Adam Capay. Photo via Allison Jane Capay

There are currently 21 inmates in Ontario who have been held in solitary confinement for more than one year, according to new numbers provided to VICE News from the province's corrections ministry.

Other numbers from the ministry show that nearly 600 inmates out of 7,321 are currently being held in solitary confinement in jails across Ontario. And during the month of September, an average of 276 prison inmates spent 30 days or more in solitary confinement—or what the government officially calls "segregation."

"Please note that this number can change as inmates may leave segregation for other correctional settings or release," ministry spokesperson Yanni Dagonas wrote in an email about the 21 inmates. He did not immediately provide a breakdown of the reasons for their segregation.

The 21 inmates held in solitary appears to be a sharp rise from 2015 data. There were 12 inmates held for more than one year in segregation from October to December of 2015, according to a report by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. That report also found that 1,383 Ontario inmates spent more than 15 days in solitary confinement during that time period.

Ontario's corrections minister David Orazietti, who oversees the province's 26 jails, has faced immense scrutiny after it was revealed that Adam Capay, a 24-year-old Indigenous man, had been held alone in a plexiglass cell in the Thunder Bay jail for four years awaiting trial. Capay was charged with murder in 2012 in the death of another inmate.

Regardless of his alleged crime, Capay's confinement—like any inmate held in segregation longer than 15 days—is akin to torture, according to the United Nations. Those who have met with Capay during his confinement say his speech is delayed and he has lost some language capacity.

Orazietti recently announced that the number of days an inmate can spend in solitary confinement will be capped at 15 days, and said using segregation as a disciplinary method should be used only "as a last resort."

His department has long rebuffed calls to end the practice entirely, but Dagonas said the ministry has recently deployed a team to "thoroughly examine" each case where an inmate has been in segregation for more than one year. The results of these examinations will be shared with Ontario's watchdog body, the office of the ombudsman.

Last week, Ontario ombudsman Paul Dubé repeated calls for the province to eliminate the long-term confinement of inmates altogether.

Dubé wrote in his annual report released Wednesday that the ombudsman received 186 complaints on segregation in prisons over the last year and sent a submission to the provincial corrections ministry earlier this year about two recent cases of inmates being subjected to prolonged solitary confinement.

Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Renu Mandhane, who met Capay while he was in solitary in the Thunder Bay jail and told reporters about his situation, told VICE News that the current system "lacks transparency which impedes adequate accountability for long-term segregation cases and associated human rights concerns."

"This is particularly problematic because data shows that nearly 40% of prisoners in segregation have a mental health alert on their file."

Most people who end up in segregation are there for administrative or non-disciplinary reasons, such as alleged misconduct or safety concerns. A small percentage are held in segregation as a disciplinary measure.

Capay's next court appearance is set for the end of November. His trial isn't expected to begin until next year.

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Photo by Monica Morgan/WireImage

Dave Chappelle is finally going to host Saturday Night Live, with musical guest A Tribe Called Quest, on November 12—the first show after Election Day.

The comedian is obviously most famous for the influential Comedy Central show, Chappelle's Show, before abruptly dipping out during the third season in 2005. Recently, Chappelle's been putting on small stand-up shows around New York and reportedly using them as an opportunity to try out some new anti-Trump material. Hopefully we'll get a taste of that on SNL.

It'll be A Tribe Called Quest's first time on the show, too, just months after the death of founding member, Phife Dawg, who passed away last March. The group is promoting its first album in 18 years, We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service.

Read: 'Chappelle's Show' Co-Creator Neal Brennan Talks About His Off-Broadway Show, Mixing Comedy with Emotion, and Dave

A Donald Trump supporter takes a selfie with a woman in a Hillary Clinton costume at a rally on November 2. (RHONA WISE/AFP/Getty Images)

Edgar Allen Poe may have died from voting. To this day, no one knows exactly what killed the horror writer, but one popular theory for his 1849 death in Baltimore was that he was the victim of "cooping"—in other words, he was kidnapped by a band of thuggish partisans on Election Day, kept in a state of drunkenness, and forced to change his clothes so he could vote over and over again. He was left lying in the gutter of a pub that served as a polling place and died a few days later.

Life in 19th-century America sucked pretty hard in general, but elections were particularly brutal. There was no right to a secret ballot, contests were regularly rigged by local political machines, and rival factions would fight one another in the street. Today, things are better—there will be no brawls in Baltimore, no cooping schemes. The idea that a national election could be "rigged," as Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested, is silly. It's no longer 1960, when ballot box stuffing in Chicago and cheating in Texas might have cost Richard Nixon the election.

Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who runs the Election Law Blog, says that elections are "cleaner now" than they were in the 60s, thanks to increased transparency and more attention paid to how votes are counted. "The kind of things that are alleged to have happened in the past would be much harder to pull off today," Hasen told me.

Experts like Hasen are always quick to point out that voter fraud of any sort is very rare, and the in-person deception that Republican-backed voter ID laws are supposedly designed to stop barely exists. A much-cited 2012 report from News21 searched all 50 states for cases of alleged voter fraud since 2000 and found just over 2,000—and only ten of those involved impersonation at polling stations.

Still, America is a big country, and its election system is actually a clumsily stitched-together patchwork of state systems, each with their own rules. The sheer amount of activity on Election Day basically guarantees that there will be all sorts of chicanery. Voter fraud is alive and well—but it isn't the existential threat that Trump and others make it out to be.

In Denver, a CBS affiliate recently uncovered instances of dead people voting in the past several elections. Dead people have voted in Chicago as well. Eastern Kentucky remains a relative hotbed of vote-buying, with some people selling their votes in 2014 for $50. One local election that year was even overturned because of widespread corruption. The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting published a deep dive into that region's recent history of funny business. One former candidate said that vote buying was "kind of ingrained in the local society."

Similar corruption was documented in voting rights scholar Mary Frances Berry's book Five Dollars and a Pork Chop Sandwich: Vote Buying and the Corruption of Democracy. Published this year, it centers on voting-related crime in Louisiana, which a former state election official told her was common and cut across party lines.

"Distressingly, poor people were often the targets of vote buyers," Berry writes. "Though the poor are with us everywhere, tenants in public housing developments were especially targeted, sometimes with an implied threat of eviction if they failed to sell their votes. In some communities, vote buyers—some of them wearing law enforcement uniforms—made paid calls on the neighborhoods where poor and working-class people lived."

These sorts of operations are mostly centered on local elections, and often not all that successful. As the Washington Post documented in a 2012 story about vote-buying in Appalachia, sometimes people have lied about who they cast their ballots for in order to get cash from shady political operatives.

It's important to note that accounts of electoral fraud are often exaggerated. It's true that an estimated 1.8 million dead people are registered to vote, for instance, but that hardly means that we're going to see that many fraudulent ballots. And laws pushed by right-leaning state legislatures requiring people to have certain kinds of identification in order to vote may prevent some forms of (vanishingly rare) fraud, but they also restrict the rights of the same people who are often taken advantage of by vote buyers.

Fears of fraud may have more of an impact on the 2016 race than actual fraud. Members of right-wing militias have pledged to protest a Clinton victory, and say they won't fire the first shot but will fight back if the government tries to disarm them. Everyone from the Oath Keepers to GOP operative Roger Stone is talking about monitoring polling stations in minority areas. One Iowa Trump supporter allegedly voted twice because she was worried her first vote would be stolen. The Florida GOP is accusing election officials of opening absentee ballots.

On the other side of the political spectrum, in August, a civil rights group called for more international election monitors to come to the US because the Supreme Court had stripped some of the protections the Voting Rights Act gave to minorities. Democrats in Ohio cried foul in October after Republican Secretary of State John Husted didn't mail a million absentee ballot applications out—385,000 merely because the would-be recipients hadn't voted in 2012 and 2014 and hadn't replied to county mailings confirming their addresses.

Meanwhile, trollish online plots to suppress the vote have proliferated. Fake announcements claiming that people could vote for Clinton by text spread on social media, while some alt-right keyboard Nazis claimed (likely facetiously) that they'll hand out booze and weed in black neighborhoods in Philly to encourage residents not to vote.

As Republicans ramp up their poll-watching efforts, Democrats are pushing back in court, filing a lawsuit against the Republican National Committee for allegedly violating a decades-old consent decree requiring them to steer clear of doing anything that could be construed as intimidation of voters. Separate lawsuits in a variety of states claim that GOP poll watchers aren't complying with the relevant rules, which can change from state to state.

"There is a heightened awareness of the issue of voter intimidation because Donald Trump has made it an issue" by telling his supporters they need to watch the polls, Hasen said."We don't know how much is going to happen this election, but there is certainly much more open talk about it than we've seen in recent elections."

When you add it all up—the scattered cases of genuine fraud and corruption, the court battles, the rampant fears on both sides that the election will be illegitimate—the 2016 contest is shaping up to be the messiest electoral battle at least since the 2000 debacle in Florida. And Election Day is bound to be full of even more rumors and panic.

