Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died at the age of 82 on Sunday, leaving the country's moderates without an important and longstanding voice.

Iran state media reported that Rafsanjani died after suffering a heart attack.

The former president, who served from 1989 to 1997, was extraordinarily influential both in and out of office. He pursued improved ties with the West throughout his political career and supported the recent nuclear deal with the U.S. despite opposition to it among the nation's hardliners, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who rose to the position in no small part because of Rafsanjani's support.

Rafsanjani helped found the republic after playing a key role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In its chaotic aftermath, he led parliament and served as an aide to the first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. His counsel helped convince Khomeini to work toward an end to the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war.

Read more on VICE News.

Male chastity is that thing where you lock your penis in a specially designed cage that prevents you from getting full erections or using your penis for sex. While locked up, you can't masturbate or orgasm, and the cage can only be removed by your designated "keyholder." While the thought of this makes most men cringe, it makes others whimper with excitement. Being caged can be extremely exciting and fulfilling. Some people say orgasm denial increases your sex drive and improves your focus. It also obviously heightens the stakes of a dom/sub relationship, with a master or mistress able to punish their sub by denying them not just sex but the ability to orgasm.

Obviously, this is not a casual kink. Not only does it change the life of the caged, it places a lot of responsibility in the hands of the keyholder. While slight discomfort is common for those who put their penises in cages (duh), in more serious cases a faulty or poorly set-up cage can cause serious injury, and if that happens, a keyholder needs to be able to remove the device right away.

To learn more about what drives the people involved in this fetish, we spoke to three men about their experiences with chastity and any advice they had for those itching to try it. Two of the men are gay, and one is bisexual, though that doesn't mean that straight men aren't into these cages—it just means all of the hetero guys we approached for this piece declined to talk out of embarrassment or nervousness. All names have been changed.

Travis, 29, Gay

The Birdcage and The Jail House

VICE: What was it like first wearing a cage?
Travis: It was a whole learning experience, how to deal with it and how to sleep through the night. My first time trying it I was locked up for just a day in the CB-3000. You have to get adjusted to it. The first time was just a day, but I couldn't sleep that night, so I took it off and waited a little bit and slowly built up to it. Everyone sleeps and gets boners, it happens, but these are made so that you can't get a boner, so you wake up and have to figure out a way to get it to go down and then go from there. I didn't really know how to. I tried a cold shower but realized if you just pee you're fine.

What do you like most about it?
It's the "not getting off" part I like the most. It's like you're giving up something. I'm into someone having a certain level of control over me. Someone saying "wear this shirt" or "wear this underwear," that stuff gets me excited. Chastity is an extension of that. I'm giving this up to someone. I'm letting them decide. I remember back in high school getting high-top chucks because it was a really low-level form of bondage you could wear every day because it restricted your ankle. For me, it's a lot of the wearing something sexy and people not knowing.

What surprised you the most about wearing a cage?
It's a lot of work. When you read a story or watch a porn, it's sexy the whole time, but you have to clean it every day, you have to make sure you're trimmed so it doesn't pinch your hair, you have be sure you're cautious when using a restroom… I remember one time I used a public bathroom and ended up getting pee everywhere. I was standing and hadn't realized that you have to sit down to go when you're locked up. I was a hot mess… it was all over my pants, my coat, everything.

What were the benefits?
I've often had a lower sex drive than the partners that I'm with, so I've found it actually gets me going a little more. I know especially in grad school I would often just jack off to get it out of the way, so locking up makes everything a little more fun and out of reach. The cage makes my subby side come out, and you really just wanna latch on and have some good snuggles that night.

Jerry, 27, Gay

The Birdcage

VICE: What was your first interaction with chastity?
Jerry: The very first time I ever met up with anyone for play, I was 19. One of the first things he did was put me in a chastity device. It was a metal cage and I was so turned on that I couldn't get soft enough to actually get into the device. That was the first time I ever hooked up with a guy, besides make out and touching someone's feet my first year of college. I was in chastity about five hours that first time… it was actually Christmas Eve. When I got back home I had to hide the indent marks from the metal cuffs on my wrists.

