Vanguard Award recipient Nate Parker speaks onstage at the Sundance Institute on August 11, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/WireImage)

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On August 20, 1999, 19-year-old Nate Parker was supposed to meet a fellow Penn State student for a date at a restaurant inside a local Day's Inn. When the woman arrived at 10 PM, though, Parker was nowhere to be found. To kill some time, she drank several Sex on the Beach cocktails purchased by a both a stranger and a friend, as the Daily Beast reported.

When Parker eventually materialized around midnight, his date was already sloshed.

What happened after that may have ultimately derailed the woman's life and helped lead to her suicide 13 years later. According to court records, Parker convinced her to come back to his apartment, where he and another man took turns having sex with her. The woman pressed rape charges soon after, claiming she was slipping in and out of consciousness and unable to consent. Parker was ultimately acquitted of rape, and his roommate and fellow wrestler, Jean Celestine, eventually had his own conviction overturned.

But the story has reemerged in the past week because the accused co-wrote the early Oscar favorite The Birth of a Nation—and we now know the victim committed suicide with sleeping pills in 2012 at age 30.

"She feared for her life," her brother told Variety, citing the victim's allegation that Parker and Celestine harassed her in the weeks after the incident. "She became detached from reality."

The case still matters because The Birth of a Nation has been heralded as a triumph for black artists and black stories in a medium largely controlled by and in service to white people. Some critics are now grappling with whether they can separate the artist from the art, especially when the film, which follows Nat Turner and his 1831 slave rebellion, uses a gang rape as one of its central plot points. The allegations have also resurfaced amid a national conversation about rape culture on college campuses, and at a time when intense scrutiny is being applied to the way sexual assault allegations against both celebrities and student athletes are handled.

It's important to keep in mind that both men were ultimately deemed not guilty, and that the United States has a long and well-documented history of wrongfully accusing black men of raping white women. Parsing all of this is particularly difficult for black women, who as one writer for the Atlantic put it, feel like they "have to choose between their blackness or their womanhood when they're partaking in these conversations."

Often in college sexual assault cases, the trial boils down to the opposing testimony of two very drunk people. But Parker's case was different: A third person who was there that night, Tamerlane Kangas, testified that the sex may not have been consensual, as the defendants claimed. Instead, Kangas painted a harrowing picture of an unconscious victim who wasn't moving at all and said the two men invited him, too, to have intercourse with her—but that he didn't feel it was "right."

"The defense will try to characterize every case as a he-said versus she-said case, but usually there's evidence to corroborate," says John Wilkinson, an attorney at the legal group AEquitas, which helps prosecutors build sexual assault cases. "That's pretty powerful corroboration."

The former prosecutor told me that if he were working the case, the fact that Parker told the woman she was too drunk to go back to her apartment, as court records suggest, would have signaled to him that there may have been a plan in place to isolate his victim and build her trust.

Unlike many cases involving athletes at major universities, investigators did seem to do their due diligence, however. For instance, they apparently had the woman call Parker under the guise of a pregnancy scare to try to collect more information and a possible admission of guilt––a policing tactic that requires a court order in Pennsylvania.

But Wilkinson believes the defense had a powerful weapon in the fact that Parker and the woman both said they had consensual oral sex the night before the alleged rape. Pennsylvania's rape shield law prevents the admission of an alleged victim's sexual past as evidence. There is an exception, however, for cases where there was a previous relationship between the accused and the victim.

"That is always gonna be a tough issue for jurors," Wilkinson says. "I know sexual assault happens in relationships, and it happens in married couples, but that is tough for jurors to understand. I can't say that today anything would turn out differently."

What's more difficult to know is whether Parker's career would have advanced the way it has if the allegations emerged in the modern era of internet feminism, when high-profile rape cases at major athletic programs are part of the national dialogue.

Thomas Doherty, a cultural historian at Brandeis, says the contrast between the current reexamination of the allegations against Parker and the way the public reacted to director Roman Polanksi winning an Oscar in 2003 after being charged with drugging and sodomizing an underage girl decades earlier is telling.

"He won an Oscar and, in some quarters, was considered a victim of overzealous US prosecution" Doherty told me. "My sense is that Parker would be subject to less opprobrium if he had been acquitted of manslaughter."

Meanwhile, Hannah Brancato, the co-founder of FORCE, an artistic collaborative focused on upsetting rape culture, maintains that despite the progress being made, a handful college athletes gaining some notoriety over rape allegations doesn't amount to much. She says the reason Stanford rapist Brock Turner, for instance—who unlike Parker was convicted—got so much attention is because his victim wrote a letter that went viral. Most survivors don't get that sort of audience.

"We've come a long way in the last few years, but unfortunately the number of cases that we hear about in the media are a very select few of the horrifying number that happen every day," she told me.

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Leave the toys at home, people. Photo via Flickr user Dennis van Zuijlekom

In light of two recent incidents in which Americans attempted to sneak their guns into Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency is reminding our neighbours to the south that we are a different country and as such we have different gun laws.

In a press release dated Aug. 22, the CBSA said "Canadian laws are different than US ones."

"It is strongly recommended that you not carry your firearm when travelling to Canada and/or transiting through Canada to reach another US destination," the statement says. But, if you should decide to bring your gun across the border, don't lie about it.

The seemingly straightforward advice was apparently lost on a couple of Texans who tried to make it across the crossing at St. Stephen, New Brunswick, while packing heat.

According to the Canadian Press, Than Jeffrey Do showed up at the border August 13 in a pickup truck towing an RV. He said he didn't have guns on him, but in fact, when border officials searched the trailer, they discovered a Bersa Thunder .380 handgun; a Smith and Wesson .38 Special; a Rossi .357 Magnum; a 12-gauge shotgun; loose ammo; and pepper spray.

Canada has strict rules about handguns—if they have a barrel length of less than 4.25 inches, as was likely the case with at least two of the aforementioned guns, they are prohibited.

The very next day, another retiree from near Dallas, Lloyd Norman Chaffin, arrived at the same border in his motorhome. He and his wife claimed they didn't have any weapons, but later fessed up to storing a .40 Glock handgun in the safe of their vehicle.

Both Do and Chaffin were kicked out of Canada and fined, and their guns were destroyed.

The CBSA warning says, "Canadian firearm laws are clear - failure to declare any firearm may lead to seizure action, penalty, prosecution in a court of law; and may make you inadmissible to Canada. Your vehicle may also be seized and you will have to pay a penalty to get it back."

In the first half of 2016, the CBSA reportedly seized 413 guns at the border.

Speaking to the Toronto Star, Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said the CBSA's view on bringing guns across the border is a "shame."

Perhaps the bigger shame is not bothering to read up on another country's firearms laws before paying them a visit while armed to the teeth.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

All photos courtesy of Adam Landry

Adam Landry has worked the rails for over a decade, and logged enough miles to circle the earth 10 times. Currently a locomotive engineer with VIA Rail Canada, the 33-year-old has been a brakeman, conductor and locomotive engineer on both freight and passenger trains across Canada. VICE found out what it was like to be in charge of 20,000 tonnes of freight in a speeding locomotive, and work a job that's almost as old as the country itself.

VICE: Why did you want to work on trains?
Adam Landry: I liked the idea of going on a trip. It was a family thing—my grandfather worked on them. I knew the money was good too.

What does a conductor do?
Technically he's in charge of the train. He will be on the ground putting cars together, throwing switches, hanging off the side of a boxcar and basically giving directions—he's basically guiding . Because as an engineer, you can't see—you've got 50 cars behind you and you're going around curves.

Like the guy who helps you park your car?

What was your most memorable trip?
I was working with this one guy who shall remain nameless. We were the first train out of Ottawa in the morning. You're on duty at 4:30 so you're up at 3 in the morning. Your body is not ready for anything. We got the train ready, the train leaves at 5:30. We got going and I realized I had to poop.

On most locomotives, the toilet is in the nose of the engine. But you're not going to do it there—you just don't want to do that to your mate. I wouldn't be surprised if most railroaders develop some sort of bowel condition later in life, just from trying to hold it in. You're there with someone else in tight quarters, and the scent will linger for the rest of the trip. You don't shit in your own nest, right?

Anyways, we pull into Brockville a little early, with time to spare. I grab my gloves and radio to get off the engine, and say to the other engineer: "Look, I'm going in to take a shit." I went into the station. I do my business. Start hearing a locomotive bell. Then a whistle. I figure I guess there's a freight train pulling in. I don't hear the engine outside anymore. I think no fuckin' way—did he just fuckin' leave? I go outside, the train is gone.

I look down the track, I can't even see it in the distance. I get on the radio and say "41 where are you?" Then he finally says: "I'm just around the corner." I say, "you better stop because you left me at the station." I hear nothing then; "OK. What do you want me to do?" and I say "just stop." It was January. It was cold. I was so mad. I was walking so close to the train so the passengers couldn't see me out their windows. I keep walking and as soon as I get to the train the onboard staff are like "what's going on?" Well, he left me at the fuckin' station.

I just fuckin' yelled at him: "How the fuck did you not know I got off the engine?" The rest of the trip, not a word was said except anything that pertained to railway matters. If there's an emergency and we can't stop the train, we say to the onboard staff "code blue." So my new nickname is '"code brown."

What's the worst part of the job?
Getting up at two in the morning!

Best part?
The freedom. I mean, we're being watched. We have all this telemetry and data that gets sent so they know what we're doing. But it's not like in an office where you have someone bugging you about sales figures and checking to see if you're on Facebook. There's a sense of pride I take in the job. My "office window" view always changes. Sometimes I'll just sit back and think, fuck, it's cool that I get to drive this thing.

Follow Tiffy Thompson on Twitter.

This post originally appeared on the Trace.

Polls show that an overwhelming majority of African Americans see gun violence as a raging crisis—more urgent than mass incarceration or abusive policing—and tougher gun laws as the solution. But the policy reforms that might reduce shootings have been excruciatingly slow to arrive, which is perhaps why more than half of blacks, according to the same surveys, believe that owning personal firearms will make them safer.

