For most of its history, the Rikers Island jail complex has been a blight on the conscience of America's largest city.

Rikers opened in 1932 to temporarily relieve the nearby Blackwell Island jail, but quickly became permanent, and controversial. By 1939, a grand jury investigation had found that the complex was already wildly unsanitary and overcrowded. Over time, the sprawling penal colony grew to meet demand, housing more inmates as the city arrested more of its citizens. Yet it has always been troubled by brutal beatdowns and institutionalized corruption, and most reform efforts have been abortive, at best. The jail's population—about 7,600 inmates, as of this writing—ebbs and flows with law enforcement practices on the mainland. So fixing Rikers is not only about salvaging the complex itself, but also untangling the entire criminal justice system of America's largest city.

In 2016, a nuclear option arose: Shut the whole thing down.

In recent months, the idea of closing Rikers Island and replacing it with a series of neighborhood jails picked up some steam. A number of city and state officials have expressed support for the idea—which has been periodically floated in the past—including the city council speaker, New York's governor, the city comptroller, and the mayor's own wife. The head of the city's jails himself even went so far as to say he's "open" to the idea.

Suffice to say the proposition has been seriously discussed in the corridors of city hall (and maybe by some real estate developers, too). Notorious jails like Baltimore City Detention Center and another in Kentucky have closed in the past decade, but these were of much smaller size, and consequence. If a 400-acre island complex with ten separate correctional facilities can be dismantled, Rikers could serve as a case study in downsizing as mass incarceration undergoes fresh scrutiny nationwide.

The only question: How would it work?

Candie Hailey, 32, spent more than two years in solitary confinement at Rikers after being charged with the non-fatal stabbing of a woman's three-month-old baby in 2012. She was acquitted in May 2015, but says she was subject to sexual and mental abuse by correctional officers (COs), who routinely called her a "baby killer," and, she claims, even tore up photographs of her children.

The conditions in her small cell, Hailey told me, were abysmal: spiders, maggots, cockroaches, feces. "The stench alone could make you suicidal," she said.

In a notice of claim she filed against New York City, which is being prepared for inclusion in a lawsuit, Hailey says she tried to kill herself more than 100 times, sometimes using a broken lightbulb to cut her wrists, or swallowing Nair, the hair removal product. She didn't have those thoughts before Rikers, she said, but they haven't left her since.

I died so long ago, I can't believe I'm even here. —Candie Hailey

"I feel like killing myself now," she explained. "It feels like I'm in jail still. It takes control of my life, the way I live, and what I do." She even said a man who raped her as a teenager doesn't deserve this: "I wish him death, I wish him suffering, but I wouldn't wish him a day in solitary. That's how bad it is."

"I died so long ago, I can't believe I'm even here," she continued. "I can't believe stuff like that even goes on."

In a statement to VICE, the city's Department of Correction (DOC) said it was investigating Hailey's claims, and has since closed the case. A spokesperson also referred to recent efforts to reform solitary confinement, which was banned for juveniles last year (although that change was delayed from implementation until this October). The use of the practice itself, the spokesperson added, has dropped 76 percent in the past two years.

Newspaper headlines, investigations, and even a federal lawsuit have ignited reforms at Rikers. But Hailey fears little has been achieved since she left in May 2015 given the glacial pace inside. "Only thing I saw them do was paint the walls," she told me of her time there. In her mind, the alternative to Rikers should be to rehabilitate, not punish. "If you're not guilty yet, you shouldn't be treated like this," she added.

It is stories like Hailey's—and, most famously, that of Kalief Browder, who committed suicide in June 2015 after spending three years on Rikers—that activists cite as the key reason the jail needs to go: It traumatizes inmates who have yet to be convicted, and, in many occasions, compels them to plead guilty. Anecdotally, pleading guilty just to get out of Rikers is an entrenched pastime, and while it's difficult to track frequency, the discrepancy in court figures can be staggering: In 2011, when Browder was in jail, only 165 felony cases made it to trial in the Bronx; meanwhile, 3,991 defendants pleaded guilty.

Death is no stranger to jails, and suicide is responsible for many of them. In 2012, suicide accounted for a third of the 958 jail deaths nationwide, according to a federal report. And with Rikers, grim headlines about inmates who committed suicide or correctional officers standing trial for inmates' deaths (often mentally ill ones) are a frequent sight. (For more on the plight of the mentally ill at Rikers, read an essay by Mary Buser, a clinical social worker who worked as assistant unit chief in the mental health department on the island, here.)

Since the early 1990s, as crime has fallen, Rikers's population has dropped from an astounding 24,000 to today's nearly 8,000. Critics expect the decline to continue, with new speedy trial and bail reforms, nearing the ballpark where closing the jail complex may no longer seem like a pipe dream. Local jails, they argue, would grant greater access to families, lawyers, and courts.

But one former city corrections boss is stuck on the same snag Mayor Bill de Blasio and other skeptics have cited: Logistically and financially, closing Rikers is an awfully heavy lift.

"It's convenient to the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn," Peter Curcio, who was second-in-command at the DOC in the late 2000s, told me. "The other thing is, jail construction costs are always double whatever the initial projected costs are.

"Get past the argument of, 'We'll take the jails in our backyards'; get past the argument of, 'A facility is going to cost $1.6 billion'; and get past the seven to ten years it'd take to design and build," he continued. "I just think it's too many obstacles to overcome."

Separating the jails would "stretch the resources," tacking on transportation, health service, and delivery costs, he argued. Classification issues, too, would arise, since Rikers separates adults from juveniles, women from men, and violent from nonviolent inmates. Not to mention that other city jails, which currently can hold 3,000 beds, would lack space for the 7,600 people on Rikers. (Recent city documents floated a $7 billion plan, which includes constructing two new 2,000-bed facilities: one next to a police academy in Queens, and another next to the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Center, a barge jail in the Bronx.)

"So you throw 600 in Queens, 800 in Brooklyn," Curcio, who's worked at these jails, asked of plans to forge ahead without significant new construction. "What are you doing with the other thousands of inmates?"

Watch Sheriff Tom Dart break down the challenge of running a massive jail in Chicago that happens to be one of America's largest mental health institutions.

Being in the heart of New York City, with its high numbers of homeless and mentally ill individuals, Curcio says Rikers is unlike any other prison or jail he's visited. But even though he thinks closing it is tough, Curcio acknowledges the jail's major flaws, including violence, poor mental health training, and limited safety—issues other correctional facilities face across the country.

That's a sentiment you often hear even from skeptics of closing the place: that regardless of what happens, something needs to be done with Rikers Island.

When asked about Mayor de Blasio's position on closing the penal colony, a city hall spokesperson pointed me to a column de Blasio wrote in the Staten Island Advance last April, in which he outlined his administration's reform efforts so far. But, in terms of an all-out shutdown, where he stands is a bit less clear: While he thinks the idea warrants "serious consideration," de Blasio doesn't want to stop reforming the Rikers Island we have today.

"After decades of neglect, culture change won't happen overnight," the mayor wrote. "But we have signs that our reforms are starting to work. And no matter where we choose to house our jails ten years from now, today we need to keep moving down the path that is making the system better."

As de Blasio's 2017 reelection bid nears, Rikers reform is sure to become a talking point on the campaign trail, with the mayor's more progressive allies calling for wholesale change. Only now, it's clear the politics of the possible can swing suddenly—Donald Trump's surprise win certainly shocked criminal justice reformers nationwide after he ran on a law-and-order platform. Even so, incarceration reform has begun to go mainstream nationwide, and this moment represents fertile ground, at least at the local level, for a total rethink of how to lock up people we suspect (or, in the case of prisons, think we know) are dangerous.

This article is part of the VICE series The Future of Incarceration. Read the rest of the package here.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

Beautiful isn't it? WELL TOO BAD IT DOESN'T EXIST! Photo via Flikr user josef.stuefer

America loves jails. And prisons. Also juvenile and immigrant detention centers. Right now, more than 2 million men, women, and kids are sitting behind bars across the country, many of whom have not had a trial or been convicted of a crime. The fact that we host a wildly disproportionate share of the world's incarcerated population—nearly 25 percent—is a stat that's tossed around so much it's easy to tune out. But it is a startling reality nonetheless, and an embarrassment for a country that considers itself a paragon of freedom.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that mass incarceration disproportionately affects marginalized communities and people of color. According to an analysis of the 2010 census by the Prison Policy Initiative, nearly 9 percent of black men in their late 20s were incarcerated. Add to that the fact that by some counts, a majority of jail and state prison inmates suffer from a mental illness, and the wisdom behind spending more than $80 billion per year on this system becomes all the more questionable.

None of these are particularly new problems. But, in recent years, there's been a broader acknowledgement that something at the core of the system is deeply fucked, and the desire to fix it has gone mainstream. Last year, Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit a federal prison, a historic moment documented by VICE and accompanied by a series of articles examining the many problems with the mass incarceration system in America. Obama has also commuted more than 1,000 sentences, more than the past 11 presidents combined. Social movements like Black Lives Matter have helped build nationwide awareness of the prejudices that have infested police departments for generations. And calls to close problematic jails and prisons, such as New York's Rikers Island, have taken on a new urgency under an avalanche of articles and investigative reporting on inhumane conditions, sometimes ending with the wholly preventable deaths of inmates. Just this week, a New York Times probe into the state's prison system revealed systemic racism when it came to solitary confinement and other punishment, quickly prompting Governor Andrew Cuomo to launch an investigation of his own.

