The promotional image for 'Love' by Gaspar Noé. (Photo: Benoît Debie)

Last last month, a study that examined how weed and booze affects sex was published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour. Researchers drew on a sample of 24 adults (half male, half female) and conducted in-depth interviews about their experiences of fucking under the influence of each substance.

Dr Joseph Palamar – Assistant Professor of Population Health and drug researcher at New York University (NYU) – was the lead researcher behind the study, but wasn't sure if it was publishable at first. "A sample of 24 is pretty small," he said during an early morning Skype conversation. "It was actually only a pilot. A group at NYU funded us to use this as a pilot study so we could use the preliminary findings to apply for a larger grant."

When it came to alcohol and sex, the findings were pretty predictable: booze makes you more socially outgoing – meaning it facilitates the act of finding someone to take your clothes off with – and it's way more likely to lead to risky behaviour and post-sex regret.

But with weed, some of the findings were surprising. "Some participants reported that the illegality of marijuana contributed to the facilitation of sexual actions," said Dr Palamar. "With alcohol you can use it pretty much anywhere if you are of age. But you can't smoke marijuana out in public; it has to be a private area, or an 'intimate' area where you're not going to get arrested. So if you have someone you're attracted to in your dorm room, or whatever, you're already in an intimate setting, alone, and doing something forbidden together. Participants commented on how that can lead to sex."

This study took place in America, which is almost the same as the UK, but also completely different in every possible way. So I wanted to speak to some Brits about their experiences, to see if a jump across the Atlantic impacts people's perspectives about sex on booze and weed.

Martha, a 29-year-old horse-riding instructor, said there's "a massive difference" between having sex on the two substances. "With alcohol, there's a loss of sensitivity," she explained. "It can be a bit numb, depending on how much you've had. Because of that I find that the orgasm just feels deeper on marijuana."

Philipa, a 26-year-old administrator, feels the same: "You're definitely a bit more stimulated – a bit more sensitive to the touch – on weed. Sex feels much better than when you've been drinking. I think that's because you're more likely to get high with someone you know well and have a deeper connection with, which, for me, equals better sex. Drunken one-night stands often involve really shit sex."

These opinions were reflected in the findings of the study. "Participants reported that the sex 'felt' more to them when they were high on marijuana," Dr Palamar explained. "They felt more emotional with the person and more physically sensitive, so they enjoyed the sex more. Alcohol, we all know, has the opposite effect: it numbs your emotions."

Carl, a 26-year-old graphic designer, agreed with Philipa, but was keen to point out that the specific strain of weed could influence the experience: "Sex on weed is just nicer. You're more in tune with your partner on an emotional and spiritual level, so you can communicate better," he said. "Although, I think it depends what weed you get; if you were to have a sativa that wasn't very couch-locking, for instance, it would be fine for sex. But if you had a strong indica, you might end up very submerged in your thoughts and find it difficult to perform. Not that I do, though, y'know?"

Dr Palamar agreed that the specific strain of weed you smoke could affect the experience. "We wrote about that when we applied for the larger grant – we would need a big sample to test for that," he said. "That was one of the limitations that we couldn't look at: different types of weed, and different types of alcohol, too. It's a great point."

Maria, a 26-year-old estate agent, pointed out that sex after smoking weed is generally better as, in her experience, people rarely struggle to perform. "When I'm drunk I just can't get wet, and sometimes guys can't get hard," she said. "These are all things that never happen after a few joints."

Not everyone was so quick to talk up the magical effects of marijuana. Roy, a 22-year-old carer, pointed out that "as long as you don't have so much that you get whisky dick", a bit of booze can be a helpful incentive to get out there and fuck: "You've never heard anyone say, 'I'm going to meet that girl today – I'm going to have a couple of joints before I go because I'm a bit nervous.'"

And he has a point: for a lot of people, weed makes you look inward, not outwards, for sex with a stranger. Enough booze, however, traditionally makes people want to fuck literally whoever's closest to them.

"A lot of the men did say that they felt more confident on alcohol, and some of the women reported feeling more attractive," said Dr Palamar. "Marijuana was a little different; people said they felt a bit more self-conscious. Another main limitation of the study, aside from the fact that everyone that applied to take part happened to be heterosexual, is that we didn't have the sample size to control for level of consumption. If someone is not used to smoking weed they might feel wary or paranoid, so you can understand that."

So there you have it: the findings of the study were pretty much exactly in line with the experiences of everyone I spoke to. Although, as both Carl the carer and Dr Palamar pointed out, to fully get to grips with each substance's effects on sex, researchers are going to need to speak to considerably more people than they have so far.

@oldspeak1

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President Barack Obama greets Dr. Joel C. Hunter, senior pastor of Northland, A Church Distributed, during the Easter Prayer Breakfast in 2014 at the White House in Washington.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

This story was co-published with the Marshall Project.

Earlier this month, roughly 50 evangelical leaders signed a letter urging the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and the state's governor, Greg Abbott, to stop the August 24 execution of death row inmate Jeff Wood.

Self-described evangelicals—a large, varied group—have opposed executions before, often flocking to the side of prisoners who present themselves as having been born again. Their interest in Wood's case is notable because he is not one of these inmates; they are focused instead on the details of his crime. Wood was in a car while his friend shot a gas station clerk during a robbery, and his attorneys claim he had no intent to murder. "The death penalty, we are told, is reserved for the most egregious crimes," the letter states. "Wood's actions—which did not include directly committing a murder or intending to—simply do not fall into this category."

The letter is the latest sign that a community once known as a bedrock of death penalty support is no longer monolithic. In 1973, after the US Supreme Court struck down the punishment, the National Association of Evangelicals urged state legislatures to rewrite their laws to revive the punishment. But their support was always in tension with the belief that anyone could be redeemed through faith in Christ—and should not die before they have a chance to take that step. That tension was tested in 1998 by the Texas execution of Karla Faye Tucker, who murdered a man and woman with a pickaxe during a robbery, but underwent a conversion in prison convincing enough to bring televangelist Pat Robertson of The 700 Club to her cause.

That wasn't enough to sway then-Gov. George W. Bush, who carried a base of white evangelical voters to the White House two years later. (Bush later wrote that signing off on Tucker's death was "one of the hardest things I have ever done.")

Then came a slow shift. The national association, which claims a constituency of 30 million affiliated churchgoers, has become less white over the last decade, and black and Hispanic churchgoers are more likely to oppose capital punishment.

But even among whites, leaders often speak of a generational shift. "I remember debating this issue in college with my friends," says Heather Beaudoin, a 32-year-old evangelical activist with Equal Justice USA who organized the current letter. "I've noticed that the friends who fought me have come around." On a variety of political issues, from environmentalism to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, younger white Protestants have moved away from the positions that defined a previous generation.

Last fall, the national association revised its 1973 position andacknowledged, "Evangelical Christians differ in their beliefs about capital punishment." Older pastors, who may have leaned left on some issues for a long time, now have more cover to take actions like signing a letter in support of a death row inmate.

One of the signatories is Joel Hunter, who leads the 20,000-member Northland Church in the suburbs of Orlando, Florida. He supported Mike Huckabee in 2008, but has prayed with President Barack Obama and says, "Many of us in the evangelical Protestant community are coming to where the Catholics have been for a while: pro-life in terms of whole life, all vulnerable life, whether in the womb or on death row."

Hunter and his peers speak of separating the theological question of whether the death penalty is just—since there are clear Biblical statements in both directions—to a more grounded focus on inequities in how capital punishment is applied. In 2014, R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote for CNN that the death penalty should continue to be used, but "while the law itself is not prejudiced, the application of the death penalty often is."

Some white evangelicals are increasingly interested in issues of race; another signatory to the Wood letter, Pastor Wes Helm of Springcreek Church in Garland, Texas, said the book Just Mercy by death penalty lawyer Bryan Stevenson had sparked conversations among his staff. His church has fought payday lending in the past, and plans to discuss the death penalty as a community later this year. Until then, he said, he only signs for himself.

When it comes to individual cases, evangelical activists know they need to choose ones that will galvanize their community. They continue to go with inmates who, like Karla Faye Tucker, present clear redemption narratives. In recent years, they have supported Kelly Gissendaner of Georgia (who studied for a theological certificate in prison) and Duane Buck of Texas (who leads a Bible study on death row). Fisher Humphreys, an emeritus divinity professor at Samford University in Alabama, says, "Those who undergo a great transformation must have a special appeal to pastors who are trying so hard to get people to undergo that same transformation."

But in the past few years, the ground has shifted enough that they can go further. Christian leaders are also particularly troubled by the possibility that an innocent person has been executed, so it was a short step to consider someone like Wood, who had so little involvement in the murder. "He just seems like he went with the wrong crowd one night," Humphreys says.

Mental illness is another area where there's an opening; Christian leaders supported Scott Panetti, who was so mentally ill he tried to subpoena John F. Kennedy before his trial. Jeff Wood was also intellectually impaired (his IQ has been assessed around 80) and he asked his trial attorneys not to present any evidence on his behalf.

There are limits, however. Joel Hunter admits that his 20,000 parishioners "give me the benefit of the doubt" in cases like that of Wood, but might not be so comfortable if he were to support a death row inmate with a heinous crime and no sign of remorse.

"I'm a pastor first; I'm not primarily a social justice advocate," Hunter says. "I won't come out and argue it's too bad that Hitler died."

This article was originally published by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

This story originally appeared on VICE Brazil.

