Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

Faking your own death is a timeworn tradition. Whether it's to collect on a life-insurance policy, escape a criminal conviction, or to simply disappear, people have been playing dead for centuries. It's hard to say exactly how many people have pulled it off successfully, because a successful pseudocide just looks like a real death.

There are, however, plenty of death fakers who don't pull it off. Their plots, the motivations behind them, and the ways they get caught are at the heart of the book Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud, which was released this week. I spoke to the book's author, Elizabeth Greenwood, to find out how some people fake their own deaths and why it's never a good exit strategy.

VICE: How many people do you estimate fake their own deaths?
Elizabeth Greenwood: It really is hard to say because if people fake their deaths successfully, then they're just considered dead. The real marker for it, and the people who tend to get caught, are people who try to commit life insurance fraud. There are several red flags that come up—like, if you've recently increased your coverage in the past year or two, or Seth Ferranti for another book I'm writing. He staged his death as a suicide. They actually dredged the river looking for his body. So we think that's a really genius Jason Bourne move, but it's actually amateur hour.

Also, being unable to cut ties. That's a perennial problem. I thought that technology would be the biggest stumbling block that you would face in faking your death, but it's actually really being able to truly abandon your old life and your old profile of your likes and dislikes and preferences. Really, just be born a totally new creature. Unfortunately, unless you're kind of a total sociopath, that's really impossible for most people.

Follow Simon Davis on Twitter.

Library couches, not just for naps anymore. Photo via Flickr user nshepard

At a certain point, Simon Fraser University theatre student Cindy Kao says she just didn't want to bother searching for a place to live anymore. Everything in Vancouver was out of her $600-a-month price range, and the competition was getting out of control.

"I just realized I didn't want to think about it anymore," she told VICE. "Despite the market being as expensive as it is, it's still a huge fight. Anything cheap gets taken within a day or seconds... It shocked me that I don't even expect to have a place."

Kao was one of the subjects of a recent Globe and Mail story that found several students at Simon Fraser University have given up on the city's overpriced rental market and are choosing to crash on campus couches instead. It adds to a growing list of strange ways young people are trying to get by in a city where housing values have shot up in the last year faster than any other city in North America. VICE caught up with Kao to learn more about the challenges of partying, showering, and not getting caught while sleeping at school.

Kao says she started regularly sleeping on campus in February of this year and stayed nearly every night until school let out in April. Before that she crashed every so often, but when her lease on a basement suite was up, she decided the couch in the student lounge was better than a couch at a friend's place.

"I have a lot of friends who would offer, but that's only a once in awhile thing, you can only take so much from people," she said.

Read More: Vancouverites Tell Us the Strange and Awful Ways They've Saved on Rent

Kao knew she wasn't alone, because she had friends doing the same thing, and they would see each other wandering the halls of the student building late at night. The lights in the downtown campus student lounge don't turn off, so she began asking friends for access codes, and eventually found off-the-beaten-path studios with a working light switch.

"You start wanting to use it for school purposes, but once in awhile you just need a darker place to sleep," she said. When that doesn't work out, Kao puts a scarf over her head, and hopes security won't bother her.

Kao says much of her campus sleeping arrangement depends on the whims of security. Showers are available on campus, but only during certain hours. Before the school opens, Kao says she sometimes asks a guard to open the door for her. "If they're willing to open it for you."

And then there's the challenge of getting past security to crash after a night of partying. Unless Kao's out with friends who can put her up for the night, it's up to campus security to let her in. "There are definitely times where I had to come back to school at strange hours and sign in with security guards," she told VICE.

Kao says she hasn't run into too many issues, but she says she's seen other sleepers who have been asked to leave at 3 AM, "simply because he didn't have his ID on his person."

Kao is sleeping better now that she lives with her mom in Langley, but says she's likely to return to campus couches in September. Her studies often keep her on campus past midnight, so commuting back to the Fraser Valley—a two-hour journey when transit is actually running—isn't an option. She's been looking at places, but isn't holding her breath. Her former roommate, meanwhile, found a spot in someone's living room for $600—a deal considering two bedroom apartments in the city averaged nearly $1,600 last year, and have been creeping up closer to $2,000.

Being public about her campus couch surfing has so far prompted mixed reactions. "I know when the article came out I worried a lot of people," she said. But Kao has also heard from other students trying to get by floating around campus. "I knew that there were a lot of people in my position, but I didn't realize that there were more. Some of them actually reached out to me and thanked me for doing it."

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Photo via Wikimedia

Ahmed Mohamed, the Muslim teenager who caused an uproar after he brought a homemade clock to school that his teacher thought was a bomb, is now suing Irving, Texas, for violating his civil rights, NBC reports.

Last September, Mohamed brought a homemade clock he fashioned out of old electronic parts to MacArthur High School in an effort to impress his teacher. The teacher, though, mistook the box of wires for a bomb and called the cops. Mohamed was suspended from school for three days, and the outrage around the school's profiling prompted a White House invitation from President Obama, led to a meeting with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and gained him almost 100,000 Twitter followers. Mohamed and his family later moved to Qatar, so he could further his education.

The new lawsuit, filed on behalf of Mohamed and his father, names the Irving Independent School District, Mohamed's former principal Daniel Cummings, and the city as defendants. The suit reportedly claims that Mohamed was treated unfairly as a Muslim student since arriving in the town as a third grader and cites discrimination under the Civil Rights Act.

According the NBC, the city said it hadn't yet been served with the lawsuit but wrote in a statement, "The legal process will allow all facts to be revealed, and the city welcomes that opportunity."

Read: A Muslim Kid Got Arrested Because His Teacher Thought His Homemade Clock Was a Bomb

Donald Trump speaking in Detroit on Monday while a protester stands on a chair. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Donald Trump's much-ballyhooed speech on Monday was supposed to be a chance for him to flesh out the details of his plan to improve America's economy. It was also a chance for the alleged billionaire to get people talking about something other than his struggling campaign and to appear more presidential than he usually manages. So onstage at the Detroit Economic Club, Trump read from the teleprompter like a 70-year-old on his best behavior. Even when protesters interrupted him—over and over again, he simply made a few wisecracks and waited until they were escorted out.

But while it was billed as a substantive address, the speech oddly—but perhaps predictably—contained little, well, substance. Trump did announce that he was revising his proposed tax rates upward and would allow childcare to be tax deductible. But mostly, the speech was a mishmash of Republican boilerplate, vague promises Trump has made many times before, and statements that were outright misleading.

Take the childcare issue: Allowing people to deduct the cost of childcare—which generally amounts to hundreds of dollars a month—from their taxes seems like a decent way to help the working class. But poor people often don't make enough money to pay federal income taxes in the first place, making that deduction largely irrelevant to their bottom lines.

"A lot of people will not be able to make use of ," William Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institution and co-chair of the Tax Policy Center, told VICE, "and the people who would are probably higher income."

According to Gale, a refundable tax credit, which would allow people to get reimbursed by the government for some or all of their childcare costs, would be a more effective way of easing the burden on working-class households. " designed it as a deduction specifically because they don't want the benefits to go to lower-income people," he said.

Then there was Trump's claim that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, has explicitly said she would raise taxes on the middle class if elected. This apparently comes from a video in which it's not clear whether Clinton said "we are going to raise taxes on the middle class" or "we aren't going to raise taxes on the middle class." Both the transcript of her remarks and Clinton's stated policies make it pretty clear that she was saying "aren't." But Trump is apparently advancing the idea that Clinton is secretly out to screw over everyday Americans and revealed this insidious plot when she didn't properly enunciate a "nt."