Enter Donald Trump. The president-elect ran and won as the law-and-order candidate and frequently seeks the counsel of hardline conservative white men such as his likely attorney general, Jeff Sessions—who was considered too racist for a federal judgeship in 1986. Suffice to say, the threat to the progress made over the last several years is very real. And it's clear that the appetite to overhaul how America thinks about and responds to crime isn't the only sentiment out there. For every podcast or TV show about a possible wrongful conviction, for every gut-wrenching story about the system gone astray, there is also fear. Fear about rising crime, even if the oft-hyped crime surge is dubious at best. Fear about protests that challenge institutions like the police. Anger about a country that doesn't look the way it did ten or 20 or 100 years ago.

It is in this climate that we are publishing The Future of Incarceration, a series of articles and short videos dedicated to exploring a better way forward for the criminal justice system. Inside this package, you'll find pieces exploring the logistical hurdles behind closing a jail, an essay from a former social worker who worked with mentally ill patients at Rikers during some of the jail's darkest times, and a dispatch from an initiative by the criminal justice shop Vera Institute of Justice looking for a more humane future. There are also redemption stories from former inmates who talk about the struggle to find work with a criminal history, thoughts on preventative measures for keeping people out of jail in the first place, and much more.

We're also happy to announce a partnership with the Center for Employment Opportunities that will see VICE hire a number of formerly incarcerated people for apprenticeship positions across our editorial, production, and television departments. It's the first program of its kind by a major media company, and we believe an important step in helping people with criminal records reenter the workforce and, in turn, become equal members of society.

Still from 'Sisters for Sale,' courtesy of Ben Randall

In 2011, Australian filmmaker Ben Randall got a call explaining that two of his 16-year-old friends in Vietnam had been abducted and sold as brides in China. Over the next few years, he would travel over 12,000 miles, pass through 12 countries, and spend his grandmother's inheritance, only to bring back one of the two girls. The other chose to stay with her "husband."

What happened to Randall's friends isn't an isolated incident. According to a 2004 estimate by the US State Department, between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. Four out of five trafficking victims are female. Half are under 18.

Of particular note is China, which the State Department lists as a Tier 2 Watch List country, meaning they don't really comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, although they're trying.

A large part of China's trafficking epidemic is the result of the country's one-child policy, which has led to a disproportionate number of men in the country. The result is a massively competitive mating culture. Some Chinese men have opted out of the dating pool, preferring to purchase a bride from one of the many trafficking networks operating out of Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Mongolia, Russia, and North Korea.

Since returning to Vietnam, Randall turned his friends' story into a documentary, Sisters For Sale, which chronicles the bizarre journey he took to try and rescue his friends and explores the culture of marriage by abduction at large. We spoke to him about his own journey, and what life is like for these trafficked girls.

Still from 'Sisters for Sale,' courtesy of Ben Randall

VICE: How did all this get started?
Ben Randall: Several years ago, I spent about three months in a touristy spot in the north of Vietnam called Sapa. It's quite close to China, up in the mountains. Most of the people up there are from various minority groups, the biggest one is the Hmong, and a lot of Hmong girls come to town selling little trinkets, handicrafts, stuff for tourists, and they take them on treks to their little village and whatnot. Over the course of my time there, I got to know a group of these girls, about nine or ten of them, relatively well. We became Facebook friends afterwards.

How did you learn your friends had been kidnapped?
About a year after I left, one of them got in touch, saying that one of the girls I was closest to, May, had been abducted and suspected trafficked into China, which had happened to many of the girls from that area. In fact, of that original group of nine or ten, five were trafficked in separate incidents.

What's the process of abduction and sale?
The initial traffickers are often Vietnamese Hmong, who pass the girls along to Chinese Hmong—basically middlemen. While they're in the "care" of those middlemen, they're threatened with murder or sale into prostitution, as opposed to marriage. And they're in a place that is very foreign to them, that they're not necessarily going to readily get out of. And of course, there is a language barrier as well.

Who are the men buying these women?
If you're a Chinese man and you want to marry a Chinese woman—of which there are, you know, tens of millions fewer—, especially in rural areas. You have to be pretty well established, you need to have your career, and you need to give bridal gifts to her family, which end up being quite expensive, more expensive than buying a trafficked girl. Maybe they're old, or disabled, or ugly. It's a bit counter-intuitive, but the ones that are buying these girls are more like lower-middle class. The one who bought May, for example, is a taxi driver.

How are these girls sold? Is there a website? An actual open-air market?
The way that I've heard it described—and I don't know how reliable it is because the girls don't get to see all of the process—but basically when they arrive in China, they're stripped of everything. Their traditional clothes are taken from them, their phones, any identification they might have. They're given a new set of clothes, maybe a haircut, and it sounds like some of them are then photographed. Then these traffickers will go to the local marketplace, or make it known around town that there are girls for sale. It sounds like marketplaces in these border towns are crucial meeting points, where the Chinese Hmong will basically say, "Come back to my house and see what I've got."

How much does a typical bride cost?
For the final sale price I've heard anything from between $3,000 to $9,000. The initial traffickers can get around a thousand of that. That's specifically girls who are sold as brides, not the ones who are sold into prostitution.

And what kind of punishment do traffickers usually get?
It's pretty light actually, if you look at what some of these guys are doing. It tends to be four or five years in Vietnam, even a little bit less in China sometimes.

So how did you end up finding your friends among 1.4 billion people in China?
Well, at first I got lucky because one of the girls who'd been trafficked, Pang, was able to get a phone and call her mother in Vietnam. But it was still quite a process because Pang had no idea where she was. These girls have never really been to school, they don't really have a sense of geography, and they're not too familiar with the world outside their villages. They couldn't read or write, couldn't decipher signs, so they really had no idea where they were.

So you were in contact with her, and you were able to call her?
Yes.

Was there fear that her "husband" would find out?
There was definitely a risk. With Pang everything was a little easier than with May, her husband was working in another city and would only come home once a week. So she was relatively free to move about and to make calls. May was in a very different situation. She was much more tightly controlled, she was in a smaller village rather than a city, and there were a lot of little factors around her story that just made it a lot more complicated.

What was one of the most difficult things about maintaining contact with May?
The thing with May was that she was much further north. I don't know how your Chinese geography is, but she was down in the region Hong Kong, whereas May was up closer to Beijing. She didn't know the name of the village but it was an area where there are not a lot of foreigners, and where I—as a white guy—would be very conspicuous. And she had a lot less freedom to move around. There were phases where she was tightly controlled by her husband, and wasn't able to leave the house at all.

What was the most unexpected part of this process for you?
One of the most bizarre things that you'll see, out those girls who were sold, two of them had wedding DVDs. It's got to be glaringly obvious that this girl isn't local, can't speak the language, has no friends or family members present, but they still go through the whole process of putting on the wedding.

Another surprise was that May's family actually threatened to have me killed for trying to convince her to come home.

Wait, what?
The way these communities are handling these issues is basically in the worst way possible. There is a lot of victim blaming. The girls are blamed because they're not allowed to have boyfriends in that culture, so the fact that they're hanging out with boys is enough of a reason to blame them for their part in it. From the point of view of May's family, these Hmong people living in Vietnam are living very, very difficult lives to begin with, and that's a large part of what makes them so susceptible to trafficking. May's family were basically looking at the situation thinking that, in such a traditional society, she's already lost her virginity, she's lost her value to society.

For me it's obviously horrible to watch this girl who is scared and alone, being married off to this guy who is ten years older than her in this completely alien environment. But May's family couldn't see that. They see a house made out of bricks, a concrete floor, they see people wearing clothes that they couldn't afford. So, by our standards May's husband is certainly not a rich man, but by their standards, they think, she's fine there.

Why is this so common in these communities?
They have a culture of marriage by abduction. It's a historical thing. If you're a Hmong guy and you see a girl you like, you don't really need to know anything about her except that she's not already married. You can get a bunch of your friends and relatives together and just grab her off the street, take her back to your place, and keep her there for three or four days before someone from the guy's family goes and tells the girl's family where she's been.

They do the same in Kyrgyzstan, which I guess is not altogether surprising, geographically speaking.
The similarities are amazing, in respect to bride kidnapping. The practice also really facilitates trafficking, since rather than actively going and doing something when a girl is trafficked, the families will go sit at home. Even some of the local authorities, in Sapa for example, who are familiar with the Hmong custom of marriage by abduction; if a girl disappears, the cops will just say, "Go wait at home, and if she doesn't turn up in three or four days, come back and file a report."

Are you still in contact with May?
I haven't spoken to her for some time. May has made her choice to stay in China with her child, and while I don't necessarily think that was the best choice for her, I respect it. I still try to call her every couple of months to see what's going on. Recently I haven't been able to get through, but that's not particularly alarming, it happens sometimes.

What about Pang?
Pang ended up escaping. She managed to cross thousands of miles of China by herself, but when she reached the border region, she didn't know where she was and she had no identification. I, along with the Blue Dragon Foundationin Hanoi were trying to tell her to stay put, but she said she'd met a local guy who was going to help her across the border, and for us alarm bells were going off. Like, this is basically the worst possible situation that she could be in, in an area that's absolutely rotten with traffickers. And then she disappeared. She couldn't call us, we couldn't call her. So, I went to her village to find her mom and give her this horrible news, that there's a 95 percent chance your daughter got this close to home only to be trafficked again, and then right when I was entering the village, the mum got a phone call from Pang saying that she'd crossed the border and needed to be picked up. It was like something out of a film. It was really bizarre.

Sisters for Sale is available for pre-order here.

Follow Jules Suzdaltsev on Twitter.

Finals season is in full effect. Everyone, or at least everyone I know, has procrastinated to the point of desperation. At this point there's really no shame in entertaining the idea of just hiring someone to write your paper on 19th century French Modernism and the Inevitability of Change in Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

Photo via Facebook

The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) have been asked to investigate two more possible victims of former Ontario nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer, the CBC reports.