Maj Toure, a 29-year-old black man, agrees that the United States has a gun violence problem—but he has found his calling among those who reject stricter regulation and embrace guns themselves as the answer. He is a lifelong resident of Philadelphia, where, according to a recent analysis of city police data, a person is shot every six hours, on average. Growing up, Toure witnessed gun death up close. As an adult, he joined the Republican Party and the NRA.

Over time, Toure realized that the residents of his North Philly neighborhood would inevitably come into contact with firearms, often at a young age. He reasoned that if they learned the proper way to handle the weapons, and understood and obeyed the rules that govern them, Philadelphia might see a reduction in violence.

In August 2015, Toure sought to test his theory, launching a group called Black Guns Matter, which, despite the name's similarity, is not affiliated with Black Lives Matter. In an attempt to reach as many people as possible, he teaches free firearms training classes at the Philadelphia Firearms Academy. Next month, he will take his program on the road, holding seminars in 13 cities, including Baltimore, New Orleans, and Oakland.

Here's Maj Toure in his own words, as told to Mike Spies of the Trace.

I've seen someone get shot, OK? It's an unfortunate situation. Seeing people get shot is not glamorous or exciting. TV makes it like a guy flies through a window. No, it's not like that. I've seen people's heads open up. Frankly, I wouldn't explain to someone what it feels like to see someone get shot. I don't want to traumatize them. They don't need that gruesome experience inside of them. I want to offer them training, so they don't ever have to get there.

Black Guns Matter is about training. We've been going for a year, but because of incidents with law enforcement over the last six months, it's picked up a lot of steam. We're getting much more attention. The ratcheting up is both good and bad. It's bad because it's due to murders. It's good because it means more information is getting into the hood.

Our goal is to educate all hoods across America about the Second Amendment rights they have. A lot of times in my community, firearms are available before people have the information to even handle them properly—you can run across a gun at 15. What we want to do is, if anyone runs across a gun at a young age, we want them to know what to do and not to do. It's about making sure people from my demographic aren't doing the wrong thing.

If you're ignorant about firearms but are also exposed to them at a young age, it will lead to stupid decisions. When I was growing up in Philly, I saw a clear difference between those who had respect for the tool and those who didn't. I was lucky and had uncles in the military; I saw their attachment to their rifles was different. They respected the tool; they knew how to fieldstrip and care for it. The military mindset is very regimented and very organized. Some of my homies obviously didn't have that structure.

That's why I got more and more involved in the Second Amendment fight: I saw too many friends going to jail for the same thing—they were missing the information; they didn't know the rules. It's the not knowing that causes them to not take the extra step. Sometimes they'll be like, "I already have the gun. I bought it. Forget the paperwork." But not going through the right procedures to carry that gun can get you five years in jail. Five years based on ignorance. And a lot of guys, they just don't know you need a license to carry a concealed gun. But they're not criminals. They work at a job, and they take care of their family. They bought that gun legally.

Look, man. Black Guns Matter isn't just for black people—it's for anyone who has been disenfranchised, oppressed, or slandered. We're the ones on the streets, and we're going to use the Second Amendment to defend ourselves against any tyrant. If police don't want to protect us, we'll protect ourselves. We'll protect ourselves from the scumbags in our community. I don't call the police, ever.

But violence can be easily avoided. Most of the time, conflict can be handled way before firearms are involved—I'm talking about conflict resolution. I mean, I've never had to shoot anyone. Having a firearm doesn't mean you have the right to commit an act of violence. But unfortunately, if it comes to that—and it very rarely does—you need to be trained to handle the situation.

Like when you have a .22-caliber handgun—a small firearm—even that, the first time you fire it, can be overwhelming. It gives you a certain level of respect for the tool. When you see what a .45 can do to a person's face, or a watermelon, you have a whole new respect. But I don't think people should go there—you only go there when someone gets violent, and you have no choice but to defend yourself.

The rules guiding the use of deadly force are clear: Don't point a gun at someone unless you fear for your life. But harassment? Harassment doesn't mean you take someone's life. If someone says, "Maj, I don't like your hair," I can walk away from that. Deadly force is only used in spaces where you have no other option. That's why it's key to understand conflict resolution. A lot of gun rights organizations are leaving that out: You only shoot when you have no other option. What George Zimmerman did, for example, was not acceptable.

And that's why, if you're going to exercise your Second Amendment rights, you need training. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't have a gun—I'm saying, if you're going to carry a gun, you need to learn how to do it properly and legally.

A version of this article was originally published by the Trace, a nonprofit news organization covering guns in America. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Trace on Facebook or Twitter.

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Richard Henry Bain photo via Facebook

After opening fire on a Montreal nightclub on election night in 2012—a move his own letters called an attempt to assassinate Quebec's new separatists leader—Richard Henry Bain has been found guilty of one count of second-degree murder, and three counts of attempted murder.

Quebec Premier-designate Pauline Marois was giving her election night victory speech at Montreal's Metropolis nightclub when Bain walked in the club's back entrance in a bathrobe and ski mask, carrying a semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm pistol. News footage at the time showed Marois was quickly whisked off the stage by security.

Bain shot and killed Denis Blanchette and wounded fellow stagehand David Courage before his gun jammed. Then he tried to set the backstage area on fire, using gasoline and a flare. A video submitted as evidence shows Bain yelling, "The English are waking up!" as two police officers carried him off to a cruiser.

During the trial, Bain's defence argued he was not criminally responsible for the nightclub shooting because of an undiagnosed mental illness. Prosecutors argued he knew what he was doing, and his motivations were political, but did not accuse Bain of terrorism—a fact many observers have questioned.

Herman Déparice-Okomba, the director of the Centre for Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence in Montreal, told the Montreal Gazette a political agenda and violence fits the Canadian definition of terrorism, but mental illness and drug use can also be a factor.

Psychiatrists that assessed Bain said he likely suffered from untreated bipolar disorder. In letters to the psychiatrist, Bain wrote he wished he killed more separatists.

"If my rifle had not jammed I would have killed other people," he wrote in letters presented as evidence. "If inside, if Madame Marois could be seen, I would have killed her." Before the trial, Bain posted a recording on Facebook claiming he acted for separatist Montreal (he wanted the city to separate from the province), that he aimed to stop Marois' speech, but did not have control over his actions.

"What is most important for me is that I have complete faith and trust in Jesus Christ my lord and saviour. So please do not be concerned about the government's case against me. One day Jesus Christ will set me free by his jury," he said.

After nearly two weeks of deliberation, a jury rejected the defence's argument, but settled short of a first-degree murder conviction. Second-degree murder carries a 10-year minimum and 25-year maximum sentence.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

A mosque in Ottawa. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Another day, another sketchy report alleging Canada's mosques are a hotbed for extremism.

On Tuesday, the Canadian Press published a story reporting that "many mosques and Islamic schools in Canada are placing young people at risk by espousing—or at least not condemning—extremist teachings."

The story was published in the National Post with the headline: "Extremist literature common in many mosques and Islamic school libraries in Canada, study says."

That study—which was purchased by VICE Canada for the outlandish price of $7—claims that "direct evidence shows that extremist ideology and radicalization are being advanced in Canada in mosques and Islamic associations."

The story says the co-authors "base their findings on research conducted quietly in mosque libraries and Islamic schools."

The report, called "The Lovers of Death?" says it "takes the reader inside the mosques and other forums to see the messages being put forward which are driving the youth into fighting for ISIS, dying as martyrs in Algeria or blowing themselves up as suicide bombers in Iraq or working against Canadian democracy and values."

The co-authors' strategy was to creep into mosques and take photos of bookshelves. The report doesn't include any interviews with Muslims, young or otherwise.

Read More: We Spoke to a Former Jihadist About How Young People Are Radicalized

However, that didn't stop them from concluding that: "Many of those present during the visits to the libraries seemed sullen and sometimes angry. The traditional greetings of friendship were absent. This is consistent with the increasing general angriness of Islamist/extremist views being advanced in some local mosques."

Apart from spotting grumpy congregants, the report's findings about mosques hinges on the claim that they contain little else but extremist literature. To prove it, the authors took several photos of bookcases.

Other parts of the study do not fare any better.

The report calls respected universities for Islamic scholarship, including al-Azhar in Egypt, "extremist organizations."

The report also cites "Sahih al-Bukhari" as an example of a scholar that can lead readers to extremism. Sahih al-Bukhari is actually a collection of hadiths, the actions and saying of Prophet Muhammad, not a scholar. It's author, Muhammad al-Bukhari, is one of the most widely respected Islamic scholars of all time.

Meanwhile, the report itself notes that more controversial works found on shelves are "to be expected, much as many libraries in the West have copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf."

Nevertheless, the report makes bold assertions about the potential effects of these works.

"The youth and others who see these books are left with the impression that this is what Islam is really all about–a politicized faith which is Islamist, Salafist, Jihadist and Takfirist."

The report claims mainstream Muslim organizations, such as the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the Muslim Association of Canada, are "front groups who work on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaahe-Islami."

An NCCM statement about the report, released today, says the report's labelling is inaccurate, and that it is "yet another anecdotal attempt to vilify Canadian Muslims and their institutions."

The report also targets schools, both religious and public, claiming that Toronto District School Board is "re-enforcing the inferiority of women." The only evidence offered for this however is two unattributed photos of Muslim children praying, purportedly at schools in Toronto.

The report, co-authored by Saied Shoaaib and Thomas Quiggin, is self-published by "Second Star Publishing," meaning it has gone through no peer-review.

The report says Shoaaib, originally from Egypt, worked for various news websites, and published a couple books on the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as one titled, "How to be a Successful Journalist and to profit from the Electronic Media."

Quiggin, meanwhile, bills himself as a "subject matter expert on terrorism, recognized as such in both Ontario Superior (criminal) Court and the Federal Court of Canada." As proof, he cites the fact that he testified at the parliamentary committee hearing on Bill C-51. Other noted terror "experts," such as the Toronto Sun's Tarek Fatah, also testified at these hearings.

Stephanie Carvin, an assistant professor of International Relations at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and a former national security analyst, called the co-authors "2 guys in a basement reading Breitbart."

The NCCM statement claims Quiggin "has a record of promoting discredited, conspiratorial ideas about Canadian Muslims and their institutions."