In his speech Monday, Trump said he would cut taxes on middle-class Americans, but the scant specifics he gave about his tax plans seemed to make it clear that his reforms would be tilted in favor toward the wealthy. Most notably, he's in favor of abolishing the "death tax," a.k.a. the estate tax—a policy that would only alleviate the tax burden only for those making more than $5 million.

Trump also proposed a moratorium on all new financial regulations and promised to eliminate those existing regulations that "are not necessary, do not improve public safety, and which needlessly kill jobs." He didn't provide examples of any such regulations, or explain how lifting those regulations and cutting taxes—the GOP's longstanding solution to everything—would help workers in cities like Detroit, which have been ravaged by complicated decades-long economic trends having to do with globalization and new technologies, not just government policies.

"The forces determining the evolution of manufacturing are pretty powerful... the problem isn't taxes," said Gale. "Basically he's selling the notion that his tax plan is going to create a huge increase in growth, and it's just not."

Trump's appeal to everyday Americans rarely rooted in policy, though. As he headed into the home stretch of Monday's speech, he trotted out the same protectionist talking points that he's been using for months: China is breaking the rules and stealing American jobs; free trade is hurting regular workers; Trump will bring back old-fashioned jobs in the coal and steel industries; the country's low unemployment numbers are "one of the biggest hoaxes in American politics." The system, in other words, is rigged, and only Trump's cocktail of tariffs and tax breaks can unrig it.

The candidate also made sure to link his economic policies to the more red-meat rhetoric of his campaign: He emphasized that "without security, there can be no prosperity"; implied that money spent settling refugees could have gone toward infrastructure instead; and even found the time to mention crime, noting that "our police in this country are really unrecognized for the job they do."

The basic arc of the speech was the same one that Trump employs for virtually all of his campaign speeches: That real America—cops and steelworkers, every character in every Springsteen song, white people, pretty much—are being betrayed in favor of the Chinese, immigrants, and a global-banking elite. Even in a "serious" speech, he can't avoid the whiff of conspiracy, promising that "Americanism, not globalism, will be our new credo."

Trump did get the basic premise right. Detroit and lots of other parts of America are doing badly. But diagnosing rips in the country's fabric is not the same thing as mending them. And throwing tax cuts at a struggling economy, said Gale, isn't going to magically fix those problems. "If that were the case," Gale added, "we would have solved this a long time ago."

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

Del Mar, my hometown, is a small, beachy suburb of San Diego, home to about 4,000 people and the second-largest racetrack in California. I've been drawn to the track as far back as I can remember—the palm trees and the smells of sunscreen, spent adrenaline, and stale beer always make me nostalgic. Horse racing is slowly fading into the past, replaced by other forms of entertainment, but you can still get the entire range of human experience in the two minutes between the "and away they go" that marks the start of the race and the crossing of the finish line. I hope some of these photographs capture that in between.

Eric Chakeen is an artist and photographer based in NYC. You can follow his work here.

And Away We Go is now available via Done To Death.

Chicken Boy stands tall over his current home. All photos courtesy Amy Inouye

Amy Inouye first met the fiberglass statue she calls Chicken Boy in the early 1970s. She had just moved to Los Angeles to attend the ArtCenter College of Design; Chicken Boy loomed above her school commute, the towering, 22-foot-tall mascot of an eponymous fried chicken restaurant in Downtown LA.

With the body of a strapping, Bunyan-esque man, the head of a cartoon chicken, and his goofy, cross-eyed gaze, Inouye came to find comfort in his hulking presence. "If he's OK, I'll be OK," she tells VICE she often thought to herself as she drove by her first true LA friend. He was an antidote to the sprawling metropolis, a fellow outsider watching over her from above.

Eventually, Inouye found her footing in Los Angeles, and once she graduated, she founded a graphic-design firm with college friends. Chicken Boy's comforting stare had proven correct: Everything was going to be OK here.

But one day, Inouye came to discover that her friend was in grave danger, and the only one who could save him was her.

In May, 1984, Inouye discovered that Chicken Boy's restaurant had gone out of business. She phoned the proprietors, who told her they intended to destroy the monument. After much pleading, Inouye was granted custody of her hero, but she only had a week to get him off the roof.

She quickly assembled a crack team of employees from her her design firm. They found sign-removal contractors willing to rescue Chicken Boy from his perch, but Inouye faced one obstacle: the City of Los Angeles. You can't rip a 22-foot-tall landmark off a public structure without permits, but bureaucracy takes time, and time was the last thing that Inouye had to spend.

It soon became clear: They weren't gonna get him off that roof without breaking a few laws first.

Chicken Boy stands over his first home, the "Chicken Boy" restaurant in Downtown Los Angeles.

The streets were deserted on the morning of their hijack. Her sign contractors had planned it that way—this was a 3 AM raid that would forever change the Los Angeles skyline. They parked their truck outside the three-story building where Chicken Boy had roosted for years. Some gathered blow torches; others manned the crane. They worked quickly, eager to complete their mission before dawn.

Three hours later, Chicken Boy was safe and sound on the back of a flatbed truck.

Now she needed to find him a new home, a process that would take more than 23 years. But nothing would stop her from making her dream come true. Come hell or high water, Chicken Boy would once again brighten the smog-tufted skyline of Los Angeles.

Chicken Boy lays in storage as Los Angeles officials cruelly deny him a home.

For the next 17 years, Chicken Boy sat in storage while Alice lobbied every last park, art museum, and city space to give her friend a home. Her heart was broken over and over as each rejected her meticulously drafted proposal for Chicken Boy's installation. Then, shortly after the turn of the millennium, after mercilessly denying Chicken Boy a home, the city had the gall to greenlight a public-art project called A Community Of Angels, where 400 fiberglass angels were installed around LA.

To Inouye, there was room for just one fiberglass guardian angel in LA, and that was Chicken Boy. And if you fucked with Chicken Boy, you fucked with Amy Inouye.

She assembled a guerrilla team of 25 friends, family members, and fans for an art project of their own, one that would peck a clear message into the minds of the officials who had slighted her idol. They convened at 6 AM on May 9, 2001. The rebels used no guns; chicken beaks were their only weapon. That morning, they descended upon those fiberglass angels with fervor, affixing beaks to sculptures across Los Angeles.

"This was done as an art project on behalf of Chicken Boy," Inouye later explained to the Los Angeles Times. "He is, after all, the original as well as the quintessential guardian angel of downtown LA."

Emotions run high in times of war, and Inouye soon found herself in love with a fellow revolutionary. Stuart was a handsome insurgent brought to Inouye's group by a friend of a friend. It turned out she did have room in her heart for another man—this one wholly human.

Though their art attack garnered press coverage, it did not earn Chicken Boy a home, so Inouye decided to buy him one herself. Stuart joined the hunt, and in 2003, the couple found a home for their mutant-fowl son: a 2,300 square foot commercial space in the neighborhood of Highland Park. The building would serve as an office for Inouye's company, with a sturdy, flat roof on which Chicken Boy could perch.