Two more London, Ontario, families have asked that the OPP investigate the deaths of their family members that occurred at one of the nursing homes where Wettlaufer, 49, had worked between 2007 and 2014.

The investigation could potentially add two more victims to the list, bringing the total to ten elderly persons that Wettlaufer allegedly administered a lethal substance to.

William Brennan, the lawyer representing the two families told the CBC that: "Obviously, everyone in a nursing home has some health issues but individuals had nothing that was expected to cause their death imminently. They were unexpected deaths."

The investigation began in late September after Wettlaufer apparently revealed information to staff about the deaths at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) where she had voluntarily checked herself into for substance abuse.

She was arrested and charged in October for the deaths of eight elderly persons between ages 75 and 96. The investigation spanned London, Oxford, and Brant, Ontario, while the crimes are said to have been committed primarily at Caressant Care, a long-term care facility located just outside of Woodstock, Ontario.

The two most recent families to come forward claim that their loved ones were patients of Wettlaufer during her time at the Meadow Park facility in London.

The investigation by OPP is still ongoing and more information is expected to be available at the end of January. Meanwhile, Wettlaufer is currently stationed at the Vanier Centre for Women in Milton where she is awaiting trial.

Follow Lisa Power on Twitter.

On an all new episode of BALLS DEEP, Thomas attends an autopsy performed by a private forensic pathologist in Phoenix to find out what happens to your body after you die.

Then, on an all new episode of Dead Set on Life, Matty Matheson experiences the Inuit way of life while visiting the Arctic and discovers how the high cost of food is impacting Inuit traditions.

BALLS DEEP airs Thursdays at 10 PM followed by Dead Set on Life at 10:30 PM on VICELAND

Want to know if you get VICELAND? Head here to find out how to tune in.

After reading VICE's useful guide for men on Tinder, I was inspired to do the same for my fellow man on Grindr. I realize that everyone on dating apps has different goals and endgames (marriage, murder, etc.), so this should be taken loosely, and tweaked heavily to achieve your goals (unless it's actually murder). I also realize that some (aka not gay male) people might not be familiar with Grindr, so maybe this article will explain it a bit. I hope this helps some gays out, and if you're not gay, strap yourselves in for the ride.

GRINDR IS NOT TINDER

If you picture Tinder's interface like a filtration system, imagine Grindr like wading through a swamp with no shoes on. Anyone can send you unsolicited nudes as their icebreaker. ANYONE. There's no degree of separation for a vetting process, it's just a bunch of thirsty dudes in geographic cesspools hunting each other.

Because it's not like Tinder, you shouldn't be modeling your Grindr profile like one. Tinder is where you can post vacation photos with maybe a family member or best girlfriend to make it look like you're a fun and functional human being. Don't do that on Grindr. Grindr is for hookups, without having to go through the boring formalities like "What's your name?" or "What do you do when the sun is up?"

CRAFT YOUR PROFILE

I mean, you could be looking for Mr. Right on Grindr, but in the context of my guide, you're already using it wrong. In my experience, there are two successful types of Grindr profile to craft for successful responses: a sexy, mysterious profile where you come off as a cool, mildly apathetic person who doesn't look as desperate as you actually are in real life, or the more direct approach. The direct approach has a Tinder-esque face pic, maybe shirtless, and has social media accounts linked to it.

Personally, I opt for the face pic with social media linked up, because in this modern age I feel like internet stalking is a given with online dating.

An important note about daily existence in society: Don't be discriminatory! If you're writing things like "no femme guys" or "masc4masc" or "white dudes only" you don't deserve to hook up with ANYONE, and I hope you lose your phone in a taxi.

Once you pick your photo and ~vibe~ of your profile, it's time to tell all the other desperately horny men what you're looking for.

BE DIRECT ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR

It's really important to be clear about what you want and what you're into. No one wants to go to someone's place thinking it's going to be a medium-vanilla hookup and the guy is high on meth with four friends, or asking me weird things like if I am going to ever see him again. You could be looking for those things, and I'm 100 percent not shaming you for it, but just tell people what they're getting into. Ask, and you shall receive. Here are some examples of me telling all the dudes out there what it takes to get into my pants.

Grindr is a land of (mostly unwelcome) surprises, and it definitely pays off to tell people your expectations. Speaking of expectations, that brings us to my next guideline.

HAVE LOW EXPECTATIONS

I feel like this should be a general rule in any "dating" realm, not just on Grindr. If you're going on Grindr expecting to meet a super hot guy who's into all the same stuff as you and lives on the same floor of your building and has no emotional baggage and a perfect cock and doesn't snore or tell you that you should be doing more with your life, you're setting yourself up to be let down. I have had lots of good hookups on Grindr, but they've mostly just happened out of the blue, and definitely not from looking for my ideal companion.

I also message people who are way out of my league all the time on the off chance that it could actually lead to a hookup. Most of the time it does not, and I am OK with that. I know I'm not a catch, and I am OK with that as well.

When someone messages me, I usually assume that it's a bot or a catfish, which are two of the most abundant creatures in the Grindr swamp. If a really sexy guy wants me to come over, he's probably not using his own photos. Or they could just be a sexy algorithm that isn't going to satisfy your loneliness whatsoever.

Here is my friend Brent talking to a gay robot

GET USED TO REJECTION

If I see someone I want to hook up with, I'll usually message them first. This is definitely a parallel I see with Tinder, too...people having too much pride or ego or whatever to message the other person first. I don't care about looking cool. I have no chill in real life, so why am I going to censor myself on Grindr, of all places?

I suggest getting used to being shot down. I don't really take Grindr seriously, so it doesn't faze me. Usually when I am on Grindr it's also pretty late, which tends to bring out a lot of wasted and high people―much like a real bar! I'm sober, and not a sexual predator, so sometimes things can get a bit dicey. Night Grindr still beats Day Grindr. Day Grindr sucks.

Day Grindr is mostly just office job people sending you nudes from their work bathroom. The real action starts to happen at night. I like to think there's a magic hour, where everyone is horny, but not too lazy to leave their house yet. Laziness factors into one of my favorite aspects of Grindr: potential guys being displayed by their proximity to my bedroom. People who've never used Grindr might be thinking it's similar to Tinder's "less than a kilometer away" distance feature. It's not. This is like "yo dude I am 10 feet away from you, nice eyes" distances. You can turn your location off, and sometimes I do, but I also like the thrill.

GRINDR CAN BE SPOOKY

Safety is really important when using Grindr. If I am going to a guy's place in the middle of the night I'll let my roommate know, and send a photo of his location and face to her. I watch too much Forensic Files not to. The aforementioned "thrill" of location settings can also be terrifying. Once, I was on my mom's farm in the middle of the woods and it said someone was 50 feet away from me and I freaked out and checked to make sure all the doors were locked. Maybe I am paranoid when it comes to going out alone at night to meet complete strangers for sex, but if there is any time to be overly alert and mildly skeptical, it's then.

NONSEXUAL GRINDR

Even when I am not looking for dicks, Grindr can be one of the most entertaining pastimes. It's really fun for me to check the Grindr game in weird places and places you don't often frequent. Vacation spots, malls, small towns, and my all-time favourite: AIRPORTS. Why would I read a book when I can post up and look for random guys catching a connecting flight, or flight attendants, or perhaps even the rarest of them all―a pilot!

Hopefully this guide serves you well. I delete Grindr every other week and download it again when I am bored and horny. I honestly have better luck on Tinder, but sometimes I just like the comfort of knowing there's a community of other lonely, horny guys a stone's throw away from me.

Jaik Puppyteeth an artist and cynic based in Vancouver. Follow him on Twitter and jaikpuppyteeth.com

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

Usually when you flush something down the toilet, the idea is to have it out of sight and out of mind as soon as possible. It's a different story when you've accidentally dropped and flushed your phone or your car keys down the same ceramic black hole.

If you've really flushed them, your phone and keys won't see the light of day until they reach the sewage treatment plant in your area. Your phone and keys won't be the only non-human waste there – at the sewage treatment plant of Ruhleben in West Berlin alone, 5 to 6 tonnes of un-biodegradable dirt is filtered out of the water every day.

Since 1963, employees of Ruhleben's sewage plant have been collecting objects they've found swimming in Berlin's sewage system, and then putting them display in glass cabinets at their Visitor's Centre. I visited the plant to photograph to some of their best finds.

More toilets on VICE:

What Do People Think of Public Toilets Being Flushed Away?

Brits Tell Us What They Really Think About Unisex Public Toilets

Over or Under: We Asked a Physicist to End the World's Great Toilet Paper Debate

Poundland's "playful" bullet (All photos by author)

The world wants you to upscale, upgrade, aim forever for the top of the range – to spend, spend, spend. But is it really necessary to keep blindly pissing away money? Can't we just strip everything back to the basics, where a phone is a phone, a car is a car and a Poundland vibrator is a vibrator?

Potentially, yes, but this only works if the cheap stuff isn't miserably shit. No point committing to a Sainsbury's Basics life if that means an existence of sub-mediocrity, where nothing works and you're throwing pennies straight into the bin, the toilet and wherever else the products of your earnings end up.

So it's time to see if price really does mean quality, starting right here, right now, with vibrators. And where cheaper for my low-end goods than that staple of the limping British high street, Poundland? I headed to my local store to buy one of their bullet vibrators, while VICE used the dwindling blagging powers of the press to call in loads of vibrating sex toys ranging in price from £25 to £339.

Here they all are, ready for unboxing, collectively worth more money than I've ever had in my bank account at one time.