Salvador is savage. The first capital of Brazil (now capital of the state of Bahia) is one of the oldest and wildest cities in the country—it has buses on fire, street parties, African orishas, kids playing in the streets, cops, a lot of rain, and wonderful beaches.

Salvador is the cradle of the samba, and it's the spirit of Carnival. In fact, its own annual Carnival rivals the better-known event that takes place in Rio every year. However, according to the UN, Salvador is also the 14th most violent city in the world. Salvador is protest; it is pain; it is an offering to the goddess of the sea, Orisha Iemanjá.

Antonello Veneri is an Italian photographer based in Brazil. These photos are his way of seeing all the above and more.

UPDATE 08/15/16: The section about the number of visitors to Salvador's annual Carnival was amended as the previous figure was incorrect.

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By the time Rachel was hospitalized at New York City's Cornell Weill Psychiatry Specialty Center in July 2014, she was almost too exhausted to speak. For years, she had been traveling the same cloistered, unrelenting path on which many female members of her branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism find themselves: arranged marriage at 18, a domineering, sometimes abusive husband with whom she would have a bevy of kids. Duty, family, duty, duty. She was breaking slowly under that weight, and worst of all, she had no one to talk to. Everyone Rachel knew was in similar situations, and she had so little access to the outside world that she didn't know there was any other way to live.

"I was having a baby every year because I wasn't allowed to take birth control, and I wasn't allowed to talk about the fact that I couldn't take birth control," Rachel, who asked me not to use her real name or any identifying details, tells me over Skype.

Rachel, who is in her early 30s and looks like a dark-haired Lena Dunham, bats away her sidecurl-sporting son, who keeps climbing into the frame. She's speaking from her dimly lit apartment in Borough Park, Brooklyn, where she remains for the sake of her children. She has a thick accent, a wry sense of humor, and a hurried manner of speech. Which makes sense: She's terrified of being caught speaking to someone outside the highly religious community, let alone a reporter.

In 2011, she tells me, Rachel reached out to a mental health referral service called Eitzah for help. She says she was sent to a life coach who instructed her to pray, drink more water, and not go the police even after her husband's abuse extended to her kids.

"They would say, 'What do you wanna do, break up your family? You got kids, you got this, you got that,'" she remembers. "I was like, 'Well, what am I supposed to do? He's beating me and I'm smiling to the whole world because I can't talk to anyone.'"

Finally, it all came tumbling down for her and she checked herself into a hospital on the Upper East Side. It was her first opportunity to learn how the secular world worked; the only problem was she had ceased to care. Her depression deepened, and Rachel barely saw the point of living. It was impossible for her to discuss the abuse with anyone, she says—every time she saw a doctor, an ultra-Orthodox woman referred to as a "community liaison" was in the room.

But two weeks into her stay, another ultra-Orthodox patient was brought in: Faigy Mayer, the woman whose name briefly became famous last year when she jumped off the 20th floor of a tony Manhattan bar in July. The tragedy came with a made-for-tabloids narrative. "Ex-Hasid's death bares anguish of leaving ultra-Orthodox sect," read one New York Post headline. Faigy's still-religious sister, Suri, went on to hang herself the following October, further casting a pall over the family.

But the story of Mayer's death didn't start when she went off the religious path, or derech—she had been troubled since she was a child, and her difficulties surely weren't helped by the frequently shoddy approach to mental health taken in Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox world.

"It's like we've lived parallel lives. We knew each other's traumas without having to know the details of it."
–Rachel

Rachel remembered Mayer by reputation. By the standards of the community, Mayer was a rebel.

Going off the derech means rejecting everything you've known, and often turning your back on your family. When Rachel tried to picture what happened to such people, she could only imagine them being swallowed by a black hole. But here was Mayer––a raven-haired beauty with an awkward posture and glasses that were perpetually on the verge of falling off her nose––explaining that she'd been committed for handing out condoms in the middle of Borough Park.

"She was paranoid, but she wasn't hallucinating," Rachel remembers of their four weeks together. "She was very clever and focused and articulate, and we really had great discussions in the hospital. She was from a younger age group, but we ended up having conversations like two people on a rocking chair, reminiscing, like in a nursing home. It's like we've lived parallel lives. We knew each other's traumas without having to know the details of it."

The two women had a lot in common. They'd both grown up in the same Hasidic Jewish neighborhood, where they were taught to follow the orders of their respective rebbes down to how many stitches they could have in their socks. Now Rachel had someone to mock her former teachers with, someone with whom she could openly question her upbringing. "The staff there was so happy that Faigy found someone there that she knew, because she wasn't really talking to the staff," Rachel says.

The duo had one more important thing in common: Eitzah.

Eitzah is a hotline that helps parents to "learn how to diffuse tension, create calm, and get their children to listen," according to its website. The name is Hebrew for "advice," and many ultra-Orthodox Jews in Borough Park turn to it in times of need and stress, as Rachel did. But several young women say the hotline, run by the nonprofit umbrella Mishkan Yecheskel, intimidates people who might want to leave the community while directing patients to unlicensed "life coaches" who do more harm than good.

Because they're unlicensed, such practitioners aren't required to report instances of abuse or neglect to the city or state of New York. Victims and advocates tell me that these coaches are sometimes recommended by pillars of the ultra-Orthodox community for precisely this reason.

The informal and often inadequate mental health system is just one of many ways that Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox are isolated and insulated from the systems of government and law enforcement that run the rest of the five boroughs. Interviews with academics, rabbis, activists, members of the community, and those who have left it suggest this loophole protects an image-conscious group from public scrutiny in cases of domestic violence and sexual assault—all at the expense of vulnerable women.

Jennifer Mesrie is a psychiatry resident at Montefiore Medical Center who was recently awarded a fellowship grant to study the mental health of former Hasidim. She says people like Mayer and Rachel have no good options: They're ostracized if they leave, and silenced if they stay.

"These are people who are brought up in extremely isolated communities that are extremely disconnected to the rest of the world and the process of... transitioning out of these communities is so disruptive and very often there is nowhere for them to go," she says. "There are so many basic life skills that they may not have, and many of them end up feeling desperate or ending their lives.

"On the flip side of that, families will send their kids to unofficial mental health workers, who are members of the community and see things from the same perspective," she continues. "They may very often worsen the situation by not understanding how bad that situation might be."

During their late-night talks, Mayer tried to convince Rachel to leave Borough Park, but she was too scared to make the plunge because she didn't know how to support her kids. Today, she has a protective order against her husband, though she lives with him—one foot still firmly inside the community she believes is responsible for perpetuating her abuse. As she puts it, she's "in both worlds, which is not the right place to be, but it's getting there."

Rachel believes unlicensed therapists are running rampant in Borough Park, and that the mental health regime there keeps people like Faigy Mayer and many others from getting the help they need. "It's everyone I know," she says. "My old neighbor used to see people for $300 an hour with no certification. And I know Faigy had that in her life, too."

Rachel and Faigy had many late-night talks while in the hospital

Faigy Meyer's father's family came to Borough Park from Ukraine after the Holocaust decimated the Hasidim of Europe. Hasids are Jews who believe in the message of extreme piety preached by an 18th-century rabbi and mystic named Israel ben Eliezer. Most follow strict guidelines laid out by their rebbes: marry very young, wear modest clothing, and generally try to emulate shtetl life. The men dedicate their lives to studying the Torah and receive little secular education. The women are generally expected to be subservient to their husbands while managing the secular affairs of their families.

Life in such communities is governed by faith in ways both large and small. In stores, Hasidic cashiers leave change on the counter when dealing with female customers so they don't have to make physical contact with a woman who is not their wife. At the Belz School for Girls, where Mayer went to high school, the principal implored girls to wear thick socks, and "even a belt was considered immodest," according to a classmate of Mayer's.

New York City's Hasidic community—which votes in blocks and is therefore politically powerful—is often left to its own devices. Disputes among Hasids are often settled in their own private courts; there's even an organized quasi-police force that patrols the community. Mayor Bill de Blasio—who unveiled a citywide mental health initiative last November—seems unwilling to challenge this community's autonomy. Last year, his administration rescinded a city rule requiring parents to sign consent forms about the health risks of a ritual common among some sects of the ultra-Orthodox where the mohel uses his mouth to suck away blood from an infant's penis during circumcision. "Whatever we needed, he was always there for us," Yitzchok Fleischer, a prominent rabbi in the Bobover sect, told Tablet magazine in 2013.

The community's isolation, its conservatism, and the lack of secular education its members receive makes it possible for them to stay ignorant about some tenets of modern medicine, according to Yosef Blau, an orthodox Rabbi at Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.

This is especially true when it comes to mental health.

According to a spokesperson from New York State Education Department's Office of the Professions, practicing psychotherapy without a license is illegal, but there are exceptions that allow churches, schools, and nonprofits to provide advice or instruction. That loophole has helped spawn Borough Park's cottage industry of "life coaches." Under the law, people can advertise themselves using that term and offer services that "are not intended to treat a behavioral or mental health condition that would require the use of professional judgment and treatment techniques," the spokesperson says. But a significant number of people in the Hasidic community suffering from very real mental health problems are regularly referred to these life coaches for treatment.

"It's a community in general that doesn't begin to understand anything about therapy and anybody in their world can be a therapist," Blau says. "They don't know much about psychology, and they're very hesitant to opening up to people on the outside. They don't have a clue, and they don't want to have a clue. Therefore sending someone to a fake therapist is par for the course."