Inouye still needed approval to mount Chicken Boy, and she couldn't do it alone. Inouye called world-famous structural engineer Melvyn Green, who had overseen the seismic strengthening of the Golden Gate Bridge. He'd spent his career contemplating mass destruction, and Chicken Boy provided much-needed comic relief. Green visited Inouye's building, inspected the roof, and took measurements. Before long, he fell in love with Chicken Boy himself.

Green drafted blueprints while Inouye began a grassroots campaign to erect her bizarro monument. She solicited support from every community group in Highland Park, carting her proposal to Highland Park Heritage Trust, the Historic Preservation Overlay Zone, Historic Neighborhood Council, and more. Then she had to navigate a Kafkaesque maze of bureaucracy from the Building & Safety Department. Finally, she spent weeks applying for a City Community Beautification Grant. Chicken Boy's installation required a significant amount of money, but Inouyefeared he was too weird for an organization that typically financed murals and civic gardens. But Chicken Boy's unique LA history resonated with the committee. To her shock, Inouye was awarded the grant.

On October 16, 2007, the installation began. What had taken 23 years was over in three easy days. Chicken Boy came home to roost, and Inouye's dream was finally realized.

Chicken Boy being installed at his final home over Inouye's office

"But why?" I ask Inouye, when I visit her at Chicken Boy's home. "Why devote so much time to a chicken that can't thank you?"

"Because it's fun," Inouye said. "This is America, and America is about weird stuff on the road. These things exist, and people love them. That's what it comes down to: It's fun."

I follow her up a set of wrought iron stairs as she opens the hatch to the roof. I climb through, gain my footing and turn to face Chicken Boy.

Faced with his cartoonish visage up close, I find it impossible not to laugh. He is, as Inouye insists, fun.

"He just got a fresh coat of paint," Inouye announces, beaming proudly.

"It looks great," I say.

Chicken Boy stands silent, a googly-eyed sentinel determined to keep Los Angeles dreaming for just a little longer.

Follow Jonathan Parks-Ramage on Twitter.

Two types of people in this world: those who, rightly, spent their childhood hating Manchester United, fuck you Manchester United, Manchester United a faceless machine designed to do nothing but win, Manchester United so despicable because they are so unquestionably but anonymously Good, Manchester United doing power moves like buying Jaap Stam, the scariest non-war criminal in history, for £10.6m; like buying the Premier League's two most in-form strikers and combining them somehow to even greater and more devastating effect; replacing them, spent and used, with £19 million worth of Ruud van Nistelrooy, then just winning again, Manchester United the perfect plane in motion, the parts being replaced but the function remaining the same, win win win, win, win again, then win, all in brilliant red, Manchester United the Stormtroopers, the baddies, Manchester United force-choking you down to a 1-0 win. And the other kind of people are the people who support Manchester United, who are all – necessarily – tainted with a little streak of evil. Manchester United fans wear bobble hats and say "BOB ON" and pretend to like the Happy Mondays and ecstasy. Manchester United fans look at you blankly when you say, "Remember Gary Pallister?" Manchester United fans only enjoy winning, and even then they do it so much it's almost joyless, Manchester United fans all now essentially Ron Jeremy, the tired old remains of Ron Jeremy, an old stretched whoopee cushion drops on a bag of pine needles, Ron Jeremy shuddering to one final nerveless orgasm, Ron Jeremy just drooping and sad now, Ron Jeremy knackered, Ron Jeremy just sitting heavily in a big bath, sighing into a bath, and dying, instantly, his lifeforce spent and used, one last cigar sizzling in the bathwater. That is essentially a portrait of all Manchester United fans winning the FA Cup last year. That is an accurate description.

Although, hold on though, woah there, what the fuck:

(Here is a link to the tweet in question if the above video does not embed. You need to watch it.)

I don't think it is an overreaction to say this is the most important 45 seconds that have ever happened to this planet, and as such we need to break it down, we need to enter the Break It Down Zone™:

THE STORMZY X POGBA ADIDAS-SPONSORED BREAK IT DOWN ZONE™

What we are seeing here, undoubtedly, is the return of Bad Bastard Manchester United, and as a fan of both football, glamour and drama: this is very notable for me. United being reborn as the baddies has been brewing for a summer, now – they recruited Mourinho, the most Bad Bastard manager, and got in Zlatan on a free, and though Zlatan is a pure and true being made of light and ego he's also glossy and bombastic in that old United way, that too-big-to-be-real way, that unassailably brilliant way – but now they have dropped a world record £89m fee on Paul Pogba and decided to announce it like this, I mean like this, and now they are back, United are no longer the domain of David 'Scots Man, 56, Scared of His Own Reflection' Moyes and Louis 'Our Angriest Dinnerlady Had to Take Our PE Class For Two Years Because of Budget Constraints At the School' van Gaal, they are now the three biggest characters in world football, Pogba, Ibrahimovic and Mourinho, united like three witches over a bubbling marsh-top pot of corporate money, United are the baddies, now, again, nobody can take that away from them;

Point two is there any other phone on earth with more peng tings on it that Stormzy's? I do not think so. I do not think it is possible. Stormzy must now be approaching the maximum amount of peng tings allowed. Stormzy close to dangerous with this peng tings. I feel like if you taped a thermometer to your iPhone, and a thermometer to Stormzy's iPhone – despite the two machines being ostensibly the same hardware – his would run some ten to fifteen degrees hotter than yours, just with the sheer number of peng tings on it. One glance from a mortal man at the WhatsApp saved images folder on Stormzy's iPhone would surely kill him. Only Stormzy, his body enduring so many peng tings now that it has built up some form of resistance, only Stormzy can break into that radioactive bunker of pengness and swipe around inside it;

Third and most importantly, and because I have watched the above just so many times now, and I have ruled that this is the coolest thing that has ever happened. This is the absolute coolest thing that has ever happened. There are moments, early on, before Stormzy starts yelling about Nick Jonas and everyone just starts pounding the fuck out of their chests with their flat palms, where you worry this isn't the coolest thing to ever happen – you go, 'actually, is this awful?', like how Pogba, one of the most remarkable athletes currently alive, somehow conspiring to look sort of skinny and a touch wonky in some worth-more-than-your-house-is denim, a couple of dance moves not quite landing, not quite cool enough, and like could he not have just held a shirt up while standing on a balcony over Carrington like everyone else, what the fuck man – but then it becomes the coolest thing that ever happened, then Stormzy turns around and he's wearing a 'POGBA' shirt, and it suddenly feels Significant: you realise that this is exactly what he said it was at the start of proceedings – "two young kings" – just two absolutely at-the-top-of-their-game 23-year-olds just kinging about in a warehouse studio wearing the fuck out of a load of adidas, If you could bottle the energy of this video you would never have to eat again. You wouldn't piss. Pogba the most expensive footballer on earth now, a record unlikely to be surpassed for half a decade at least, fresh off the back of an insanely grandiose Chevrolet motorcade from the airport to sign his contract, Pogba arriving in Manchester like some high space emperor landing on a planet he is about to conquer, somehow fitting in the shoot for this in there somewhere in between, and Stormzy, not even an album out, but so cool without it that all he essentially needs to do is rub his hands together and sneer and it's better than 90% of the musical output of this country, currently, good god damn, I cannot get over this video. I just cannot get over it at all. I hate Manchester United so much and yet this is the coolest goddamn thing that has ever happened.