What drew you to the fetish in the first place?
I'm definitely into sensory play in a lot of kinky ways. With chastity, there's a feeling of enclosure, every part or your cock is completely encased, enclosed. It reinforces my kinky headspace that I am inferior, a faggot, someone who does not deserve to be allowed to get off, who needs to be put in their place. For me, that's what I truly wanted, that's my sexual fantasy. Chastity provides that because you cannot engage in active penetrative sex. Which is tremendously exciting for me, being impotent in that regard. There's certainly a feminization aspect to it as well that I really like. I like that you can't stand up and use a urinal. You're kinda smashing the hetero-patriarchy a little bit. When I'm in a bathroom and have to pee sitting down because of my cage, it's like saying, "Just so all you men know, I'm not one of y'all," which I like. In my real life, I'm fairly ambitious and conversational, outgoing. Because of that I have an inverse side as well. That inverse side wants to contain myself and keep my myself subservient.

Kevin, 26, Bi

CB6000

VICE: How long have you been into chastity?
Kevin: I first experimented with chastity about two years ago, which is roughly the same time I started getting into puppy play.

How did you get into it?
I started with a CB6K, and I wore it to a birthday party. I wore it for a few hours that night. After the party, I put it on someone else and operated in a keyholder capacity for a month. I haven't worn the CB6K for more than a few hours at a time. I find that my skin kind of muffin-tops out of the holes, and I get blisters from rubbing against my underwear. I also got so hard once that it split down the center seam, and then pinched shut. It left me with a nasty blood blister and I haven't worn it since.

What other models have you used?
I tried using the all-silicone Bon4 brand. It fits better, but I have different problems with it. Namely that I can't keep it properly lubricated, and after about an hour it feels like someone has wrapped my cock in duct tape and is trying to rip it off.

I got a relatively cheap metal cage from Purple Passion in the city, that looks like a set of rings welded together. I've been able to wear it for days on end without any irritation or complaint. It can be heavy, though, so I use a small, thin length of nylon rope to make a sort of belt to take off the weight.

Whats the longest you've been locked up?
The longest I've gone was four days, which seems to be a short duration compared to other guys I know. I don't have a keyholder or regular play partners, so it's all self-imposed when I am locked up. My advice to people who are interested in it would be to see if a friend has a cage you can borrow, because they're not cheap. Wear it for a few days, and get someone to act as a keyholder. For many of the cages, you should take it off at least once a week for cleaning and to check your junk for any cuts, abrasions, or rashes and so on.

The Jail House

All Photographs by Zak Krevitt and Thomas McCarty. Prop Styling by Cale Hughes

Fetishes come in a range of forms, from a longing to slobber on a set of toes to wanting to be penetrated by an extraterrestrial. Of course, with sexual desires, some are much easier to fulfill, while others are just impossible. From wanting to be trampled by a voluptuous gigantic woman to being anally swallowed by a dragon, impractical fetishes come with challenges way beyond telling your partner that you like it rough.

"I always say that fetishes are like snowflakes. Each fetish is so intricate and detailed," Jackie Castro, a licensed sex therapist and author of Fetish and You told me over the phone. "But, some of them like macrophilia, people who like the Amazonian women, have really limited their choices. How do you deal with that?"

Castro, who has been involved with fetish for over 30 years, said that having an impossible fetish isn't easy, but there are things you can do.

"I find it's the case that people [are affected mentally and emotionally by these fetishes], that is why they come to me for help," Castro said. "Most of our fetish takes place in the brain, so first of all you have to accept that you can't have sex with an alien, but you can imagine it."

So, can a vivid imagination really satisfy your deepest desires? We reached out to people with impossible fetishes to find out how they cope.

Giantess Tina has a macrophilia fetish and likes to fantasize about being a giant, from 50 ft. tall to the size of the universe.

VICE: Can you describe your ideal sexual scenario?
They all have in common something involving power dynamics of a sort. In my case, the interactions can range from a gentle domination to the complete crushing of my partners. People from this size community would label me as a "cruel giantess." I'd like to hold a dozen little people in my palm and watch them squirm and fight to regain their balance. I'd gently dip the tip of my tongue in the center of my palm and gather them. I would keep on toying with these little people for a few more minutes, dropping one here and there, smothering a few between my breasts while giggling…

How do you deal with the fact that you could never live out your deepest sexual desires?
I've always considered my fantasy to be strictly this: a fantasy. Imagination is a crucial part of the process for me—the more I imagine things, the more "real" it gets. This fantasy is cute in this sense that everyone knows it'll never happen and that only makes it more real and vivid. Besides, I dearly respect life and couldn't harm the most nefarious living being if I tried to.