One of these Hasidic practitioners is Goldie Stern, an aunt of Faigy Mayer's who, according to Finette Russack, another of Mayer's aunts, claimed she was the reincarnation of a great healer. It's not clear how much formal education Stern has, but she's not licensed with the state of New York's Office of the Professions as a mental health professional. Instead, she has credentials from something called the Refuah Institute, which claims to be about "coaching in the light of the Torah." A cached version of the Refuah Institute website from 2014 indicates that she is also credentialed by something called the American Association of Professional Coaches––an organization with a shell website and a broken contact form. Nevertheless, she had a stable of clients referred to her by Eitzah, the hotline run out of Borough Park, including both Faigy and her sister Suri.

It's unclear when either girl started seeing their aunt as a life coach, although Russack, the secular aunt, says it was when they were teenagers. Neither Stern nor Mayer's immediate family would speak to me for this story, and it remains unclear precisely what happened to Mayer while she was under her aunt's care—but it was apparently enough to make numerous religious officials in the Borough Park community take notice. In June 2014, 11 rabbis posted a flyer around the neighborhood. "Mrs. Goldie Stern has an unprecedented method of counseling her clients," it warned in English, detailing how she "counsels children and she poisons them with chutzpah and hatred against their parents." They issued a proclamation that no one was allowed to go see her any longer.

But even though the rabbis banded to together to stop Stern, they did not condemn unlicensed therapists outright. "People who are not sophisticated in this area see any piece of paper and think a person is qualified," says Blau, who adds that ignorance and the desire to keep young women quiet are equally to blame.

"But," he says, "that doesn't change the fact that it's form of fraud."

Some parents sit shiva—or mourn as they would a death—their children who leave the community.

Life for those who go OTD (off the derech) can be complicated. Most people who grow up ultra-Orthodox don't have much secular education and rely on the community's resources to support themselves. Making friends is difficult when you've missed out on a lifetime worth of pop culture references, and dating is even harder when you've grown up segregated from the opposite gender and without any sex education. But worst of all is the risk that your old friends and family will turn their backs on you. Some parents sit shiva—or mourn as they would a death—their children who leave the community.

Faigy Mayer continued to have one foot in and one foot out of Borough Park after she officially became non-religious. In fact, when she moved out of her parents' house, she just moved down the block in Borough Park. That's around the time she became a loyal MeetUp.com user—at one point belonging to some 200 groups, ranging from ones targeted at people looking to overcome social anxiety to those specifically for New York Latinos in tech. And at many of those groups, she gravitated toward other former Hasid. One of them was a man named Aaron Katz, who remembers Mayer keeping a dress in her bag so she could change on the train and still be allowed into her parents' house.

In 2010, Mayer joined a support group called Footsteps, a social service agency and nonprofit intended to help teach OTD people about secular life by taking them to movies and ballgames and giving them a space to network. She became a well-known and well-liked person there––someone who had a bit of experience with the outside world, who could lend help with constructing a resume or securing an apartment.

People who knew her then remember her as a determined woman with a bit of a smartass streak who dreamed of making a life in the secular world. From the outside it seemed as if she was successful at transitioning into OTD life: She got into Touro College in Manhattan despite not having any transcripts, and at the time of her death was teaching herself to code with hopes of becoming an entrepreneur and an app developer.

She was also learning the art of public speaking through her local Toastmasters chapter, where she'd give speeches like one called "Breaking Hasid," which was named after the reality show called Breaking Amish, in which four Amish people and a Mennonite move to New York City, then decide whether or not they want to return to religious life.

Henny Kupferstein, a friend of Mayer's, says the comparison between Hasidim and the Amish is an apt one. An ex-Hasid from Borough Park herself, she says that she was excommunicated after she tried to get outside help for her autistic children and secure them "access to someone who has different thoughts." She says ending up across the country in San Francisco–– as opposed to attending Footsteps meetings and living in Borough Park—is the best thing that could have happened to her.

"Have you ever met an Amish person who has left but still lives in the Amish town?" Kupferstein asks me. "It's a no-brainer. You can't connect someone who wants to escape with someone who hasn't had the balls to up and leave themselves."

Faigy's search for some sort of guidance led her all over New York City, including to an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting

One friend of Mayer's, who did not want me to use his name but met her through MeetUp in July 2012, remembers being taken aback by her honesty about how much she was struggling with her mental health. "She just met me and she was unloading all this stuff," he says. "It was a lot to take in. But she would go to these meet-ups and make long-lasting friendships. I think she had spent so much time not having friends that she came to really appreciate people."

Despite being from very different backgrounds––he is a secular Hindu who is getting a PhD in math from New York University––the two became close. To his dismay, he watched Mayer's mental health unravel over the course of their three-year friendship, he says. Her text messages became alarming. In July 2013, she wrote about a dream she had in which her neighbor's rabbi raped her. Mayer also had nightmares about her own mother molesting her. A recorded call she placed to a local police precinct in April 2014 attests to her increasing paranoia: Mayer became hysterical with a dispatcher over fears that her roommate would break into her room.

She was also seeking out community wherever she could find it. Another friend of Mayer's remembers taking her to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in 2013, which he thought would feel comfortable and familiar after her time in a mental institution focused around group therapy. But when she told the group about her desire to finally separate from her religious upbringing, an AA member told her, "Are you an alcoholic? Because if you're not, there's nothing here for you."

According to her Hindu friend, Mayer was also still in touch with life coach Goldie Stern, although she never revealed many details about that relationship.

Mayer maintained contact with her family as late as July 2015. Pinny Gold, a friend of hers from Footsteps, says he was relaying messages between Mayer and her parents over the phone. He remembers that Mayer had an Apple Watch shipped to her parents' house because she didn't trust her roommate at the time not to steal it. To retrieve the watch, she put a skirt on top of her jeans and covered up with a sweater. But despite her modest dress, her mom wouldn't let her in.

"This is ridiculous," Mayer told Gold. "She wouldn't let me in and I tried to accommodate her."

A week after that incident, she went to a bar she'd been to for MeetUp groups before called 230 Fifth. Mayer showed her ID at the door, went down a long corridor, and took an elevator up to the 20th floor. Then, she asked a bartender the location of the east deck. As people sipped $14 cocktails, she slipped unnoticed into the smoking section and vaulted over a six-foot-tall green fence and a shorter brick wall. With her back to the setting sun, she jumped into the air above Fifth Avenue.

Today, her friends disagree on exactly what went wrong. "People are blaming her family," Gold says. "I just want to point out it's way more complicated than that."

"I was terrified of them. Everything I thought was, 'What if Eitzah finds out?'"
—Leah

I was never able to reach Mayer's immediate family for this story, despite multiple attempts in person, on the phone, and through email. I still don't know when Mayer stopped talking to Goldie Stern, among other details of her last days. Unsurprisingly, given the sensitive nature of the story and the Hasidic world's tendency to avoid engagement with outsiders, most of the community refused to speak with me.

One former Hasid who did agree to meet me was a woman named Leah, whose transition into the secular world began when she was in tenth grade and met another outcast at summer camp. Leah's parents were divorced, while her friend Sara's were American Hasids who adopted her from Israel. "In the community, we were both defective in some way," she remembers.

The two wanted to keep in touch after camp, but Leah and Sara lived in two different Hasidic enclaves in Brooklyn. Their solution was to pass notes through a middleman who frequently traveled between the communities. These notes were not defiant in any meaningful way, but would almost certainly have raised some flags with Hasidic elders. Leah, who was 16, wrote about the only time she had seen a movie, at an rebellious uncle's house. Although it took her years to realize The Parent Trap wasn't a documentary and that Lindsay Lohan wasn't actually two people, the experience stuck with her. She wrote to her friend about how she would one day have a TV in her house, too.

But the girl they trusted to relay the notes was actually letting her mother read them first. Concerned that they were going rogue, she contacted a rabbi and, according to Leah, the rabbi called Eitzah. The hotline then contacted Leah's principal and tried to have her expelled, she says. She ended up filing a petition to get back into school, but was forced to go see an unlicensed religious therapist twice a week as a condition. "I was still very, very religious, but I knew she was full of shit," she tells me.

Eitzah became involved with Leah's grandparents, her principal, and even the man who was helping her father sort out his divorce in the Hasidic court system. (That man, she said, sat her down one day and told her, "I know that Eitzah is involved in your life, and that's no good, because they're only involved with rebels.")

Leah says Eitzah "made sure the whole world fucking knew" about her letters to Sara, and that the biggest threat was that they might prevent her from ever getting married. She never once met with anyone from the agency, but it was a haunting specter in her life until she eventually moved to Israel. "It was definitely bullying," she says. "I was terrified of them. Everything I thought was, 'What if Eitzah finds out?'"

After several stints in the hospital, Leah attempted suicide. But she survived, and made the move to Israel to escape the series of quacks she believes nearly ended her life. Today, Leah is a student at a private college in New England, where, she says, "There's no such thing as an unlicensed therapist."

When I met her she was back in Brooklyn for spring break, staying at a house on the edge of Borough Park that's known as a place where ex-Hasids congregate, sort of a club house for the OTD. The plan was for me to provide emotional support to her while she visited Eitzah's offices and asked for her records, but as the day wore on she began to have doubts. Maybe she shouldn't show up in person, she said—perhaps she should pretend to be a therapist over the phone.

She sent me her schedule and I hoped to speak with her again, but she soon stopped returning my calls. Around the same time, Rachel stopped speaking to me as well. Other members of Mayer's family told me that Stern was still seeing patients, but then wouldn't give me any details or any way to verify that claim.