The statement adds that "such writing only fans the flames of ignorance at a time when vandalism of mosques and hate incidents against Canadian Muslims are increasing."

I would call the cops too. Photo via Flickr user Robert Taylor

A teenage girl from Mississauga has been reprimanded for calling the cops because her parents "forced her to go on vacation with them."

Specifically, the teen's parents had taken her to Trent Hills, according to Ontario Provincial Police, a town in Northumberland County whose slogan is literally "An Un4gettable Experience." (Maybe that's what turned her off?)

When police checked on the family, they found there was "no real emergency."

"This appeared to be a case of a teenager being a teenager... Although she perceived this as a real issue, it was not an appropriate use of 911," OPP Const. Stephen Bates told the Toronto Star.

While I understand the officer's position, I can't help but sympathize with the teen in this situation. When I was a kid, going on vacation with my family was hell.

Read more: How to Travel with Your Parents and Not Want to Kill Them in Their Sleep

One time, I cried when my parents—who lowkey hated each other—forced me to go camping with them. It sounds like I'm being dramatic, but I was right! We basically spent our time there with my parents bickering and my dad keeping everyone awake because we all shared a tiny hotel room and he was snoring the whole time.

Being brown, a lot of my family trips consisted of going to someplace where our extended relatives lived and just sitting in various family members' homes, eating curry, and pretending that I remembered my aunt from San Francisco even though the last time I saw her I was a goddamn baby. Often, we didn't even venture into the actual city. Like, I tell people I spent lots of my summers in "Seattle" but when I got older, I realized I was actually in Auburn and the only things I ever saw were outlet malls and Bollywood movies.

What's even worse though, is when your folks force you to do some crap out of a guidebook that you just have zero interest in. Like no, I don't want to go see this botanical garden or museum full of miniature soldiers, I want to go on the internet. And they always seem to start the day at 6 AM, so as to "make the most our time here." Inevitably, by 1 PM, we're out of things to do, but your parents are at least able to get drunk to entertain themselves.

One of my guy friends pointed out that during puberty, vacationing with your parents in particularly challenging.

"We'd go to my grandparents house and it was close quarters, like watching the Olympic gymnasts on TV and reading Sports Illustrated with the women's swim team. All I wanted to do was rub one out."

Obviously when you're a kid vacationing with your parents, they're super anal about curfew—even more so than when you're at home, because they have dick all to do except worry about you. But even as you get older, it doesn't really go away. I visited Australia a couple years ago—in my mid 20s—and my aunt was legit pissed off that I wanted to go out clubbing. So much so, that en route to the subway station, she told me, "You know a girl was murdered here last year?" She then went on to detail a horrible attack on a young woman who'd been coming home from the bar late at night.

Going on vacation with your parents as an adult isn't a lot better. They nag you about why you don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend, why you're still working as a journalist, etc. But the one silver lining is that they pay for things. And now that you're old enough to actually know how much things cost, because you're broke and underemployed, that is a pretty decent bonus.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo by David Stanley

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Manmade global warming could permanently flood the streets of New York City, it might be linked to an increase in worldwide conflict, it may cause people around the world to starve and die, and—maybe worst of all—it looks like it's already killing polar bears. But as if that wasn't enough, if you're a millennial, a new report says it's also about to hit you right in the wallet.

"The millennial generation will lose approximately $8.8 trillion in lifetime income if we fail to act on climate change," according to a new report from NextGen Climate, titled "The Price Tag of Being Young." NextGen's report is based on a UC Berkeley projection from October 2015, which said that the average person's income in the year 2100 will be 23 percent lower than it would be in a world without global warming. In the US alone, the report says, there'll be 5 percent relative loss in income by 2050, followed by a drastic spike to a total of 36 percent by 2100.

The picture of a future economy painted by the report is quite general by design, NextGen spokesperson Suzanne Henkels told VICE. "It only looks at macroeconomic changes—that is, changes in GDP—in scenarios with and without climate change." In other words, rather than projecting economic output by sector, or taking into account corporate profits and losses, it charts two lines on two drastically different graphs: GDP assuming there's no global warming, versus GDP assuming we do nothing to fix global warming and temperatures skyrocket.

"This report makes clear that millennials literally can't afford to wait to address climate change," said Henkels. She noted that millennials overwhelmingly support climate action and said her organization hopes to "make sure millennials show up on November 8 to elect climate champions up and down the ballot."

NextGen Climate was founded by California hedge fund billionaire and environmentalist Tom Steyer, who has fashioned himself into a Democrat version of the Koch Brothers.

Image courtesy of NexGen Climate

NextGen Climate contrasts the loss from global warming with the other economic plagues faced by the class of 2015. The lingering effects of the great recession stand to cost the young $112,000 per person over a lifetime, and student debt will be another huge hit, at $113,000 per person. Still, those both pale in comparison to the lifetime cost of climate change, which the report tallies at $187,000 per person—40 percent more than the cost of student debt.

Lifetime wealth may seem like an odd concern for a generation increasingly convinced its going to spend its life poor, but Henkels encourages a certain brand of optimism (despite the obviously pessimistic takeaway of the report). "Right now, might be thinking, How can I lose $187,000 in savings because of climate change when it doesn't seem like I'll ever have $187,000 in savings to lose? But the average worker—and particularly the average college grad—does indeed end up with savings, assets, and a house eventually," she said.

So young people will feel the hit in their pocketbook, Henkels argues. She says the pain will really set in "as climate change begins to accelerate at millennials' peak earning years: their 50s."

Switching to 100 percent clean energy is not exactly a pipe dream, and would simply involve a vast global engineering project focused on actually implementing existing technologies—imperfect as they are, at least according to our colleagues at Motherboard." But that effort isn't just one big annoying ecological chore that we all have to deal with, according to Henkels. "Transitioning to a clean energy economy is one of America's biggest economic opportunities," she said.

And the cost of not doing it isn't just the "majesty of nature" and "biodiversity" and whatnot. According to Henkels, it could be your livelihood.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Image courtesy of Affinix Software

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Infinity, a Game Boy Color game inspired by classic Japanese RPGs like Dragon Warrior, was supposed to be released in 2001. The game was nearly done, with the developers estimating it was roughly 90 percent complete, when suddenly, the game's publisher, Crave Entertainment, decided to drop support for the project. Infinity would sit unfinished for another 15 years before finally being released this month.

It was much harder to release a game in 2001, especially on a Nintendo platform. Not only were cartridges expensive to produce, they took months to manufacture. Without a publisher, you simply weren't going to release a game on Game Boy Color. Steam didn't exist back then (it would actually launch just two years later), and the legality of emulators was hardly settled.

So when Infinity's publisher vanished, despite being almost finished, the game was dead.

"Quality design and artistic talent gave way to statistical analysis," reads a statement on the official Infinity website from 2001, a not-so-subtle jab at Crave's decision to can the game.

"My feeling is that they were never really that into the game, and they were stringing us along in order to try to hire us," said designer Justin Karneges. "There were several times when they tried to get us to abandon Infinity and join different game projects of theirs."

A Celtic fan waving a Palestinian flag, this time back in 2009 before a Europa League match at Celtic Park (Picture by: Andrew Milligan / PA Archive)

During the summer of 2006, a small group of fans sitting in the pubs of Glasgow decided something needed to change at Celtic Park, the home ground of Celtic Football Club. A stadium revamp had left the atmosphere at matches feeling flat and apathetic, according to the group. What was needed was a fresh injection of colour, noise and politics – an ultras group modelled on the hardcore fans they had witnessed on away days in Europe.

A decade on from those first pub sessions, the group – which called itself the Green Brigade and describes its politics as "anti-fascist, anti-racist and anti-sectarian" – rarely seems to stay out of the news. On Wednesday night last week, during a UEFA Champions League qualifier match against the Israeli team Hapoel Beer Sheva, dozens of Green Brigade members waved Palestinian flags, ignoring a UEFA ban on using banners of a "political, ideological, religious, offensive or provocative nature".

Anticipating a penalty from UEFA, the group then set up a campaign to match the inevitable fine and raise money for two Palestinian charities. The target was £15,000, but so far over £135,000 has been donated. "This act of solidarity has earned Celtic respect and acclaim throughout the world," the group said in an online statement. "In response to this petty and politically partisan act by European football's governing body we are determined to make a positive contribution to the game."

The amount of money and media attention the campaign has received is a sign of just how far the Green Brigade have come in a relatively short space of time. Back in 2006, the group had no more than a dozen members and limited ambitions. "Our main aim in that first season was to bring a more European flavour to the match day experience, but we couldn't let our ambitions run away," one of the founding members said in a fan forum interview. "We just wanted to get ourselves heard, and hopefully the crowd would join in."

Based in Section 111 of Celtic Park, the group quickly became famous for eye-catching Tifos, a taste for pyrotechnics and vocal left-wing, republican politics. While some disliked their views, numbers steadily rose. Given the strong, left-wing history of Celtic football club – it was founded with the aim of alleviating poverty for Irish immigrants – this was perhaps unsurprising.

"Celtic has a background of standing up to oppressors," says Jeanette Findlay, a member of the Celtic Trust, which has worked closely with the Green Brigade over a number of years. "The vast majority of people came over from Ireland at the time of the famine and they weren't readily accepted here. Celtic was founded to serve those people who were really suffering at that time."

The Green Brigade may have been one of the first attempts by Celtic fans to properly organise within the ground, but according to William McDougall, a politics lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, the club was involved in various political struggles and controversies before 2006. "They saw themselves as representing a community that had second-class economic status," he says. "Fans considered themselves Scottish but were proud of their Irish roots, so it was always going to be difficult for the club to avoid some of the controversies that came up."

Chief among those controversies was the 1952 flag affair, when then Chairman Bob Kelly fought against the Scottish FA's demand that Celtic stop flying the national flag of Ireland, and the decision in 1968 to boycott matches against teams from communist countries in Eastern Europe after the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia

Today, Palestine solidarity is one of the Green Brigade's primary political causes. In 2012, on the last day of the season, members organised a day of solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, raising a banner with the slogan "Dignity is More Precious Than Food". In 2014, during the war in Gaza, the club were fined £16,000 by UEFA after Green Brigade members flew Palestine flags during a game against Icelandic side KR Reykjavik.