Joyfully, this video now ushers the overdue relaunch of megafootball, and I for one am glad of it. Listen, we had fun having Leicester as champions, yeah – it was very heartwarming, wasn't it, they were very plucky, they turned kick-and-rush into a high art, good on them, Good Old Jamie Vardy, Good Old England's James 'Jamie' Vardy, With His Cast, Good Old Leicester, God Don't They Love Crisps – but we need Bad Bastards again. We need Manchester United to take one pinch of their global turnover and we need them to buy the absolute best, so-good-they-are-terrifying players, and we need them to just bulldoze their way to the league title. Manchester United are like the baddies in Space Jam now, and they are gloating about that fact. Never has a transfer to a team I do not support been so thrilling as this one. Never has their been a transfer like this. I hate Manchester United again. It's brilliant.

@joelgolby

More stuff about the footer:

An Analysis of Cristiano Ronaldo's Blanket-Selling Side Hustle

Arise Sam Allardyce, England's Post-Brexit Saviour of Choice

I Watched Football in Different European Pubs to Taste Life Before We Retreat to Our Little Island Forever

The pair thought it would be fun to stage a sexy, housewife-themed photo shoot in Theo's aunt's house.

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece

"The hardest part of this job is getting your family to accept it. We're lucky because our families have been understanding and supportive from the beginning. We are not hurting anyone, we are just earning our living – most Greeks our age still live with their parents. But we are also each other's family, and getting into porn did not affect our feelings for each other," says one half of Greece's most famous pornstar duo, Theo. His on and off screen partner, Ina, sits next to him nodding approvingly.

Theo and Ina began their career six years ago, acting in films made by Greece's most respected porn production company, Sirina Entertainment. The fact that they are also a couple in real life is what distinguished them from other actors, while performing at live sex shows in various strip clubs across Greece was also crucial in promoting their brand. These days, the pair film most of their movies abroad alongside a number of internationally known pornstars, like Kendra Lust. I wanted to know if their love story is as boring as anyone else's, so I got in touch with Theo and I was lucky enough to find that they had just come back from filming in Las Vegas and could spare me a day for an interview.

And so I find myself sat in Theo's aunt's living room in Nea Smirni, Athens. Their own place, in the neighbourhood of Patissia, is being renovated so it made more sense to meet here. Ina and Theo have been together for 10 years; apparently, they started dating long before their mutual foray into the world of adult entertainment. They first met at a cafe, where the then-18-year-old Ina worked as a waitress. Theo at the time worked at a gas station. "I liked that she was shy," he says. "I kept going back to the same place for the next 10 days. I paid her compliments, tried to make smart comments, gave her bigger tips but nothing – she didn't pay me any attention. One day I decided to go up to her and said: 'Please do me this one favour. I want to meet for a coffee, just for an hour. After that, I promise I won't bother you again.' I guess she felt sorry for me cause she agreed to see me, and we've been together ever since."

Ina appears to be truly shy. She seems happy to let Theo do most of the talking, while she sits beside him, smoking. Until I ask whether they are planning to get married, that is: "We were in Las Vegas recently and we did think about tying the knot there but the whole thing was too fake. It felt too forced, so we let it go," she jumps in.

"We've been engaged for a few years now, so of course we think about getting married. But we keep seeing couples who've been together for years, break up as soon as they get married. I believe that marriage spoils a relationship. It's like a collar that asphyxiates you," adds Theo. "We'll marry when we have kids, because that's right thing to do," Ina says firmly, making it clear that that conversation is over.

The couple spend every moment of their lives together. They exercise together, work together, party together and they fish together – which is one of their hobbies. "We're a team. Even when we get job offers, they tend to include both of us, as a package deal," Theo explains. "We didn't plan it, it just happened. And now that's part of our brand." Currently, the pair devote a lot of their free time to reading Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series.

Their every day schedule is as follows: wake up at 9AM, run errands, go to the gym, eat, nap and at around 8PM leave for the strip club, where the two perform a live sex show every night. That is of course when they aren't shooting, which lately involves a lot of travelling abroad. On Sundays, they'll go for a drink.

However, they do not share the housework – that's Ina's realm. "We've split everything. I do everything around the house and Theo does whatever needs to be done outside the house – groceries, bills, that kind of thing," she says.

"Have you ever made a sex tape?" I ask. "Yes, a long time before we got into movies. It was very good – it's a shame we didn't keep it," Ina reminisces. "I think everyone is curious to see what they look like when they are having sex. Back then, it hadn't crossed our minds to do it professionally," adds Theo. "We haven't made a sex tape since we got into pornography. These days, if we film it, we sell it."

It's time for Theo to make his weekly visit to the supermarket so I tag along, while Ina stays at home to do some phone calls.

– "Do you feel like having sex, after a shoot?" I wonder on the way.

– "It depends. There are times, when we are not in the mood. It really depends on who we were filming with, what the role was, the scene, the director... And then there are definitely times when we feel like carrying on at home," he replies.

He goes on to tell me he fell in love with Ina because she is very sweet. "She has never given me a reason to be jealous and she treats me very well. Plus, she lets me fuck other women at work. What more could a man want?" he jokes. "But she nags me a lot, too – most often because she'll have just cleaned the house and I might leave something here or there. That really does my head in."

"I do nag him a lot," Ina admits, when we meet her later at the gym. "But he's very attentive – he gives me everything, and I don't mean material things. What annoys me is that he gets angry very easily and then he takes it out on me, because we're together all the time."

I leave them to their work out, because after that they will need to take a nap so they are fresh for their nightly strip show. These days, they have a contract with Athens Queens – one of the oldest strip clubs in Athens.

Ina in the changing room at Athens Queens.

That is where I meet them later, around midnight. In their changing room, we talk about their future. They say they want one or two children, a nice house with a pool and yearly trips to Thailand, which is their favourite destination. They also both agree that their profession has an expiration date and plan on either setting up their own production company or an agency for people working in the industry.

The MC announces the arrival of "two world renowned pornstars" and the pair rush on stage. I wonder about that last tidbit, so I do a quick google search and I find out that I'm an asshole: Ina did recently find herself amongst the final four in the category of "Newcomer Sex Goddess" at the DDF Awards 2016.

After the show, it's time for one last drink before we say goodbye. I am sat on a barstool, surrounded by gorgeous, semi-naked women, listening to Theo describe stage mishaps that happen from time to time (like, falling of a prop chair and injuring his penis) when a friend texts me: "Hey buddy, ask them if size matters," he writes.

– "No, buddy. It does not," Ina winks at me. "You could be hung like a horse but if you don't know what to do with it, a big dick is pretty useless on its own."

Scroll down for more photos:

With No Man's Sky coming out today, we at VICE Gaming were torn between two needs: First, we wanted to offer you a picture of our experience playing the game in time for today's release; second, we want to spend quality time with NMS before coming down with any sort of "verdict" about our feelings. So to do both of these things we decided to write a series of letters or dispatches to each other (and you), about what we'd discovered in our first hours of gameplay. Over the course of the next week we hope to paint a picture for you of what the game feels like—its strengths and flaws and frustrations. And hopefully by the end of the week we can all come to some kind of agreement (or not) about what kind of game it is.

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

I'm a very, very nice guy. That's just the way I am. Have you ever offered people behind you in the queue at the supermarket your place in line because you could see they were having a stressful day and needed to get home ASAP to spend some quality time with their bucket of Häagen-Dazs? I have. Whenever I sneeze, I make sure I tell everyone around me that I'm sorry – because I really am. I once ran into a lamp pole and promptly apologised.

