bad Liar” uses the bass line from the Talking Heads’ 1977 “Psycho Killer.”

With Santana’s blessing on “Wild Thoughts,” now all that’s left to decide is who did it best?

Watch the two videos below and decide: 

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Before Thurgood Marshall became the Supreme Court’s first African-American justice and won the landmark case that ended segregation in public schools, he was a lawyer for the NAACP. In 1941, more than a decade before the civil rights movement peaked, Marshall defended a black chauffeur whose white socialite employer accused him of sexual assault.

“Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman, who played Jackie Robinson in “42” and James Brown in “Get On Up,” will portray Marshall in the biopic titled, well, “Marshall.” He’s joined by Sterling K. Brown and Kate Hudson as the chauffeur and socialite, respectively, while Josh Gad plays a Jewish attorney who aided in the defense. 

Directed by Reginald Hudlin (“House Party,” “Boomerang”), “Marshall” opens Oct. 13. Watch the first trailer above.

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It is difficult to roam the streets of New York City on foot without encountering a larger-than-life advertisement against your will. Images of airbrushed models aimed at exploiting the desires and insecurities of passersby are as omnipresent as traffic lights, silently nudging women and men to believe that pesky voice in the back of their heads saying you are not enough. 

Beginning June 26, however, some of the billboards around NYC will swap out their traditional promotional materials for some freshly squeezed feminist art. The summer initiative, entitled “The Future is Female,” was organized by nonprofit organization SaveArtSpace, which frequently transforms advertising spaces into impromptu sites of public art. 

SaveArtSpace, co-founded by Justin Aversano and Travis Rix, is intended to transform the city of New York into an “urban gallery experience,” inspiring the next generation of young artists in the process. Through a string of exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, Aversano and Rix are putting some pressure on the art world’s insular walls, inviting all citizens to taste challenging and engaging art as part of their daily lives and routines. 

And this particular NYC exhibition features a full roster of women artists.

“We are buried in a consumption-focused society,” Marie Tomanova, one of five women who curated the program, told HuffPost in an email. “And my wish is to have more art than advertisements in public spaces, art that will elevate your soul, inspire you to dream and encourage you to think.”

“When selecting works for ‘The Future Is Female’ I was looking for works with immediate power, celebrating ALL women,” she continued. “Women who are fierce, loving, brave and unstoppable, tough and sometimes fragile, daring, dreaming, creating, women who are vulnerable but always embracing, women who are powerful!”

One such woman is artist Elise Peterson, whose piece “Grace Meets Matisse” injects a photographic image of Grace Jones into Henri Matisse’s 1910 “Dance,” placing her in the center of a ring of naked dancers. The image puts Jones’ black body into an image previously filled with white bodies, juxtaposing the flesh of the painted figures with the three-dimensional glow of Jones’ self-actualized body, mid-performance. 

In another piece, titled “Boudoir,” photographer Lissa Rivera captures her muse and lover BJ wearing a robe and tights as he lounges, odalisque-like, on an emerald-draped cushion. A mysterious, gloved hand juts into the frame to brush his hair. In her series “Beautiful Boy” Rivera captures BJ in a variety of sensual, cinematic poses that riff off and subvert gender norms in and outside of the photographic tradition. 

Their creative partnership began before their romantic one when BJ confided in Rivera as a friend, expressing a desire to explore his femininity by dressing in women’s clothes. Rivera, who herself had ambiguous feelings about her own femininity, suggested they untangle their relationships to gender together, using photography as a space where fantasy could override reality. 

“I had been interested in the idea that popular notions of beauty are largely drawn from looking at repeated images,” Rivera said in an earlier interview with HuffPost. “The quality of the image has an incredible power to create desire, and that desire can be to inhabit the space of subject.” 

Rivera’s words are especially powerful in the context of the billboard exhibition, which replaces tired images of people as sex objects and product pushers with liberating, challenging and complex depictions, often of femininity from women’s own perspectives.

“Through ‘The Future Is Female’ we got an opportunity to show work of women who explore and narrate womanhood in many different ways, layers and angles,” Tomanova said, “and can challenge the mainstream media expectations and portrayal of women that I personally find very limiting.”