Into sport, are you? That's good – we've got a whole website dedicated to it.

There are two reasons for the specific interest in Palestine, according to Findlay. On the one hand it's about supporting a popular left-wing cause – "our stance in general is to support progressive causes, and Palestine is probably one of the longest running" – while on the other it's about a conflict which she says chimes with Ireland's own experience of oppression: "We see them as a dispossessed people, a people who have been shoved off their land, who are locked up, subject to laws that none of the rest of us would like to live under, a complete unjust system."

Palestine isn't the Green Brigade's only area of political interest, though. The group has previously protested against 6PM kick-offs by throwing balls onto the pitch, and in 2010 they protested against poppies being used on the club's strip, holding banners that read "Your deeds would shame all the devils in Hell. Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan. No Blood Stained Poppies on Our Hoops."

Unsurprisingly, this affinity for radical politics and pyrotechnics has caused constant problems with the authorities. In 2012, after a game between Celtic and Rangers descended into chaos, the Scottish government introduced a new piece of legislation called the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act. The bill was designed to stop sectarian behaviour in football, but Green Brigade members said it was used as an excuse to crack down on them.

A year later, after a banner of Provisional IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was unfurled in a game against AC Milan and damage was caused at an away game at Motherwell, the club itself decided to crack down on the group; 128 members were suspended, and a further 250 relocated away from their section at Celtic Park. "The club is a PLC, just like most football clubs in the UK," McDougall explains. "They want to base themselves on a model like Manchester United, with the idea of a family-friendly atmosphere. They don't want politics to be brought into the stadium."

It was, the group says in an online history, their "most testing period faced to date", but after a lengthy exodus they were eventually allowed back into the stadium at the start of the 2014/15 season. As last Wednesday's protest shows, their time away hasn't impacted their ability to court controversy. According to McDougall, if anything their influence on British football fans appears to be growing: "It's part of a broader Europeanisation of football culture," he says. "A reaction against the commercialism of the sport. Certainly at Celtic, for a number of the younger fans, the Green Brigade is the part of the stadium where they want to be."

@PKleinfeld

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"There are five excellent reasons to buy this book," Dwight Garner wrote in his New York Times review of The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (Scribner, 2016), a new collection of essays edited by National Book Award–winning author Jesmyn Ward. "The essays by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Carol Anderson, Kevin Young, Garnette Cadogan, and Ms. Ward. Each is so alive with purpose, conviction, and intellect that, upon finishing their contributions, you feel you must put this volume down and go walk around for a while."

Garner's review appeared online the same day I met Cadogan, a traditional flâneur whose essay "Black and Blue" concerns the fraught prospect of walking while black. Cadogan, a tall, slight man with an undulating Jamaican accent and red-rimmed reading glasses, delivered to Ward's project an essay that successfully catalyzes an otherwise banal act—walking—into yet another arena where a black person must consider his body and its safety, its agency. Cadogan, in "Black and Blue," literally walks in search of a safe space—Cadogan discovered his love for walking at age ten, in 1980s Kingston, Jamaica, fleeing a violent stepfather—and finds wonder, bewilderment, and confrontation, whether strolling through New Orleans pre-Katrina or traversing New York's boroughs.

Cadogan is currently a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. We spoke last week at the Catapult office in Manhattan about walking into one's best thoughts, James Baldwin's theory of love, and what it's like to be a black body moving through frequently threatening space.

VICE: What has been the overall impression you've gotten from readers of "Black and Blue," either before or since it has appeared in The Fire This Time?
Garnette Cadogan: It's been surprising the range of readers who've responded and the ways in which they have responded, readers who weren't black, taken aback by how much this mundane act was so full of complications. They never imagined the dividing line between the way they move in public space, versus the way someone of dark complexion would move through public space. What is also encouraging is a set of letters from across the country and even beyond the water's edge from Europe, and even someone from South Africa just writing in encouragement and saying, "Garnette, we walk with you," or some variation of that. You never know sitting down in a room with four walls staring at you.

In reading the essay, I thought that you raised a really good point about respectability politics as survival tactics as you're walking the streets.
My dear friend Rebecca Solnit has written a lot about what it means to be a woman moving in public space, and she touches more on it in her marvelous book Wanderlust, a terrific history of walking and more. We have to wear costumes in order to feel safe, or to feel less unsafe. I remember once walking down the street, and a police car pulled alongside of me and the lights came on. I immediately dropped the book I was carrying and put my hands against the wall, taking the initiative in showing compliance before they said anything, and the car just drove off.

Up came an older black man saying, "You're OK—you're a nerd, they leave nerds alone." And so there's this whole costume that we take on in terms of ease, safety, warmth—just so that you won't offend anyone else, because their fear causes you to fear more and the last thing you want is for them to have to call the police. It's not so much the citizens you fear, but the citizens' access to police.

Is that interaction actually successful? Does the costume even work?
I think the costume does work, but one of the things you have to balance is trying to have a costume for your safety, but not a mask I am now hiding behind to feel safe. I try not to feel alienated through walking. But at the same time, I don't want to be alienated from myself, I don't want to be alienated from my community—whether it's my community of immigrants or community of black adults. I keep moving between this tension between hyper-visibility and invisibility, that in even the essay's name "Black and Blue" there are allusions to black bodies, and the bodies in blue—police officers. I wanted to allude to the opening of Ellison's Invisible Man—someone who is hyper-visible and invisible at the same time.

"There's this whole costume that we take on in terms of ease, safety, warmth. It's not so much the citizens you fear, but the citizens' access to police."

The editor for The Fire This Time, Jesmyn Ward, described "Black and Blue" in her introduction to the book as an essay on "the black body in space." The book in general has a lineage to James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. There was a nice synchronicity between your essay and Baldwin, who attempted to witness and document the world around him, and created a body of work that probes, that roams.
I wanted to write something that revealed what is it like to live in contemporary America as a black person, not merely as a black man. One of the things that I admire about Baldwin is the ways in which he always had a handle on our common humanity and showed ways in which we can't degrade others without degrading ourselves.

In the early part of The Fire Next Time, Baldwin wrote, "We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other none of us would have survived. And now you must survive because we love you, and for the sake of your children and you children's children." I wanted to write an essay that had love shot through it, and the importance of how much love is critical to survival. The kind of love that Baldwin wrote about so often: a robust, rich and firm, powerful, potent thing.

You enjoy being in the thick of human interaction and movement like any other flâneur, and yet because of your black body there is that anxiety of a performative or respectability tactic breaking down, eventually leading into a confrontation with the police.
You have a limited role in how much you can control your environment around you, so walking also allows a freedom or independence, an ability to discover things, but it also gives you over to the world around you, to serendipity, to move around in a way that surprises us. But if you are black, aimless movement, unpredictable movement, spontaneous movement leads to suspicious movement, and suspicious movement invites police, and the police, of course, ask you to give account of the unpredictable, for the aimless, or the spontaneous.

Obliviousness could mean putting yourself in a place where you are blown into oblivion. And so time and again I am like, "OK, what's the rhythm of the city?" or "what's the rhythm of this neighborhood?" and so you manage to flow into that rhythm, and it brings out this sort of accidental joy and you suddenly recognize patterns of this city or community, and understand ways in which to be a part of it. You're trying not to be too out of step with the rhythm of the environment, because suddenly you become visible and visible for the wrong reasons.

'The Fire This Time' and essayist Garnette Cadogan. Photo courtesy of Simon and Schuster/photo of Garnette Cadogan by Bart Babinski

Jesmyn Ward opens the book with the memory of Trayvon Martin who, in many ways, has a one-to-one comparison of the logical, violent conclusion as a black body walking through space. Trayvon Martin was literally a black body in space walking from Point A to Point B before his fatal run-in with George Zimmerman.
[Travyon Martin's death at the hands of George Zimmerman] left you weary, and it left in you this suspicion, which became confirmation, that you're walking with a lot more fragility—that your mortality is a lot more tenuous, that the dangers that you face were a lot greater. Eventually, you begin to wonder why you get the questions like, "Oh, why are these things always happening to you? These things never happen to me." Then suddenly, here comes thousands of witnesses saying, "Ah, me too!"

When I wrote this essay, I remember saying that I really hope that this essay becomes obsolete. I really hope that in two years, people go, "What are you talking about, this is not the America we are living in." But I wrote it also with the recognition that this has absolutely been going on for far too long, and it's heartbreaking.

First and foremost, walking as a pastime is a joy for you. You wrote, "I strolled into my better self. I said, along with Kierkegaard, 'I have walked myself into my best thoughts.'"
It gives you a sense of self-virtue that you're not just swerving through or slipping through the world, and that you're actually a part of it and feeling a sense of commitment to it that it makes you as a person grow because of your constant exposure to things beyond yourself. But it also gives you a sense of playfulness, and a sense of tragedy and the hearing of people's stories and exposing of the whole kaleidoscope of the world and a full arc of humanity, and of humans in their joys and selfishness and generosity, and frustrations and confusions and warmth, that there is no human activity that I know of that allows you to be as richly engaged with other people, and are more in touch with who you are. You learn to deal with people in their shortcomings, you learn to deal with people in their warmth and their selfishness and their annoyances. Walking allows a better me because all of these rich inequalities that come with walking and gives to us.

I want to end this with the end of your essay: "I lived in the New York City for almost a decade, and have not stopped walking its fascinating streets, and I have not stopped walking to find the solace that I found as a kid walking the streets of Kingston. Much of coming to know New York City's streets has made it closer to home for me, the city will also withhold itself from me via those very streets. So I walk caught between memory and forgetting, between memory and forgiveness."
Because walking can be contested, it's a simple act in which I am trying to enjoy the world, this act that has so much symbolic significance. Freedom, independence, discovery, agency, encountering the suspicion of others: All of this has allowed me to seek limits. Time and again I find that there are different encounters that you have to be forgiven. Part of that act of forgiveness comes from not trying to celebrate alone. It's one of the things that is marvelous about seeing protests. Even if you're arguing and protesting against people who are moving together in time, harmony and solidarity you can't just look at it passively, and it does something to you to see that energy that collective solidarity.