"You're dealing with an unbearably dysfunctional family with its own dynamic," the Rabbi Blau told me just before he too stopped returning my messages. "So it may be more about that than the community writ large. But how the heck is this woman still getting people to go see her? That is a real criticism of a community. If she's still out there after all of this, that is really scary."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Keith

A young girl covered in 43 itchy bites took home the grand prize at the Russian Mosquito Festival after a horde of bugs decided she was the most delicious, Associated Press reports.

Nine-year-old Irina Ilyukhina braved swarms of blood-sucking bugs as she went berry picking with her competitors in the Russian town of Berezniki, where the annual mosquito festival has been held for the past four years. When Ilyukhina returned to the judges, she was covered in a whopping 43 bites—the most out of any women competing for the title of "Tastiest Girl." She went home with a ceramic trophy and a monumental number of itchy welts.

Along with the "Tastiest Girl" competition, festival-goers took part in a mosquito costume contest, as well as a competition to see who could do the best mosquito squeak. There was also an award for the most mosquitos caught in a jar.

Competitors weren't particularly concerned about Zika, as Russia has managed to avoid the global public health emergency with only five reported cases of the virus. Texas, on the other hand, held its own mosquito festival last month, despite logging more than 100 cases of the virus.

Read: How Scared Should I Be of Zika?

Photo by Yukkiko Matsuoka via

In the late 1960s, Nina Simone sat down with filmmaker Peter A Rodis to make a 22-minute documentary about her work. The short film is a collation of musical highlights shot between 1968 and 1969 and candid personal interviews with Simone, where she famously discusses the political role of music, art, and the artist.

"An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times," she said. "I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, musicians... I choose to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty. And at this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when everyday is a matter of survival, I don't think you can help but be involved. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?"

Almost 50 years later and her words still ring true, for me at least. That's why I'm working with director Troy James Aidoo to make 1500 and Counting, a documentary investigating the relatively untold story of police brutality in the UK. As a writer and poet, documenting the rather extraordinary events of my generation lays the foundation for what I create.

That impulse to make sense of the world led me to the story of Sheku Bayoh, who died at the hands of police in Scotland under circumstances that remain unclear, more than a year later. At the time, I still found myself astonished that black men were and are killed by police in the UK too—this wasn't just an American problem.

What I've learned so far has been ugly. Since 1990, according to research by British charity Inquest, over 1,500 people have died in police custody in the UK. A handful of cases have received unlawful killing verdicts but as of yet no officer has been prosecuted for any of these deaths.

In fact, the first, last, and only conviction of police officers in relation to a black man's death was in 1971, when two officers in Leeds were prosecuted for a series of assaults on David Oluwale, after another officer spoke up. Oluwale's body was discovered face down in the river Aire in 1969. The brutal story of this Nigerian immigrant being hounded by the police in the 1960s still resonates loudly today to those of us in Britain's ethnic-minority population.

When discussing the recent waves of Black Lives Matter protests in London, Birmingham, and the rest of the UK, Harmit Athwal—researcher at the Institute of Race Relations and co-editor of their groundbreaking 2015 report, Dying for Justice—said it was "incredibly interesting to see people campaigning on issues of police brutality in America," but that it was disappointing to note that "not the same numbers were on the streets for UK victims and their families. Police in the UK will kill people with their bare hands; in America they shoot you at a distance."

This chilling realization resonated with me and reminded me of my feelings during the early stages of my research into the film. I was frustrated with the seeming apathy of people in Britain about police violence—in relation to the deaths of people of all ethnicities—and some people's complacency when it came to discussing the differences between the UK and the US. Police brutality kills here too—and not just people from BME (black, Asian, and minority ethnic) communities—but the main difference between British and American understandings of that racism comes down to it being institutionalized and insidious in the UK.

Victims are more likely to be killed behind closed doors as a result of officers using "undue force" and demonstrating a "culpable lack of care" than executed in the streets as one mobile phone video after another has shown us in the US. But was Mark Duggan not shot by police on the streets of Tottenham in August 2011? Was 27-year-old Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes not shot in a south London Tube station in July 2005? In April of the same year, 24-year-old Azelle Rodney was shot six times by police in north London.

In the last 25 years, of that startling 1,500 estimate for deaths in police custody, about one-third have come from BME communities, despite such communities making up only 14 percent of the British population. This disproportionate number of BME victims and the worrying lack of accountability and culpability of police officers has, for the most part, gone widely underreported in most mainstream media—most recently, in the case of 18-year-old Mzee Mohammed's death in Liverpool in July 2016.

As noted by the editors of Dying for Justice, "it is significant that the most important work on deaths in custody has been done by freelance journalists and independent writers and filmmakers"—those with supposedly less to lose, such as Diana Taylor, Tanika Gupta, Kester Aspden, and the Migrant Media documentary film-making group (most notably with the seminal works of Ken Fero).

Sheku Bayoh's mother, Aminata (left), and his sister Kadi Johnson. Photo courtesy of 1500 And Counting/ Troy James Aidoo

The conversation (or lack thereof) surrounding deaths at the hands of British police still has a long way to go. "Campaigns by people such as the Rigg family are committed to changing things," Athwal said, when we spoke. "The police use shocking restraint methods. Now a key issue is also deaths in prisons, overcrowding, targeting foreign nationals, and deportation. The levels of force used during deportations is astonishing," as in the case of Jimmy Mubenga, who died on a plane bound for Angola when restrained by officers in 2010.

But, as you'd expect, the issues are complex. "The reality is that deaths in policy custody doesn't represent the total picture," said Lee Jasper, co-chair of BARAC UK and a prominent if divisive voice in British race relations. "Suicides in jail, deaths in mental hospitals, and detention centers all need to be investigated. Post-Brexit Britain requires a robust debate around human rights for black and brown people."

Just as Nina said, as an artist and a black woman with a platform, I feel it's my duty to document the times I live in and the movements I am a part of. When 1500 and Counting finally sees the light of day, I hope that what Troy and I reveal adds to the robust debate that we so desperately need in Britain. We also hope more than anything else that it adds to a small canon of necessary work on a subject still so taboo that many in the mainstream, and the public sphere, choose to keep their heads in the sand.

Visit 1500 and Counting's website. Siana Bangura is a journalist, writer, and poet from London.

Follow Siana Bangura on Twitter.

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

Photo by Darren Hauck / Stringer via Getty

US News

One Person Shot at Second Night of Milwaukee Protests
Police say one person was shot during a second night of unrest on the streets of Milwaukee. The protests that erupted on Saturday after 23-year-old Sylville Smith was shot dead by police continued Sunday evening as rocks were thrown at police. The police said shots were fired at several locations and one man was taken to hospital for a gunshot wound. —CBS News

Four Dead in Louisiana Floods
The federal government has declared a major disaster in four parishes of Louisiana after massive flooding killed at least four people and left 10,000 in shelters. Nearly 20,000 people were rescued from flooded areas of the state. Governor John Bel Edwards said waters would continue to rise in many areas: "It's not over." —NBC News

Millennial Voters Back Clinton by Big Margin
Hillary Clinton is trouncing Donald Trump 56 percent to 20 percent among those under 35, according to a new USA Today / Rock the Vote poll. The survey of millennials also shows 72 percent of Bernie Sanders supporters now planning to vote for Clinton, with 11 percent planning to vote for Trump. —USA Today

Suspect in NYC Imam Shooting Reportedly Detained
A suspect in the horrific execution-style killing of an imam and his friend by a lone gunman in Queens, New York, was reportedly taken into custody Sunday night, though no charges have been filed yet. Maulama Akonjee, 55, and Thara Uddin, 64, were both shot in the head in Ozone Park on Saturday after prayers at a nearby mosque. Residents are asking police to treat the incident as a hate crime. –New York Daily News

False Alarm at JFK May Have Been Cheering, Not Gunshots
New York City's JFK International Airport has reopened two terminals that were evacuated Sunday night after a false alarm of shots being fired at Terminal 8 prompted security to clear the area. Some officials said that the whole thing might be chalked up to people clapping and banging on things while watching the Olympics. –USA Today

International News

Suicide Bombing Kills 25 in Syria
At least 25 people have been killed and 25 others injured after a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest on a bus in Syria's Idlib Province. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the bus was carrying opposition fighters when the blast happened near the border crossing with Turkey. —Al Jazeera

Boko Haram Releases Video of Captured Girls
Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram has released a new video purporting to shows dozens of the 276 schoolgirls the group kidnapped more than two years ago. A masked man is seen in the video offering to trade the captives in return for the release of the group's jailed fighters.—Reuters

Hong Kong Student Leaders Avoid Jail
Three student leaders in Hong Kong who organized pro-democracy rallies in 2014 have avoided jail after being sentenced for unlawful assembly. Joshua Wong was given 80 hours of community service, Nathan Law was given 120 hours, and Alex Chow was given a three-week prison sentence suspended for a year. —BBC News

Swiss Police Search Home of Train Attacker
Swiss police have searched the Liechtenstein home of a man who attacked passengers on a train with a knife and burning liquid on Saturday. The 27-year-old assailant and a 34-year-old woman he had attacked died of their injuries Sunday. Five people were stabbed or suffered burns during the attack, one of whom remains in critical condition.—AP

Everything Else

Bolt Wins Record Third 100-Meter Gold
Usain Bolt became the first athlete ever to win three successive 100-meter Olympic titles, running the race in 9.81 seconds to beat Justin Gatlin to gold. "I expected to go faster, but I'm happy I won," he said.—CNN