The exhibition doesn’t only provide an opportunity for an unwitting public to encounter art in their everyday spaces, it also shifts the conversation from what women do not have to what women can do. It’s a crucial message, told through radical accessibility, that will hopefully help shape the way young women view their relationship to their city and themselves. 

The billboards will pop up in various locales around New York’s Lower East Side beginning June 26. The featured artists’ work will also be featured at The Storefront Project beginning July 7. Get all the details here. 

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J.K. Rowling is the powerhouse behind the “Harry Potter” universe, and we love her for it. From the books to the films to the theme parks, you’d think a woman who has already given us so much couldn’t possibly give us any more.

But, au contraire, friends. Rowling’s Twitter presence has long been lauded, primarily for her ability to take down trolls and provide consistently humorous musings on the world.

Ahead of the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which first hit bookshelves back in 1997, we’ve decided to celebrate Mother Potter in the best way possible: Rounding up her most iconic tweets for our reading/retweeting pleasure. There are 35 of them. You’re welcome.

Her #relatable feelings of frustration that led to needing cake:

This classic response to a troll that does double duty as a song lyric:

These epic responses to/subtweets about trolls:

Her complete and utter vitriol toward President Donald Trump:

That time she wrote out “Expecto Patronum” for a fan’s tattoo:

When she’s frequently expressed her love for otters:

When she received a truly incredible mug for her birthday:

That time she served up some serious sass about women and sex (... and women everywhere started clapping):

When she admitted that killing all those people in the “Harry Potter” world was hard on her, too. Even Snape:

When she revealed the one thing that rivals Voldemort in terms of evilness — printers:

Those times she filled us in on the ups and downs of her writing life:

That time she said she doesn’t care if you think she’s a bitch:

When she referred to herself in the third person to declare that she loved the casting of a black Hermione in the “Cursed Child” play:

That time she said the phrase “penis hat”:

When she proved she’s ~ just like us ~:

J.K. Rowling ― never stop tweeting. Ever.

From June 1 to 30, HuffPost is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the very first “Harry Potter” book by reminiscing about all things Hogwarts. Accio childhood memories.

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The Public Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” featuring a Donald Trump-like lead has closed, but the controversy circling the play remains. 

According to The Associated Press, police are currently investigating threats made to the wife of the play’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis. Eustis’ wife filed a complaint on June 9 about threatening phone messages she received. One caller, the AP reports, said he or she “wanted her to die after saying her husband wants the Republican president to die.”

The production, which ran last week as part of the annual free Shakespeare in the Park festival held in Central Park, incensed critics with a Julius Caesar character bearing strong physical similarities to Trump. As a result, some alleged that the play’s iconic scene ― during which Caesar is assassinated ― sanctioned or even encouraged violence against the president of the United States. 

However, anyone who has actually seen or read the 400-year-old play ― or listened to director Eustis speak on the matter ― knows that it unequivocally denounces political violence of all kinds. Shakespeare’s message strongly warns that democracy can only be upheld through democratic means, casting Caesar’s stabbing as an illegitimate act of misguided patriotism. As Eustis summarized to The New York Times: “This production is horrified at his murder.”

Nonetheless, anger surrounding the play has escalated over the past weeks, climaxing when rightwing protesters interrupted a performance last Friday, one storming the stage and another standing up amid the crowd to scream “You are Nazis.”

Sadly, Eustis’ wife is not the only individual to be threatened as a result of the theatrical dispute. Other Shakespeare theater companies around the nation, completely unattached to The Public’s production, have been mistakenly targeted. 

Stephen Burdman, artistic director at New York Classical Theatre, described some of the “hateful emails” the company received. “Every arts organization gets critical correspondence,” he told HuffPost. “But normally, they are very well crafted and certainly not vitriolic or threatening. These were outrageously threatening, lots of ‘you should die’ and lots of expletives. Once they started threatening families I didn’t even want to share them with my wife.” 