"We're starting to see false reports on social media," Hasen said, citing a tweet from an activist who claimed without evidence that Trump supporters—"men with dogs"—were patrolling a polling location open for early voting.

"These stories are very hard to figure out," Hasen told me. "Some of it is based on rumors, some of it is actually happening... On Election Day, there's a lot of misinformation."

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For the past few years, the Canadian government has faced accusations that it's been asleep at the switch when it comes to stopping youth from being programmed by violent extremist groups.

Donald Trump speaking about immigration at an August rally in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo by Gage Skidmore / Creative Commons.

Donald Trump's all-out denouncements of illegal immigration helped catapult him to being a few jumps in the polls away from the presidency, but his rhetoric hasn't helped him in the border states that would be the site of his long-promised wall.

The GOP nominee is likely to win in both Arizona and Texas, but by smaller margins than are usually enjoyed by Republicans in states that are usually strongholds for them. Does that mean that Trump's fire and brimstone talk is actually turning border voters off, and that they don't want his "big, beautiful wall" after all? Or is he just a uniquely bad messenger for anti-immigration polices that many voters still believe?

"Part of the reason Trump is going to lose is because he's Donald Trump," Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restrictionist immigration policies, says. "He's obnoxious and has all kinds of personal baggage that turns people off even if they hate Hillary and agree with what he says. The result of this election is not going to be any kind of ruling on policy positions."

Whoever wins the presidency, immigration reform is unlikely thanks to widespread opposition from conservative Republicans in Congress. But observers say the votes in Texas and Arizona show how the immigration issue is evolving—led, in part, by Latino voters who have built their electoral strength in response to anti-immigration politics. Antonio Gonzalez, the man who has helped lead that effort as president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, says the future of immigration reform may bypass DC entirely and take place at the state level instead.

"Federalism is real," Gonzalez tells me. "There's no reason immigration reform, or some version of it, can't be enacted by the states." Gonzalez believes states and cities will lead the way on immigration, as they have on gay marriage and marijuana legalizations.

You can forgive Gonzalez for being skeptical about the prospects for federal reform. He's witnessed previous turning points—big Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008, as well as the famous Republican National Committee "autopsy" advocating outreach to voters of color after the 2012 election—turn into dust. After all, the Obama administration holds the record for deportations.

"One thing both parties have done," he says, "is ratchet up border enforcement."

Gonzalez doesn't expect anything different after the 2016 election, even if Clinton wins big.

"I think there'll be a kabuki dance of Democrats offering some form of immigration reform," he says. "Republicans will reject it, and Democrats will say, 'We'll punish you in 2018.'"

That's not to say that important changes aren't happening. Motivated by initiatives like Arizona's controversial SB 1070, which required state law officers to determine an individual's immigration status during traffic stops, Latino voter registration has surged from a reported 9.7 million in 2008 to an estimated 13.1 million in 2016. (Meanwhile, a court challenge to the law diluted its power.) In Arizona, 22 percent of eligible voters are Hispanic, making them a powerful voting bloc. In Texas, Democrats are holding out hope that someday, the Latino vote could flip the state from deep red to bright blue.

Some longtime anti-immigration hawks like Arizona's Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio are suddenly finding themselves on the ropes in this year's election. (Arpaio isn't helped by the fact that he's facing a federal criminal contempt citation in a racial profiling case.) Lisa Magana, an associate professor at Arizona State University, says the troubles of anti-immigration politicians in her state aren't surprising. Recent polling shows most of the state's voters are against Trump's proposed wall, and even more—68 percent—are against deporting all undocumented immigrants.

"I don't think (Trump's) message is consistent with how people feel, living in a border state," Magana tells me. "It may work with his base, his supporters, but it doesn't necessarily coincide, in Texas and Arizona, with attitudes toward immigration."

Still, the fact that Trump was able to rise to the Republican nomination means that there's a sizable population of anti-immigration voters who won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

"The Trump campaign started with—and has always put front and center—anti-immigrant and anti-Mexico rhetoric as its cornerstone. The election would be a repudiation of that," says Raúl A. Ramos, an associate professor at the University of Houston. "But the fact those sentiments gained the traction it did (in the GOP primaries) shows it'll still be there."

That means Republican politicians have every incentive to block immigration reform, even if Clinton wins an overwhelming victory.

"If Republicans keep control of the House, as they're likely to... legislatively, not much is going to happen," Krikorian says. "The other side is not going to get what it wants, and the proactive stuff I want isn't going to get passed either."

That doesn't mean there won't be movement on the issue. States and cities are already striking out on their own. There are a number of "sanctuary cities" that decline to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Some, like New York, are offering IDs to undocumented migrants to help them access city services.

Krikorian, meanwhile, is putting Republican politicians on notice not to backtrack on immigration enforcement. The 2012 "autopsy" recommending the party soften its approach on the issue, he says, was a disaster.

"The GOP brain trust just completely misunderstood their own voters," he says. "That's an interesting question I think will determine, literally, the continuing existence of the Republican Party."

Trump may lose, Krikorian says, but that doesn't mean immigration hawkishness is a losing issue. "The opportunity is there," he says, "for a Republican who isn't a lunatic."

Follow Joel Mathis on Twitter.

WARNING: Do not scroll any further if you do not want to see some dicks.

Scrolling through Instagram this week, I came across a meme that said, "If you're having a bad day, just remember there's females out there who gonna take a small dick tonight and act like they love it cause it's their man." The caption continued, "Be happy with that USB thumbdick baby girl." Mostly because I've been working on this story, the post made me think about how prevalent dick size shaming is in our society.

But for men who have micropenises, the punchline is all too real, as is the stigma that comes with having a dick that sometimes really is no larger than a USB stick.

A micropenis is defined as a penis that measures less than 2.5 standard deviations below the mean average penis size when stretched and flaccid; the actual length would likely be less than 2.5 inches.

The condition affects about 0.6 percent of men.

"It's a very rare event," Dean Elterman, urologic surgeon at Toronto Western Hospital, told VICE.

Elterman said a micropenis can be diagnosed during infancy; they develop mainly when testosterone has trouble getting to the fetus in utero. If caught very early, it's possible to use testosterone shots to potentially boost the penis length, but Elterman said after puberty that's not effective. Nor are creams, injections, and pills available online. As for penis enlargement surgery, Elterman said men who have small penises often attribute that to other problems in their lives "which can lead to anxiety about relationships, depression, low self worth." A surgery won't necessarily produce results they want, he said, and it won't cure mental health issues.

"You have to really address the whole person and not penis alone."

VICE reached out to a bunch of men who have micropenises to find out how being small has impacted their lives.

Jack, 29, Fort Worth, Texas

VICE: How big is your penis?
Jack: It's kind of varied some but recently it's been three inches, at most three and a half (when erect). It's pretty much all head flaccid, usually smaller than an inch, with a wrinkle of flesh above. A minority of the time it's an "innie."

When did you realize you had a micropenis?
I would say when I was about 11. I seen all my friends naked and stuff and realized that I was a lot smaller than them. I think honestly I'm probably about the same size now that I was when I was about 11 or 12.

How did you feel about it?
I remember watching Scary Movie and there's the baby dick scene and I kind of thought, Wow I'm smaller than him, and at the same time I kind of got a rush from realizing that. I think the nickname "Baby Dick" really stuck in my mind, and I've always thought of myself as a baby dick I suppose. I would always think in both a horrified way and eventually an aroused nightmare-turned-fantasy where my tiny dick was exposed, and I was called "baby dick" and other pejorative nicknames, and in my fantasies some girl would always say, "Oh my two-year-old brother is bigger than that."

So it became a fetish?
I really think it developed as kind of a subconscious reaction to deal with insecurities and that sort of thing. I think part of it is men want their penis to be noticed, and if one has a very small penis, one could never believe someone who was telling them it was a big dick, so the next best thing is to be small. I dated a dominatrix and I loved her to tie me up and tease me about my "baby dick," "tiny dick," "teenie weenie," "useless worm." It is an amazingly thrilling combination. I even let her fuck me in the ass with a strap-on, proving that she could be more of a man and have a bigger dick than me, a pathetically small baby dick.

When did you have your first sexual encounter?
I was about 18 when I first got a blowjob and 19 when I first had sex. The first time I got a blowjob, when I pulled out my dick it was really kind of awkward. You could tell she was really surprised that it was small and she kind of laughed about it. The first time we had sex, she had known for a while that I was on the smaller side so it was an enjoyable experience.

So you told her beforehand?
Yes I did kind of make some subtle references to it and we had kind of discussed it before she saw it. I think she was more intrigued than anything else.

Is it a handicap sexually?
I would say that it's kind of a handicap in some ways. But I would say most guys who are on the smaller side kind of make up for it in other ways as far as orally and with hands and stuff like that. It's kind of like they realize there's kind of a disadvantage. I definitely tried to overcompensate.