So what helps you get off?
That's the interesting part. I create. I create all kind of representations of my fantasy. Most people have an artistic talent in this community. It's kind of mandatory. I have tried a lot of things to represent the pictures I had in mind. I wrote stories, created games, painted, drew, did some CGI, and photo-manipulations. I role play as well.

Does your fetish carry over into your real life sex?
My significant other isn't into it, but we do communicate a lot and have a fulfilling sexual life. I just happen to have two sex lives in one.

Rose is a 29-year-old with an exophilia fetish. She has been a fetish artist for the past ten years. She developed her sexual attraction to aliens after watching Star Trek as a young girl.

Can you tell me about your fetish?
Exophilia is a desire, a sexual and emotional attraction, for something not found on Earth. It is characterized by arousal in the presence of alien beings or representations of aliens. [I get turned on by] the thought of the possibility of other intelligent beings in a galaxy far, far away thinking about if we exist; anti-gravity and the weightlessness and the cold of space; the dangers and endless possibilities that exist in the universe; the multi-dimensional beings that can control you with their minds; the nebulas in bloom.

Besides an actual encounter or abduction taking place, how do you satisfy your fetish?
With indirect expressions. Exophiliacs will have an abnormal obsession with science fiction films, even the alien characters in the films. A sexual attraction to NASA astronauts and even alien experts and UFOlogists. Role play and cosplay are a huge part of this.

And also with the theory of all minds in the universe are connected in one, through a protocol of consciousness and meditation, it's a practiced and noted theory that we are able to contact telepathic extraterrestrial beings. CE-5, or Encounters of the Fifth Kind, branded by Dr. Steven M. Greer who has had over 200 documented series of encounters while practicing this technique. I imagine through this we are able to also have a sexual contact with these telepathic beings through consciousness and meditation.

What role does your art play in your fetish?
I use art to create my own alien universe, my imagination to create any universe I want, any creature I desire. I Write my own science fiction erotica with these alien species. I become alive in these series and live there. I am attracted to humans with same interest, same passion for the otherworldly, rare breeds with a different way of thinking, or even that look abnormal, maybe a bit alien like. Of course, it's never like what the real thing would be like, although I wouldn't know what the real thing would be like. In space, anything is possible. If I want to create a penis tentacle monster like those in henti, or use body paint and FX makeup to make someone look grey, that is about the best possibility.

Do those methods make it possible to fulfill your sexual desires?
I do think there are possibilities we may be experiencing exophilia already and don't know it. As far as humans know, we have not experienced exophililia because aliens do not exist, or they exist and do not visit. Or they visit but avoid the exophiliacs? Or maybe they do but we are unable to remember? Or they have been living among us already and we've been breeding half-breeds all along. I think with a lot of fantasies and fetishes, it's about our imagination seeking every possibility and pushing it more. My exophiliac imagination is endless, so yes I definitely think it's possible.

Eka is a Canadian with a vore fetish who has been a member of the community that sexualizes being consumer by another creature for around 14 years. Eka's also the founder of the fetish website Eka's Portal.

What exactly is a Vore fetish?
There are millions of sexual scenarios. One of the most common example is as simple as being trapped inside another creature. You see those in all sort of cartoons, video games, or science-fiction. It doesn't take anything else for it to become a sexual scenario.

Are there any Vore fetishes that can be carried out in real life?
With the recent development in VR, potentially. Some people don't need more than simply closing their eyes and listening to sound. Some people simply wrap themselves up in a blanket. Imagining it came to life and harmlessly ate them. Of course, not all of us are equal and most vore fetishes are largely impossible to make a reality. Even if the thought of being consumed turns you on, you would never risk your life for it.

Since it's impossible, how do you manage to get off?
Popular media is actually filled with material. Though we have plenty of people spending thousands of dollar hiring artist to draw or render their ideal scenario, commissioning stories, or simply searching for material from artists and writers who did it on their free time. A lot of us engages in text-based role play. Real life role play exists, but it is exceedingly rare considering the underground and unspoken nature of this fetish.

Erika Eiffel is an objectum sexual, who changed her name to reflect her commitment to the Eiffel Tower. She founded the site OS Internationale in 2008 to offer support and raise awareness about objectum sexuality.