You're probably thinking that, if this were you, you'd rip open the boxes and use them all in one disgusting triple-A powered sesh. But for starters I'm not a fucking animal, and also because this is very unbiased review I didn't use more than one a day so I could use each at peak horniness and sensitivity.

And so we begin:

PLAYFUL VIBRATING BULLET, POUNDLAND, £1 DUH

Never thought I'd be writing about Poundland vibrators tbh, but 2016 is the gift that keeps on smacking you in the face until you understand nothing. Wrapped in a strange little metallic pocket like those fluorescent lollies you had as a kid, it feels as tacky as a Kinder Egg toy.

It is the cheapest thing I've ever put near my vagina.

It doesn't belong there.

It was weak enough to conk out at any moment; the batteries rattling around like a bottle of pills was so irritating that I wanted to throw it across the room. If you've managed to get anywhere close to the shallowest state of arousal with this I applaud you. So all-in-all, not great. But one plus: if you want 30 years of Secret Santa gifts and you're as cheap as fuck, you can buy a case of 30 of them online for £30.

RATING: -1/5

VALUE FOR MONEY: 0/5

"Inspiring women to find their true sexual selves since 1992." An admirable raison d'etre.

SH! WATERPROOF RABBIT VIBRATOR, SH!, £25

Rabbits are a bit cringe. Vibrators got sleeker and textured and curved, looking thankfully less and less like a dick by the second, while rabbits are the glittery "fun" aunt who buys you G-string underwear sets for birthdays and whose pop cultural references begin and end with Sex and the City.

I threw mine out when I stopped being a teenager, so it had almost been long enough to forget what the rabbit is like – and hey, I don't want to exaggerate, but using this again is the most joyous thing that has happened to me in my entire life. With so many functions on the handle you are the master of your own pleasure. It's sort of like having three people down there at once. The only downside is that because rabbits are retro this is battery operated, but just take batteries from work. It costs £25, the same as a week's worth of coffee shop coffee or one meal out. Buy this if you want to feel again.

RATING: 5/5

VALUE FOR MONEY: 5/5

LOVE BULLET SILVER LIPSTICK VIBRATOR, SH!, £29

It might seem hyperbolic to say that this felt like taking a power drill to thegenitals, but I do wonder how they managed to squeeze a power drill into this tiny casing. You would not be able to use this on another person without filling out a risk assessment form and briefing them first.

There are more settings than you'd usually get on a bullet like this, but all of them are roughly the same: Ridiculous. Intensity. For me, this was both a bit unpleasant and also quite good, ideal for a second round when you're really done but want to carry on out of sheer disgust for yourself and the world. Also, for people who want to endure enough force that they'll risk losing all sensation for the rest of their life, this could be perfect. Plus it has a charger, which is nice.

RATING: 3/4

VALUE FOR MONEY: 4/5

MOTORHEAD ACE OF SPADES 7 FUNCTION POWER CLASSIC VIBRATOR, LOVEHONEY, £29.99

The Motorhead range of vibrators came out three months before Lemmy's death last year (RIP), so getting one in felt like a fitting tribute to the old legend.

But before starting, I read some of the reviews on Lovehoney, which were extremely positive. "Quicker than I could say the Ace of Spades, my wife was in bed. She had given the vibrator a coating of water-based lube and she slid the vibe smoothly into her vagina. She was now ready to experience this bad boy," read one, alarmingly but promisingly.

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite as enthusiastic as this guy's wife. It was average. It does have a memory, though, so if you accidentally slam it off while muffling it under the cushions as your housemate walks past your door – which isn't what happened to me – it remembers the setting you had it on last.

RATING: 3/5

VALUE FOR MONEY: 3.5/5

LELO SMART VIBRATING BODY WAND LARGE, ANN SUMMERS, £155

Can I start off by saying this is very big in real life. It's like a club, or a police baton – the kind of thing I imagine you'd have to check into your big luggage for fear that security would haul you off into a special little room. Mind you, that is no bad thing. It is too heavy for my arm, though, and lost half a point for making my hand go completely fucking dead via the exceptionally strong vibration.

Negi stuff over: lifehackers and minimalist YouTubers would love this – you can use it on a sore back, wank with it, stir stuff with it, cosplay with it, massage anything. It feels like something you're not sure that you need, but that you should have anyway. Just in case. I got carried away and started giving my leg a weird massage until that went numb, too.

If you press harder it vibrates harder, which is a deeper level of understanding than most men display, so tbh the price seems worth it.

RATING: 4/5

VALUE FOR MONEY: 5/5

SIRI 2, LELO, £129

Yes this looks a lot like an Apple product, but have they had the ingenuity to create a pebble that vibrates? No they have not. It's very user-friendly, but so small that when I lubed it up it kept slipping away.

Weird thing: didn't read the instructions but leaned across during to put music on and it started pulsing to the beat. I turned the music off and started talking and making weird noises at it to see if that did anything and it pulsed along with my voice like a sexual echo. I don't know how useful that function actually is, but it's a function more than the Poundland vibrator even possesses.

Also, if it seems like a lot of money for a pebble vibrator, you can get it in this gift set with another expensive vibrator for only £169.

RATING: 3.5/5

VALUE FOR MONEY: 3/5

TIANI 24K, LELO, £339

Yep. Three-hundred-and-thirty-nine pounds.

At total odds with the Poundland special, this is more expensive than anything I've ever a) bought or b) put inside me. I don't even own jewellery that's any carat gold. This is a couple's vibrator, which explains the price, and before you immediately think, 'Yeah, but what are we gonna do when we break up? Who gets custody on the weekends? What if they don't like the new girlfriend?' if your relationship ends within a year of buying it, you can return it, used, and get a new product.

The toy itself is really small and works by you putting one "arm" inside you while also buzzing, making you feel simultaneously full of stuff and also vibrating. Both good. However, it is difficult to get right and you have to go really slowly, but you'll get the hang of it. The other person can use the remote control while you bark instructions. It works just as well as the other vibrators when you're alone, too.

Mostly all I could think was: does Nicki put this in her vagina? Probably not; she would snarl at £300. But maybe some of Fifth Harmony have one? Meghan Trainor definitely has one. Anyway, I was getting off on the fact there was 24ct gold touching my foof, which is the point of expense, isn't it? Luxury feels different. Much of the experience is wrapped in the idea that this is premium and better. That superiority is what you pay for. You paid to come knowing you are the type of person who deserves to rub off on £339 worth of vibrator. Still, it didn't beat the rabbit.

RATING: 4.5/5

VALUE FOR MONEY: 3.5/5

In conclusion, while most cheap vibrators are terrible, you don't necessarily need to spend loads of money on vibrators to get quality. That £25 rabbit has ruined men for me forever. But if we've learnt anything today – and I think we've learnt quite a few things – it's that £1 buys you absolutely fucking nothing in 2016.

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American soccer fans (Photo: Don Ryan AP/Press Association Images)

This Saturday, Seattle Sounders fans will travel 2,500 miles coast-to-coast to will their team to victory against Toronto FC in the MLS Cup final. It's the kind of migration that feels like it should be narrated by David Attenborough, and says a lot about the role that tribalism is able to play in a country where supporters are routinely confronted with journeys that make the trek from Plymouth to Carlisle – at 389 miles, the longest away day in English football at present – look like a hungover traipse to the shop for Haribo and a ten-deck.

It's interesting to consider the value of ritual and tradition in a footballing nation that tends to draw for novelty to sustain attention. In the last few years, it's not just been footballers and coaches that the MLS has imported; a way of supporting – a lifestyle and culture of devotion – has been shipped in too, most obviously from the Premier League and Bundesliga. But really, it's impossible to talk about the state of North American fandom without first – what's the right word? Absorbing? Experiencing? – enduring this video:

Now that's out of the way, we can get on with answering the pressing question at hand: Just why do Americans love bicycle kicks so much?

The 1994 World Cup was held in the United States. It was the first international tournament I can (just about) remember, and by virtue of me being a kid and the witching hour kick-off times, I had to watch all the games in secret on a shit, hand-me-down TV in my room, face pressed right up against the screen with the volume on 1 so I could hear if the stairs creaked. My house was built by idiots and creaked of its own accord often, and after every false alarm I'd have to creep back to the telly, turn it on again and manually retune the channel because none of the preset buttons worked. But it was all worth it: Gheorghe Hagi's absurd lob against Colombia; Kennet Andersson doing the same to Brazil; Jack Charlton – who you'd think, if you've ever seen him blast the head off a stag with a shotgun, would be ecstatic just to be in a country with such lax gun control laws – having a tantrum in the Orlando heat; the iridescent kits gleaming like brand new colours in the sun; the world's saddest ponytail; the world's most obviously drugged-up genius. The whole world of football, basically, gloriously England-free, on parade before me for the first time in my furtive satellite town panopticon.

It was a tournament of so many moments, proto-gifs that seemed to lodge themselves in the consciousness of a generation. But there was one moment from that tournament which, for obvious reasons, appears to have taken on a greater resonance to Americans in particular. And it's this:

...Chicagoan defender Marcelo Balboa, attempting to score direct from a corner with a bicycle kick.

Why does any of this matter? The relationship that the US has with the bicycle kick is emblematic of their relationship to the game as a whole. Balboa failed, obviously, but that's not the point. The extent to which Americans have struggled to love football due to its chaotic, freeform nature – its attritional, low-scoring routes to victory, defeat or parity – has often been overstated, but while the tide seems to slowly be turning amid a sea of stats-crazed Yanks getting into the game, it's still difficult to escape the feeling that its popularity would increase relative to other American sports if only it could be a little more cinematic – if it were something that took place in short, scripted bursts and had a more obvious plotline than any that could be offered up by 22 players relentlessly shifting in and out of position with very little downtime to analyse and draw breath in between. I've often found it difficult, too, to get my head around the way that so many of the players in the NFL in particular seem to fade into oblivion after a few rare seconds in the spotlight, in a way that supporting cast members like Martin Kelly or Christian Kabasele or Mohamed Elneny just can't in football, given the way the game is built and flows.