What's your sex life like now?
I've been married about five years now. It's been about two months since the last time we had sex. It's kind of mixed because of my small penis humiliation fetish. Sometimes my wife will also help as far as role playing, just kind of talk about, "Your dick is so small" and sort of mock my perceived inadequacy. I've actually tried to get my wife to gossip about it, she hasn't really agreed to do that.

Has having a micropenis ever been the source of mental health problems?
When I was younger I kind of dealt with depression, a few sort of suicide attempts. Like one time I took eight hydrocodone and drank half a bottle of Jack Daniels and I was about 15. I definitely kind of dealt with some issues that are only somewhat, I think, tied to the fact that I have a micropenis.

Jesse, 23, Rock Port, Missouri

How big is your penis?
It's about two to two and a half inches when hard. It's roughly the size of a Bic lighter.

When did you realize your penis was smaller than average?
Me and a friend of mine were very young, I think he was seven, I was six. We both would run around the woods together. One day we both had to pee and we stood almost hip to hip while we did. I noticed, even at that age, his was considerably bigger than mine.

What would your ideal size be?
Five inches.

Have you ever had a bad sexual experience because of your micropenis?
The first woman I was ever with, I was 17 when I lost my virginity to her. She was warned I could be very small so after it happened she kept telling how big it was and that I'm huge, just trying to make me feel better. Then about a week later we broke up and she went around to anyone that would listen telling them about my condition and had pics to show them. I caught a lot of flack from that.

Has it affected your ability to have sex?
Definitely. A lot of positions the average person can do I'm too small for; I can't have sex while standing at all and I'm actually stuck with only about three or four positions I can successfully do.

Which are?
Well missionary with me on top, missionary with her on top, doggy style and I think that's about it. Those are the only ones I can achieve penetration from.

How often do you masturbate and is it difficult?
Every few days. It's not necessarily difficult just different than the average guy—I have to hold it in my finger tips most of the time.

How is your sex life now?
I'm currently married. She actually likes my size but honestly we do swing and I think that helps our relationship a lot.

In what way?
She enjoys seeing me with men and enjoys pleasing them as well and I actually enjoy knowing she is getting a normal sized penis since I honestly don't always cut it. After we started swinging, we no longer hold anything back sexually, and she says she has been with huge guys and it hurt her to have sex with them. She said she does wish mine was bigger sometimes but is just glad it's small enough not to hurt her.

Have you thought about penis enlargement?
After doing research I've found that most won't work and the ones that actually show results cost an arm and a leg.

Anything else you wanted to share about your penis?
Well on top of having a micropenis I'm what's known as partially circumcised—more or less a botched circumcision that means I was left with about half my foreskin. Definitely had the short straw drawn in the pants department.

Neil, mid-50s, UK

When did your penis stop growing?
My penis has always been tiny since I can remember. It hasn't stopped growing, just never grew.

How big is it?
It's three centimetres erect and non-existent flaccid, you can only measure it erect. It's the size of a two pence piece.

Tell me about your sex life
I am bi-sexual. I've only tried to have sex twice, it was impossible. I have had women laugh at me, that's why I have given up dating.

Can you masturbate?
I can masturbate but it is difficult. I can't hold it, just rub it.

How have these issues affected your mental health?
It does depress me and causes me to feel I am inadequate. I have thought about enlargement. It would be lovely to have a proper penis.

Chris, 42, Netherlands

How big is your penis?
Erect, it is four inches, which is not micro but very small. Not erect, the size varies between zero and one inch. I would be happy with one more inch.

When did you first notice it was smaller than average?
I noticed in primary school. We swam weekly and we dressed in a public dressing room so I found out very soon that my penis looked different than other boys. They found out also.

When did it stop growing?
Around my 12th birthday.

What was your first sexual experience like?
At about 12, a good friend and I masturbated together. He made me realize a penis could do more than just pee. My first sexual experience with real sex was at the age of 26—til then I was a virgin.

Have you ever had a particularly embarrassing sexual experience due to your micropenis?
That was during my first sexual experience. I lost my condom and it was very hard to find the woman's vagina. Losing condoms is very common, so I decided to buy a smaller size which are available online.

How has it impacted your sexual performance?
It has not impacted my sexual performance. Since I use smaller condoms I do not lose them anymore and safe sex is possible with my wife. My sexual performance is OK since my wife prefers not to do the complete Kama Sutra. We do not try positions. But that is not due to my small penis.

Do you tell your sex partners about your micro penis prior to having sex?
I did not—they were able to find out themselves. Neither one of them complained about it.

Interviews have been edited for style and clarity

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo via flikr user Dank Depot

Police are going full out against pot shops in Ottawa.

Earlier today, police stormed and raided at least six pot shops in the country's capital. The Ottawa Citizen reports that the stores hit were two Weemedical clinics, three Green Tree Medical Dispensary's and one called CannaGreen.

It has been reported that all five dispensaries were all run by the same BC outlet.

Police have arrested at least one person and were seen bringing in battering rams and tools into several of the stores before leaving with several cardboard boxes filled with alleged contraband and locking the doors.

At the moment it is unknown if police will hit any more shops.

Paul Davie who works at TopSpot, another Ottawa dispensary, told VICE that he's aware of the raids but isn't too worried about the police storming their front doors.

"I believe have been warned and I guess the police are now taking action," said Davie, adding that TopShot didn't receive a similar warning.

"I think if you're not really being a problem with the community they aren't going to come and raid you."

Medical marijuana is legal in Canada but it must be delivered through the post and can't be purchased in person making all the stores in Ottawa technically illegal and unregulated.

In 2015, Vancouver adopted regulations for stores providing medical marijuana from a store front. Davie said that, since Ottawa doesn't have its licensing regulations in place yet, TopShot follows the Vancouver regulations.

Some of the dispensaries hit by the raid have been in the news recently. In Mid-October a truck drove through the front of a CannaGreen dispensary. The people running the shop simply boarded it and and proceeded to sell the weed in a drive-thru fashion.

The landlords of the building told the Ottawa Citizen that they did not know the store was selling weed out of their strip mall. Last week the landlord was able to evict that particular tenant after going to police.

"In my opinion it's kind of a waste of taxpayer money because they want to make it legal for recreational purposes soon. I think it would be better for them to start regulating them, we would love to be regulated, want to be at ease and help our patients," said Davie.

"Right now, this year, Ottawa has the most homicides and shootings in a long time. So I think there a lot more other things to worry about."

Follow Mack on Twitter.

A work by Tony, a prisoner in Nevada, titled 'Prison is Worse for Some.' Courtesy of Black and Pink

There are 1.56 million people currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the US. At 716 incarcerations per 100,000 people, America has the dubious distinction of having the highest percentage of its citizens imprisoned out of any nation with more than 500,000 residents—higher than Rwanda, Russia, and China. For LGBTQ people, the situation is even worse. According to a recent report, nearly 8 percent of state and federal prisoners identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, a rate nearly twice that of the general national population. And 16 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey say they have spent time in prison, over three times the rate of the general population.

LGBTQ Americans aren't only more likely to end up in prisons—once inside, they're subject to endemic levels of physical and sexual violence, both at the hands of fellow prisoners and from prison guards. Yet people on the outside rarely hear their stories. According to some activists, that silence allows their isolation and abuse to continue unchecked.

A new art exhibit is hoping to break it.

Tonight, the LGBTQ prisoner advocacy group Black and Pink is debuting an exhibition of artwork by incarcerated LGBTQ artists called On the Inside. At New York's Abrons Art Center, several dozen works will be on display, ranging from portraiture drawn on the back of envelopes to watercolor drawings made with illicitly obtained materials. The themes are diverse, but they all serve one purpose: trying to break down the barriers between the lived experience of LGBTQ prisoners and how outsiders perceive it.

"We want people to see the artists for who they are," said Jason Lydon, community minister for Black and Pink. "We want people to see that when you lock people up, they're real people with real talents and interests, and we want to use their art to build a connection to them."

'Acceptance,' a work by a prisoner named Stevie. Courtesy of Black and Pink

Of course, creating an art show with currently incarcerated individuals presents its own challenge. The first step was to put out a call for art, so Black and Pink placed an announcement in its monthly newspaper, distributed free of charge to more than 10,000 LGBTQ prisoners a month. The organization offered to compensate each participant for postage costs and put $50 into its commissary account for accepted works. Over the course of a few years, the group received more than 4,000 submissions.

"I was so surprised at the volume," said Tatiana von Furstenberg, who helped fund and curate the exhibit. "Every time I'd go to the PO box there'd be 200 more submissions. There's no internet really in prisons, so anything beyond people seeing it in the newspaper was all word-of-mouth."

All participants in the exhibit are identified by their first names only for two reasons: It's illegal to run a business from prison, so their $50 commissary payment could lead to disciplinary action, and many could be endangered by disclosing their gender identity or sexuality.

Most of the submitted artworks arrived on standard US letter-size printer paper, which is often available to purchase through commissaries. Most are drawn with ink—in many prisons, prisoners aren't even allowed to have pens, so they must draw with the thin, bendy ink tubes from the inside of pens. Coloring gets complicated; some prisons sell watercolors, but in others, inmates will melt magazines to create dyes. It's clear that much of the artwork on display at the show is made with illicit materials, said Lydon.