Burdman is not alone in receiving disturbing messages intended for The Public. Last week the Washington Post reached out to Massachusetts’ Shakespeare & Company, which, perhaps due to its domain name Shakespeare.org, was also the target of threats. One read: “F— you, hope you all who did this play about Trump are the first do die when ISIS COMES TO YOU f—– sumbags [sic].”

Artists around the world have expressed their support for the play, stressing the importance of free expression and political theater. The Public released a statement last week, declaring it stands by its production:

We recognize that our interpretation of the play has provoked heated discussion; audiences, sponsors and supporters have expressed varying viewpoints and opinions. Such discussion is exactly the goal of our civically-engaged theater; this discourse is the basis of a healthy democracy.

Our production of “Julius Caesar” in no way advocates violence towards anyone. Shakespeare’s play, and our production, make the opposite point: those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save. For over 400 years, Shakespeare’s play has told this story and we are proud to be telling it again in Central Park.

There is something painfully ironic about unleashing violent threats to protest what is perceived by some as an endorsement for violence. Hopefully now that the production has finished its run, the vicious and often misplaced attacks on members of the theater community and their family will come to an end.   

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Most likely to prioritize avocado toast over home ownership. Most likely to hate cereal. Millennials get stuck with the most grating superlatives, but according to a Pew Research Center report from last fall, they’re getting a lot of things right, too. The generation frequents public libraries more often than members of any other age group.

A blog published on the center’s site on Wednesday says, “53% of Millennials (those ages 18 to 35 at the time) say they used a library or bookmobile in the previous 12 months. That compares with 45% of Gen Xers, 43% of Baby Boomers and 36% of those in the Silent Generation.”

And, the question on the survey was explicitly about public libraries, as opposed to university libraries, so the fact that many millennials are still college-age is moot.

These findings are consistent with a 2014 study from Pew, which shows that millenials read more books than members of other generations.

It’s also possible that younger and more civically-minded readers are privier to the services provided by libraries that are unrelated to checking out new titles.

After last year’s presidential election, American Library Association president Julie Todaro played a part in updating an information evaluation system called the CRAAP test, which is used in schools to spot so-called fake news. And before that, librarians across the country have worked to provide information and safe spaces to LGBTQ visitors.

So, the need for libraries ― and the apparent desire young people have to visit libraries ― makes the possibility for budget cuts an urgent issue. In Trump’s proposed 2018 budget, the Institute of Museum and Library Services was eliminated altogether. In response, librarians put their advocacy experience to use, fighting for these spaces that are valued by younger generations.

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We still don’t know much about next year’s “Jurassic World” follow-up, but now we at least know the title: “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.”

Universal Pictures announced the news Thursday, exactly one year before the movie hits theaters.

One can assume the name, which seems aligned with 1997′s “Jurassic Park: The Lost World,” refers to the havoc wreaked across the titular park in “Jurassic World.” J.A. Bayona, who is directing the film after “World” maestro Colin Trevorrow opted to make “Star Wars: Episode IX” instead,” has said this sequel will be “darker” and more pointed in its depiction of animal exploitation. 

Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard and BD Wong will reprise their roles from “Jurassic World,” while Jeff Goldblum returns to the franchise as Dr. Ian Malcolm for the first time since “The Lost World.”

“Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingom” opens June 22, 2018.

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It only took a moment for pop superstar Kelly Clarkson to become a co-conspirator in a gay fan’s wedding proposal this week. 

Longtime fan Alex Malerba and his boyfriend, Justin Blake, were ushered backstage for a meet-and-greet session with Clarkson at Las Vegas’s Venetian resort and casino after her performance Tuesday night. After posing with the “American Idol” songstress for a photo, Malerba dropped to one knee and popped the question to Blake. 

As seen in a photo and video series Malerba posted to his Instagram, a teary-eyed Blake accepted the proposal while Clarkson looked on gleefully. 

“I’m, like, a part of it,” the star gushed. After learning the couple had been together for four years, she quipped, “About damn time! I’m like, shit or get off the pot!”