A friend recently told me that I could be an arsehole if I wanted to – and that people would still like me. This friend was right, in a sense. I definitely have plenty of very good friends that I would describe as "arseholes" and I don't see how I could be worse than them, if I tried. Real, honest-to-god tossers. Like Magdalena – a friend of mine who likes to label everything I do for work as my "crazy hobby!" When I told her recently that I had sold my manuscript to a publisher, she said: "Wow, these days, anything is possible!"

That's literally what she said. What a dickhead. Nevertheless, I still like her a lot.

But what is it exactly, that makes someone a dickhead? I did a little Twitter survey to crowdsource a precise definition. The answers I received ranged from "standing on the left side of an escalator," to racism, sexism and then back to "eating a smelly sandwich on the tube." All examples had one thing in common: They related to the public sphere. An arsehole does what he or she wants to do, with no consideration for other people.

Could I – someone who enthusiastically greets Siri before asking her anything and thanking her when I'm done with her – be a dickhead for a whole week? What would it do to my everyday routine and my friendships? Would I end up liking it? I decided to find out.

DAY 1

I don't want to go cold turkey on being a nice guy, so I spend the first day of my experiment primarily on being a passive arsehole. I just don't do the nice things I'd normally do. I don't hold any doors open for anyone, I don't greet the shop clerk when I come in and I don't tip at my local ice-cream shop. That would be perfectly normal behaviour for many, but I feel horrible and I hope my reign of terror isn't paid forward by the people I don't greet or tip.

A friend of mine texts to say that she hopes I didn't forget to water her plants while she is on holiday. I actually did forget, which is pretty nasty thing to do. In my defence, I've been playing a lot of Pokémon Go recently. "Yep, watered them all!" I text back.

I've agreed to meet up with other friends later that evening to watch TV, but I decide not to show up. Because that's what arseholes do, but also because I'm afraid that when TV night is over my friends might suggest playing a round of Scrabble. I hate Scrabble – the only word I ever care to spell out is "HELP".

After three ignored calls and five texts from my friends I write back: "Not coming." My friends aren't mad but let me know that I just missed an "epic triple word score". I realise that there could be a lot or merit in being a dickhead.

DAY 2

Today, I'm ready to go all-out. I decide to try to find a waiter to be unfriendly to for no reason, which to me is a terrible thing to do. I'm sure people who work in the service industry have to deal with enough tossers all the time - it's just that tosser is never me. Even when the food or the service are bad, I'll still be very civil and leave a 20 percent tip – I just really don't want to be that guy shovelling more shit on a waiter's plate.

But not today! I avoid eye contact from the moment I enter the place to the moment I leave. I keep my 'pleases' and 'thank yous' to myself and frown through the entire order. It's hard, but when I imagine this person being an arsehole themselves – like, he's the one guy responsible for the unsatisfying ending of the seventh season of Gilmore Girls – it gets a little easier.

I really didn't know what I expected but it certainly wasn't this: As I make a move to leave, the garçon very politely wishes me a nice day, although I've left no tip whatsoever. I feel terrible. Treating someone who's nice to me badly is the worst. When I get home, I resist the urge to find this guy on Facebook and send him a message like "To the world you may be someone but to me you are the world!" I play some more Pokémon Go instead.

DAY 3

I run into Magdalena – the dickhead I mentioned earlier – on the way to the supermarket. She's the kind of person who likes to tell me we should definitely do something fun together again at some point – completely ignoring the fact that we hardly ever do something fun together. I like her, but she does do this thing where she says something mean and then when I look hurt, bursts out laughing saying that she's just joking. That just isn't very fun.

Magdalena and I give each other a quick update on our lives, and then she says we should totally have a drink together soon – which is undoubtedly another way for her to rain down insults on me. Not today, lady. "I don't want to do that," I say, a little out of breath and afraid for her reaction. "Well," she says, a little taken aback, "I guess we won't, then." The silence that ensues is so suffocating and uncomfortable that I feel I have to say something. What subsequently comes out of my mouth is "I have to buy potatoes," and I flee into the supermarket like the arsehole I am now. Officially.

DAY 4

I embark on a three-hour train ride because I've been invited to a two-day beer tasting event in another part of the country. It's common knowledge that trains are where all the arseholes of planet Earth convene, so this is the perfect opportunity to watch, learn and develop my new disposition.

I immediately strike gold. There's a family with four children in my car, and every time our train goes through a tunnel, the kids scream so loudly that it's as if we're passing through a portal to the underworld. Normally I wouldn't say anything – I've been known to lose my cool in the dark myself – but not this week.

Every time the children scream, I harrumph or say something about the children under my breath. I'm doing this while reading a newspaper, and I lick my finger each time I turn the page for effect. They completely ignore me. It's ice cold, really.

Then the father of the kids tries to calm them down by saying: "Don't worry, that was the last tunnel." I know this route well, and I know this father is lying to his children. "I'm sorry to have to say this," I tell him, "but you're mistaken. There are a lot more tunnels ahead." This man isn't happy with me, I can tell from the look in his eyes. He looks at me like I just told his children that Father Christmas raped a reindeer. The children start to cry desperately – even louder than they did earlier. I didn't do it on purpose, but it happened. I entered the train as a half-decent man – I leave it as a complete tosser.

DAY 5

At the beer tasting event everybody is so nice that being unfriendly doesn't come easy. And yet, I try. Even though I'm told several times that it is not necessary to finish every glass of beer we're tasting, I drink every last drop, which in these circumstances seems to be the worst thing I can do.

At the end of the event we're told that we're welcome to take home as many bottles of beer as we want. This is not a wise thing to tell me this week. Being the greedy arsehole that I am, I walk around grabbing all the beer I can carry: craft lagers, stouts, IPAs – everything ends up in my backpack. I consider hiring a servant to bring my bounty back to my hotel room for me – only real arseholes hire servants to carry their shit for them, but I'm not ready to go that far yet.

DAY 6

By now, I feel I'm really starting to internalise my inconsiderate behaviour. On the train ride home I feel like eating a blue cheese sandwich and wash it down with beer so I do exactly that. This results in a wildly loud and pungent burp. While the other passengers don't say anything, their looks are hard to interpret any other way than that they hope I choke on my gorgonzola.

That evening, I go to a friend's birthday party and don't consider bringing a present. I don't even bring any alcohol for the party, although my fridge currently looks like it could belong to a Guinness.

I think I'm being really nice when I make smalltalk with the other guests but that may have something to do with he fact that I've been drinking since 11AM. I find myself wanting to put on a Tina Turner playlist instead of the house music that has been blaring for hours. It's a dick move, but so is putting on those terrible beats for hours on end. When "Simply the Best" comes on – the best exit song ever – I leave the party, thoroughly drunk, at 1AM. I don't say goodbye to anyone and grab a beer from the fridge on my way to the door. This isn't part of the asshole project by the way, it's just the way I am when I drink.

DAY 7

I wake up with a headache and I feel pretty bad, which comes from drinking for 14 hours straight and acting like an arsehole for a week. I know, I know. Despite my efforts, I've been a relatively agreeable human being. If I remember correctly I didn't spend any time this week standing on the left side of an escalator. I did eat a smelly sandwich on public transport but I wasn't particularly racist or sexist. Nevertheless, I've been very uncomfortable and I feel I need to make up for the nastiness I temporarily brought into the world. I start by getting my hangover breakfast at the same restaurant where I had been unfriendly to the waiter earlier in the week. This time, I'm an absolute darling.