Though the themes of the exhibit vary, two main threads emerge: what prison feels like, and what it takes away from you. In the first category are self-portraits, sparse drawings of solitary confinement, abstractions made of cell bars. In one particularly powerful image by a Nevada prisoner named Tony, titled A Self-Portrait (below) dozens of masked, featureless prisoners stand in a cramped room with bars behind them, seeming to stare out at the drawing's viewer. The work, whether intentionally or not, recalls some of the Holocaust's most haunting photography. In the image's center, one man stands above the crowd, naked, their penis exposed, their arms to their side, their eyes expressionless. One gets the sense that they're transitioning, halfway between being human and becoming one of the faceless creatures that surround them.

'A Self-Portrait,' by Nevada prisoner Tony. Courtesy of Black and Pink

In the second category are sensual self-portraits and works that depict sex, uninhibited sexuality and queer pride—everything you can't do or feel in prison. Carrie, an artist imprisoned in Texas, wrote that her self-portrait was about showing "my feeling of inner-beauty as a woman on the inside. If she could show you herself, this would be her face." An artist named Mike imprisoned in Florida sent in a super hero-themed picture, writing "The LGBT voice has become so strong that it illuminated and powered the rainbow-colored hair of the hero, who had been weakened in exile for over a century. Bound in chains, she felt the surging Rainbow Energy, rose up, and finally broke the chains."

The exhibit is also meant to show how art operates as a financial and psychological lifeline for artists.

Jennifer Mayo, 38, was imprisoned in Texas from 2009 to 2015. As it does for many prisoners, art became her way to survive on the inside.

"That's how I did my time," she said. "I would stay focused on art and not get distracted. I don't know what else I would have done if I didn't have it."

Mayo would use whatever she could find to make her works. Some prisoners at her facility had access to a hobby shop, from which they'd smuggle out colored pencils that Mayo would then buy with stamps or coffee. Its commissary also sold packs of watercolor paint, not unlike that used by schoolchildren; Mayo would use a toothbrush as a paint brush, a razor blade to contour pieces of paper into sculptures, and powdered milk as glue to hold it together. She made a few pieces for herself, but most to sell. Her family cut her off when she entered prison, so she used her art to buy soap and other commissary basics. Other prisoners would commission her to make 3D greeting cards and portraits of themselves, their lovers, or of their kids.

"If you can do good portraits, you can charge an arm and a leg," she said. "But at one point I thought, 'If I have to draw another person's ugly little kid again, I'm outta here.'"

Mayo now lives in Corpus Christi on a sailboat and works at a potato chip distributor (I could hear the sound of crinkling plastic bags during our phone call). She still makes art on the side; an author who lives on the boat across from hers commissioned her to illustrate his book about mermaids. She's trying to get back into more personal work, but she's busy with her job and life. "Now that I don't have to do it, I do it less," she said.

Follow Peter Moskowitz on Twitter.

On the 24th of October, 2016, at the behest of French Minister of Local Affairs Bernard Cazeneuve, the refugee camp in Calais was dismantled. The port town of Calais – which is also known among immigrants as 'The Jungle' – is the closest French town to England, and that has made it a hub for migrants hoping to cross over to the West for years. At the time of the most recent evacuation, about 7,000 refugees had been living in the camp. VICE France photographer Michael Bunel was there to document the chaos.

I started working on the European refugee crisis in September 2015, by travelling to the Austrian-Hungarian border to photograph the arrival of the trains carrying refugees who had been rejected by the Hungarian government. The first time I visited "The Jungle" was in October, 2015, and in the year that followed, I've gone back a few times to document the daily lives of refugees in their makeshift camps. Having spent so much time in the place, it only seemed logical to follow the dismantling of the camp as it unfolded last week.

I decided to use a panoramic lens, when I saw the refugees lining up in front of the Orientation Centre – a governmental space, where they are invited to rest and plan the next part of their journey. At the same time, hundreds of policemen and journalists had flooded the scene. It felt voyeuristic to be part of that group, while the refugees saw their tents and belongings go up in smoke. Still, among the chaos, I witnessed a few touching scenes – poignant farewells between volunteers and refugees or Eritrean people praying in front of their makeshift Church before its destruction, for instance.

I talked to some of the refugees to find out their plans for the future. Most of them had no idea where to go next. Some were thinking of trying out the camp in Stalingrad in Paris . A few others said they would try to make their way into Germany, Belgium and Sweden.

See Michael's work on his website, and more photos below.

This year has often felt like the end times. The scope of apocalypse often feels global—refuges, wartime, Brexit, a possible Trump presidency. But if Peter and the Farm is any indication, it's that the prevailing sense of dread has entered even the most pastoral of regions and the effects, while smaller in scope, are largely devastating.

Peter and the Farm is part character study, part anthropology; both a love letter to a way of life and a warning against it. The documentary's focus, intimate and unwavering, is on Peter Dunning, a 68-year-old farmer and the sole human on a rural Vermont farm. He is a rugged individualist with a wild temper and a host of demons, a charismatic storyteller, a former artist, and a depressive alcoholic.

Filmmaker Tony Stone met Dunning as a child, when his family would visit the local farmer's market and chat him up as they bought produce. In the years since, Stone, now married, developed his friendship with Dunning until he was invited up to the mythic farm he'd grown up hearing about.

"When we went up to the farm, had been spending more time up there because he was coming off of his second DUI," says Stone. It was during that visit that he got the idea to shoot a documentary on the farm, which Dunning not only agreed to but added to: In addition to filming him and his work on the land, Stone could also document Dunning's intended suicide.

Four years after that visit, Peter and the Farm documents a year in Dunning's life, and the effect is somewhere between euphoric and harrowing. The suicide thankfully didn't come to pass, but the threat of death lingers thick; suicide is brought up often, as casual a notion as dinner plans. The full cycle of the seasons prove to be a smart through line: to understand both the repetition and the connectivity of Dunning's work, seeing it year round is narratively pragmatic as well as emotionally effective.

"The idea of the seasons was to show a cycle," Stone recently told me, over the phone. "To show the relationship between man and earth, and how it endlessly repeats—how it can be maddening."

Peter and the Farm strikes a smart balance between two worlds consistently. It's a careful look at the life of an individual, but it juxtaposes that isolationism with the fundamental principles of his work, which is to grow for a community. In that sense, as a product of the 60s counterculture, Dunning's loneliness proves to be a particularly devastating turn of events that the film unspools quietly. His alcoholism, perfectionism, and temper result in his alienation. Abandoned by his family (his second wife took off with the kids one early morning in the late 80s, taking the farm's truck with her), Dunning's view of his own existence has soured, leaving him with nothing but the farm he tends to with reckless obsession.

The film is a potent allegory: What do we pass on when we have no one to pass it on to?

In one particularly grueling scene, Dunning, drunk and depressed, chops wood while screaming about the farm ("I care more about the farm than me"), his sons ("I don't even care, I hate him," he says of his oldest), and his mental state ("you don't know what insane fucking is"). The sound of the saw hacking the wood soundtracks his breakdown, with the camera's proximity making the acre-wide property feel miles away.

The film is a potent allegory: What do we pass on when we have no one to pass it on to? In an era of global warming, it's a question that goes far beyond the abstract, and into the overwhelmingly practical.

When the film begins, Stone shoots the pastoral landscapes like an alien planet. The throbbing opening song establishes a dread that often doesn't let up, except for choice moments when Peter recounts better times: a full house of young children, a diving board tethered to a pond, a night out drunkenly singing show tunes. Between Denning's highs and lows are blistering shots of the work itself, including uninterrupted takes of animal-slaughtering that aren't for the faint of heart, including a badly aimed gun shot to the head of a sheep, which Denning has to attempt for a second time. Through it all, the camera never wavers.

As the film's scope widens, the character begins to do the studying. Peter and the Farm is a film about extinction, and as Peter watches his way of life fall out of favor—both in America, and in his own pathologically complex relationship with his land—it feels as if he himself is vanishing, too.

"Peter started this farm in 1978, but it was another farm 100 years before that—so what is the next incarnation of it?" Stone said. "Is it going to be another farm or someone's country home? How do you really preserve something? It's such a universal conundrum."

The specificity of the film is what makes it so potent, but it's also something of a red herring. The way life looks and what life means is a vast chasm; the things that we purport to give us meaning can, in a sense, betray us and dare us to abandon them for nothing. Watching Peter grapple with his purpose makes for a truly human spectacle; it is profound and it is painful. No man is an island, but one man is a farm.

Follow Rod Bastanmehr on Twitter.

Peter and the Farm is in theaters on Friday, November 4.

A still from the trailer for Spa Night

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Within the vast canon of East Asian and East Asian American filmmaking, only a small number of films catch the attention of the Western entertainment industry. But among those, so few address queerness that that genre—queer Asian filmmaking—is scant at best. Folks in diasporic communities wanting to find East Asian characters who aren't represented as villains and sidekicks or queer narratives that aren't laced with outdated stereotypes are often out of luck.