Lin-Manuel Miranda Wants Scalper Crackdown
The creator of Hamilton and New York senator Chuck Schumer have urged Congress to pass the Better Online Ticket Sales Act of 2016. The legislation would crack down on people using automated bots to scoop up tickets.—Rolling Stone

US Olympic Swimmers Robbed in Rio
Gold medal-winner Ryan Lochte was one of four American swimmers robbed at gunpoint in Rio by men posing as police officers early Sunday. "He took our money, he took my wallet—he left my cellphone, he left my credentials," said Lochte.—VICE News

Exasperated Scientists Reject Chemtrails Conspiracy
A survey of the world's most respected atmospheric scientists "resounding rejected" evidence for the existence of a government chemtrails program. Seventy-six of the 77 scientists said there was no spraying from the sky by the government.—Motherboard

Bon Iver Plays New Album Live
Bon Iver played new material from forthcoming album 22, A Million—the band's first in five years—at the Eaux Claires music festival in in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The show closed with old favorite "Beth/Rest."—Noisey

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

Since war broke out in Ukraine in 2014, nearly 10,000 people have been killed and more than 20,000 wounded. Though the Ukrainian government and separatist groups have signed two separate peace accords, fighting in the eastern Donbas region continues. The Ukrainian military has reported that more than 90 of its soldiers have been killed since March 2016. In the winter of 2014, photographer and visual artist Wiktoria Wojciechowska traveled to Ukraine. It was the first of more than a dozen trips to the country she would make through the spring of 2016.

Using mixed media—including portraiture, documentary photography, and collage—she attempted to record the ongoing effects of the war on Ukrainians, particularly young soldiers, and to draw renewed attention to a conflict that seems to have been forgotten.

Sandy Bullock putting up some Harambe memes in The Net. Photo still from The Net.

The other week we learned the exciting new twist to the Splash! remake. This time the Mer will be a man—a Channing Tatum-man to be precise. I have some thoughts. Don't worry I'm not about to complain that they've "ruined my childhood"—Pee Wee Herman's mugshot took care of that a long time ago—plus that's stupid.

Last summer, I piled into an ancient Ford Fleetwood Jamboree RV with my friends Abdullah Saeed and Martina de Alba, to go on a road trip for our VICELAND show, VICE Does America. The producers' idea was to have a black man, a Muslim dude, and a Spanish immigrant girl drive from LA to DC in the run up to the 2016 presidential election and find out what direction our country was headed.

We were the perfect motley crew to host the politically-themed travel show, considering our biographies touched on all three of America's hottest issues. Martina, who fought like hell to make a life in this country, could speak on the dysfunction around the US immigration system. Abdullah, a punk Pakistani American with a penchant for pot, represented the true diversity of Islam at a moment when Muslims are often viewed with profound distrust and fear. And I brought the voice of the black American male at a time when the country was beginning to ask if the lives of young black men actually mattered.

Then, as now, it felt like America was tearing itself into pieces. The world was getting hotter, both literally and figuratively. Protests had sprung up in the face of continued racial injustice and were gaining momentum, but they were also countered by militarized police forces and the xenophobic rhetoric of Donald Trump. And the Obama era, with all its initial promise and sobering realities, was coming to an end, conjuring up an intense sense of uncertainty about the future.

Abdullah, Martina, and Wilbert dressed for a Mexica rodeo.

As we pulled out of VICE's headquarters in LA, the air felt ominous. We really had no idea what we were about to get into. Martina, Abdullah, and I all lived in Brooklyn, a bubble of youth, prosperity, and social progressivism compared to much of the country. Adding to the sense of uncertainty, our producers had been deliberately cagey about the places we were going to go and the people we were going to meet. We just didn't know what to expect.

Even after spending 30 days pushing that sweltering RV through as many states and meeting dozens of extreme characters from all walks of life, I can't say America is any less mysterious to me today than it was at the beginning of my journey. But seeing my country up close left me constantly in awe. I don't have the words to describe the wonder I felt seeing sun climb above the red sands of Monument Valley or what it was like to run my hands across the leaves of overhanging cypress trees as I floated through a lazy bayou in Louisiana.

I was touched as well by the tight-knit communities I encountered who managed to embrace the US while still maintaining their own way of life. I met Mexican Americans in Texas who put on a rodeo called a charreada that was equal parts Wyatt Earp and Emilliano Zapata. I met a Lakota Native American motorcycle club who embraced their tribes illustrious history as well as the lifestyle of outlaw "one percenters." These are the kinds of people who have stories that could only be told in this country.

Unfortunately, I was also disenchanted by the undercurrent of racial hate that I saw from coast to coast. As a sort of baptism by fire, one of our first stops was an interracial cuckold porn shoot, where I saw the age-old stereotypes of black men as savage, sex-crazed beasts turned into XXX entertainment. As I watched a white actress and two hulking brothers dripping in baby oil get it on, the white director told me the film's target audience was mainly white southerners, a demographic whom he said actually begged his studio for more degradation and sexual minstrelsy. There's a kind of terrible logic to that: You'd only find those sorts of scenes sexy if you were fearful of and repulsed by black men, if you saw them not as people but as some kind of fierce, untamed taboo.

What was fascinating to me was how that piece of pornography was so steeped in plantation-era raceplay. The stereotype of black men as a sexual aggressors against white women was often used as one of the main excuses to subjugate blacks—it also obscures the actual history of rape in America slavery, once a routine practice in this country. How did we get so far from truth in our ideas about each other?

I thought a lot about the real and imagined history of slavery on my trip across the country. Time and time again, I came across distorted takes on its practice and ramifications, which have lead me to feel that even though more than 150 years have elapsed since the Civil War, the rot at the core of the American experiment remains. What distraught me the most was this sort of hate-filled nostalgia people I met seemed to have. They fetishized bygone eras that were defined by the brutalization and subjugation of my ancestors.

Lubrication supplies on the cuckold porn set.

Our next stop on the trip after the porn set was the Nevada home of Cliven Bundy, a wealthy rancher who's been battling it out with the federal government for decades over his usage of federal-owned land. Bundy first made nationwide headlines in 2014 when he had an armed standoff with the government over the land dispute, in which the feds eventually backed down. That face-off turned him into a nationwide celebrity, especially for those involved in the "liberty" movement, making his pontifications on everything from state's rights to the race relations newsworthy. It was during this time that Bundy suggested he felt blacks in America might have been better off when they were enslaved, because back then they didn't rely on the government to provide them with welfare.

When I came to his rustic, wooden one-floor home, the feeble old man was pretty hospitable. Abdullah and Martina and I sat on his big couch in his living room as his wife came out from the kitchen with a plate of watermelon slices. Of course, I didn't eat any. But I did try to engage him in a conversation about what he was getting at when he made his infamous statements. Although he eventually apologized to me personally for what he'd said in the past, he held onto his idea that things might've actually been better in this country when black men were forced into labor, never compensated for their work, and denied any semblance of dignity or participation in our democracy.

Getting even a slight apology from a guy who wouldn't back down to armed federal agents probably should have made me feel pretty good. But instead, I was troubled as I left his ranch because I knew he was the face of a bigger movement. There are thousands, if not millions, of people across the nation who share his views and it unnerved me to think of what this already chaotic country would look like if they got their way, possibly through the election of someone like Donald Trump.

Wilbert, Abdullah, and Martina on the Bundy ranch, being taught how to shoot a gun.

As weird as my interaction with Bundy was, the greatest reverence for the days of the antebellum South that I encountered on my trip had to be in Jacksonville, Alabama. Towards the end of our journey, the producers dropped us in the middle of a Civil War reenactment with the promise that the attendees were merely history buffs. As we marched up the hill to where the Civil War camp and battles were to take place, we could see all the hallmarks of the Old South, with bold Confederate battle flags fluttering in the air.

I had a sneaking suspicion things would get ugly, but I tried to put my best foot forward. I donned a hotter-than-hell wool costume so I could look the part of a Union soldier and hopped around in military formations, shooting off caps in the direction of Confederate cosplayers. But every time there was a lull in the action, I heard people saying off-the-wall shit—that slavery wasn't that bad for blacks, that enslaved blacks weren't brutalized, that enslaved blacks loved the Confederacy so much they fought for it in the South's "integrated" military... When I heard this last bit, I knew we had to get out of there. The producers had wanted us to spend the night at the reenactment camp, but there was no way I was sleeping in a place where people legitimately believed that a large number of enslaved blacks willfully supported their own bondage. The idea was even more reprehensible than what I'd heard from Bundy.

Statements like that made these people seem eager to legitimize America's horrible history of white supremacy. I was amazed at how much these people pointed to that past as something to aspire to, something to return to. And they had had spent thousands of dollars on costumes and gear to get as close as they could to actually going back in time. It was just too much for me.

Again and again on our trip, I saw white Americans yearn for a time that had long since passed—a time that, often, they seemed to barely understand. It was only after the trip was over that I realized that it was the gulf between these backward-looking fantasies and this modern moment that has made America such an ugly and angry place to be recently, especially on the campaign trail.

I'm reminded of a quote from Don DeLillo's classic novel White Noise: "Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It´s a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence." I'm also reminded of Beenie Man, who said basically the same thing but shorter: "When yuh live in the past, yuh lost."