Malerba, who hails from South Carolina, told HuffPost that the surprise proposal was part of his vow to travel the world with Blake. He said he tried reaching out to Clarkson after learning that he and Blake would be traveling to Las Vegas for IHG’s 2017 Americas Owners Conference last week, but was unsuccessful. Fortunately, his dedication caught Clarkson’s eye during her performance. 

“During the show I was in the front row screaming and singing along to every word, which she noticed,” he said. “She gave me a shoutout and mentioned how she loves my dedication and my singing along helped her remember the words. It was cute!” 

During the meet-and-greet, Malerba informed Clarkson of his plans to propose, at which point he said the star proclaimed, “Go get him ― let’s do this NOW!”

Congrats, gentlemen! 

Happy Pride! Don’t miss the latest in LGBTQ news by subscribing to the Queer Voices newsletter.   

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The untitled Han Solo film has a new director.

Ron Howard is officially signed on to finish off the “Star Wars” spinoff film, which canned its previous directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, earlier this week over their creative differences with writer Lawrence Kasdan, who also helped write “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return Of The Jedi.”

Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, made the decision official in a statement on the “Star Wars” website on Thursday. 

“At Lucasfilm, we believe the highest goal of each film is to delight, carrying forward the spirit of the saga that George Lucas began forty years ago,” Kennedy said. “With that in mind, we’re thrilled to announce that Ron Howard will step in to direct the untitled Han Solo film. We have a wonderful script, an incredible cast and crew, and the absolute commitment to make a great movie. Filming will resume the 10th of July.”

LucasFilm is still planning to release the film on May 25, 2018. The movie is set to star Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo and Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian.

Howard is a safe choice considering his longstanding ties with George Lucas. He starred in 1973′s “American Graffiti,” which Lucas directed. Howard also disclosed in 2015 that Lucas had asked him to direct 1999′s “The Phantom Menace.”

Lord and Miller, the film’s previous directors, who had directed films like “21 Jump Street” and “The Lego Movie,” said they wanted to “take risks to give the audience a fresh experience” when they first signed on to the project.

They had already been directing the project for more than four months when the studio apparently decided they had taken one too many risks. 

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Jimmy Fallon entered the children’s book world in 2015 with the release of his New York Times bestseller Your Baby’s First Word With Be DADA. Now he’s back with a follow-up that’s all about moms.

On Tuesday, Fallon announced his new picture book, Everything Is MAMA. The book is scheduled for an October 10 release from publisher Feiwel & Friends. 

Introducing the book on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the host said Everything Is MAMA was a natural sequel to Your Baby’s First Word With Be DADA. 

“Even though I basically forced my second child to say ‘dada’ as her first word, every other object that mattered in her life was ‘mama,’” Fallon explained.

“The idea of this one is that moms are trying to educate and teach their babies other words, but the babies are obsessed with the word ‘mama,’” he added.

Fallon and his wife Nancy Juvonen have two daughters, 3-year-old Winnie Rose and 2-year-old Frances Cole. 

He told People he believes the book is great for babies and toddlers.

“If you have a 3-year-old, they’ll love the pictures,” Fallon said. “And if you have a 1-year-old, they’ll love how it tastes.”

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Spotify has officially pulled an ad naming Justin Bieber a “Latin King,” after uproar from Latinos around the web.

The advertisement seemed to connect Bieber with the mainstream success of Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” (featuring Daddy Yankee) in the United States. The Canadian star remixed the already global hit in April and that version became the first No. 1 Spanish-language single in the country since the “Macarena” in 1996.

The ad garnered attention after one Twitter user posted a screenshot and a short message directed at Spotify on June 14. The message in the tweet included a few words asking the streaming company to take down the ad on behalf of the Latinx community.  

Latinos have pointed out that the Spotify ad whitewashed the work of the Latino artists who were truly behind the mega hit. Twitter users responded to the ad by threatening to stop using Spotify and calling it “disgusting.” 

Some even pointed to Bieber’s butchering of the “Despacito” lyrics during a live performance in May. The incident angered many Latino fans, who accused the singer of “mocking″ the Spanish language.  

Jeronimo Saldaña, from the Latinx political organization Mijente, even started a petition against the ad. 