Which makes the arrival of two groundbreaking works that do just that this year—veteran Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden and Korean American filmmaker Andrew Ahn's debut feature Spa Night—feel like a revelation.

Though both Park and Ahn are Korean in heritage, their films couldn't be more different. The Handmaiden, a lush adaptation of Sarah Waters's Victorian era-set novel Fingersmith, is a historical drama in three acts. Set in Japanese-occupied Korea in the early 20th century, it follows a love story (of sorts) between an heiress and her new maid, one that unfolds with both subtlety and outright perversity.

It's a complicated narrative, flushed throughout with the manifold plot twists and color saturation that are Park's signature. Spa Night, for its part, is a more straightforward story, but one that's no less intense. Set in Los Angeles's sprawling Koreatown, it follows a Korean immigrant family straining under the pressure of assimilation while their second-generation son explores his sexuality in Korean spas.

Whereas The Handmaiden focuses on how sexuality can be weaponized, Spa Night explores how it can be sheltered and closeted. And given that East Asian cultures are historically (and still) obsessed with notions of family and honor, it only follows that those obsessions would trickle over into their cultural products. Park's other films take this obsession to stomach-churning extremes, suffused as they are with violence and brutality, but The Handmaiden eschews outright gore for other horrors.

In this way, it's reminiscent of Chinese filmmaker Chen Kai Ge's Farewell My Concubine, which came out in 1993 but takes place in the same cultural moment as The Handmaiden. As in The Handmaiden, Farewell My Concubine is based on the notion of found family—in this case, two orphaned boys who grow up in the same Chinese opera training camp and find stardom in their professional union—but unlike The Handmaiden, the queerness of one of Farewell My Concubine's characters is left an unspoken secret until the film's very end, and is used to ruin him until he's driven to suicide. It's a harsh (and familiar) interpretation of queerness, but if anything, it's historically accurate. To this day, openly addressing sexuality is still considered socially inappropriate in most East Asian countries. While China has what is probably the largest queer population in the world (with the Chinese-founded gay chat app Blued hosting 15 million users to Grindr's global user base of 5 million), attitudes about same-sex relationships, let alone Westernized queer culture, are still evolving both in terms of social awareness and legal recognition. To that point, no East Asian country or territory has yet to legalize same-sex marriage, though Taiwan is poised to become the first.

As was the case with other territorial conquests of Judeo-Christian/Western colonization, countries like China, Japan, and Korea once had societies that, if not outright accepting of homosexual relationships, didn't persecute them. State-enforced repression of queer people is a relatively new phenomenon that's bled over into social and cultural attitudes toward queerness. And in the face of a family-oriented culture like China's, where until recently only one child was allowed per married couple, or Japan, with its birth-rate crisis, pressure on queer folks has been compounded: Not just to repress their sexuality at large, but to continue the family line through heterosexual unions.

Intra-family tensions are, as in Spa Night, at the root of the Korean film Two Weddings and a Funeral and the Chinese-American film Saving Face—films that address even less-discussed aspects of queer Asian culture, like marriage and honor. The former, released in 2012 by out filmmaker Kim Jho Kwang-soo, follows the plight of a gay man and a lesbian woman who marry each other to please their families (a seemingly rising occurrence in the region), and while that arrangement is played for laughs, the film doesn't shy away from the discrimination that drives queer people into these sham unions in the first place. The lead character of 2004'sSaving Face, by Chinese-American filmmaker Alice Wu, struggles to come out to her family even as she falls for the woman of her dreams because of the Chinese notion of "face," which describes both your own and your family's social standing.

That queer East Asian folks now have any films that explore their lived experiences is a relatively new phenomenon; all of these films were made in the past few decades, and while there are many (though oftentimes censored) same-sex and queer representations in East Asian media at large, such as the popularity of Japanese yaoi and yuri works, cinema, with its moment-in-time quality, can serve as a benchmark for society at-large. There are still too few of them, but these films, across decades and continents, at least give voice to a conversation that social stigma all too often renders silent.

Film festivals centering queer Asian and Asian-American stories and creators are on the rise; it was on such a circuit that Spa Night first received notice, and now one-off screenings for the film are sold out. And even Hollywood's most famous East Asian face has received a canonical queer rereading: While Mulan has been meme'd to examine if Shang was actually Disney's first gay character, the version of Mulan that aired on the 2013 ABC series Once Upon a Time is bisexual. As for her upcoming live-action reboot? Perhaps she will join this small but growing canon of films that boldly explore what it means to be queer and Asian.

Follow Lilian Min on Twitter.

Check out Line Hoj Hostrup's Tumblr.

Journalist Nick Ryan, left, interviewing former KKK member Don Black in 2001

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Last month, I traveled to the Harlow in Essex, to see the town beyond the headlines on hate crimes in the wake of the murder of a Polish man. To get some background on the area's perceived history of racism and xenophobia, I spoke to journalist Nick Ryan, who spent time with Combat 18, a neo-Nazi group that originated in the town.

It turns out that one of the central figures in Combat 18 was a former Benedictine monk who had previously dabbled in Satanism, and wanted to establish a kind of white-only farming commune in rural Essex. Another was a football hooligan who Nick says sounded keen on transforming a Chelmsford council estate into a separatist state. He was inspired by Northern Irish paramilitaries who'd managed to gain effective control of areas of Belfast. I was intrigued by the concept of Britain's most prominent neo-Nazi group planning to turn sections of Essex into an Aryan homeland, and got back in touch with Nick for a more in-depth interview.

VICE: Hi Nick, how did you end up getting in with Combat 18 in the first place?
Nick Ryan: Back in 1996, I was trying to write a book about the growth of subcultures. I was looking for something right at the edge of society that seemed to reject widely-accepted social norms—maybe biker gangs, or similar. Wandering into my local independent bookstore, I spotted a copy of an anti-fascist magazine, which I picked up at random. It contained an article about racist football hooligans connected to Chelsea football club.

When I got home, I got in touch with the research head of the magazine, Nick Lowles, who said that Combat 18 had never openly spoken to a journalist before, but might do so now. Somewhat naively and not really understanding what I was getting into, I used Nick's help with a few addresses and PO boxes to approach members of the gang and ask if they'd be interviewed, initially for a magazine piece and then later for my book. Surprisingly, one said "yes." Mark Atkinson, who has since done jail time for activities connected to racial hatred, was my initial point of contact.

What was the deal with their plan for an Aryan homeland?
C18 had established itself as a stewarding force to the BNP, but after violence against many other far-right activists, it had been proscribed by the BNP leadership. The gang ran a music business, Blood & Honour, which was controlled by Paul "Charlie" Sargent, a thug with a history of football hooliganism. C18 was telling supporters, both here and abroad, that it was going to create an Aryan homeland out in Essex, a place where "our people" could follow their racial dreams.

Those dreams seemed to vary wildly depending on who you talked to, despite the fact that C18 was attempting to raise money for this homeland from all and sundry. Charlie and his brother Steve talked about some sort of paramilitary-style, street-based system, taking over various estates in parts of the county. They often referred to Northern Ireland as their inspiration, and there have been many links revealed over the years between far-right and Loyalist movements. Meanwhile, their ideological backer, David Myatt, an ex-Benedictine monk with a long-involvement in far-right movements who was alleged to have been a Satanist and later converted to Islam, talked in fantastical terms about a communal back-to-the-land existence, replete with "racial warriors," slaves, and other elements.

That sounds pretty intense.
Myatt and the brothers talked pretty frankly about their beliefs. What I didn't realize was that the gang was about to erupt into open warfare. The number two figure, Will Browning, challenged Charlie for the leadership, and during a meeting between Charlie and one of Browning's supporters, the latter was stabbed and died. I attended the subsequent murder trial, and witnessed the dead man's partner screaming—something I'll never forget. Charlie and another man were sent away for murder.

I heard Myatt was very into medieval England, and challenged you to a duel after you wrote some things about him that he didn't like.
I had met Myatt at a tea shop in Malvern, where our encounter had verged on the surreal with his talk of race warriors, etc. I was later told that he'd sent me the challenge to a duel after my book Homeland was published, but never actually saw the challenge itself .

You also spent some time with extremists in the US. How did they compare with the ones at home?
Through my initial connections, I encountered members of the BNP—then Britain's largest far-right political party—and met Nick Griffin, who helped me to travel into the States and spend time with his networks there. I stayed with his head of American fundraising, a Loyalist supporter. My journeys in the States were something else. They took me from revisionist Holocaust-denying networks in DC to the KKK in the south, from neo-Nazi networks and murder cases in Illinois down to the Ozark Mountains, of Deliverance fame.