I don't think I'll ever understand the hateful nostalgia of a Cliven Bundy or those Civil War reenactors. As a black man in America, there aren't many bygone eras I'm fond of, except maybe the gangsta rap of the early 90s. Trump's "Make America great again" slogan makes no sense to me. When was America great for people who looked like I do? Not during slavery, not during the Jim Crow era, not at the height of the war on drugs... There is no time I'd rather be young and black in America than right now, because at least today I have more of a fighting chance at survival.

Wilbert at the RNC. Photo by Jason Bergman

Most forms of nostalgia are benign—flannel comes back in, hair gets bigger then smaller again. But the sort of white nostalgia that has fueled Trump's rise is inextricably connected to the racial supremacy that was there at the dawning of this nation. It's impregnated with the idea that black people are inferior, that whites must be defended from the chaotic dark-skinned hordes.

I felt this when I was reporting for VICE at the Republican National Convention last month in my hometown of Cleveland. During Trump's speech, every time he made dog-whistle appeals to "law and order," the crowd erupted in feverous applause. The fear, anger, and hope were tangible among the delegates and supporters, who were whooped up by his fire-and-brimstone rhetoric. It was like being inside one of those late-night pharmaceutical commercials that seem to invent a disastrous new medical condition, then sell you on their cure. But this time, the problem wasn't "restless leg syndrome," it was our country's black boogeymen and Trump alone was the solution.

When people like Trump say they want to bring a return to "law and order," they are talking about a particular kind of order from a bygone era, one in which a white man's dominance in society was an unquestionable fact. Just talk to the people who support him, or listen to the cries and chants at his rallies, if you doubt this. The candidate has a long history of being accused of discriminatory business practices, but it doesn't even matter what is in his heart—his campaign has emboldened American racists.

Trump's support is greatest among uneducated white men with limited employment prospects and an increasingly marginalized position in society. It's much easier, Iimagine, for them to blame the specter of lawless black men, terrorist Muslims, and rapist Mexican immigrants for their problems than to grapple with the public and private institutions that have failed and harmed Americans of all races. In truth, we have common enemies. Whites are victims of extrajudicial police violence; whites are victims of the drug war; whites are victims of the deregulated financial system. But when these marginalized white people are stripped of their money, opportunity, and hope, they are sometimes comforted by their distorted view of superiority and the backwards culture they claim to uphold. Which is why they flock to Trump. He's offering a way to cling to that feeling just a little while longer.

Wilbert, Martina, and Abdullah Saeed at the end of their trip.

The good news is that hateful nostalgia is losing and was always destined to. As James Baldwin once said, "To accept one's past—one's history—is not the same things as drowning in it. An invented past can never be used. It cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought."

Right now, Trump is falling in the polls in large part thanks to folks who realize that the hate enshrined in the legacy of white supremacy creates a toxic environment for everyone, poisoning everything connected to it, making monsters out of all of us.

Instead of trying to recreate a flawed vision of the past, we need to think about how we can do better in the future. I thought about this sentiment a lot when Abdullah, Martina, and I finally reached our ultimate destination of Washington DC. We arrived in the early hours of the morning, when the streets were completely desolate, and we drove straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to see the White House. We stood outside the gates and looked at the building that was such a source of inspiration and despondency for the different people we met across the country on our trip.

It was so powerful to know that a black man wasinside that center of power, sleeping between the walls that—as Michelle Obama noted at the Democratic National Convention—were once built by black slaves. It was also sobering to realize that no matter how good it felt to have a black president, his presence in the White House had not cured the cancer of hate and racism inside this country. If anything, it helped bring more of it to the surface, like summer rain summoning all the earthworms out onto the concrete. But I knew, regardless of my mixed feelings over his triumphs and his failures, the last thing I wanted was for us to go backward. America is not great, it has never been great, but it's what we've got and we need to keep fighting to make it better.

Follow Wilbert on Twitter.

Photo via Pool / Getty

Dwayne Stafford is enjoying temporary housing and donated clothing, food, and cash after being released from jail where he assaulted 22-year-old Charleston shooter Dylann Roof earlier this month.

The 25-year-old told NBC that he assaulted Roof—who gunned down nine black people holding a Bible study at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church last June—after the white supremacist started blabbing about starting a race war and insulted Stafford's late father.

"I wasn't even in the mindset of violence," the former inmate told NBC. "I was more like damn, that could've been my people. No, they were my people. I just didn't understand how he could do that... Pure evil."

Stafford—a black inmate who had been arrested on robbery and assault charges—said he waited until Roof was alone and unguarded in the shower before escaping his cell and laying into Roof.

"He tried , but, nah," Stafford said. "I beat Dylann Roof's ass."

Supporters reportedly sent money to Stafford's commissary following news of the incident. An attorney, Marvin Pendarvis, also jumped onboard to represent Stafford. According to Pendarvis, a sympathetic bail bondsman posted Stafford's $100,000 bail to help him get out, and a crowdfunding initiative helped raise money to pay the bondsman back.

Roof and his lawyers have decided not to press charges against Stafford, and the killer will remain in county jail awaiting his trail where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for last year's racially charged killing spree.

Read: What Racist Skinheads in Prison Think About Dylann Roof

We sat down with Health Minister Jane Philpott last month. Still via Daily VICE.

Canada's new-and-improved bullshit blood ban comes into force today.

As VICE Canada has previously complained, the Liberal Party had promised to eliminate the prohibition on gay men donating blood and then—surprise!—didn't.

Instead, they changed a virtual ban on non-straight dudes (and the women they have sex with) to, well, a slightly different virtual ban on non-straight dudes. It's now a one-year celibacy period instead of a five-year one. Good news for the recently-celibate and for nobody else.

And, just as a recap: there is really no scientific basis for this; there has not been a single bloodborne transmission of HIV in Canada since new testing technology came into place; gay men are not the only minority with higher-than-average HIV rates; and the excuses for why there is an entire sexual orientation-based ban, as opposed to a lifestyle-based screening process, are utter horseshit.

You may have noticed the conspicuous lack of bulging-eyed anger over this obviously-homophobic ban. Somehow, neither our politicians nor the press are frothing over this.

Not Scott Brison, the openly-gay Treasury Board Minister, nor Rob Oliphant, Seamus O'Reagan, or Randy Boissonnault—all openly-gay members of Trudeau's government who are (presumably, if things are good at home) banned from donating blood.

And just look at the news coverage.

Read more: Liberals Failed Gay Men

Google News hits for "Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau breast feeding"? 10,600.

Hits for "Canadian Blood Services, men-who-have-sex-with-men"? 1,300.

Luckily, Canada's Health Minister seems as frustrated with this nonsense as I do.

Jane Philpott, who approved the smiling, happier ban, invited VICE Canada to her office to chat about the issue and to explain why she didn't follow through on her promise to axe the discriminatory policy.

Her answer is both understandable, and frustrating. And it's really emblematic of how the Trudeau government has tackled thorny issues—study, consult, ask for reports, "consult" with "stakeholders," and punt the issue down the line.

Everyone loves to talk about science. About research. About studies. Because you can't argue with scientists.

But, let's be clear, the current ban is not even slightly different than the previous absolute ban on gay men. This ban is just prettied up, with a new hairdo and a fresh layer of makeup.

If a government-managed agency was banning any other minority on the basis of gender or race: there would be bedlam. Fists, pounding on desks. Fingers, wagging towards justice. Open letters, pointedly written.

Now? Just some foul-mouthed faggot writing for VICE.

So we put the bullshit to Philpott and asked for some justification. You can read a segment of our conversation below.

Follow Leslie on Instagram, Tumblr, and buy her books from Fantagraphics.

Shad's done with q. Photo via CP.

In a move that no one saw coming, except for staff, media critics, and listeners, Shad is no longer the host of CBC's q.

The hip-hop artist is being replaced by Tom Power, the CBC Radio 2 host who no one has an opinion on.

Shad, 34, took over the show from the disgraced Jian Ghomeshi in March 2015 after a long search for a replacement host for the CBC's flagship radio show (then known as Q). Ghomeshi was fired in October 2014 amid sex assault allegations.

Shad's final show will be Tuesday. He will be followed out the door by two senior producers on the show, though they are sticking around in different roles at the CBC.

While a well-known figure in Canadian music, Shad was a relative newcomer to radio and failed to deliver the audience and zeitgeisty moments of his predecessor.

Even the CBC's own story about Shad today notes that his critics called him "unengaging and rudderless," which is not ungenerous.

Shad and the CBC are apparently discussing developing another show but that feels a bit "of course, we'll stay friends."

Power, 29, hails from Newfoundland and your mom will like him just fine.

Follow Josh Visser on Twitter.

A protester stands outside a police station the day after a fatal police involved shooting Sunday, Aug. 14, 2016, in Milwaukee, Wis. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images)

Around 3:30 PM on Saturday, police officers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, pulled over Sylville K. Smith when they deemed his car suspicious. Smith and a friend got out and ran, and cops gave chase. Smith, a 23-year-old black man, was carrying a stolen handgun loaded with 23 rounds, and a black officer fatally shot him after he didn't drop the weapon, police say. His friend was arrested, and the entire incident going down in less than a minute.

By Saturday evening, angry protestors were squaring off with the local police force, throwing rocks and bricks at cops and their vehicles. Two stores and a bank branch were set ablaze as a gas station fire burned unabated, and two more storefronts were on fire by 2 AM, as the Washington Post reported. The sporadic gunfire made it too dangerous for firefighters to do their jobs amid one of the most intense scenes of rioting over police violence since 25-year-old Freddie Gray died at the hands of Baltimore cops in April 2015.