But a bicycle kick – well, a bicycle kick is probably the most un-football thing in football. There is something intrinsically staged and showbiz about it – so it's no surprise that, for Americans, a bicycle kick direct from a corner in a home World Cup by a man with a funny moustache, a mullet and a fictional Hollywood boxer's name is about as relatable as it gets, even if he missed. In this split-second of glorious, sunlit failure, Balboa defines America's relationship to football. And if you think that's a stretch, listen to these commentators react to a bicycle kick scored just this season by itinerant Italian carthorse Amauri, from all of six yards. Pray they never whack the words "Trevor Sinclair Manchester United" into YouTube; you doubt they'd survive it.

Which brings us back, all the way back, to the man riling up the crowd in that first video: Robby Branom. Branom is, in a strictly biographical sense, a pretty pleasant-seeming white American guy who, according to the internet wormhole over my shoulder, got a solid degree and works at an energy company. But crucially, he is both all of this and someone who, in his spare time, goes down to the CenturyLink Field and functions as a "capo" for his beloved Seattle Sounders, leading his fellow fans in chants that he devised, he says, after the trips he makes to Europe "just about every summer... I've learned the trade, you know? How it really works."

I'm not sure which European summer league Mr Branom has been watching. I'm not sure to what extent this really "works":

I'm not saying that Americans aren't allowed to care about their football club. That would be absurd and especially cold-hearted given the circumstances – Seattle's appearance in the MLS Cup final will be the first in their history, and I will be thinking of Branom on Saturday, hoping that a man who has watched his side through years of relative mediocrity is entirely excited, hopeful and proud of his team, that he is exhilarated by the rare prospect of his love for Seattle Sounders being requited by success. But where it starts to jar for me is the naked, misplaced Anglophilia. I can't get past it.

When I try to pinpoint why Robby Branom makes me feel uncomfortable, I can think of lots of reasons. Perhaps it's because, like so many depressing forces at work in this country at the minute, he represents a yearning for an England that never really existed. Perhaps it's because his own childlike and apparently cynicism-free love for the game puts the desperate, angst-ridden seething I feel twice a week into sharp and unflattering relief. But perhaps it's just because it looks like a lot of unnecessary work trying so hard to be someone else. He makes me feel uneasy in the same way that actors in "immersive theatre experiences" do – you want to grab his face and shake him around, tell him that it's OK, that he doesn't have to pretend any more.

Fans of Toronto FC, the Sounders' opponents in Sunday's cup final, have a history of making themselves look like dickheads, too, most famously in the video below, where they launch into an impassioned chant of "the referee's a wanker":

Crucially, the game had yet to kick off, which means that rather than this being a targeted, ad hominem assault on whoever officiated it, the Toronto fans must have been railing instead against the abstract concept of the referee, the notion of some independent adjudicator imposing the laws of the sport rather than allowing it to descend into a free-for-all with no set laws, objective, beginning or end, a hallucinogenic scrimmage in a pit of mud, blood and shit that reaches out into eternity until it ceases to resemble a game at all and becomes a piece of performance art comparable in scale with global warming or modernism as one of humanity's grand historical projects. This, in fairness, sounds like a laugh, but it doesn't quite sit right coming from the mouths of North Americans, people who, as I've already argued at length, tend to prefer a bit more structure to their hobbies.

The apex of all this imported partisanship has arrived, unquestionably, in the fresh rivalry between New York Red Bulls and New York City FC, a hatred that nobody's calling the "Hudson River Derby". To give them their due, fans of the two clubs have shown they possess a flair for nomenclature – Red Bulls groups include the Garden State Ultras and the Viking Army Supporters Club, and they sit in designated parts of the Red Bull Arena known collectively as the "South Ward". The first official NYCFC fan group call themselves "the Third Rail" after the steel conductor rail that electrifies the city's subway system. These are all decent uses of words. Which only makes it all the more weird that, when fans of the two clubs had an underwhelming barney in New Jersey last August, they couldn't get a three-syllable chant right:

(Illustration: Dan Evans)

Culturally, the United Kingdom is a confusing place. It's like America, but with less shouting and more antique shows; like mainland Europe, but with slightly better clothes and worse coffee. Dotted around our lumpen grey rock are an assortment of weird and wonderful celebrities and phenomena – the flag bearers and rituals of our Isles. To foreign eyes they might appear confusing – inexplicable, even – so with that in mind, these seminars intend to elucidate who they are, and why. Welcome to British Studies. Here's number five: Prince Charles

Say what you like about Britain, but if there's one thing we're good at it's tradition: the guns, the funny hats, the flags, the trumpets, the empty gestures of dominance – we simply can't get enough!

Of all these outdated conventions, our favourite is absolutely the Royal Family – a crazy bunch of golden oldies and stately studs who live in a castle in the middle of central London. Now, admittedly, the object of these British Studies seminars is to shed light on the lesser-known corners of our culture – and as British culture goes, the Royal Family are pretty well-known internationally – but this public-facing "Royal Family" doesn't give much of the truth of their identity. The version we see is merely the tea-towel edition. What of their souls?

What of Prince Charles' soul?

What of Prince Charles' soul?

Firstly the data: Charles Philip Arthur George of the house Windsor is the 68-year-old son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. As their first born, his official title is the Prince of Wales, and he is next in line to the throne. He's been married twice, firstly to the sadly departed sweet Lady Diana Queen of our hearts, and secondly to your mum's friend from keep-fit class Camilla Parker-Bowles. He has two charming sons, both of whom are adored in the public eye and at least one of whom is definitely his child.

Yet, surrounded by all this family, all this history, Prince Charles finds himself in a strange position. On one hand he is one of the most powerful, important men in Britain. On the other hand, Charles is tired now; so tired.

Like the other royals, Charles spends the majority of his time speaking at charity events, opening leisure centres, announcing competition winners and watching horses do stuff. He's an active environmentalist, campaigns for the preservation of historic buildings and once wrote a children's book about an old man having a bath. He walks around flower shows, one hand in his blazer pocket, passively commenting stuff like "oh yes, very nice, look at the leaves" in an accent so posh it sounds like golden chain-link dribbling down his chin. His face, a coin that never was, has remained permanently fixed in a strained attempt at vague interest for his entire life.

It's a gentle life, for sure, but things haven't quite worked out for Charles as he might have hoped. For yes, while he might be keeping himself busy, it doesn't take a royal historian to work out Charles probably imagined his mum would be gone and he'd be King by now. Just like he probably imagined he was going to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles in the mid-1970s when they first started dating. Just like he probably never imagined that when he did marry somebody else, it would end in public scorn and Elton John releasing the best-selling UK single of all time. He is the longest serving heir in British history, and the oldest person to be next in line since the 1700s. This nearly-man, this odd little bloke, has most likely been in the throes of a constant, violent internal crisis since about 1987.

Prince Charles shot by Allan Warren in 1972. (Via)

The British public do not love Charles. The Queen? Sure, plenty of people love the Queen. Some people love her so much they dress up like biscuit tins and follow her around the country. Pensioners sit in folding chairs for hours, waiting; gripping Thermos flasks with their cracked pink digits, a tartan rug over their knees, splinters of rain pelting against the surface of their grey, glazed, glaucoma-pickled eyes, eyes they are too afraid to close in case Her Majesty might, in that second, sail past aboard her gilded carriage. No one – not one person in this country – would do that for Charles.

Charles' children are also, now, more popular than he has ever been. Wills (the posh, oddly plural version of Will) and Kate's marriage in 2011 sealed their status as a sort of Barack and Michelle Obama for Tories, and they now have a pair of porcelain children. On top of that, everybody thinks Harry is an absolute fucking legend and if you disagree you're a bloody disgrace! Even the Duke of Edinburgh, Charles' sagging, sallow old dad – a man who looks like a melting Boris Karloff waxwork – is more popular. At least he offers some sort of light relief.

Charles is tired now; so tired. Staring out the window at a great Scottish loch, he considers the sky grey and unending, and the mountains which never move. "Cunt," he mutters to himself, as he drops a bit of shortbread in his tea.

With no real purpose in life beyond signing off on different flavours of organic biscuit, and no real prospect of ever becoming the one thing his entire life has been predicated upon, Charles has been rendered a strange floating ghost. The forgotten bloke in the corner of the pub, half-asleep, half-waiting for it all to end. His parents are more than looking after themselves, his children are off partying with the metropolitan elite if they're not looking after their own kids. The muscular youth are catching up with him, but the old just won't die. Time is running out, and all he can do is sit and wait for this macabre race to play out.

@a_n_g_u_s

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This article originally appeared on VICE Serbia

Having an orgasm as a woman is absolutely amazing, but nothing to make a big fuss over. Over the course of history however, women's sexuality has been so repressed and punished, that our orgasms have been endlessly theorised on and defined by men. Freud, for example, hypothesised that young women have "clitoral orgasms" and that once women mature, they upscale to "vaginal orgasms".

Recent research proves the obvious: women can orgasm in myriad of different ways and with different kinds of intensities – and age has nothing to do with any of it. Clitoral, vaginal, both at the same time or one leading to the other – it's all good. We wanted to see if men nowadays are any wiser about female orgasms than their grandads, so we went out on the streets of Belgrade and asked a few of them what they imagine a woman feels like when she comes.