I can't ignore that while I may have been uncomfortable this week, it has also done me a lot of good: I successfully dodged a game of Scrabble, I got out of having to get a drink with someone who's always mean to me and I was rewarded with a fridge filled with beer. I get it. I get the appeal of being an arsehole. But I'll never live my life that way. I like giving tips, apologising when I sneeze and I like giving up my seat on the bus to anyone who looks a day over 35. I like being nice to people and I will keep doing that. Unless I'm drunk, of course. That's a different story.

More on VICE:

I Said 'Yes' to Everything for a Week and Ended Up in Hospital

I Tried to Live Like Gwyneth Paltrow For a Week

I Lived in a London Hostel for a Week to See If it Could Be the Cure to My Rising Rent

All images courtesy of id Software

Piracy isn't new to video games. But as new methods for combating piracy are invented, hackers are finding news ways to get around them. Over the weekend, hackers made a breakthrough that, for a brief moment, allowed hundreds of thousands to freely download and play some games for free again.

It's been a rough year for gaming piracy. Denuvo, a relatively new form of Digital Data Rights Management (DRM), has been packed into a series of high-profile PC releases—Rise of the Tomb Raider, DOOM, Inside—and hasn't been broken. Some companies deploy DRM in order to prevent people from downloading games without paying for them. Conversely, other companies like the developer of The Witcher 3, believe DRM's restrictions are alienating and simply trust that most people will pay. For the games using Denuvo, however, piracy has became essentially nonexistent. But things shifted last Friday, when a Bulgarian 19-year-old hacker called Voksi found a loophole.

"Its The most breaking news of all is that Denuvo allowed 650,000 pirates to breach their servers for 3 days. And they call themselves the most secure company?" -Voksi

"It's a very clever work around," said MTW, "but Denuvo can easily fix it, preventing it from working for people who have not already generated tokens using the tool."

Follow Patrick Klepek on Twitter, and if you have a news tip you'd like to share, drop him an email.

Cameron Diggs, whose body art includes symbols affiliated with white supremacist groups. Photo courtesy CockyBoys.com

Warning: Most of the links in this post lead to NSFW things.

Other than a bat mitzvah, gay porn is about the last place you'd expect to see someone tattooed in symbols affiliated with white supremacy. Yet gay porn is exactly where you'll find Cameron Diggs, a Dallas-based male stripper and gay-for-pay porn actor whose torso is drenched in tattoos, several of which are symbols popular among white supremacist groups.

Upon the release of a scene for San Francisco–based gay porn studio NakedSword last April, commenters on gay porn blogs (including industry news blog Str8UpGayPorn, which I've been the editor of since 2013) excoriated Diggs for the tattoos—specifically the Iron Crosses on his chest and the SS Bolts on his hips, both of which are classified as hate symbols by the ADL. (Disclosure: I was employed by NakedSword as a blogger and screenwriter between 2010 and 2013.)

Despite the backlash, NakedSword (the company for whom Diggs filmed the majority of his scenes) continued to promote his work, as well as a live appearance in Chicago at an industry awards ceremony last May. As the controversy continued to grow, neither NakedSword nor Diggs responded to multiple requests for comment on the tattoos' significance, or lack thereof. It was entirely possible, of course, that Diggs wasn't a racist at all, and the tattoos were just a very unfortunate coincidence. The Iron Cross, for example, is often used in surfing and skateboard culture in a completely non-racist manner.

But then, on or around July 13, NakedSword suggested to Diggs that he could issue his own statement—by way of a comment on a Str8UpGayPorn blog post—to "clear his name," as NakedSword's publicist told VICE.

"I believe people should want to be proud of who they are and where they come from," an account using Diggs's name wrote on Str8UpGayPorn on July 14. "I feel like we are suppose to continue our race and our culture... When it comes to having kids, I prefer to stay inside my race. It's nothing hateful towards any race, it's just what I believe. Why is that so wrong? Does that make me a racist?"

Hours after the remarks were published—which were not run by NakedSword first, the studio's publicist confirms—porn studio CockyBoys removed a Cameron Diggs scene that had been on its site since the middle of May.

"We removed Cameron's scene after reading his response," CockyBoys director and CEO, Jake Jaxson, told VICE. "His statement does not represent the basic values of mutual respect and acceptance that is the mission of CockyBoys."

On July 25, NakedSword abruptly canceled the release of a Diggs scene that was scheduled to go live the next day, even after it had been advertised for months as the grand finale to the studio's "International Playboys" series. NakedSword still refuses to comment on Diggs, his tattoos, his remarks, or why they pulled the scene (the studio's head of production, Pam Dore, would only tell VICE that she was "out of the office" when the decision to cancel the release was made). Diggs did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Cameron Diggs. Photo courtesy NakedSword.com

In the past, scenes featuring gay porn stars who have committed statutory rape and even murder (Mike Dozer and Sean Cody's Addison, respectively) have not been pulled down from studios' websites, even after news of their convictions spread. And in my nine years of reporting on the gay-adult industry, a studio (let alone two studios) has never removed or canceled content due to a performer's personal beliefs—that is, until now.

So what made Diggs special? White men with sexual "preferences" working in gay porn is nothing new. But thanks to social media and industry blogs, those "preferences" are being exposed, shared, shamed, and retweeted to such an extent that studios can no longer pretend to be oblivious.

In his Str8UpGayPorn comment, Diggs wrote, "I prefer to stay inside my race." Last June, model Paul Canon tweeted "I am not sexually attracted to colored people" and "im worked with models of just about every race." And he may be proof that the industry hasn't changed as much as one might hope—since his controversial tweets, Canon hasn't lost out on any work. He has been hired more and has only become more popular.

Sexual "preference" is a widespread and increasingly visible problem within the gay community at-large. As Gawker's Rich Juzwiak wrote about the issue this July, "discriminatory attitudes shared openly on Grindr and similar hook-up apps are often explained away with the attached caveat of 'sorry—just a preference,' as if to imply that sexual preferences are immune to the influences of society at large.

"'Preference' can be a way of conveying thoughtlessness," Juzwiak continued. And the prevalence of blatantly discriminatory language and attitudes within the gay community takes on added weight when considered in light of the brutal HIV epidemic among men of color who have sex with men. As Juzwiak noted, this February, the CDC projected that one in two black men who have sex with men (MSM) and one in four Latino MSM will acquire HIV within their lifetimes.

Studios can no longer afford to pretend to be oblivious. If they do, they risk being labeled just as discriminatory as the models they hire. A handful of studios have had longstanding policies in place to not hire models who refuse to work with models of different races. One of them is GuysInSweatpants, an independent studio launched in 2013, run by owner and performer Austin Wilde.

"It's happened once, and wasn't booked after he requested 'no black or Asian guys, please,'" Wilde told VICE. "Had he made that request once already booked and flown out, he would've been sent home."

Jaxson has had similar experiences booking models for CockyBoys.

"I've had performers tell me that they're not 'into' black guys. More often than that, I hear guys say they don't want anyone 'too gay'—which I find just as offensive," Jaxson said. "In both of these instances, I won't consider that performer any further."