How did the far-right groups that you spent time with back then compare to the groups that are about today?
Today, the organized far-right in Britain is weak. It's disorganized, plagued by internecine feuds and splits, and dogged by financial scandals. The EDL has come and gone, PEGIDA UK is nowhere, Nick Griffin was cast out of the BNP, which has split and split again, and UKIP is struggling. But on the continent, the rise of populist right-wing politicians and anti-immigrant sentiment has rocked many societies, reflecting deep-seated tensions. The rise of "strongmen" figures such as Victor Orban in Hungary have, in some ways, circumvented far-right movements altogether.

Thanks, Nick.

Follow Nick Chester and Nick Ryan on Twitter.

Hillary Clinton at a 2015 press conference (Photo by Steve Sands/WireImage)

It's hard for anyone to keep track of all the various interrelated scandals and controversies currently engulfing the Hillary Clinton campaign. First and foremost, the former secretary of state is under renewed federal criminal investigation, a fact the country learned on October 28 when FBI director James Comey issued a letter to Congress saying that materials recovered in an unrelated case appeared "pertinent" to the matter of Clinton's unsanctioned private email server. (The unrelated case turned out to be Anthony Weiner's alleged sexting with an underage girl.) Then there's the daily deluge of incendiary WikiLeaks disclosures seized from the hacked email account of her campaign chairman John Podesta; add to that the FBI criminal probe into the Clinton Foundation referenced by the Wall Street Journal on October 30 and you have an ever-expanding blob of impropriety that hardly anyone can seem to get a full handle on. It's just way too much for ordinary voters to process.

To gauge whether these developments are sticking with the electorate, I talked to the good folks of Portsmouth, Ohio. Ohio is a crucial swing state and a must-win for Donald Trump, who has a slight advantage in the polls there. Portsmouth is also clearly Trump territory—it lies just across the Ohio River from Kentucky and is inhabited largely by poorer whites, Trump's prime demographic. Their situation is pretty bleak—ask people what's going on around town and they often reply "heroin," along with not much else.

I met Adrian Gomez, a 24-year-old who drives trucks for Walmart, at the local Buffalo Wild Wings. Most of the guys he works with are firmly supporting Trump—the "truck drivers for Trump" constituency is strong—but Gomez himself says he's a horrible asshole. "I think Trump would just run things into the ground," he told me. Gomez prefers Clinton, but he doesn't like her either—to him, voting for the "lesser evil," as he put it, doesn't seem like a very compelling pro-Clinton argument. He might not vote at all. "After this investigation reopened, it's like, I don't know," he sighed.

Gomez says Obamacare (under which health insurance premiums are set to skyrocket next year) has been a failure, and the country is probably screwed either way. "Honestly, I wish Bernie was in it," he said. (He voted for Bernie Sanders in the Ohio Democratic primary earlier this year.)

I can't tell you how many people under age 30 I've met all over Ohio and Pennsylvania—white, black, male, female, and everything in between—who would've happily and enthusiastically voted for Sanders, but can't bring themselves to vote for Clinton. And even if they can, it's only with the most tepid motivation, borne mainly of a desire to stop Trump. Gomez's friend Jessica, also hanging out at the Buffalo Wild Wings on Thursday night, said she'd "probably" vote for Clinton but hadn't really decided what to do yet. "Doesn't mean I'm a fan of her," she emphasized. As for the reopening of the email server criminal investigation, Jessica had heard about it but also couldn't quite explain exactly what was going on. "Obviously there's something there," she shrugged.

Even if they're only vaguely aware of the details, people do generally know that the investigation into Clinton has resumed and that she appears to have lied about it (which she indeed has.) Cory Smock, 22, attends Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, and like many voters he's absorbed disjointed snippets about the investigation on the internet, but doesn't particularly care about the details because it just reinforces his pre-existing conviction that Clinton is constantly engaged in corruption and criminality. "I just know she's done a lot of illegal stuff," he said. "I don't know. I just hear a lot of shit."

Unsurprisingly, Smock was "a big Bernie supporter," who, like Adrian Gomez, voted for him in the Ohio primary earlier this year. But he won't be voting for Clinton on November 8. "Maybe I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist," Smock said, "but things are so predetermined at this point. It's all about lies."

"She's the most conceited lying evil person I've ever seen in politics. She wants to go blame Russia for sending emails? She wants to start a war?"

In the current atmosphere of omnipresent misinformation and distrust of institutional media, it's not surprising that conspiracy theories and rumors are flying across southern Ohio. "I think they're about to expose the biggest corruption we've ever seen," said Eric Steele, a diesel mechanic and strong Trump supporter from nearby Chesapeake. "Now they're saying they're about to expose a pedophilia ring. There's so many scandals—you look at Facebook, you don't know what's real and what's not. She's the most conceited lying evil person I've ever seen in politics. She wants to go blame Russia for sending emails? She wants to start a war?"

With such a convoluted tangle of scandal, it's understandable that voters who don't follow this stuff closely would conflate them. Asked for her take on Clinton's latest legal problems, Emily, a pizza store worker in South Point, summed it up this way: "She was in charge of this facility that had people there, and she got 30,000 emails and never ended up reading them, and then everybody at the facility died." That's evidently a conflation of the Benghazi scandal—itself pretty labyrinthine—with the current email saga, congealing to produce a generalized impression that Clinton is just up to no good. Emily's not voting for Trump either, however.

Another young Portsmouth woman, who didn't want to give her name or any kind of identifying details, said she'll begrudgingly vote Democratic even though she also believes that Clinton committed a crime. "She used her email in account in a way that was illegal," the woman said, "so I think it is fair for them to reopen it and to investigate."

"My first choice would've been Bernie," she added, forlornly. "I don't like the fact that she's under investigation—this is just a crappy election."

Follow Michael Tracey on Twitter.

Protesters suffer from tear gas during a protest against the Israeli separation wall in Bil'in, West Bank (2009) © Activestills

In 2005, a small group of students from the Geographic Photography College in Tel Aviv began traveling to the Palestinian village of Bil'in in the West Bank. The students, three of them from Israel and one from Argentina, were photographing weekly protests against the construction of the Separation Wall—a barrier built by Israel ostensibly for security reasons—that cut off villagers' access to most of their farmland.

The students were looking to use their images of the protests in Bil'in to show the conflict from the Palestinian's perspective and bring more awareness of the occupation into the minds of Israelis. By the end of the school year, they had formed into a photo-collective called Activestills. The collective was made up of freelance photographers who were united in their politics against the occupation and who agreed to share the credit and copyright to all their photos. They also shared a belief, expressed in the collective's mission statement, that they could change Israeli public support for the occupation—which was heavily influenced by the mainstream Israel media—through the publication of their photos.

A Palestinian family in the ruins of their home in the Al-Tufah district of Gaza City, which was heavily bombed during the Israeli military offensive, Gaza Strip (2014). © Activestills

The collective realized they needed to create an alternative platform to publish their work, and subsequently started an online archive the was continuously updated with photographs from the demonstrations they participated in throughout the West Bank. The Activestills photographers had a clear agenda: to identify themselves as visual activists by rejecting the very notion of objectivity, and actively participate in protests alongside the Palestinian subjects they photographed. Because of this, the photographers were (and continue to be) subject to similar violence faced by the Palestinian activists they've spent over a decade documenting.

Israel's Ethiopian community demonstrates against police brutality and racism, following a series of incidents involving police violence directed at Ethiopian youth. West Jerusalem (2015) © Activestills

Daniel Tepper is a photographer and journalist. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter.

In 2014 vlogger Tracy Kiss scooped some semen out of a plastic takeaway tub, rubbed some on her face and put a video of it up on Youtube. Today, her semen facial videos have millions of views, and off the back of that fame she's become somewhat of a spokesperson for cum – telling me that she's actually contractually unable to speak about some of her other semen-based beauty tips because of embargoes imposed by other publications.

Her videos are all lengthy, tangential and frank speeches on her personal life, female confidence and societal taboos. And, perhaps inevitably, the comments they tend to pick up are of the "came for the ridiculous story; stayed for the tits" variety. While dermatologists have since debunked the idea of semen as an alternative to acid peels, voiced concern about STI transmission and stated that its protein content can be easily replicated with that of an egg yolk, Tracy stands by the semen facials today.

When I call her for a catch-up she's just on her way back from the gym, but chirpily makes some time to talk about her extensive views on sperm on the internet.

VICE: So Tracy, how did you first realise semen is great for your skin? Take me through that exact moment.
Tracy Kiss: It was when my beautician told me. I was going to have an acid peel, because I have rosacea, which means that my skin is often dry and hot and I can look pretty aged. She told me it was just a way to rehydrate and make it feel a lot calmer. And when I tried it for the first time, I immediately knew it works for me. I can't sing the praises of it highly enough.

Who was generous enough to give you the semen?
Because I'm single, I didn't have a partner I could use. I guess, traditionally – if that's the right word to use – people in relationships would see it as a sexual thing, because of how it's produced. But I look at it just as a beauty thing, I'm not there while it's being made. My friend just brings it round in a container, like a little takeaway tub, and I put it on my face. There's nothing seedy about it.