Milan, 22

All photos by Nenad Vujanovic

"I always think female orgasms are basically the same as male ones – that you feel this surge of warmth and confidence. It might last longer for women than for us. Generally, men immediately lose interest in sex after they've come, while women can still be in the mood to go on for a while. It's physiological, a change felt in the whole being. When a woman comes, I think she feels she owns the person she's having sex with, that that person belongs only to her."

Jovan, 21

"When a woman has an orgasm, techno music is playing in her head. There is nothing else – just techno and the universe. She gets into a state of trance, travels to places I can't go. If it's not techno, you know she's faking it. Her orgasm is not something that just happens in her body or in a particular part of her body – she leaves her body during her orgasm."

Nikola, 22

"Female orgasms are all 100 percent in a woman's head. I think it would be like being on a rollercoaster ride – it can be amazing and thrilling but also terrible, depending on the moment and who is with you. I've read that what brings a girl to orgasm depends on her astrology sign. If you're a Cancer you're more emotional, while if you're a Virgo you have very strong ideas on how the foreplay should be. Apparently, the relationship between the sun and Uranus is very important – if they are in the same quadrant, a woman prefers it a little more rough. Anyway, I think if a guy has sex with a girl and wants to make her come, it would be good for him to know what her sign is."

STRAHINJA 20, Bogdan, 20 and JOVAN, 20

Strahinja: "When a woman has an orgasm, her mind goes to Disneyland. I think for her, it's like the orgasm is in both of our bodies and she's just not really aware in what body she is anymore. I think it's more important that she comes than that I do. When she comes, she'll talk about it later to her friends. And those friends will tell their friends."

Bogdan: "You can tell a girl has an orgasm when she gets goosebumps and she rolls her eyes so you only see the white in them. If she scratches your back you can feel it for days, but these are consequences I'm prepared to face. It's really important for me that my girl comes, especially when I'm in a relationship. If you both have an orgasm there's a mutual gratitude. You can high five each other."

Jovan: "I don't talk with other people about orgasms, only with my girlfriend."

Matija, 24

"I haven't given it much thought, to be honest. Women feel their orgasms longer, so it will mean more to them than us. They feel it with their whole body, though I don't know how to recognise it very well – it's so different for every girl. I wish I knew what it's like in her head, that would make it so much easier for me. Might be a bit like a volcano erupting."

Marko, 29

"If you love the person you're with, the experience is completely different than with a one-night stand. When it's just the once, a woman will just want to make sure she's satisfied and has enough pleasure. When she really loves you, she'll want to make sure you have a good time too. If she's not satisfied, it's not lovemaking. I guess for a woman a true orgasm is closeness and coalescence. What I know for sure is that what you see in movies – women closing their eyes and biting their lips – that doesn't mean she's come."

Stefan, 25

"When a woman has an orgasm, I think the world around her is not important anymore – the only thing she feels is you inside her. The rest is just silence and darkness. Time does not exist, every touch becomes eternal, her feelings are so intense that her brain overheats and her conscience reaches to the universe. The energy between you two is so shared that she's not even aware of her own name. That's how I imagine it."

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Image by someone who is very embarrassed to admit they made this

This article originally appeared on VICE Sweden

Sweden is currently experiencing a small wave of people shitting at inappropriate places. Less than a week after reports about people shitting on a church floor in Kristianstad, Stockholm's police department's Christmas party on Friday resulted someone taking a shit in a sink, according to Aftonbladet.

The Christmas party was held at the police's headquarters at Kungsholmen in Stockholm. Sources to the newspaper claim that staff at in-house restaurant had trouble getting the drunken police officers to leave. When they finally left, the revellers decided to move the party to their offices, where they partied until the early hours of the morning.

"A few people went to the management corridor and erased directives from the whiteboard. Someone pooped in a sink at the female restroom, while used condoms were also found at a desk and all objects had been thrown to the side," one police employee told Aftonbladet. Also, the names on some of the police bosses' office doors had reportedly been replaced with naughty words.

Stockholm City's police commander Christian Agdur says everything was in order when he left the party at about 10:30 PM. When asked about how he felt about the shit and the condoms, Agdur said he was "angry and upset."

The police held another Christmas party yesterday but so far there haven't been any reports on people doing their needs anywhere other than the toilet – yet.

@caisasoze

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Hillary Clinton speaks during a portrait unveiling ceremony for outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Thursday. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

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Former astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, has died at the age of 95. "The last of America's first astronauts has left us... On behalf of a grateful nation, Godspeed, John Glenn," said President Obama.—USA Today

Trump to Stay Exec Producer on 'Celebrity Apprentice'
Despite that whole becoming president thing, Donald Trump will remain an executive producer of Celebrity Apprentice when he takes office, and will reportedly still have a financial stake in the show. Arnold Schwarzenegger will host the NBC show when it returns next year.—Variety

Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik Drop New 'Fifty Shades' Track
Taylor Swift has released her collaboration with Zayn Malik for the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack—a song called "I Don't Wanna Live Forever." Swift, Sam Dew, and producer Jack Antonoff wrote the song.—Rolling Stone

Canadian Prime Minister Releases Ice Hockey Game
An ice hockey video game made by Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has been released on code.org. Trudeau made the rudimentary game earlier this week at Shopify's Ottawa office at an event to promote coding.—Motherboard

Michael Jordan Wins Legal Battle with Chinese Company
Michael Jordan has won a four-year legal battle with a Chinese sportswear company over its use of his name. The Chinese Supreme Court ruled that Qiaodan Sports Co. showed "malicious intent" in using a translation of "Jordan" on its merchandise.—VICE News

Fetty Wap Teams Up with Nicki Minaj on New Track
New Jersey rapper Fetty Wap has released a new track featuring Nicki Minaj called "Like a Star." It follows Zoovier, the collection of 2016 tracks released last month and previews his sophomore album set to come in 2017.—Noisey

As America's modern prison-industrial complex took shape in the second half of the 20th century, once-bustling manufacturing hubs—steel mills, coal mines, and industrial plants—were shuttering across the country. The Heartland was increasingly known as the Rust Belt, and it was only a matter of time before some down-and-out communities began seeking economic revival in the nation's most enduring industry: cages and the Bad People living in them.

In 2001, the New York Times reported that an average of 25 rural prisons had opened each year in the 1990s—a stunning jump from four a year in the 1970s. In the previous decade alone, 245 prisons moved into rural America as towns, thirsty for relief, began begging private corporations to build in their backyard. "In my mind there's no more recession-proof form of economic development," one city manager told the paper. "Nothing's going to stop crime."

Now a potpourri of factors have led all levels of government to reexamine their roles in mass incarceration: the Great Recession, which forced many states to downsize their incarcerated populations; a serious conversation regarding reform from the (Obama) White House down; and, perhaps to that manager's chagrin, stunningly low crime rates. Because contrary to the dark portrait of America that Donald Trump conjured up—and successfully ran on—the country is as safe as it's ever been, and for prisons, that's bad for business.

Nationwide, some citizens of "prison towns" are watching with bated breath. So legislators must balance any downsizing with the economic anxieties of working-class people dependent on steel cages for their livelihoods. But do prisons actually help local economies? Answering that question could go a long way toward digging America out of its mass-incarceration hole.

Among critics, that latter question is still very much up for debate—in fact, the criminal justice site and frequent VICE partner Marshall Project recently listed six reasons why this argument isn't particularly sound. And at least half of them have to do with local employment.

"Many of the individuals working in many prison counties don't actually live in the community—they commute in," Nicole Porter, a policy analyst at the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice reform group, told me. "And so one of the selling points was that it would help support the local labor pool. That just isn't what out, in many cases." Not to mention the fact that these positions are often union-affiliated, meaning they're internal transfers, and not necessarily creating "new" jobs.

"In many ways, the prison industry can be looked at like the coal industry, or the timber industry, or the manufacturing industry. When it goes bust, communities have to reinvent themselves."—Tracy Huling

A rural area's remoteness, Porter added, "brings up further challenges with people willing to work there, and move to the area to adequately staff it." A prison guard position isn't always ripe for these areas either: The job itself is grueling, and unions usually seek younger recruits, while rural communities' demographics tend to skew older.

In response to that, Porter told me, a local service economy offering food and lodging to commuting correctional officers, or visiting relatives, usually arises. But the question is, does this bring the highest economic potential to said area? Or can more be done?

"In many ways, the prison industry can be looked at like the coal industry, or the timber industry, or the manufacturing industry," Tracy Huling told me. "When it goes bust, communities have to reinvent themselves."

For the greater part of her career, Huling has documented that reinvention, both in her home state of New York and nationwide. Through her initiatives, like Yes, in My Backyard and the Prison Public Memory Project, she examines the ties prisons have with surrounding communities, and how they can be preserved—or, at least, not disrupted—as times change. Like the Hudson Correctional Facility, a prison that first opened in 1887 and attracted a large number of African Americans from the South as one of the first interracial employers in the region to offer both stable state wages and a pension.

"You had African American families, whose situation was that they were poor when they came, middle class as a result of working at the facility," she explained. "And then they raised their children and created institutions—the churches, the cultural clubs—with prison money."

In the coming years, Hudson Correctional Facility, which now only detains juveniles, may well close. With its declining population, it has been touted by Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has shut down 13 state facilities so far in his tenure—the most of any governor in state history—as a prison transitioning to an eventual end. And it is towns like Hudson that, critics of Cuomo say, are most vulnerable.

"Even though prison jobs are not lost and they move to other areas when a prison is closed," State Senator Betty Little, who has ten prisons in her district upstate, said in January, "it leaves a big impact on communities."