Yes, I have had really awful accounts with police, but I don't hate the police and I still have police officers that I laugh with. There is one cop who loves Jamaican food, and so when I see him he's telling me about the next new Jamaican restaurant, and I joke with him saying that you are more Jamaican than me, and I say how's my favorite Jamaican. What is true for me is true for so many: These awful things are happening, but we are more than what happens to us, which is why the entire story is not one of tragedy but that is so much bigger and more rich and more potent and more wonderful and more marvelous. You are someone moving through space, who is enjoying life and also with all of the horrors—that it is not the end of the story.

Follow Mensah Demary on Twitter.

The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward, is out from Simon and Schuster and available in bookstores and online.

Photo by Drew Anthony Smith / Stringer via Getty

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The FBI is investigating the possibility that reporters at the New York Times were targeted by Russian hackers working for Russian intelligence. A spokeswoman for the Times said the company had "no evidence" internal systems had been breached, but investigators believe hackers targeted individual reporters.—CNN

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Trump Says He Might Soften Immigration Strategy
Donald Trump said he is open to "softening" laws dealing with people who are in the United States illegally during a town hall in Texas hosted by Sean Hannity. "There certainly can be a softening because we're not looking to hurt people," said Trump. He said his immigration policies would "follow the laws of the country."—ABC News

Judge Halts Discriminatory School Board Elections
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US Olympian Regrets Peeing Outside Gas Station
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Millennials Blamed for Olympic Ratings Fall
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Grad Students Now Have Right to Unionize
The federal government has ruled graduate students at Columbia University who work as teaching assistants have the right to unionize. The decision recognizes all graduate students at private colleges as employees.—VICE

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There were sun-withered leaves and clods of moss in my hair and about 25 feet of pure, clear country air separating my fragile skeleton from the hard, unforgivable ground. I'd taken great lengths to preserve my life for the past 35 years—which I had now, for a reason I do not fully understand, dangled by a single knotted rope from an Oregon white oak tree at a place called Tree Climbing Planet.

My instructor, Tim Kovar, kept reminding me and the other dangling people of the importance of that rope, as it alone was keeping us from falling to possible death.

The first time he said it was earlier that morning, as we stood in the dry grass tying knots. "This is going to be what we're clipping our life into!" Kovar had shouted. There was a hipster film guy wearing a spotless white T-shirt and pendant necklace, a guy with a bed and breakfast in Costa Rica who wanted to offer tree tours to his guests, a mom who wanted to build treehouses, and her 16-year-old son, who told the group he was here "because she made me." They all seemed like they were soaking this in more than I was.

I am not a risk-taker. I do not like adrenaline. I was that kid who waited in line to meet Santa Claus and fled because it made me too anxious. And so up in the tree, I felt the familiar instinct to run.

But I couldn't, because I couldn't get down. I was trapped, gripping the rope, thinking to myself, What kind of idiot goes up without a plan to come down?

Tree Climbing Planet is a plot of 150 acres of farmland south of Portland, Oregon, where people come from around the world to learn how to recreationally climb trees. Most students stay for a week to immerse themselves in knot-tying and rope inspecting and the gear they need to climb safely. (Some just come for a day, like I did, to learn the basics of climbing.) By the end of their week, students will be so comfortable ascending into the trees that they will string hammocks—called "treeboats" by recreational climbers—between branches and sleep under the stars some 40 feet in the air.

In 1993, after working as an arborist, he became involved with Atlanta's Tree Climbers International (TCI), a recreational tree-climbing organization that developed the standards for safety and instruction now used by other recreational tree-climbers and training organizations. There, he learned about recreational tree-climbing from the company's founder, Peter "Treeman" Jenkins.

At the first class he observed at TCI's tree school, Kovar noticed the climbers weren't the traditional climbing types he'd come to know. "I see two 75-year-old grandmas. I see this punk rock kid," he told me. "I kind of whisper to Pete, 'This is never going to work.'"

But it did work: The grandmas went up high in the tree, laughing, swinging from the branches. The punk rock kid started talking to a conservative couple.

"All these different types of people from different walks of life are all getting together and getting along in the treetop," Kovar told me. "It was just people being people. And it moved me inside."

Since Kovar started his own tree climbing school ten years ago, he's taken his programs around the world. Tree Climbing Planet operates in Tennessee, Georgia, Nebraska, Hawaii, and Brazil, and Kovar teaches one-off courses around the world. In early August, he was in Sweden; later this year, he'll be in Malaysia. But the Oregon spot is his home base, where he lives in a cottage and has a treehouse and a teepee.

The gear that would be my lifeline

Up there in the trees, as Kovar was aiding other students and I hung there staring at bark, I remembered the last time I climbed a tree. It was the summer after sixth grade.

My first boyfriend—as in, he told me I was his girlfriend— was a pale kid with a bowl cut named Bowie. I hadn't talked or looked at him at all when we were in school, but I remember meeting him at the tree at the end of our street one day.

It was a tall, pine-needled tree on the edge of a low hill, which everyone climbed when I was a kid. My friends and I would sit there and talk about clubs we should start or the boys who yelled at us as we walked to school. We'd perch up there, high above everything, hands sappy, staring out at our world: a row of low-slung houses with rose bushes and green lawns.

It's not like I wasn't afraid to fall. I just knew that being up there was more fun than being on the ground.

That summer day, Bowie and I climbed up to the first set of sitting branches. He fished a red-and-black friendship bracelet he'd made out of his pocket and handed it to me. When I took it, my stomach turned. Maybe it was the seriousness of the moment to my 12-year-old self.

Not long after, I told Bowie I didn't want to be his girlfriend anymore. I took his friendship bracelet off.

The tree just wasn't the same after that, wasn't carefree or a place of escape. It was tainted, and even more, it felt silly to climb a tree as a middle schooler. There were things on the ground to worry about: makeup and mix tapes and boys and getting my braces off.

Kovar could tell that I was terrified, so he instructed me to breathe and work my way through my fear by checking my knots. "I'm totally OK," I told him, even though I was totally not OK as I inspected the snake-like rope.

Kovar was tethered to a rope between me and Micah, the 16-year-old kid in a Slipknot shirt who came here with his mom. Kovar told the kid to make sure his knots didn't slip, and we all busted up laughing. I felt better after that.

"Do you want to climb higher?" Kovar asked me. I did not, but I heard myself saying, "I'll probably regret it later if I don't!" He gave me a nod and went around the trunk to help the kid, who had just untied something he shouldn't have.

I went up, pushing my left hand upward against the blake's hitch knot I'd tied, pausing, readjusting my foot loops, standing, pushing the knot again. It was almost hypnotic.

Kovar caught up to me, and we hung there, some 30 feet up. I thought I would come up here and find something childlike inside myself—some reincarnation of the light I've lost along the way. I'm not sure I feel that, but the view was nice.

Soon, Kovar showed me how to get back on the ground again. I lowered myself down slowly, inch by inch, avoiding any possibility of a sudden drop. By the time I was back on the ground, everyone else had already packed up their gear and moved to a circle of camp chairs across the field.

I asked Kovar how high up we went, and he said probably about 40 feet. That number seemed so unbelievably small.

Normally, I would rush to catch up with the group. I would be beating myself up inside for being last when I usually try so hard to be first at everything. But I didn't, because all I could think was that, for once, I didn't chicken out. I stuck with it. I learned that I can tie knots that can support my life if I needed to.

And that alone made me feel the weight of a thousand years drop off my shoulders, and I realized maybe that's what Kovar means when he says you'll feel like a kid again in the trees. You can still surprise yourself. You are teachable. You are capable. For someone like me—someone who has always been a little scared of falling to your death, of failing—feeling like a kid is that feeling of knowing you can do something.

Funny how the years teach you to forget that.

Follow Leah Sottile on Twitter.

Archive 'Full Spectrum Warrior' screenshots via Games Press

More than spacemen, gangsters and sword and shield wielding heroes, video games love soldiers. But rarely do they attempt to accurately represent the soldier's work.

Call of Duty and Battlefield, increasingly so over the past five years, depict the military by way of science fiction. The job of a soldier, according to these games, is to kill hundreds of people—or sometimes robots—and single-handedly save the world. Equipped with millions of dollars' worth of weapons and gadgets, hungry for a fight and practically invulnerable, video game soldiers, as of today, are as fantastical as anyone in Mass Effect or The Elder Scrolls. They are, despite games insisting upon fidelity with regards to visuals and recreations of ballistics, utterly unbelievable.

"FSW demanded that soldiers, in-game, moved, behaved and reacted as they might in real life. Enemies were sporadic. Single bullets could be fatal."

But they weren't always this way. On the contrary, soldiers, as they appeared in 2004's Full Spectrum Warrior, was unerringly real. A research and development project originally commissioned by the US Army, FSW demanded that soldiers, in-game, moved, behaved and reacted as they might in real life. Enemies were sporadic. Single bullets could be fatal. Rather than big guns, battles were won using intelligent tactics and good positioning.

Ironically, FSW—developed by California's Pandemic, the studio also behind (the original) Star Wars: Battlefront and Mercenaries – was originally inspired by the most outlandish Hollywood fantasy.

"There was one general, I forget his name, who'd just seen the movie Predator," explains William Stahl, FSW's creative director. "The Predator had a shoulder-mounted camera that tracked movement along with its head, and when the general had seen it, he'd had an epiphany: 'The military never thinks up anything like this. Why not?' He decided the US Army was too much of an old dog, so it should recruit people from civilian sectors like technology, and entertainment and see how they would solve military problems. The result was a think tank called ICT, or The Institute for Creative Technologies.

"Simulations at the time were expensive," continues Stahl. "The interfaces were pitiful, and they involved a lot of specialized equipment. Plus, at the end of the day, nothing the Army was producing was as visually impressive as a game on the Xbox. So ICT recommended taking money the military would spend on a simulation and turning it over to a game studio."

This was 1999 and Stahl, who had just come off Pandemic's Battlezone II: Combat Commander, was the first person assigned to the project. The commercial version of FSW would come much later—for the first three years, Pandemic was working exclusively for the Army.