So it's completely platonic semen sharing?
We've never kissed, there's no chemistry between us. It's literally just having a friend who you can trust and feel confident enough to say: "will you provide me with something I can't purchase anywhere else?" It's not like he's a cocky guy who is like, "hey, this would really turn me on." But you know, it's actually something that men throw away quite casually. But it has so many benefits; it's worth saving some back.

What actually are the many benefits of semen, though?
I mean, there's so much going on. Look at women breastfeeding, it's the best start for your baby. Lots of women eat their placentas after birth. What's in your body is so many vitamins and minerals, but people are often just put off by the thought of it. But actually I think it's far healthier than drinking cow's milk – an animal that was never designed for humans. If you google what's in semen it's stuff like zinc, potassium, the microbes that you are probably deficient in anyway.

Has anything ever gone wrong with the whole process?
I breathed in when I had it a bit too high on my lip and got it up my nose once. I was like, "oh no, I've just snorted his semen". But it always goes in my fridge door straight away, right at the top where I keep eggs, so the kids can't reach it. I wouldn't want them to go and eat it or play with it or put it in their food.

So looking back to when you first put out the video last year, did you expect such a big response?
I hoped that people would understand it, and I never expected it to do as well as it has done. You're obviously doing something right if it's got such a big response. Looking back though, the video was probably too long and informative – people switched off and just wanted to see when I put it on my face. The people who have seen the video from start to finish, they fully understand it. The way they comment you can tell they appreciate the content. Those that have clicked on it and thought, 'I just want to see the action shot' – they are the ones that have such critical and narky responses, because they just see the shock factor and are quite ignorant to the rest of it.

Did you expect people to see it as quite a sexual video?
I used to be a Page 3 model when I was 18. Fast forward and I have two kids now, and yeah, I still want to be perceived as attractive, but the semen facial wasn't about that. It was about finding something that actually works and sharing that with the world. It was about breaking down those barriers of communication.

Did you get any positive responses from people who saw your video and tried it? Or were the comments mainly stuff like 'I'd happily donate my cum straight to your face'?
Quite a lot of women have said, "I actually do this all the time", but I wasn't expecting anyone to actually admit that. Lots of gay guys have said exactly the same thing, like, "we do this all the time, we just don't speak about it." And lots of straight men tell me their hands are really soft when they make a mess of their own accord. So there's lots of support out there, but I just don't think anyone's ever used their friend's before.

Do you think bodily fluids becoming more acceptable in society then?
Absolutely. I mean, I've tasted my own bodily fluids. In sexual terms, some people put their tongue up someone's bum. In relationships, you put fingers in holes, you taste things, and you don't see it as cringeworthy. But when you take away the passion and say it's scientific, people don't like it.

And how has the online fame affected your life and career over the past year?
I mean, I did dominate the "#semen" hashtag for quite a while. But you know, I think it has actually made the world a better place. It's told people that you can be honest, and you don't need to be embarrassed – I mean, I have spots, I'm sweaty, I've got stretch marks, and I have semen dripping down my face. People either love me or hate me for that, but I'll never change. Just be open, be yourself, be real, be true.

True words of wisdom. Thanks so much, Tracy!

More on VICE:

We Called the UK Ejaculation Police to Find Out Why Squirting Vaginas are Illegal and Jizzing Cocks Are Fine

This Is How Hard It Is to Donate Sperm to the British Government

An Interview with a British Bukkake Party Girl

So dark, so expensive. Vancouver photo via Flickr user Colin Knowles

Have you ever thought about calling your landlord and politely asking to pay less rent every month? If you apply standard "you miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take" logic, this should be a regular broke millennial practice—maybe even an annual hashtag.

It turns out this actually works in Calgary. Thanks to a tumbling provincial economy and fewer migrating workers, landlords are struggling to keep tenants, and are saying "yes" to the ones who ask nicely for a discount.

"I asked this summer, at renewal time," one Calgarian tweeted at a Calgary Herald reporter earlier this week. "They offered a rate even lower than what I proposed." Another tenant said she got $375 a month knocked off her monthly housing bill. "That essentially puts almost $5,000 more net income into our household that we can save," she told the Herald. "It's huge."

Because I'm a naturally jealous person, I immediately tried to think of ways I could recreate this scenario in Vancouver. An aspirational reading of the news that Vancouver home sales "plunged" 38.8 percent in October suggested to me that my rental situation is surely about to follow suit. If the out-of-control real estate bonanza is finally over, shouldn't renters start to see some relief?

Obviously I didn't want to get too greedy, so I called up my landlord, and casually brought up a notice of rent increase he mailed me this week. It turns out the maximum rent hike in British Columbia is going up in the new year (3.7 percent, up from 2.9), which somehow gave me the impression this stuff is arbitrary and negotiable. Since detached home prices in the city just turned a corner—down 0.8 percent from last month—I legit thought I could talk him out of adding ~$500 to my annual rent.

Let's just say my skills of tact and persuasion were no match for a less-than-one-percent vacancy rate, and a landlord who pretty well understands he could still get away with charging $2,300 for a mediocre one bedroom apartments in the West End if he really wanted to.

Still worried that this might be some personal failing on my part, I called up Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives lead economist Marc Lee to figure out how soon Vancouver rents will return to Earth, now that investors and speculators have chilled out. Unfortunately the news wasn't what I (or any renter) wants to hear. Bottom line: Toronto and Vancouver aren't going to get Calgary-style rent discounts anytime soon.

Lee told me that the rental problems in both Vancouver and Toronto have been decades in the making, and could take another generation to fully sort out. In the 1980s there were actually tax incentives for developers to build cheap rental stock, but those breaks evaporated in various rounds of budget cuts. Condos became the construction project of choice, which are easily marketed to out-of-city owners in pre-sales, bringing in yuppies from the US, China and other parts of Canada.

That population growth, driven by interprovincial and international migration, is what deepens rental shortages in Canada's major urban centres. On top of that, Vancouver's slowing market spurred by a recent foreign investor tax may actually make things worse for people in Toronto. Some investors are moving into other parts of BC or Seattle, but many are seeing Toronto real estate as the next best place to park their money. "We need more time and data," says Lee, "but we're seeing some or maybe a lot of what was coming to Vancouver now shifting to Toronto."

Are Toronto's renters just as screwed as Vancouver's? Photo via Flickr user William Turner

According to the latest numbers put out by the Toronto Real Estate Board, average one-bedroom condo rentals rose an unsettling 7.2 percent to $1,777 in the third quarter of 2016. The report looked at rental listings, and found about 500 fewer than this time last year. Fewer options increases competition and pushes up what landlords can charge. Though calculated differently, a Padmapper study of Vancouver found the median one bedrooms went for $1,800 in September, up from $1,750 the month before, and $1,700 the month before that.

These conditions are making young people poorer. So much of our income goes to rent every month, we're not able to save or move or think about the future. And according to Lee, Airbnb is actually having more of an impact on rent than we think. In Vancouver, where several thousand units are being diverted as short-term rentals, the competition among less than 5,000 empty units is unhealthy. Until the number of vacancies rises to a healthier three or four percent, you're not going to find reasonable apartments for under $1,200.

Vancouver in particular is so far off a healthy vacancy rate, lower home sale prices aren't going to move up enough renters into homeowners to make an immediate difference. There have been some efforts by our city government to tip the scales back in favour of renters, like bringing in a tax on empty condos, and the latest regulations on Airbnb, which together could add a few thousand new places to rent onto the market.

Lee says if cities are going to take affordability seriously, they're going to have no choice but to build a lot more rental stock. "If we just try to squeeze a few pieces from Airbnb and squeeze a few more pieces from what are currently empty condos, it will have a little bit of an impact, but it's not going to have the big long-term impact on affordability," he told VICE. If we actually want rent to be affordable for young people, Lee recommends Vancouver build somewhere in the neighbourhood of 5,000 to 10,000 rental-only units every year for the next generation.

While neither city's landlords are about to offer generous discounts, Toronto renters may soon have an argument that they're actually more screwed than we are. "On the buying side and rental side, it seems Vancouver is worse generally, but now that may be shifting so that Toronto will be getting worse," Lee said.

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Photo by David Hilowitz

According to a CBS News report, US intelligence agencies are looking into the legitimacy of low-level terror threats they fear may be planned for Monday, the day before Election Day.

Although authorities are still investigating the credibility of the threats, they have alerted terrorist task forces that al Qaeda may be targeting Texas, Virginia, and New York—although no specific locations in those states were named.

"The counterterrorism and homeland security communities remain vigilant and well-postured to defend against attacks here in the United States," a senior FBI official said in a statement. "The FBI, working with our federal, state, and local counterparts, shares and assesses intelligence on a daily basis and will continue to work closely with law enforcement and intelligence community partners to identify and disrupt any potential threat to public safety."

Officials in New York from the NYPD and Port Authority told Reuters that they were made aware of the possible threats and were taking the necessary precautions.

In addition to any potential terror acts, NBC reports that several government organizations—including the CIA, NSA, and Defense Department—have made preparations for cyber attacks on the polls in light of the recent hacks at the DNC.