Whether or not the example made out of Cameron Diggs will prevent those with similar attitudes from becoming gay porn stars is yet to be seen, but veteran performer Diesel Washington—who's been calling out discriminatory gay porn stars for years—is encouraged.

"I know the guys over at CockyBoys and NakedSword, and I knew they would quietly do something about the situation," Washington told VICE. "I don't think this will weed out all of them, but it will slow some of them down."

Two weeks ago, Washington took to Twitter to cite every recent example of racism he's seen in the industry, which extends far beyond a single performer like Diggs. Having worked in gay porn for nearly ten years, Washington has seen firsthand how the industry has failed to evolve on racial issues, and he's almost always the only model in the gay porn industry willing to speak out publicly.

"It's getting to the point where models are almost blatantly pushing racist agendas," Washington told VICE. "Like, throwing it in people's faces on social media, and dismissing entire races. As gays, we should be more progressive than that."

The gay porn industry is one of the only places of employment where someone can attempt to dictate who they will or won't work with based solely on race. How is this possible? According to Jaxson, "Most gay porn is produced by straight-owned conglomerates, and 'gay' is just a small fraction of their overall business—so these kinds of sensitive issues largely go ignored and unaddressed."

Of course, if producers and directors aren't willing to reject racist models with "preferences," gay porn consumers—through comments on industry blogs and social media—will just do it for them, as they did with Cameron Diggs.

Zachary Sire is the editor of gay porn industry blog Str8UpGayPorn. Follow him on Twitter.

Patricia Smith on state at the Republican National Convention on July 18. Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

On Monday, the parents of two Americans killed during the 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, as the New York Times reports.

Patricia Smith and Charles Woods—mother of Sean Smith and father of Tyrone Woods, respectively—allege Clinton's use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state at the time resulted in their children's deaths.

"The Benghazi attack was directly and proximately caused, at a minimum by defendant Clinton's 'extreme carelessness' in handling confidential and classified information," the lawsuit asserts. It also claims Clinton has made "false and defamatory statements" against the parents.

Smith, an outspoken Trump fan, took the stage at the RNC last month to rail against Clinton. "For all of this loss, for all of this grief, for all of the cynicism the tragedy in Benghazi has wrought upon America," she said, "I blame Hillary Clinton."

A spokesman for the Clinton campaign responded, "While no one can imagine the pain of the families of the brave Americans we lost at Benghazi, there have been nine different investigations into this attack and none found any evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing on the part of Hillary Clinton."

Indeed, even as he lambasted the Democratic presidential nominee for her email practices last month, FBI director James Comey said there was no direct evidence terrorists had gained access to Clinton's private server.

Read: The Strange, Two-Faced Campaign Behind Michael Bay's Benghazi Movie

Illustration by Brandon Bird

In my 20s, I dabbled in sexual submission with my abusive ex-boyfriend. I drank too much and hoped that experimenting with bondage in our sex life would ease the violence and aggression he showed outside the bedroom. It did not. While sexually satisfying and thrilling, BDSM didn't feel right, because our relationship wasn't right. We eventually broke up and, about three years ago, I got sober. With clarity, I wondered if I'd only liked sexual pain because I'd hated myself.

Sobriety is the best thing in my life, but it's not without side effects. Flirting feels embarrassing without a drink in my hand. I've lost my once unquenchable sex drive. I'm unbearably shy in dating situations, and even worse, I've become vanilla in bed. My version of a wild time is more handjobs than handcuffs.

But recently, seemingly out of nowhere, a stranger DM'd me on Twitter offering to pay me to financially dominate him. I said no—that kind of relationship seemed weird and unethical—but truth is I was oddly flattered that someone would pay me just to talk to him, and not even nicely. That kind of domination wasn't right for me, but it made me wonder: Could another kind of domination help me find the confidence I'd lost in my post-sobriety sex and dating life?

I decided to enroll in the "Art of Female Domination," an introductory class at a popular BDSM den in Downtown Los Angeles. I forced my best friend, who once had sex with the person she'd hired off Craigslist to set up her IKEA coffee table, to come with me.

The class was in a warehouse. We had been given elaborate instructions via email regarding buzzing in and not disturbing the other businesses, but when we arrived, the door was locked and we had to knock loudly.

On the door was a presidential seal. This is because the head mistress, Mistress Tara, is running for president. This is not a joke. She is running under what she calls the Female Supremacy Party (though registered as Libertarian) and her motto is: "Whipping America Back into Shape, One Middle Aged White Man at a Time." She declined to explain any of her policies, referring me to another workshop that details her political platform. I would have to pay to attend that workshop to hear about them.

Mistress Tara, a middle-age woman, was wearing baggy jeans, a baggy work shirt, and worn-out platform flip-flops with rhinestones. Her hair was dyed a light pink, pulled into a ponytail. She wore no makeup. Mistress Tara was not at all what I expected. What I expected exactly, I don't know. A young woman in head-to-toe latex and a whip, perhaps.

There were nine of us in the class—two couples and five singles. One woman drove in all the way from San Diego to attend this workshop and the woman next to me, a sweet-looking blonde in a revealing mini dress, told me she'd already been to four workshops here. She was studying to be a professional mistress. Another woman, a tall, striking brunette, said she was there to learn about macrophilia, or giantess fetish. Men already paid to watch her step on toy soldiers and model trains, and she was hoping to turn this into a full-time gig.

I took a seat on a couch near the back. There were cum stains on it. Or something that looked like cum stains, though it was made clear that dominatrixes do not have sex with clients. I was reluctant to sit (is this cum? whose cum is this?), but I eventually chalked it up as part of the experience. I had come all the way to a BDSM workshop to break through my vanilla habits. A goddamn dirty couch couldn't be the thing that made me turn back.

During class, Mistress Tara wrote on a whiteboard, like a professor. She repeatedly dropped the cap of her dry-erase marker until finally, one of the men in the class bent over to pick it up. She responded with a low, guttural "gooood boy." He grinned as the back of his neck turned beet red. I wondered if this whole scene was deliberate.

The class was essentially a Ted Talk on the generalities of BDSM. Most of what we covered was tame and unspecific, though we did get into a spirited discussion about the difference between toilet training, scatting, and brown showers—all forms of defecating in someone's mouth. Why would someone do this? It's a form of goddess worship, Mistress Tara explained. These men find women to be so holy, so perfect, that consuming their excrement is arousing. At first, I tried to pass this off as gross, but I wondered if that was my low self-esteem creeping in. I can't think of anyone who has ever found me perfect enough to eat my shit. These acts require courage.

Mistress Tara, on the other hand, has a lot of experience in this territory. When she was a practicing dominatrix, some clients would visit her daily to be her human toilet. She told us, almost wistfully, that she would eat a mix of "coffee and black cherries" prior to scatting sessions. Another mistress she knew ate pizza and burritos. The petite woman in front of me, who was practicing to be a professional mistress, dutifully wrote this down in a notebook.

Mistress Tara gave us tips on inventing your domme persona (come up with a backstory and exaggerate your own qualities), knowing the difference between buzzwords and triggers (buzzwords, like saying "you love my big tits, don't you?" can turn someone on; triggers, like degrading someone past their point of comfort, can turn someone off), and cultivating the perfect foot smell for a foot fetishist (wear an old pair of gym shoes in the shower). When a slave licks dirt off your feet, Mistress Tara told us, it feels like someone eating your pussy right after you shave it.