At first glance, the details of Smith's killing don't quite square with the tales of unarmed black men being targeted by white cops that have been the building blocks of the Black Lives Matter movement. But Milwaukee has a unique history of segregation and police brutality––one that residents describe as setting the stage for rioting and violence. As they put it, so deep and unchecked were the city's inequities that the slightest provocation was sufficient to send disgruntled residents over the edge.

"It's a series of things that has happened over a period of time," 39-year-old Sharlen Moore, who lives in the Sherman Park neighborhood where the violence took place, told the New York Times. "And right now you shake a soda bottle and you open the top and it explodes, and this is what it is."

As in many other American cities, tension between the local black and white communities came to a head in the 1960s. When the City Council failed (again) to pass a fair housing law in 1967, riots broke out, and at least three people were killed, 100 injured and 1,740 arrested, according to the Milwaukee County Historical Society, as reported by the Times.

Other factors in current tension surely include the high African American unemployment rate (20 percent in Milwaukee County) and renewed segregation, with local schools just as racially divided as they were in the mid 60s. And despite comprising 16 percent of the city's population in 2014, a report released just month by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition black communities suggests African Americans received just 4 percent of home loans there.

As Black Lives Matter was gaining traction in 2014, protests erupted in the city when 31-year-old Dontre Hamilton, who was homeless and mentally ill, was killed by a cop in a public park. The cop who shot him claimed Hamilton, a black man, grabbed at his baton; witnesses dispute who struck the first blow. Officer Christopher Manney was eventually fired, but Police Chief Edward Flynn did not publicly condemn the shooting as inappropriate. Instead, he worked with the Department of Justice to conduct a review of his own force after federal prosecutors declined to charge Manney.

That clearly wasn't good enough.

Sunday and early Monday saw more chaos, with one officer hospitalized after his squad car was pelted with a rock. The city was declared to be in a State of Emergency, and Governor Scott Walker activated the national guard (officials have yet to actually deploy them). So far, several police officers have been hurt, a teenage girl was struck with a bullet, and 17 people have been arrested. The weekend was also marked by apparently unrelated local gun violence—between Friday and Saturday, five people died in separate shootings.

Some residents say that if this kind of violent uproar is to be avoided in the future, the city will need to pay serious attention to entrenched problems and policies that festered for decades.

"This entire community has sat back and witnessed how Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has become the worst place to live for African Americans in the entire country," City Alderman Khalif Rainey told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Now this is a warning cry. Where do we go from here? Where do we go as a community from here?"

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Some spoilers for the latest episode ofThe Night Of ahead.

Sunday night's episode of The Night Of opened with the most metaphorical shot of the whole series so far: John Turturro's John Stone, the closest thing the show has to a hero, sifting through a litter box and taking out the little chunks of shit.

The scene did two things. First, it reminded me that cats are more trouble than they're worth. Second, it established what the episode would be about. The night that set the show in motion is by now weeks in the past. All that remains is for those events to be dissected and held up to the light. After roughly 10,000 years of long shots of jail inmates walking down hallways and hushed arguments between lawyers, the trial is finally happening.

The Night Of has drawn a lot of comparisons to Law & Order, probably because that august procedural is the way most Americans learn about the legal system. But it's instructive to look at the way the two shows differ. Most obviously, in the Law & Order universe, the truth of a case—which is usually that the third person the cops talk to actually committed the murder—is arrived at through the efforts of the detectives and prosecutors, with the defense team ignored or painted as villains standing in the way of justice. But of course once charges are brought, a prosecutor's job is to get that conviction, not continue to investigate any and all possible leads. So in The Night Of, the case has split in two. Detective Box (Bill Camp) and district attorney Helen Weiss (Jeannie Berlin) are searching for evidence, as are Stone and his de facto assistant Chandra (Amara Karan), but each team is going down very different paths.

Our legal system rests on the fiction that some combination of police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys can work their way toward an approximate version of the truth of an event. The Night Of, so far, has been largely about how difficult that truth is to find.

The big revelation Box uncovers—the shit in the litter box, I guess, if we're going to keep on with that metaphor—is that Naz (Riz Ahmed) was once expelled from his high school after throwing another kid down a flight of stairs. That bit of information is disconnected from the case, but in context with the fact that Naz takes Adderall for fun (which we learned last week) torpedoes the image of him as a perfect innocent. Of course, the legal system never declares innocences—it just decides between guilty and not guilty.

The defense team, obviously, is focused on something, anything, that could help their not-guilty case. But this isn't so simple. The most terrifying moment of the episode is when Chandra confronts the mortician who told Andrea, the murdered girl, not to smoke at the gas station hours before her death. It seems fantastically unlikely that he'd be the killer behind all of this, but he's a hell of a red herring, staring the young lawyer down as he explains that certain women have a "vibration" that leads them to treat men like balls of yarn, a speech made more unsettling by how carefully he's painting the nails of a corpse. "Women like that are out to destroy you, sometimes you got no choice but to strike first, you know what I'm saying?" he tells Chandra, who obviously does not know what he's saying. By the time he tells her to read her Bible, she's completely terrified, and still rattled when she comes back to Stone, who waves the whole thing away.

Our legal system rests on the fiction that some combination of police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys can work their way toward an approximate version of the truth of an event. The Night Of, so far, has been largely about how difficult that truth is to find. Physical evidence is always filtered through the human bias of experts; eyewitnesses are unreliable for reasons that may not have anything to do with the crime; and motives are simply nonsense.

When asked by Chandra about the time he pushed the kid down the stairs, Naz doesn't demonstrate remorse or even regret. "It was like pushing open a door," he says in the episode's most powerful moment. "You know what I felt after? Bad for my mom... Other than that, I felt nothing." We want our murderers to be wicked, we want narratives that paint them as such—that's the whole reason years-old schoolyard fights are dragged in front of juries at murder trials. But what if a life is really a bunch of events and decisions strung together without much in the way of cause and effect? What if Naz is angry and troubled and has a stone of hate secreted away in his heart, but is also totally blameless for Andrea's death?

Sorting through all that is difficult for a viewer with a god's-eye view of the proceedings; it's downright impossible for the characters caught up in the drama. A search for truth is a more complicated and more demanding quest than most people are prepared for. Chandra, for one, is clearly struggling with the demands of the case. She's stressed over her opening statement; she's terrified by the mortician; worst of all, maybe, is the fact that she believes in Naz's innocence. "That ain't important," replies the jailhouse prisoner-king Freddy (Michael K. Williams). "Only a new lawyer wouldn't know that."

The only one equipped for all this, it seems, is Stone, who finally gets relief for his eczema thanks to a Chinese doctor's mysterious powder. He moves through this episode like a shark in the background, zeroing in on Andrea's shady stepdad and throwing out advice to Chandra on matters of jury selection ("no sailors") and opening statements. Grubby, shady, solitary, consumed by an almost monkish passion for his often perverse work, Stone is exactly the sort of guy you want in your corner if you ever end up in Naz's shoes—and exactly the sort of guy you would never want to be.

"I broke up with my boyfriend," Chandra confides to Stone in a drunken conversation while they're discussing jury selection.

"Oh," Stone replies, brought up short but only for a microsecond. "Fuck that, who cares? This is important." And he might be an asshole, but he's not wrong—when the act of finding the right facts is a matter of life and death, who cares how you feel?

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Baquerizo poses with the English translation of 'A Safe Place with You', which was released in June by Pen Name Publishing. Photo courtesy César L. Baquerizo

In 2013, César L. Baquerizo's novel about the horrors of gay reparative therapy in his native Ecuador, Un Lugar Seguro Contigo ("a safe place with you"), was first published in Spanish. Otherwise known as "conversion therapy," gay reparative therapy is a slate of "psychological treatments" intended to convert patients from homosexual to heterosexual. They often employ emotionally scarring and clinically unproven techniques that have been banned in many countries around the world—but the practice remains legal in much of America and proliferates in countries like Ecuador, where 80 percent of citizens are Catholic.

Baquerizo's novel is set in the early 1990s, when homosexuality was still criminalized and hundreds of clinics operated in the country. It relates the journey of two young men from Guayaquil, Tomás and Sebastián, as they progress through one such clinic named "Grow and Live Normally." The horrors they experience—including electroshock therapy, physical aversion therapy, forced medication, and more—may have seemed so extreme to readers that they could have dismissed them out of hand as fiction, a shameful lesson from Ecuador's deep past. That wasn't easy to do, though, because in that year a lesbian named Zulema Constante was being held against her will in such a "dehomosexualisation clinic" at the behest of her homophobic parents, and her girlfriend was taking the unusual step of demanding her release via social media. The story made headlines around the world.

In theory, that should have been the one-two punch to shake the conservative nation out of its long-standing denial over such crimes. And, in fact, 2012 seemed like just such a breakout year, as the government vowed to shut down all such centers and President Rafael Correa even appointed a lesbian activist as health minister.

But, as of this June, the month Baquerizo's book made its English-language debut, Ecuadorian LGBTQ rights have hardly advanced since. "Whenever one of these places close down, they reopen," lesbian activist Diana Maldonado, director of La Voz LGBTI, an Ecuadorian gay rights group, told VICE at a cafe in Guayaquil last month. "They don't publicize that they're curing homosexuality. They say they're treating alcohol, drugs, whatever. But parents pay extra to get the 'full' package."