Read: How Scared Should I Be of Voter Intimidation?

For this week's First-Person Shooter, a friendly sex worker named Alissa reached out to us on Twitter after we posted a call for new people with unique hustles to burn through two rolls of film. (P.S. we're always looking for new shooters, so don't hesitate to reach out if you're interested!)

Part of the reason we like this column is that it gives us a brief vantage into world of someone with a distinct and specialized lifestyle, one that the average person might not have insight into otherwise. Alissa's photos of Sheri's Ranch, the legal brothel in Las Vegas where she's been working for six years, are no exception, as they illustrate that the life of a sex worker is certainly non-normative, though not something to stigmatize or be horrified by. If anything, the environment looks clean, safe, and honest. Below, we talked about what life is like at the brothel, as well as how she got into sex work.

VICE: What you get up to on your day?
Alissa: First, my day starts with a an early workout in our gym then I make sure my room is set up with all my supplies I need for the week: Condoms, toys, cleaning supplies, lube, and more are set up and outfits are picked out. I like to switch between lingerie and sexy dresses—heels are required!

When my hair and make up is finished, I go check my emails for scheduled appointments and potential clients. I meet clients who don't book appointments in advance at our sports bar or through a line-up with the other girls before luring them back to my room. Once there, we negotiate pricing and discuss the details of our time together. The payment is brought to the shift manager in our office and I input the "party" information in our computer system—a "party" is what we call our sessions together at the ranch. At the end of our party, I bring my client back to our parlor where our hostess assures they had a good time and they go back to our sports bar or back to their car or our limo service with a smile. I clean up and wait for the next client. I end my day back in my room and wind down with a good book or conversations with friends who are working that week.

How long have you been doing sex work? And how long at Sheri's Ranch?
I have been a sex worker since January 2010, first working illegally as an escort in Seattle. Eight months later, I learned a safer and legal way to work and have been at Sheri's Ranch ever since—it's been six years now.

How'd you get into the sex industry?
A friend who was escorting on the side mentioned it was a way to make fast money. Being a promiscuous girl, I was enamored with the sensuous lifestyle. Another escort friend informed me about legal brothels in Nevada, specifically Sheri's Ranch. I looked at their website and submitted my pictures. The next week I was on a plane to Las Vegas.

Are there specific rules at Sheri's Ranch?
To keep our environment safe and regulated there are lot of rules at Sheri's Ranch. No recording equipment or cameras are allowed to protect the privacy of our customers and ladies. (I totally broke the rules, with permission!) No weapons or drugs. We book all of our earnings and receive a paycheck the following week, so we do not keep money on us. If you are caught stealing or using drugs you are immediately removed from the property. Condoms are mandatory for ALL activities—safety first! No soliciting outside of the brothel. We are considered a lockdown house so once we arrive and start working we are not allowed to leave till our contracted end date. That also means customers cannot take us out of the brothel.

How many people work there with you?
We can house 25 ladies at a time, and there are usually at least 17 scheduled a week. There is a constant change of over 100 ladies every week. We also have our other staff that includes housekeeping, 24-hour security, shift managers, hostess, cooks, maintenance, and bartenders. There is a manager for the back of the house staff and our Madam who is in charge of us ladies.

What was your most memorable experience at Sheri's?
My most memorable experience would have to be a client that came and stayed a whole week with me. We stayed out in our bungalow suites with champagne, drinks, and food served all week, bringing in different ladies every night to play with us. I even got to play with my girl crush! We'd spend all day and night playing different sex games and just hanging out watching movies. We got to use all of our specialty rooms including the jacuzzi room and S&M room, enjoying everything Sheri's had to offer.

What are the house specials? Do you do all of these?
Our House specials is our sex menu listing all the activities that can be provided at Sheri's Ranch. I provide most of the activities depending on the price they can pay. The most popular is half and half, which is sex and a blowjob—not creamer for your coffee. Some of my favorites are Girl on Girl Show, Bubble Bath Party, and Role Playing.

What do you do during your downtime?
During my downtime I hang out in the bar with the other ladies, customers, and locals. We drink, play pool, listen to music, and sometimes catch a lady dancing on the pole! On Thursdays, one of our locals like to dress up and host karaoke; we have a lot of fun. I also have a YouTube show that I created and film called "Sheri's Cribs." I interview each of the ladies as they give me a tour their bedroom. It's a great way to meet all the ladies.

Do you have any advice for somebody who wants to get into the sex industry?
I would suggest to keep it legal! Brothels are the only safe and sane way to work in the sex industry. You can make more money, have fun, and be safe!

If someone wanted to come visit you at Sheri's Ranch, how would they arrange the visit?
They can visit my profile on the Sheri's Ranch website. Send a DM. You can also follow me on Twitter and YouTube.

Follow Julian on Instagram and visit his website to see his own photo work.

Thai merchants ready black clothing for citizens who are mourning the late monarch. Photo by Guillaume Payen/AP Images

Jaruporn Osathanont, a clothing store owner at Platinum Fashion Mall in Bangkok, was preparing her lunch in her shop—rice and spicy pork rib soup—when two Thai women strolled in. They came to purchase the hottest fashion item in Bangkok: a plain black T-shirt.

The women handed Osathanont a wad of baht, and left with a black shirt and dress. She has sold about 1,500 black clothing pieces in the last two weeks, and lately, Thais have flooded her shop in a frantic hunt for them.

"I can sell more than 150 pieces per day," she said. "One customer can get two or three pieces alone." One of Osathanont's T-shirts cost 150 baht ($4.30) and her black dresses are 250 baht ($7.15).

From Bangkok to Chiang Mai and Phuket, black clothing is selling out. It's a style fueled by the recent death of the country's monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died at the age of 88 on October 13. Wearing black has become a symbol of national mourning in an period of grief that the government announced will last an entire year, a tribute to the only king most Thai citizens have ever known.

Some Thai street merchants are selling their black clothing at inflated rates due to high demand. Photo by Guillaume Payen/AP Images

King Bhumibol ascended the throne in 1946 and ruled Thailand for 70 years; at the time of his death, he was the longest-reigning monarch in the world. His name translates to "strength of the land, incomparable power," and the king was an authoritative figure, his rule sacrosanct, and his absolute power insulated by a powerful military that staged a coup in 2014, overthrowing the country's democratically elected government. Thailand is expected hold renewed democratic elections in 2017. Meanwhile, the king is dead and the country's emotions are raw and real—Thais reacted to his death by publicly weeping in the streets.

Bhumibol was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was raised mostly in Europe. He was ordained as a Buddhist monk, played the saxophone, painted, and was generous with charities. He also implemented crucial agricultural programs in the rural reaches of the country.

Though many loved him for those reasons, they were also legally required to revere him. The country's "lese majeste" laws protect the royal family from even fleeting or minor criticism. Article 112 of the Thai criminal code stipulates offenders can spend up to 15 years in prison for defaming him. A Thai blogger faced prison time last year for snubbing the monarch's dog on social media. And in the wake of his death, sensibilities regarding his legacy haven't receded.

Those refraining from mourning or showing solidarity toward his passing has been met with swift and somewhat severe repercussions. The BBC and Al Jazeera TV channels were briefly taken off the air in Bangkok for broadcasting fairly innocuous obituaries of Bhumibol that were deemed "inappropriate content." One Thai woman who allegedly insulted the late king was arrested and forced to kneel and pray to a picture of the monarch outside a police station on the island of Koh Samui while an angry crowd jeered at her. Police had to link arms to protect her from the disgruntled throng of Thais.

The citizens of Thailand responded to the king's death by publicly weeping in the streets. The government said the mourning period is to last a full year. Photo by Guillaume Payen/AP Images

Black clothing has become one of the most obvious symbols of national grief. Thailand has a history of color-coding its dress, and each day of the week is linked to a certain color. For instance, many Thais wear yellow on Monday because that's the day Bhumibol was born. Shortly before his death, when the king was placed on a ventilator after receiving blood purification treatment, people began wearing pink, a symbol of auspiciousness, in hopes his condition might improve.

In the aftermath of his death and the resulting black clothing shortage, the Thai government has reminded its citizens that white, brown, blue, and cream are also acceptable mourning wear. Black is the most prevalent, though, and wearing anything else, especially bright colors, is borderline taboo. At the insistence of the Thai justice minister, some Thais have been shamed publicly for not adhering to the fashion blackout.

While the country is grieving, vendors like the aforementioned Osathanont are raking in the profits. Some clothing vendors told VICE they've doubled their daily revenue since the king died, bringing in as much as 70,000 baht a day—roughly $2,000—by selling hundreds of black clothing items.

"We are in better business now—busier definitely because the demand for black clothes," said Sunisa Kittiyanorrasead, a shopkeeper of 20 years who abandoned selling surfer shorts to ride the black clothing wave.

Demand for black threads is so high Thailand's government has warned of a shortage, price gouging has been suspected, and stations have sprung up where people can dye clothes black for free.