But most of all, Mistress Tara reminded us that you don't have to be the most beautiful man or woman in the room to be an amazing dominatrix. You just have to know your audience and give them what they want. If Angelina Jolie, Marilyn Monroe, and Jabba the Hutt are all working at a den one day, and Jabba the Hutt is the only one wearing lace-up boots, he's the only one who's going to book clients who have a fetish for lace-up boots. At least, that's what Mistress Tara told us.

Leaving the workshop, I wasn't sure I would ever be ready to incorporate scat play into my bedroom routine. But I did start to think differently about what it would mean to believe in myself enough to dominate another person. Since I met Mistress Tara, I've started to play myself up when I'm flirting. I use buzzwords; I tease. And when I'm getting ready for a date and starting to panic that I can't find the right outfit or can't get my makeup right and it's all gone to shit, I remind myself that appearance doesn't count nearly as much as attitude.

And if the proverbial Jabba the Hutt can do it, so can I.

Follow Alison Segel on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Jhaymesisviphotography

Proud father and son engaging in fun, light activities. Photo via Disney

Last year, the internet worked itself into a tizzy over the spelling of the popular children's book series Berenstain Bears. Many people misremembered the name as being spelled "Berenstein," which was taken as either evidence of the common fallibility of the everyday human brain or an insidious plot to conceal the existence of a parallel universe.

The case of the Berenst(e)ain Bears is an example of what paranormal author and researcher Fiona Broome called the "Mandela Effect," named after the false memories many people have of Nelson Mandela dying in jail sometime in the 1980s. The Mandela Effect—or simply the "Effect" as its more inclusive proponents prefer to call it—refers to memories shared by large segments of the population that don't line up with the current reality. In recent months, an online community has quickly grown around exposing new instances of the Effect and identifying the nefarious elitist culprits behind it.

As an example of what they're talking about here, complete the following iconic movie quotes:

The pizza shop where Councillor George Baker uttered some choice words (image via Google Maps)

A Canadian politician casually dropped the n-bomb at a pizza joint, but don't worry, he says his black friends are OK with it and he has no need to apologize.

Photo via Marnie Recker Photography

Once upon a time, in medieval Europe, the entire functioning of the political world rested on the principle of the King's Two Bodies.

This composite sketch provided by the Phoenix Police Department shows a possible suspect in a series of fatal shootings in Phoenix. (Phoenix Police Department via AP)

The man currently terrorizing residents of Phoenix missed his marks on July 11. That's when the murder suspect, who police believe is light-skinned and lanky, shot at a stopped car carrying a 21-year-old man and a four-year-old toddler. Although neither sustained injury, they were apparently subjects of the ninth attack perpetrated by a maniac local investigators are increasingly desperate to reign in.

The so-called street serial shooter is just the latest in a dense roster of repeat killers to terrorize the sweltering desert city. And while cops don't think a serial killer has been on the loose there in years, the question of what makes the place so inviting to them is an open one.

"We do seem to have had our share," Sergeant Jonathan Howard and spokesperson with the Phoenix Police Department told VICE. "I guess we would have to ask if our investigators recognize more and other locations have them but don't connect the dots like we do, or if we're just unfortunate."

The current serial killer is thought to have carried out his first attack in March, when a 16-year-old boy was shot but not killed while walking down the street. The next day, a 21-year-old man sustained a not life threatening gunshot wound of his own while standing outside his car. On April 1, the suspect committed his first murder when 21-year-old Diego Verdugo-Sanchez was shot dead. A 55-year-old woman was then shot and killed on April 19, and a 32-year-old man met the same fate on June 3. A week later, a 19-year-old man named Manuel Castro Garcia was shot and killed outside of his home.

Police began taking the serial-killer theory seriously around the time Angela Linner, Stefanie Ellis, and her 12-year-old daughter, Maleah, were shot up while listening to music in their car on June 12. Linner and the girl died almost immediately, and the elder Ellis, who was shot 14 times, went into a coma before passing away in the hospital.

That tragedy fit an emerging pattern––the killer often seems to strike people after dark who are either in cars or standing outside their own homes.

"He's targeting people that are out—seemingly by themselves, no other witnesses," Phoenix police homicide lieutenant Ed DeCastro told the Arizona Republic. "At this point, we have no connection to any of the victims. So it does seem random."

Sergeant Howard told me the phrase "serial street shooter" is what local officials have been using in press conference because the suspect has committed crimes other than murder. But the cop added that he doesn't dispute use of the phrase "serial killer" as it's been tossed around in local and national press.

The victims so far have been either black or Latino, although investigators say there's no reason to suspect a racial motive at this time, as they haven't been able to determine the suspect's ethnicity with a high degree of confidence. A majority of the shootings have also taken place in the primarily Latino southwest portion of Phoenix, as the New York Times reported, with four taking place inside the working-class enclave known as Maryvale.

To complicate things further, witness accounts suggest the shooter has sped off in multiple cars, which begs the question of whether a group of people might be behind the shootings—or at least playing some peripheral role. According to the Times, some locals have taken to speculating that the killer might work as a mechanic, or a valet, or in some other profession that would give him access to cars.

An increasingly desperate Phoenix PD is offering $50,000 for any information that leads to an arrest, up from a previous offer of $30,000.

It's also worth at least probing whether this killer was behind a series of 11 shootings that took place alongside Interstate 10 in August and September of last year. No one died in those attacks, and the one suspect in that case, Leslie Allen Merritt Jr., had the charges against him dropped in April. In May, a man known as the Beeline Highway Shooter also allegedly shot up seven cars; a suspect in those incidents is currently being held without bond.

The last time the Arizona city faced off with a full-fledged serial killer, at least three were active at the same time. Between May 2005 and August 2006, two men shot at an estimated 36 people, and one, Dale Hausner, was eventually convicted of six murders. He committed suicide in prison in 2013, and his accomplice who cooperated with investigators, Samuel Dieteman, is still serving life behind bars.

Then there was Mark Goudeau, the so-called Baseline Killer, who operated between August 2005 and June 2006. He committed a string of rapes, robberies, and murders before being apprehended and sentenced to death.

As the search for the current serial killer continues, residents of Phoenix's Maryvale neighborhood say shootings of all kinds have become increasingly commonplace—with no end in sight.

"All the kids used to come and play all night," one emotional resident told the Arizona Republic. "No more."

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A young protester wears a sign that reads 'Venezuelan Student' in the center of San Cristóbal, the city on the border of Colombia where massive protests first began in 2014. The 'student' label is a response to allegations by Nicolás Maduro's government that protesters are not students at all but paid imperialist infiltrators being used to destabilize the country.

This story appeared in the August issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Since Hugo Chávez died in March 2013, Venezuela has spiraled into crisis. The new president, Nicolás Maduro, has struggled to hold together the socialist coalition his predecessor formed. Shortages in food, electricity, and medicine has led to riots; crime has spiked the already astronomically high murder rate; meteoric inflation, corruption, and price controls have caused the cost of some basic necessities to skyrocket. "This work is about inequality," says photographer Natalie Keyssar, "and a level of tension and sometimes danger so powerful in daily life it's almost palpable." Her photos also capture a pivotal moment for "an egalitarian dream in a country that had the natural resources to pursue that dream but now seems to be in danger of falling apart."

Keyssar's project was reported with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.