According to James Miller, the spokesperson for the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, which represents current and former COs, prisons are often the "largest employer" in a region. "If those officers get transferred and have to potentially move, it would obviously impact the town economically," he told VICE. "Keep in mind that not only the correction officers, but many civilians work in positions at the prisons as well."

If 430 jobs were lost in these towns due to prison closures, what's to say that more than 430 jobs can't be added back into the economy through non-correctional means?

Miller's employer was perhaps the most vocal critic of Cuomo's closure plan some years ago, arguing that, for example, the end of correctional facilities at Mt. McGregor and Chateaugay in upstate New York would cost a combined 430 jobs to the local economy. But what needs to be figured out is how that job loss can be offset by gain. Or, in other words: If 430 jobs were lost in these towns due to prison closures, what's to say that more than 430 jobs can't be added back into the economy through non-correctional means?

Take Hudson, for example. Although home to an aging prison, it is now a center of the cultural tourism craze that has engulfed this region. As urban prices have ballooned, many have looked to the Hudson Valley for more affordable spaces and attractions, including the arts and local farming. Add Beacon and Warwick to this category of former "prison towns" that are now booming.

On the other hand, a prison town in the Adirondacks—which was once called New York's "Siberia" for its grim landscape of prisons—might find it harder to attract business due to its distance from urban areas (that may explain why the state has made a recent push to ramp up tourism to the region). That being said, each town, Huling explained, has its own formula for reinvention; the tricky part is teasing out what that is.

"Upstate is a different economy and culture, and that's true in rural areas across the country," she said. "You're not just reinventing an economy; you're reinventing a culture."

"How you do that," she continued, "requires multiple kinds of strategies."

Watch Kingsley Rowe talk about his journey from incarceration on murder charges to being a professional criminal justice reformer.

Basically, when a prison moves out, you need a plan.

"It should be the responsibility of the state," Huling told me, "to help the community come up with a plan to support an economic development conversation around reusing the prison and repurposing that land for non-correctional purposes."

Since Governor Cuomo declared, "An incarceration program is not an employment program," in January 2011, his office has offered incentives, like state-funded projects and tax breaks worth millions to soon-to-be-former prison towns. To avoid layoffs, correctional officers were transferred or offered early retirement. And although sales were tough at first, plans for old prisons have finally emerged.

The Warwick prison will soon be multi-use, perhaps even a spa or resort one day, Hauling told me, and the Bronx's old Fulton prison has already reopened as a reentry center for former inmates. Another defunct juvenile prison, in Tryon, New York, will become a tech incubator. And that correctional facility at Mt. McGregor will soon be turned into parkland, for tourism purposes.

"Prisons are really small cities into themselves," Huling explained. "They have their own sewer systems, electric, plumbing. They have enormous amounts of infrastructure, which if captured, you can do quite a lot with."

A prison in Tennessee will soon reopen as a whiskey distillery and camping ground. The privately owned Dawson State Jail, outside of Dallas, is already being eyed for development by the city. And older, more historic prisons—like Huntsville in Texas, and the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia—are now popular museums for visitors. The same might happen soon at New York's Sing Sing.

Prison closures offer another chance to tie together urban and rural communities in a way that could be beneficial for everyone involved.

"The options are endless," Huling added. She pointed to a grant-funded program in North Michigan, which helped 230 displaced prison workers find a job after their facility closed this past September.

One might argue it was government's failure to provide initiatives like these to laid-off workers in the early aughts that helped power Donald Trump in the presidential election, with anxiety about jobs, trade, and immigration all factoring into a rural American revolt. But advocates say prison closures offer a chance to benefit wide swaths of the public.

"We think economics 101 tell you that when people are working productively, that's when they help the economy," Brenden Beck, a volunteer organizer with Milk Not Jails, told me. "Not just when they're just guarding other people."

Milk Not Jails has a few missions. Staffed by formerly incarcerated individuals, the group delivers New York milk throughout the state. It also advocates for criminal justice reform in the halls of Albany, and a sustainable agricultural future for communities long attached to the incarceration industry.

Beck used Chobani as an example. The Greek yogurt company based its headquarters in Norwich, New York, he said, bringing jobs and production to the community there. "The reason Chobani relocated was not because there were a lot of prisons there," he argued, "but because there are a lot of dairy farmers there."

Now, he said, his job is to convince the farmer who has told him, "My neighbor works for the prison," that a future without prisons may not only be imminent, but bright, too.

"We want to rebuild these rural communities, but it's just not gonna be with prison jobs," he told me. "When these jobs go away, the next step is very simple, and hopefully we'll do it better than last time."

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

This article is part of the VICE series The Future of Incarceration. Check out the rest of the package here.

A Rikers Island officer leads the way to the new "Sprungs" area, where 16- to 18-year-old detainees lived and attended school while awaiting trials and sentencing in the 90s. Photo by Nicole Bengiveno/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

During the 1990s, I worked as a clinical social worker at Rikers Island. Behind the bars and concrete, surrounded by the murky East River on all sides, I was part of a dedicated team whose mission was to bring emotional and psychiatric support to New York's jailed masses. Then, as now, over 80 percent of the Rikers population had been charged with a crime but not convicted, making life at the jail one of agonizing uncertainty as the incarcerated awaited their day in court, most unable to afford bail. Naturally, our mental health "referral basket" was overflowing. A typical batch of referrals would read: "threatening suicide," "weepy, depressed," "says he'll hang himself if he blows trial," "waiting for trial for two years—can't hold on much longer," "first incarceration—terrified," "hearing voices," "cutting himself..."

Amplifying the tension, we had 72 hours to meet with the person and determine a follow-up action, which usually meant some combination of medication and/or therapy.

The saddest referral of all was that of the severely mentally ill, people suffering from conditions like schizophrenia, dementia, and bi-polar disorder. Their jailhouse plight is at least partly the result of the well-intentioned shutdown of many big state psychiatric hospitals several decades ago, once deemed "snake pits," leaving municipal jails like Rikers in New York and Cook County in Chicago to fill the void of mental healthcare for the indigent. Without the necessary levels of supervised community housing to replace those hospitals, many of the mentally ill have fallen into police crosshairs for petty mischief, charged with offenses such as trespassing and loitering. When they were identified at Rikers, our response was to segregate them from the general population and place them in more protective housing.

Most of the jails on Rikers maintained a mental observation unit for mentally ill inmates, where they were provided with a higher level of psychiatric care. And I think we did a fine job of getting these fragile individuals stabilized—at least until the late 90s, when the Giuliani administration opted for a low-ball healthcare bidder to replace the relatively solid Montefiore Hospital, the city jail system's healthcare provider for the preceding 25 years. Suddenly, staff was reduced, necessary hospital-runs for the most seriously mentally ill were all but eliminated, and our mental observation units were transformed from rich therapeutic environments to depressing dens of neglect.

Photo courtesy the author

That was the state of affairs when I left the island in 2000, but 15 years later, Rikers was making more headlines than ever for violence, brutality, and mistreatment of the mentally ill. In response to all the scathing investigative journalism, public outcries, and a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department regarding treatment of adolescents, Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged, and begun to enact, serious reforms, recently making good on one key promise by ending solitary confinement for all inmates 21 or younger. This focus on solitary confinement is heartening as this grueling punishment exacts a heavy toll, something I witnessed firsthand.

In my final post on Rikers, I was assistant mental health chief of the then-500-cell solitary confinement unit, referred to as the "Bing," supervising a team of eight psychiatrists and therapists. To manage the unit, we regularly doled out antidepressants, anti-psychotics, and mountains of sleeping pills. "If they had no mental health issues before they entered solitary, they do now!" was our unofficial mantra. Yet the pills had their limits, and we routinely entered these solitary cells and discovered slashed arms, blood-smeared walls, and agonized faces begging for relief from the torment of isolation.

While these Rikers reforms are encouraging, calls to close the place altogether are gathering steam. Although it is tempting to believe that a shutdown is the answer to all of Rikers's woes, we cannot overlook the possibility that a closure might simply relocate the suffering. Without addressing the issues that have driven the island's misery, I think this is a legitimate concern. Solitary confinement—a standard punishment in jails and prisons nationwide—would not vanish with a Rikers relocation. Nor would a proposed new jail be relieved of its role as caretaker of the severely mentally ill. And barring meaningful bail reform, low-level offenders who could easily report to court hearings from home if they could pay bail will continue to battle anxiety and depression. Without actual "speedy trials," there is also the possibility that those who insist on their constitutional right to trial could still languish for years awaiting their day in court, only now it would be inside a gleaming new facility.

Sheriff Tom Dart describes running a jail that happens to be one of America's largest mental health institutions in Chicago.

A Rikers shutdown is an incomplete solution to complex problems. Still, there are compelling benefits to doing so. The remote proximity of the forlorn island, in my experience, worsened the inmates' depression, anxiety, and fears about the future. The island is most easily accessed by car, and since the families of the incarcerated are often poor, cars are an unaffordable luxury; instead they must endure a nightmarish public transportation ordeal just to get out to Rikers. A switch to borough-based jails would inherently make it easier for family to visit loved ones, and the importance of maintaining those ties while incarcerated is crucial.

In October 2015, while testifying at a Board of Correction hearing, I described the calming effects of these visits on angry and distressed individuals. Family visits and stronger connections to the community that a borough-based jail could offer would help reduce violence and improve overall mental health. To bring these people back into the community fold as they await the outcome of their cases would represent a meaningful step forward in the crusade to reform criminal justice in America.

This article is part of the VICE series The Future of Incarceration. Read the rest of the package here.

This story was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.