The company responded to the furor in a statement Thursday. 

“We made a creative decision to feature Justin Bieber in our ad because we wanted to celebrate ‘Despacito’ as a key cultural moment when music genres crossover,” a Spotify spokesperson told HuffPost via e-mail. “We realized that this could be seen as culturally insensitive so we have pulled those ads.”

When HuffPost asked if Spotify planned to issue an apology to the community, the company responded saying there were no current plans to issue anything further.

H/T We are mitú

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YA fans, this is not a drill: Entertainment Weekly reports that John Green’s next novel will be hitting shelves Oct. 10.

Green is the author of hit young adult novels The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, both of which have been made into films. His books have been hugely successful, selling more than 45 million copies worldwide and positioning him among the world’s top-earning authors according to Forbes lists in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

He shared news of the new book, called Turtles All the Way Down, with his 5.31 million followers on Twitter.

The book follows 16-year-old Aza Holmes, who copes with mental illness while investigating a missing fugitive billionaire.

In a statement per Publishers Weekly, Green said he’s been working on this new novel for “years” — and that it has a personal meaning to him. 

“This is my first attempt to write directly about the kind of mental illness that has affected my life since childhood, so while the story is fictional, it is also quite personal,” he said in a statement.

Dutton Books, the novel’s publisher, describes the story as one “about lifelong friendship, the intimacy of an unexpected reunion, ‘Star Wars’ fan fiction, and tuatara.”

Yeah, we had to look up “tuatara” too: They’re medium-sized reptiles native to New Zealand. Apparently, they’re the only surviving member of an order that dates back to the dinosaurs. Intriguing!

Here’s one being shown to then-Prime Minister of New Zealand John Key in 2012.

Here’s Prince Harry greeting a tuatara that is 100 years old.

Not to be outdone, Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall have also posed with one.

No word on how tuatara will feel about their newfound fame come October.

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Dozens of boys in southwest England have defiantly swapped their pants out for pleated skirts after being forbidden from wearing shorts to school, despite a heat wave.

The students at Isca Academy in Exeter said they borrowed the skirts from sisters and female friends to protest the school’s dress code policy, which requires boys to wear the leg-covering garments while girls have the option of pants or skirts.

“We’re not allowed to wear shorts, and I’m not sitting in trousers all day, it’s a bit hot,” one of the boys told the BBC on Thursday.

The boys’ protest ended up going viral, with a photo of them lined up in skirts scoring more than 71,000 likes on Twitter as of Thursday afternoon.

Some of the boys’ mothers have sided with their sons.

“The girls are allowed to wear skirts all year round so I think it’s completely unfair that the boys can’t wear shorts,” Claire Reeves told Devon Live. “Boys just don’t have the option, and I am just really concerned about how the heat is going to affect him.”

As Reeves noted, the protest came as the country battles scorching temperatures that have reached the 90s.

Despite that potential health threat, Reeves complained that the school threatened to place her son in isolation all day if he showed up wearing shorts. If she kept him home, it’d be considered an unauthorized absence, she told Devon Live.

Students credited a teacher with suggesting they wear skirts instead of pants, though it’s believed that it was suggested in jest. After that, several boys showed up wearing the breathable garments, then dozens more followed.

When at least one of them said they were told that they couldn’t wear the skirts with hairy legs, they fetched razors and shaved them, the boys told Devon Live and The Guardian.

Fellow mom Claire Lambeth said she’s proud of her 15-year-old son, Ryan, who she said was one of the first to wear one.

“Ryan came up with the idea of wearing a skirt so that evening we borrowed one. He wore it the next day – as did five other boys. This morning there were about 50-60 of them in skirts,” she told The Guardian. “I didn’t expect it to take off like that. The school is being silly really – this is exceptional weather. I was very proud of Ryan. I think it was a great idea.”

Headteacher, Aimee Mitchell, wrote in a letter posted on the school’s website this week, that she would be “happy to consider a change” in the school’s dress code in the coming weeks, but not without consulting both students and their families.

In the meantime, students are allowed to remove their ties and undo the top buttons of their shirts, her letter said.

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