"It started off as purely an R&D project," Stahl explains. "It was to determine one thing: can a game company make an aid that would actually help with military training?"

Stahl was joined by roughly 20 more staffers at Pandemic, as well as soldiers and military advisors who oversaw the project and routinely provided feedback. Trips were arranged to the US Army base at Fort Benning, Georgia, so FSW's designers and animators could observe genuine maneuvers. Throughout development, four active-duty sergeants also regularly visited the studio to consult on major and minor additions to the game.

"The soldiers testing would just look at me and ask, 'How do I get around that guy?' I'd reply, 'Don't you want to shoot him?' 'No. He's not my mission.'" – William Stahl

However, on both the managerial and creative sides, working for the Army proved much different to making games for the commercial market. Stahl and his level designers had to throw out basically everything they knew about building a military shooter.

"When we were designing missions in a regular game," Stahl explains, "if we wanted a player to move in a certain direction, we'd put an adversary there— the player wants to track enemies down. The military, however, does the exact opposite. If I was trying to get soldiers to move in a direction, and I'd put an enemy there, the soldiers testing would just look at me and ask, 'How do I get around that guy?' I'd reply, 'Don't you want to shoot him?' 'No. He's not my mission. My mission is to get from this spot to that spot and I want my guys to get there safely as possible. I will go a mile out of the way if I need to.'

"The Army wanted to make sure everything in the game was a lesson applicable to real life. Running and shooting, for example, like you do in a game has no real-world equivalent—you can't do that in the real world. Plus, the military wanted the game to be told from the perspective of a squad leader; but in reality, if the squad leader is firing his gun, it means he messed up. He should never be firing his gun. So we knew we couldn't make a shooter. It had to be a strategy game. Instead of doing it from a god's eye view, we had to bring the camera right down to the ground, to the squad leader's eye line level. And if I wanted soldiers to head in a direction, I had to put enemies in the opposite direction."

Working for the Army presented other challenges. Originally a joint project with Sony, Pandemic had to abandon the PlayStation 2 version of FSW when it learned, well into production, that US military bases were not allowed to house anything not American made. That meant carrying the entire game over to Microsoft's Xbox. Partway through development, textures, skins and level designs had to be redesigned, also. At its conception, FSW was set in Eastern European towns and villages, not dissimilar to Sarajevo or Pristina. However, after 9/11 and the US military's decision to invade Iraq, the game had to be overhauled and given a Middle Eastern aesthetic.

"They knew that's where their people were going to be," explains Stahl. "People wanted to know what it was going to be like."

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From early in development, Stahl and the Pandemic team had realized FSW's commercial potential.

"We spent a lot of our personal time making sure it went beyond what the military required in terms of tech," says Stahl. "The military didn't require pixel perfect graphics or shaders, but we would do that anyway, because at the end of the day our goal was to show this to a publisher."

And after 2002's E3, when Full Spectrum Warrior was first unveiled, offers started to roll in. EA wanted to finance the game; so did Microsoft. As part of a four-title deal, Pandemic eventually signed with THQ—along with the original, the California-based publisher agreed to fund a sequel to Full Spectrum Warrior and two games from Pandemic's other burgeoning series, Destroy All Humans!

To make it ready for public consumption, FSW's team swelled from 20 to 50. One of the studio's new hires was level designer Kristine Golus. She helped to turn Full Spectrum Warrior from a military simulation to a puzzle game.

"FSW was based around the 'Military Operations in Urban Terrain', or MOUT approach to combat," Golus explains. "But after the Battle of Fallujah, the Army determined combat in the streets was far too risky. To minimize casualties, MOUT combat became about moving indoors—blowing through walls and staying away from windows and other dangerous points of combat where soldiers are at a disadvantage. So technically, FSW is teaching out-of-date combat tactics.

"That isn't to say levels were created without any thought. It's not obvious when you're playing it, but if you were to take a snapshot of FSW and look at it from top down, you'd realise it's a linear, puzzle game. You have to identify enemies and determine how to move without taking any injuries. You have a mission. And you need to complete it with as few casualties as possible."

Nevertheless, it was difficult for Pandemic to find the balance, between shooter, puzzler, and strategy game. FSW had to be a lot of things, for a lot of people. During its development, "authentic" games were vogue. Rainbow Six 3, Operation Flashpoint, and Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 were either highly anticipated or already selling well. At the same time, thanks to Call of Duty, high production values, action and spectacle were creeping further into shooters. Perhaps more than anybody realized at the time, CoD had changed the war genre. Pandemic, like dozens of its contemporaries—and successors, to this day—would have to keep up.

"There was an early version of FSW where enemies would just run in and respawn, and players could just run in, and as soon as they died the squad-mates would get replaced," says Stahl. "It was pretty damn fun. Sometimes I wish we had done it that way. There were plenty of meetings where my designers walked out frustrated because my answer, to everything, was simply 'They wouldn't do that in the military'. But we had to stay faithful."

"One problem was that, based on the way the original AI was set up, players could bum rush the enemies and kill them at point-blank range," continues Golus. "It looked pretty awful, and caused us to implement something we called LDR, or Looking Dumb Range. This was to refer to the range, between player and enemy, at which the game started to look so dumb that it broke immersion. Needless to say, if you get too close to an enemy in the finished version LDR will kick in, he'll suddenly develop 100 percent accuracy and he'll mow down your troops pretty quickly."

By early 2004, both the military and commercial versions of Full Spectrum Warrior were complete. There was, however, one small obstacle left to surmount before the game could be in either soldiers' or the public's hands.

"The Army only needed 2,000 discs," Stahl explains. "But Microsoft wasn't going to print 2,000 discs—the minimum order is something like 50,000. At the same time, we couldn't just give them cracked discs. That was illegal. So the Army had to actually go through THQ to get it printed. It was meant to be a standalone game, but it ended up piggybacking inside the retail version!"

'Full Spectrum Warrior', E3 2004 trailer

Video game reviewers enjoyed Full Spectrum Warrior. Launching in June 2004, the same year as fantastical action games like Doom 3, Killzone, Half-Life 2, Far Cry and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, FSW stood out as a more sober type of shooter. Two years later, as promised, THQ published a sequel, Ten Hammers.

Reports soon surfaced, however, that the military was dissatisfied. Lieutenant Colonel Jim Riley, an instructor at Fort Benning's infantry training school, complained the training version of FSW was "not accurate enough". "People got caught up in they hype," said Riley. "We were looking for a home run. We got a single—and it was a broken bat single."

Other Army officials, though, as well as Pandemic, defended the game. Stahl, too, believes it was a success.

"I agree with the Colonel," he says. "FSW got into the press, it won some awards, too many chefs got into the kitchen and it ended up ballooning. It was never going to be completely accurate. But then, that's not what we set out to do. It was purely a research project. It wasn't even meant to be seen by an actual squad leader. The fact it got released like it did, to consumers and the military, is testament to the Pandemic team."

Golus left Pandemic in 2004 to work elsewhere in the gaming industry. Stahl followed in 2006, to found his own graphic design company, Martian and Sons. Three years later, after releasing Mercenaries 2, The Lord of the Rings: Conquest and The Saboteur, Pandemic itself shut down. THQ, publisher on Full Spectrum Warrior, closed in 2013.

Full Spectrum Warrior itself, however, is used by the US Army to this day. Rather than as a combat training aid, a heavily modified version of the game is used as a tool to help determine, in troops returning from war, the presence and severity of post-traumatic stress disorder. The game that depicted military life more faithfully, and tried to illustrate and explain it for the public, is now helping soldiers to better understand themselves.

"Tom Clancy teaches kids to go to war," Stahl concludes, "and Full Spectrum Warrior teaches them to get out of there. But it doesn't teach them not to be a soldier. Being a soldier, I think, is a noble profession."

Follow Ed Smith on Twitter.

Illustrations by Tiana Dunlop

Deaths related to MDMA are at an all-time high. In September of 2015, a report from the Office of National Statistics showed that deaths had increased from eight in 2013 to 50 in 2014. In the last few years, Boomtown Festival has seen the deaths of both Deborah Jeffery and Lisa Williamson. In June of this year, 16-year-old Sky Nicol died after taking five times the fatal level of MDMA. The same month, 22-year-old Stephanie Shevlin died after taking MDMA at The Box nightclub in Crewe. Later the same month, 17-year-old Emily Lyon died after taking MDMA at Red Bull Culture Clash at the O2.

These tragic cases are just a few of many. But no one is highlighting a blinding fact: that a large proportion of the deaths have been young British women.

The results of the 2016 Global Drugs Survey revealed that there's been a fourfold increase in British female clubbers seeking emergency medical treatment in the last three years. In addition, women are two to three times more likely to seek that treatment than men. This isn't a coincidence, so what are the reasons for this significant split? Why are women so at risk?

Adam Winstock, who runs the Global Drugs Survey, says that, for starters, women are less likely to buy the drug directly from a dealer. "It's far more likely they'll be given them by men, therefore they don't know much about the particular preparation," he explains. "They may not have done that pill before or taken that powder. It could just be their partner or a bloke at a party going, 'Here, have half a pill.' Basically, women are often trusting men with dosage. Men who are judging what they're giving a woman from their own drug-taking experience."

The fact that the British take so much more MDMA per session compared to users in other countries also puts women at higher risk. "The average ecstasy user in the UK uses more MDMA in a session than anywhere else in the world," says Adam. "And we know that the risk of seeking emergency medical treatment and having adverse effects goes up the more MDMA you use."

Our drugs are getting stronger, too. A recent report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction found that compared to an average of 50-80 mg of MDMA contained in pressed pills throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the current average dose in a pressed pill of ecstasy has increased to double that potency: 125 mg. Meanwhile, "super pills" are coming in from the rest of Europe – most often the Netherlands – with some containing an unthinkable 270-340 mg.

If women are more easily adversely affected by MDMA due to their biology, this increase in purity could seriously impact female drug-takers. So is that case? Are women biologically predisposed to have a worse reaction to the drug? All the research on biology and sex and MDMA points to a solid yes.