I stepped out of my cell with the words of advice I'd just written to a fellow prisoner still fresh in my mind. We'd been having a weeklong discussion about our "self-development." I told him that he'd grow only if he could get beyond the streets of Detroit and learn to work through conflicts by understanding both sides.

I walked out the back door of my maximum-security cellblock and into the exercise yard, an octagon no bigger than a corner-store parking lot. About a dozen men were ready to start their day. The two guards who formed the checkpoint I had just walked past were busy performing random searches.

Soon, more prisoners poured out, and the yard got much louder. I exchanged greetings, hugs, and handshakes with several men, then looked back at the door for Tron, my main workout partner.

Eventually, Tron walked past the guards. He was 27 years old with light-brown skin and dreadlocks. He grew up "streetbanging" in Detroit's West 7 Mile; now he wanted "change." I was nine years older, and I'd taken him under my wing.

Today, we were going to talk about the school he dreamed of building for troubled youth, but when I saw him, he looked uneasy.

"What up, bro?" I said.

"What up, though?" he greeted back in Detroit fashion. "They probably 'bout to—"

Before he could finish the sentence, the center of the yard erupted. I heard it before I saw it—the sound of knuckles snapping against bare flesh.

I saw Charlie's bald head. His arms were launching fist-flurries at a much bigger man who was swinging away, too, but a little slower. Charlie Austin, as I'll call him, was 200 pounds of muscle, a former amateur boxer from Flint, Michigan, who now worked out like a professional bodybuilder. But the man he was fighting was massive—and fat: about 6' 3", 350 pounds.

The fight drew everyone's attention. My hands automatically balled into ready fists.

I looked around to see if anyone else would join the brawl. Four dozen prisoners, and no one had moved except the two checkpoint guards, who had their pepper spray and Tasers aimed.

"Alright, come on, guys. Knock it off." Their first warning was passive, a plea of exasperation—just another day at the workplace.

Then three more guards rushed through the door, providing backup. More confident now, the passive guard ordered again, "OK, that's enough. Get on the ground, Austin."

But he kept swinging, and the bigger guy, Brightmoor, went down.

Brightmoor was named after his westside Detroit neighborhood. He was a 23-year-old kid, doing no more than five years for a petty drug offense. Set to max out his sentence next year, he was going home no more rehabilitated than when he came in—the shank in his right hand said so.

The shank didn't do much good against Charlie, but Brightmoor held onto it as he struggled to get back up.

One Taser popped, but Charlie swung on without flinching. A second guard fired his Taser, and Charlie finally went down with Brightmoor. Eight more guards rushed outside, but the fight was over. It had lasted about 20 seconds.

Tron waited until the guards led the two men away, spat in the dirt, then explained what had caused the fight.

"Sellin' slum behind the door," he said, using the slang for exchanging insults and threats. Charlie and Brightmoor were locked right across the hall from each other and argued all the time.

Tron shook his head, sighing. "Charlie just got a 12-month flop, too. And now this, over some words."

I sat and wondered what "words" or insults could possibly be worth a parole opportunity. In Michigan's penal system, a 12-month "flop" meant you had one foot out the door; if you stayed out of trouble for another year, your parole was pretty much certain. Before this fight, Charlie had been looking at freedom after serving 23 consecutive years.

Brightmoor wasn't even alive when Charlie, now 48, got arrested for a robbery-murder in the 90s, but somehow they had enough in common—call it Detroit—to stand up at their cell doors all day bickering about sports, crime, women, and entertainment. Until they fell out.

No matter how much I liked Charlie, I couldn't help resenting him for not knowing better. My disappointment was personal. I had 16 more years left before the parole board would even think of my case, so I would have gladly traded places with him.

But—Detroit. The recklessness, the despair, the black-on-black destruction of bodies that we all should have been so tired of. Self-hatred in the inner city.

So I stood there in the hot yard, staring at all of my potential enemies, four dozen now—until I suddenly thought, I wish one of you would run up on me. I ain't had a good fight in nearly ten years. What if I'm rusty? What if the younger and quicker of them think I'm rusty?

I lamented not just for Charlie and Brightmoor's misfortune but for my own.

I wanted to be done with the madness.

But I still craved it.

Deyon Neal, 35, is incarcerated at Marquette Branch Prison in Marquette, Michigan, where he is serving a 30 to 60 year sentence for assault with the intent to commit murder, with an additional two years for a firearms charge.

Illustration by Dola Sun

There's a new viral challenge taking over the internet, and this time it involves crushing apples with your bare hands. There's no real rhyme or reason to it—UFC star Sage Northcutt just crushed an apple last month and asked people to follow suit. They did. And so, the apple crush challenge began.

On Thursday's episode of Desus & Mero, the Kid Mero decided to take on this challenge and crush an apple of his own. As you'd expect, it was savage as hell. Check it out above.

Be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11:30 PM ET/PT on VICELAND.

Sorry, kid. Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Christ, a high point of the movie season, an opportunity to get drunk around your family, and a flash point in the largely imaginary culture wars. For economists, though, Christmas is mostly a spike in economic activity, an outlier that results in an infuriating amount of waste.

Classical economists—who tend to think markets work best with minimal government intervention—could identify lots of sources of waste. First, there's the waste created by bad gifts. We all get Christmas gifts that we don't want and that we'd rather not have. And this is a tragedy not just because your Aunt Marge made you feel bad and you have to pretend to be really into the ladle she gave you, but because the money she spent on that ladle is money that could have been spent on something you'd have liked. That money isn't just money—it represents real resources, in a world where we have a limited number.

But it goes beyond poor gifts. Because Christmas concentrates all this shopping in a single month of the year, it creates a huge amount of slack and spare capacity in the economy. Retailers, warehouses, and transportation businesses have to have the capacity to deal with the Christmas rush—capacity (in the form of mail trucks, say, or shelf space) that isn't needed the rest of the year. If we could all (somehow) collectively decide to spend all that money more evenly throughout the year, the economy wouldn't have to build all that spare capacity, which in turn would mean we'd be using our resources more efficiently, which means we'd all be richer, because the economy would have more resources per unit of time spent to obtain them.

Keynesian economists—who agree with the macroeconomic models pioneered by 20th-century economist John Maynard Keynes—would doubtless think that Christmas is a great idea, however. The shopping frenzy leads to all sorts of economic activity: Companies hire more workers to produce goods, to ship them, to stock them, to sell them, to advertise them. The spending—the aggregate demand—of the economy goes up and generates more economic activity, and that's good for everyone. Keynesians think the economy is all about total spending: More spending means more economic activity means more jobs means everyone's happy.

Which side is right? Well, they both have a point. We've heard a lot more about Keynesian economics since the financial crisis of 2008, when all the world's economies went down the drain and there was debate over how much money should be injected into them to prevent them from collapsing entirely. Christmas is mostly wasted spending, but wasted spending can be good when the economy is in a deep slump, and the only thing that can kickstart it is an upsurge of spending.

Keynes himself once semi-joked during the Great Depression that the government hiring workers to dig holes and then fill them up again would be a valuable use of its resources, exactly the sort of thing that would have a classical economist tear his (and they're mostly he's) hair out. As best as we can tell, over the time we have been monitoring this stuff since the Great Depression, when there is indeed a deep slump, Keynes is right, but the rest of the time he's wrong. When the economy is in a slump, you need some way—any way—to increase its spending and kickstart economic activity. But when it's humming along, irrational bursts of spending just direct resources away from more productive activities and make everyone subtly poorer.

But this disagreement goes beyond technical economic jargon and gets at a fundamental, even philosophical, disagreement about what the "economy" is. You can call them the "productionist" and the "creationist" view (here, "creationist" has nothing to do with fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible). This is a more subtle, and most often implicit, distinction that doesn't map perfectly onto the Keynesian/classical divide.

Productionists, which include Donald Trump and many disciples of Keynes (though not, it should be noted, Keynes himself), believe that an economy's fundamental function is to provide jobs to people and to produce the level of economic activity necessary for those jobs. If you're a productionist, you essentially believe that the economy is a huge endless cycle of buying and selling, and the goal of economists and politicians is to keep the cycle humming along so that it employs enough people. Left-wing productionists emphasize that workers should have high wages so they'll buy more stuff, and that'll keep the cycle going; right-wing productionists emphasize that businesses need to make profits so they'll hire people, which will keep the cycle going—they have massive fights over this on TV and in op-ed pages and faculty lounges, but deep down, they have the same worldview.

Creationists, meanwhile, believe that the function of the economy is to enable people to create stuff. Productionists essentially don't care what people buy and sell so long as the cycle keeps going. Creationists, however, think it matters very much. When Henry Ford invents the Model T, or Steve Jobs invents the iPhone, or for that matter, when your buddy from college starts his craft beer business, we're made better off not because these people will create jobs or provide some incentive for people to spend money, but because they've produced stuff that didn't exist before and make our lives better. The free market's cycle of buying and selling just happens to be the least bad way we've come up with to enable that creative process.

So, where does that leave Christmas? Is it good or bad for the economy? Well, who knows. The only way to know for sure would be to create an Earth B that's identical in every respect, except without Christmas, and we can't do that. I can tell you what I think. I think that economic models are important, but that what makes the economy go is people, not things, and that not all aspects of people are captured by economic models. I think maybe the most economically significant part of Christmas isn't the buying and selling. It's what we call the non-economic parts: spending time with our families, and maybe extending more acts of kindness to our neighbors than we usually do. If these things make us into better adjusted, more compassionate human beings, that actually has an impact on what economists call "human capital," which is the most important kind of capital and determines everything else in the long run. The economic lesson of Christmas is that the most important things in economics might not be economics at all.