Indeed, even as legal rights for LGBT people expand across the region—same-sex marriage was legal in Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay before last June's Supreme Court gay marriage ruling, for instance—the nonprofit North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) says the pernicious "ex-gay" movement is as robust as ever across South and Latin America. "The belief that homosexuality is a sickness in need of a cure... remains widespread region-wide, providing a constant supply of mostly young LGBT people for the private practice of 'conversion therapies,'" NACLA's Annie Wilkinson wrote last year.

"It's supposed to be that these centers are illegal, but still they operate in hiding and with the family's approval," Baquerizo told VICE. "Ecuador lives a façade of lies. People from around the world say it is a secular and progressive country, which it absolutely is not. The reality is far from that."

Latin America's conversion therapy movement emerged from the ashes of its increasing disfavor in the United States, where it largely originated. In 1973, the same year the American Psychological Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness, gay conversion group Love in Action was founded, which morphed into Exodus. In 1994, it created two separate organizations, Exodus Latin America and, later, Exodus International. In the US, the group became ostracized and mocked as science debunked its practices and high-profile figures were exposed as closeted gay hypocrites. In the face of growing visibility and political power for LGBTQ Americans, Exodus shut down in 2012. By then, its final president, Alan Chambers, apologized to patients for "the pain and hurt many of you have experienced."

These days, the movement to ban such therapy sits near the top of US gay activists' to-do list, especially in the face of the GOP's inclusion of such therapy as a plank in the party's 2016 platform. Success has been slow but steady, beginning in 2012 with California and now reaching five states, DC, and Cincinnati. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a fiat barring insurance companies from covering it. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of such bans when challenged by right-wing religious groups, but a new federal lawsuit challenging Illinois's statute was filed last Thursday.

While the conversion therapy movement atrophied in the US, American evangelical leaders found fertile ground in pushing their discredited pray-the-gay-away creed abroad, and Exodus Global Alliance remains a formidable force across Latin America and Africa in particular. Exodus International's first office abroad, in fact, was established in 1998 in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito. Homosexuality in the country was only decriminalized in 1997.

"The thinking behind their presence elsewhere in the world, especially in developing, religious countries, was that these were places they could grow," David Maas, a co-author of a 2013 study, "The 'Ex-Gay' Movement in Latin America: Therapy and Ministry in the Exodus Network," told VICE.

Baquerizo, now 30, was never sent to an ex-gay clinic, though when he came out to his parents in his early 20s, his mother took him to a physician, who tried to persuade him to take testosterone to become more "manly." He refused, moved "to live far away from the influence of my family," and began writing his novel in 2011. He based it on newspaper accounts he says he read of clandestine operations where gay and questioning teens and young adults were subject to torture, including rape and electro-shock therapy. It's unclear how many conversion therapy clinics exist across Ecuador today, because they're fly-by-night operations, but Maas's study asserts there are hundreds.

After his book was published in Spanish, Baquerizo became one of the most prominent openly gay Ecuadorians, in part because his great-grandfather, Alfredo Baquerizo Moreno, served as the country's president in the early 20th century. His parents have not disowned him, but he has struggled to fit into his extended, religious family.

He has taken on substantial risk—there are no openly gay pro athletes, elected officials, singers, or actors in Ecuador. He has stepped into a vacuum, and LGBTQ activists now revere him.

"You know, it is not too common here to have a man like Cesar Baquerizo, who is from high-class society, to say, proudly and openly, 'I am gay,'" Silvia Buendia, an attorney who works with LGBTQ people, told VICE. "It is more usual that gay people come from the middle or lower class. It is very important."

Such becomes clear when, coincidentally, two of the nation's Spanish-language newspapers—El Universo and El Telégrafo—publish profiles of Baquerizo to report on the English edition of "A Safe Place with You" the same day I speak with Buendia and Maldonado. Baquerizo, who now lives in New York, was thrilled. He hopes to remind the country that despite LGBTQ gains there, its "illegal" gay conversion movement remains in full force. He believes an English translation can help shame Ecuador into doing more to close conversion centers.

"It's important for me, because I can let a large audience know about the reality of Ecuador and some parts of the world—about this evil experiment on humans," said Baquerizo "All I want to do is to make a good difference and be visible so that the LGBTQ community can stop hiding and be true to themselves."

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Still from 'The Sessions'

For many people, sexual dysfunction is one of those things that isn't even talked about, let alone dealt with. Sure, there are all those weirdly suggestive subway ads and television commercials aimed at dudes with erectile dysfunction—not to mention the over-the-top emails that flood our collective inboxes—but no real discussion about what goes on (or doesn't) between the sheets. Sexual surrogates, which gained a bit more recognition thanks to the 2012 film The Sessions, offer learning by doing; helping clients with hangups by offering the ultimate sexual healing.

Mark Shattuck is an IPSA Certified Surrogate Partner based in San Francisco. VICE spoke with him about why his services are more than just a helping handjob.

VICE: What does a surrogate do?

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There's a day in the not-too-distant future when incorrigible smokers, having blackened their lungs beyond function, will have access to a shiny new artificial pair; when cancer patients will mobilize microscopic nanobots in their bloodstreams to eradicate disease; when diabetes will be nothing more than a bad memory on account of an effective blood-sugar management system. People who are alive today will be taking advantage of such medical developments—and wrestling with the dystopian conundrums aggressive life-extension practices present. So says science writer Eve Herold in her new book, Beyond Human, which captures the current state of these various "converging technologies" in medicine via the scientists developing them and the patients testing out their early iterations.

"As exciting as these possibilities sound, they could be extremely dangerous if human beings don't change the more belligerent side of their nature," Herold writes, going on to describe internecine wars and a gap between rich and poor that extends deep into our physiology and cognition. Amidst her dark projections, though, are bright spots—about incredible feats underway in medicine and technology, and the inevitable human capacity to adjust and adapt. —Kate Lowenstein

Meet Victor, the future of humanity. He's 250 years old but looks and feels 30. Having suffered from heart disease in his 50s and 60s, he now has an artificial heart that gives him the strength and vigor to run marathons. His type 2 diabetes was cured a century ago by the implantation of an artificial pancreas. He lost an arm in an accident, but no one would know that he has an artificial one that obeys his every thought and is far stronger than the original. He wears a contact lens that streams information about his body and the environment to his eye and can access the internet anytime he wants through voice commands. If it weren't for the computer chips that replaced the worn-out cells of his retina, he would have become blind countless years ago. Victor isn't just healthy and fit, he's much smarter than his forebears now that his brain has been enhanced through neural implants that expanded his memory, allow him to download knowledge, and even help him make decisions.

Advances in wireless computing, microelectronics, drugs, cell and gene therapies, nanotechnology, and robotics have reached a state in which all these fields are coming together in a new synthesis of treatments and technologies. The rate of change in these fields has become not just incremental, but exponential, as one technology builds upon another, extreme miniaturization occurs, and the cost of manufacturing plummets. As this process takes place, human life could extend for hundreds of years. Of course, in order to make such a long life meaningful, natural aging will have to be dramatically reduced so that those years are healthy, vital, and independent.

Most of the groundbreaking technologies it will take to get to this point are either in human clinical trials, in animal trials where they have already provided proof of principle, or already exist and simply await commercialization. Already in use or in development is an array of artificial organs, including hearts, kidneys, pancreases, lungs, retinas, and parts of the brain. Those of us living today stand a good chance of someday being the beneficiaries of such advances. These human "components" are already saving and extending lives, but once nanotechnology, or the manufacture of tiny machines at the atomic level, becomes available, we will have entered an entirely new paradigm. At that point, microscopic nanoparts will be able to enter our bodies' cells and repair just about any damage brought about by aging, disease, and genetic mutations.

The last few years have seen wireless computing technology being integrated into a huge array of products, including our bodies, our homes, our gadgets, and our clothes. The broad distribution of computing will make our lives easier and more convenient than ever. Yet with this technology comes a profusion of intimate information about our bodies and brains that is likely to be stored on the internet. Who "owns" that data, and who will have access to it? Can this data be protected from insurance companies, employers, and the like? And what happens when we no longer wish to be monitored? Will our doctors be willing to turn off artificial organs, for example, when we are ready to embrace the end of life, or will they consider such actions euthanasia?

There's also the possibility of a backlash against technologies that merge biology with technology, while many people continue to place a higher value on that which is "natural." The key issue is that many new technologies don't just cure disease—they go far beyond that and may end up enhancing almost every human ability. As these technologies advance beyond even current imagination, the changes to our lives, and the necessity to use them only for good, will require our best minds to literally rethink almost everything we currently know about being human.

From Beyond Human by Eve Herold. Copyright © 2016 by the author and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press, LLC.

The (not so) happy graduate, with her parents. All photos Jay Stephens.

Like everyone who cons themselves into attending a liberal arts college, I was captivated by the idea of changing the world by immersing myself in a diverse pool of academic thought, theory, and action. Boy, was I wrong! After my four-year stint at university, I was transformed from a plucky, young, free-thinking free spirit into a cranky, old, get-off-my-lawn conservative.

It all started with a quiet disdain for political correctness, a seed that grew—through the miracle of college—into a giant beanstalk. I quickly learned that, at liberal arts school, the general aim of each class was to identify something problematic, discuss it, and then refuse to do anything about it. We were expected to offer solutions, of course, but the only acceptable answers were noncommittal and intersectional. Any attempt to get to the actual root of a problem was generally seen as problematic too, and a politically-correct policing was instituted to hinder any real solutions of important issues. Most group discussions devolved into us asking one another how to ask questions about something problematic without being problematic.