Fiona Measham, professor of criminology at Durham University, is well aware of the potential dangers of being a woman taking MDMA. "There are concerns with women's differential metabolising of MDMA combined with low body mass index," she says. "If you're a slim, slight young women, you will not be able to take as much as a big guy with a higher body mass index who's been going out clubbing for years." This, of course, makes sense when you consider how body mass affects how much drink you can handle. But there could be more to it than that: one study found that ecstasy produced stronger responses in women than in men of the same weight.

It doesn't stop there. One of the most serious medical risks associated with ecstasy is hyponatremia, a condition that occurs when the level of sodium in your blood is too low. This salt is crucial to the functioning of the nervous system, and an imbalance within the body can be fatal. When sodium is diluted, the user becomes disorientated, may experience convulsions, go into a coma and eventually die. Worryingly, women of reproductive age are actually at greater risk because of their high levels of the hormone oestrogen. Oestrogen plays a significant role in the transfer of water across cell membranes, exacerbating the the effects of hyponatremia.

Almost 90 percent of cases of ecstasy-induced hyponatraemia reported to the California Poison Control System over a five-year span involved women. When scientists tested the blood concentration of ravers at Awakenings Festival in the Netherlands in 2013, they found that 27.3 percent of the women they tested had blood so diluted that they had mild hyponatremia, compared to just three percent of the men. The scientists concluded that this is likely down to where women were at in their menstrual cycle when they took the drugs.

Last year, scientists published the results of a study where they gave MDMA to male rats, female rats, and male and female rats that had had their testicles and ovaries removed. They found the drug had the strongest effect on female rats with an intact reproductive system, stating that, "The increased sensitivity of the females can be explained by an increased reactivity of the serotonin system due to the effect of ovarian hormones."

Research has also shown that the effects of other stimulants, like cocaine, vary in women because of changes in the levels of female hormones during the menstrual cycle. For example, you could be more sensitive to amphetamines just before ovulation. So not only do women react differently to some drugs than men, they might also react differently depending on whether they're premenstrual or not.

It goes far beyond just physical response. The psychological effects of MDMA appear to be experienced much more strongly by women. In 2001, Matthias Liechti revealed that women are more likely to have anxiety and a generally more intense experience while on the drug. In 2002, scientist Suzanne Verheyden found that women experience higher levels of depression mid-week after taking MDMA.

"Our most recent data shows that women are much more likely to face hallucination and mood problems, and that around half of all women admitted to A&E weren't back to normal after two whole weeks," says Adam. "This isn't just women being paranoid – we need to drill down more into why biology is important in terms of mediating those effects."

Problem is, we don't know much about the effects of MDMA on women because drugs are rarely studied. "It's so difficult to get funding for research on illegal drugs," says Measham. "If you talk to the government, their line would be, 'It's illegal – of course it's going to be dangerous, so don't do it.' People are more likely to want to fund cancer research than something for people who are self-indulgently taking illegal drugs."

Frustratingly, when it comes to what we do have, women are largely left out of the studies. According to David Erritzøe, a medical doctor and post-doctoral researcher from Imperial College London, women are often skipped out of molecular imaging drugs studies – the only way to access neurotransmitter systems in the living human brain – for two grounds. Firstly, in case they're pregnant because of the low risk to a developing human, and secondly, because of their periods. "If you want to look at women, you need to include extra people so you can figure out what is caused by where they are in their menstrual cycle. It means often studies just look at men," he told Broadly. The very reason women should be studied means they're neglected. This is just one small part of a much wider issue of a lack of understanding and research into women's health.

This information needs to be out there because young British women are dying. There's no mention of sexual differentiation on Talk to Frank's MDMA page. Dancesafe has a section on women but doesn't mention anything about dosage for women. In fact, you really have to hunt through scientific publications to find this information on the web at all.

Anne-Marie Cockburn lost her 15-year-old daughter Martha after she took half a gram – at least twice the safe amount – of MDMA in her bedroom. Since then, she's been campaigning for drugs to be taken out of the hands of criminals and to be passed to medical professionals. "After Martha died, I found out she'd been looking on Google for ways to do it safely," she said. "And that's why I said, 'She wanted to get high, but she didn't want to die.'" Unfortunately, the information she found wasn't sufficient. If she read about dosages, any guidelines would have been too much for a young girl under seven stone anyway.



Danny Kushlick of Transform, a think-tank campaigning for an end to the drug war, is of a similar mindset to Anne-Marie. "The government needs to know that when you prohibit something, you're operating blind," he says. "It creates massive dangers that wouldn't exist otherwise. None of this information is delivered by the Department of Health, but it bloody ought to be."

In absence of research on how women react at various stages of their menstrual cycle, he advises that female drug-takers should go slow initially, especially if it's their first time. "Take a low dose, see how you react. If you're a regular user, keep tabs on how MDMA affects you throughout your cycle," he says. In addition, look out for each other and share this information as widely as you can. If it's not coming from above, then it has to come from the ground up.

Adam's advice is sensible and almost impossible to forget: "Men, don't be daft, take a half. Women, don't get slaughtered, have a quarter."

"It's not about being for or against drugs," says Anne-Marie. "It's about being for life. I want people to not die of curiosity. Future generations are going to look back and shake their heads at us."

@hannahrosewens

*Adam's final quote was added since the publication of this piece

More on MDMA:

Why You Get Brain Zaps After MDMA

How to Tell If Your Drugs Have Gone Bad

Can One Pill Have a Lasting Impact On the Brain?

Not Mickey the Goat. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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I had just gotten a job writing for a sitcom, so when my agent Mickey got married I felt a lot of pressure to give him a "funny" gift. I got him a goat—specifically, I paid Oxfam International about $40 to donate a goat to a village in the developing world, on Mickey's behalf. If you're wondering how a goat is funny, it's not.

Hello debt, my old friend. Photo via Flickr user Sean MacEntee

A new report shows that Canadian millennials (ugh, sorry), especially ones working in Alberta, are going deeper into debt and having a hard time paying their bills.

Shocking, I know.

The report from credit bureau Equifax Canada shows that the delinquency rate of young millennials (18-25) has jumped 11.7 percent year over year to....1.8 percent. Which doesn't sound all that bad, but it's the worst among all age groups and will allow for yet another "Millennials are lazy and terrible with money" thinkpiece for your mom to email you.

On the other hand, young millennials had the lowest amount of average debt (which doesn't include mortgages) at $8,203. Older millennials (26-35) had double the debt at $16,841. The 46-55 age group had the most average debt at $32,243, probably because they were paying the way for young millennials. (jk)

Read More: Young Canadians Are Rather Broke

However, when you break down the numbers by city and province, there are some very interesting tidbits—in particular, Alberta is really going down the shitter.

The delinquency rates in most major Canadian cities have gone down year-over-year with a couple notable exceptions, Calgary (32.2 percent increase), Edmonton (39 percent) and St. John's, Newfoundland (21.2 percent). What do these cities have in common? They all have a lot of people who work (or worked) in oil, specifically Albertan oil.

Those three cities also had the three highest average debts rates in the study.

Just yesterday is was reported that Alberta's deficit jumped another $500 million to $10.9 billion with its economy due to shrink another 2.7 percent.

So, it's only going to get worse. Isn't growing up fun?

Follow Josh Visser on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on VICE Switzerland.

Whether it's the Syrian woman who smuggled her pet turtle all the way to Munich in her pocket or the girl who brought her cat to the makeshift refugee camp Idomeni in Greece—everyone who is forced to flee their home and country has to ask themselves: What's so important to me that I can't leave it behind?

Gabriel Hill, a photographer from Basel, Switzerland, invited refugees into his studio, where he normally takes corporate head shots, and asked them to bring the most important thing they brought with them on their journey to safety. It's often the only thing they've brought with them.

Shireen, 21, Fled Afghanistan in 2010

"I have been living in Switzerland for two years now. My family could only afford one journey out of the country, so I'm all alone here. It's very expensive to leave, so they won't be able to follow me here.

When I left home, my father gave me a cellphone. This cellphone and the clothes I was wearing were the only things I could take with me.

Thanks to the cellphone, I was able to get in touch with my family and tell them that I had arrived safely. It also gave me the feeling that I wasn't alone. It meant everything to me."

Sejla, 33, Fled Bosnia in 1992

"When I was a child, my father would often travel to Africa for work. One time when I was three, I had asked him to bring me back a real-life monkey, but he brought me a stuffed bunny he had bought for me during a transit at Zurich Airport.

I took that bunny everywhere. When the war began, everything went so fast I could neither understand what was going on nor think about what I wanted to take with me when we fled. That's how I forgot my bunny when we left. My dad stayed behind, and I wrote him so many letters saying things like, "Did you find my bunny? I miss you!"

I can't describe how I felt when I saw my father again three years later, in 1995. My whole body was trembling when I saw his face at the airport in Zurich—and saw that he was holding my bunny."

Taghi, 27, Fled Iran in 2011

"Five years ago, I had to leave Iran. The only things I could take with me was what fit in the pockets of my trousers.

After a few months, I arrived in Switzerland. I made most of the journey on foot. Every now and then we had to cross a river on a rubber boat.

I only took these three photos with me. Every single one reminds me of a different time in my life before I had to flee—times I have warm memories of. I would have taken more things with me if that had been an option at the time, but it wasn't."

Yosief, 20, Fled Eritrea in 2014

"The escape from Eritrea was quite long and exhausting. Walking for days, being held captive in several countries, and crossing of one of world's biggest deserts didn't make it an easy journey. We were lucky, though. Everyone survived.

I took some personal things with me, but I had to throw most of it away before crossing the desert, so I could take as many bottles of water with me as possible. I kept a small book with phone numbers and a few photos from my childhood.

The phone numbers were very important, because I was held captive a few times and had to pay my captors a ransom for them to let me go. I'm lucky enough to have an uncle in the United States—he'd send me money, so I could pay. That made his number the most important thing in my life."

Nazim, 26, Fled Afghanistan in 2011

"Five years ago, I had to leave Afghanistan. I was trained as a police officer there, but shortly after I had started on the job, I was forced to leave the country.

I had a backpack with my belongings with me, but the human traffickers told me to throw it away. The only thing I have left is this little book from the police academy and a necklace my mother gave me.

I always dreamed of becoming a police officer. This little book is the only thing I have left of that dream."

Ahmet, 23, Fled Eritrea in 2013

"I got on a ship in Libya that was supposed to bring us to Italy. I couldn't take anything with me except the clothes I was wearing and a little piece of paper with the phone number of my family on it. They had told me to get in touch with them as soon as I would arrive in Italy. About half way, the ship overturned and sank. My clothes were soaked and became so heavy I had to take them off. They disappeared in the sea, along with that piece of paper with my family's phone number on it. I survived, together with about 200 others. More than 250 people from that ship drowned.

Months after fleeing Eritrea, I found someone in Switzerland who could reach out to my family. They thought I hadn't survived the crossing. This piece of paper with their number on it used to be the most important thing I owned."

Marie-Therese, 62, Fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2008

"I had to leave my home from one second to the other. Unfortunately, there was no time to take anything with me."

Rohulla, 24, Fled Afghanistan in 2010

"Five years ago, I fled Afghanistan. When I left, I couldn't take anything with me except the clothes I was wearing.

I was very little when my father was killed, so I hardy have any memories of him. He always wore a golden necklace, and after he died, my mother gave it to me.

I came to Switzerland by myself, and this necklace is everything I have from my family and my homeland. It means the world to me—it makes me feel like I'm not alone, like my father is always with me."

Farhad, 27, Fled Afghanistan in 2007

"I had packed some things from home, but the smugglers told us to throw everything away. I didn't have the heart to toss out the photo of my mother, so I hid it under my clothes. I haven't seen my mother since I left, so this picture of her is very important to me."

Vinasithamby, 64, Fled Sri Lanka in 1984

"I had to abandon our home in Sri Lanka in 1984. I walked most of the way, but in order to get to Switzerland, I took a boat, a plane, and a train as well.

I wasn't able to take much with me besides the clothes I had on. Since I had to leave my family behind, these photos were the only things that were important to me, and luckily I could carry them on me. In the photos, you can see my parents, my brother, and my sister—who's now deceased."

Migmar, 59, Fled Tibet in 1959

"In 1959, I fled with my father, my mother, my sister, and my grandparents from Tibet to India. I was two at the time, although I don't know the exact day I was born. I arrived in India only with my father and my grandparents—we had lost my sister and my mother on the way.

The most important items we had on our escape were the torches illuminating the pass over the Himalaya."

Suleyman, 18, Fled Afghanistan in 2014

"It took me almost nine months to arrive in Switzerland. I wanted to take a ship from Turkey to Greece, but we kept getting caught by the coast guard in Greece and sent back to Turkey. I tried five times—once, the boat overturned and sank.

From all the things I took with me, only this cellphone is left. My mother bought it just before I fled Afghanistan—she spent 3,000 afghani on it. That's half of my family's monthly income.

The phone was the only way I could let my family know where I was on my journey and that I was OK. My mother was very worried, so a call from time to time helped to calm her down. The phone also made me feel safer and less lonely."

Mahmoud, 20, Fled Lebanon in 2014

"Originally I'm Palestinian, but I fled from Lebanon. A few years ago, I converted from Islam to Christianity and a priest gave me this Bible. During my journey, a boat I was on was in trouble, and our fixer ordered us to throw all our stuff overboard. Somehow I managed to hide my Bible. It's my most treasured possession and gives me strength in hard times. It's been soaked with seawater, and it's quite dirty, but I wouldn't want a new one.

Here in Switzerland, I live in an asylum predominantly with Muslims—my family are the only ones who know I converted. That's why I can't show my face—I'm living a double life."

Hill's project ImPORTRAITS has been selected for the Swiss Photo Award 2016 as one of the seven best Swiss works in the free category. You can see more of his work for yourself until the end of August at the Gallery Parzelle 403 in Basel.

Skulls featured in the "Perfect Vessels" exhibit. Images courtesy of David Orr

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You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their skull—their age, sex, race, and health can all be ascertained by examining the 22 bones that cradle the brain. No two skulls are identical. Like faces and personalities, each one is unique, preserving the essence of someone even after they've died.

David Orr, a photographer based in Los Angeles, sees these individual differences in skulls as art. For his latest exhibit, currently on view at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum, he photographed 22 skulls from the museum's Hyrtl collection—over 100 skulls collected by Viennese anatomist Joseph Hyrtl, who used them to counter claims that you could determine someone's intelligence by their cranial features. Orr's exhibit pairs the original skulls—some of them disfigured or marred by disease—with black and white photographs that have been vertically-halved and combined with their mirror image. The end result explores our cultural ideal of perfect symmetry, in life and in death.

I spoke to Orr about his exhibit and what we can learn about the living by looking at the skulls of the dead.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

"Perfect Vessels" on exhibit. Photo courtesy of The Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

VICE: The exhibit is called Perfect Vessels. What does that mean?
David Orr: The significance of "perfect" as a modifier is that each of these skulls is mirrored. I photographed them facing the camera and I took one half and I mirrored it. I've often worked with symmetry and repeating forms, and I was always fascinated by the way that it resolves them. No matter how odd a shape is, if you repeat it, it becomes considered. But it also leads to something more concrete as well, which is that people consider faces that are more symmetrical to be more attractive. There is a study about this called "Symmetry and Human Facial Attractiveness." That love of symmetry got a hold of them back in the day. So it's kind of interesting to me that now, someone will know the name "Milan Joanovits." Whereas in the past, the way he lived his life and the way he ended up and what happened to him would normally not have led to people knowing his name.

Perfect Vessels runs through January 5, 2017 at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.

Follow Simon Davis on Twitter.

A still from a video by Mischa Badasyan, accompanying his performance art piece"Save the Date"

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Two years ago, Mischa Badasyan, a Russian-born, Berlin-based performance artist, set himself a challenge: to organize a date every day for a year. More importantly, he forced himself to have sex every day, whether with that date or not. While it may sound like a convenient way to live out a fantasy, for Badasyan, the project—titled Save the Date—was often a harrowing experience.

The concept made for easy headlines, and Badasyan received a slew of American media attention at its outset, both positive and critical. (I wrote about his project for Mic at the time.) But none of those outlets have followed up with Badasyan since its end. One year later, having had a chance to reflect, what may be more interesting is how it has changed him. The 28-year-old, who had not previously been in a relationship, says he now may never be in a serious relationship ever.

At the project's outset, it seemed as though the result would reflect upon the easy consumption of sex brought about by the location-based dating app revolution—apps like Grindr and Scruff, which make finding people nearby to chat with, meet, date and hookup easier than ever, and which have changed a large swath of gay culture.

But Badasyan said responses he received on apps, where often people not only declined his offer for a date but launched scathing attacks upon him, were too upsetting to bear. So he tried a more traditional approach—cruising Berlin's parks and streets. The experience quickly became the opposite of fulfilling. "I didn't like the dates, I didn't like the sex, I didn't like anything," he told VICE.

Badasyan was also aware of the similarity of his work—which was becoming an occupation—to that of sex workers. He began interviewing people on Kurfuerstenstrasse, in the red light district of Berlin, and having sexual encounters with escorts there. Eventually he started working there as a sex worker himself, though he didn't take money.

He found that his sexual encounters, as one might expect, became quick and emotionless. Ordinary intercourse became routine, and he looked for ways to intensify the experience. "I had to use violence to enjoy sexuality," he said. "I was punching people. I became a machine."

Some of the men he met on the Kurfuerstenstrasse also turned violent. "They didn't punch me, but they were screaming at me, one guy was about to hit me with a car, another smashed me with a bottle of beer," he recalled. He also received an online death threat from a Neo-Nazi, and just before he finished the project, he was pepper-sprayed by a man in the street, for reasons that remain unclear.

Good emerged from the project, as well: "Some of my dates became friends, art partners and buddies," he said. He's kept in contact with many, and has come to incorporate a few into new art projects.

One of the last dates Badasyan had was with 20-year-old student Ahmed Baldr, who identifies as heterosexual.

"I had never had any sort of relationship with a man before, and I was curious what a date with Mischa would be like. So I wanted to be a part of the project," Baldr told VICE. Their date involved dinner, partying at a club, and the necessary sex act. From then onwards, they discussed Badasyan's project almost daily.

Badasyan slept with a huge variety of people over 365 days and nights, from a 76-year-old journalist to a Berlin-based Scottish yoga instructor and at least one Serbian porn star. During the year, Badasyan travelled to and slept with people in Sweden, Denmark, Holland, the Czech Republic and Poland.

He also dated several HIV-positive partners. He had previously worked in HIV activism and had been provided free condoms for the project by a German HIV organization, but the project marked his first time sleeping with positive men. "I was always scared of sexual contact with positive people," he wrote on Facebook. "Save The Date changed my life and my reality."

Badasyan said he didn't want people to interpret his project in any one way. "For some it's about sexuality, for some it's about freedom, for some it's about loneliness," he says.

Loneliness was definitely part of his own experience. In a comprehensive diary he kept throughout the year, he showed me how daily entries went from detailed accounts of dates to single sentences.

The response to his project has surprised him.

Other artists have painted his portrait. An undergraduate thesis was written about him. One dancer in Los Angeles, Kevin Lopez, created a piece inspired by Save the Date and then visited Berlin to be one of Badasyan's dates.

"Mischa sees nothing but art and beauty through his eyes," Lopez told VICE, but he could also see how the project was taking its toll on him. "I did feel as if he just wanted to know what my deepest darkest secrets were before learning anything about me," Lopez says.

Badasyan has been hard at work in the year since. He tells me he's been working in the biggest refugee camp in Germany, and provides support to queer refugees. He is also working on a new project, TOUCH, "an attempt to rebuild the connection between myself and other people. In order to understand something you have to touch it."

"My sexuality is very strange now," he said. "I don't go on dates with gay people anymore. The only way enjoy sex is voyeurism in men's bathrooms, and by picking up of straight, bi, and undecided guys in the street in Berlin."

When I spoke with Badsayan at the end of his project last August, he showed me a poster someone had made for him to commemorate it—it depicted a silhouette representing every man he'd slept with that whole year. "It's almost impossible... I had to be so focused, so disciplined for the whole year," he said. "I slept with so many people. Isn't it insane?"

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