What is objectum sexuality?
Objectum-sexuality is a natural inclination to develop meaningful and significant relationships to objects that possess a particular uniqueness in the eye of the beholder. In other words, people who joke about falling in love with a toaster or a pencil miss the point that OS people find something distinct in the object that attracts them. If your lover had 10, 000 twins, they may not be so appealing.

Can you tell why you don't consider it a fetish?
OS is not a fetish because it misses the element of being a habitual psychosexual response to the object. A fetish implies that the object is merely present as a means-to-an-end for sexual stimulation and gratification. OS people are not inclined towards an object due to a sexual attraction. Instead, intimate feelings develop as a product of an emotional attraction.

Can sexual desires be fulfilled in OS relationships?
Given the fact that objects and humans are not two puzzle pieces originating with fitted parts, intimate affections are therefore not gauged on the idea of sexual intercourse. This gives rise to a certain freedom where we do not feel bound to follow certain standards of how to be intimate. Many OS people are also synesthetic and with the intrinsic cross wiring of the senses, climax often involves more than just the customary erogenous zones.

So, what does that look like?
Despite the seemingly awkward joining of two distinctly different puzzle pieces, OS people have the ability to fulfill their desires outside of the box. Naturally we have more recognizable forms of intimacy such as hugging, kissing, and caressing. However, the greater semantics of romance need not be discussed. There are certain questions that should remain unanswered. If not for the preservation of something personal and sacred, but to maintain the mystery of our beautiful and unique way of love.

Emma is an age player and diaper lover. She lives in Amsterdam where she has her own nursery. She also has her own website where she shares pictures of her diapered daily life.

How does being an adult baby play out in your sex life?
I am not exactly an adult baby—my play age varies from 3 to 16. Age play and diapers are not sexual in itself for me. To be little and to be diapered makes me feel snug, safe, secure, and relaxed. It's my happy time and it makes me feel good. When I do add sexual arousal to that, like with a partner or solo, it makes me feel extra super good. Not every ABDL (adult baby diaper lover) is interested in sex when they're in little mood, but me, I like it. It makes sex extra awesome.

What does your ABDL fantasy look like?
Well, the best place to do this would be an ABDL nursery, and I happen to have my own ABDL nursery in Amsterdam. I have adult size nursery furniture which is so awesome. In my fantasy, I would be wearing a school uniform or cotton romper and a lovely diaper, and my hair in pigtails. My sitter is just wearing his casual clothes. Or maybe his pyjamas. I love pyjamas.

What kind of techniques do you use to make it seem real?
ABDL, either sexual or non-sexual, is a fantasy scenario—it involves adults playing different fantasy ages. It's obvious that the world is not scaled for adult-sized littles. But you can upscale lots of things to be adult size, and then you can come a long way. For example, you can buy lots of cute rompers in size S to XXL or buy a pacifier that fits an adult.

Do you ever get frustrated with the fact that your fetish is just a fantasy?
I think it's nice that things are fantasy. That makes it possible to mix and match different fantasies and to be creative. For example, I wear a school uniform and I also wear a diaper and suck a pacifier. Or you can play it's time for bed when it's midday. It's fun.

All art by Heather Benjamin

Follow Erica Euse on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

The realisation that you've spent a year making a toxic wasteland of your body came on January 2nd, when you stumbled out of some house party coughing up mucky bits that could very well once have been part of your lungs or other vital organs. The next day, drenched in hangover sweats, scrolling past articles about body cleanses and Dry January on your timeline, you decided it was time to lay off the booze for a month.

Wonderful. Now, let's not make more of not drinking alcohol for a while than it is—pregnant women do it all the time, often for nine months or longer—but still, it can be a struggle. You won't want to be out of the house as much as you used to, you'll have to be hard on yourself at difficult moments and your friends will stop liking you for a bit.

So why, then, deny yourself the taste of sweet, sweet alcohol this month? What's the use, besides momentarily knowing to be true what you've always suspected—that you are a better person than your alcoholic friends? I did some reading and spoke to a clinical psychologist and the spokesperson of the Jellinek institute for drug and addiction prevention in Amsterdam, to see whether or not it makes sense for you to stop drinking for a month.

All images from Raymond van Mil and Sabine Rovers' photo series Drinken, dutten en een punt drukken on VICE Netherlands.

In 2013, 14 editors of New Scientist didn't drink for a month, after which they had themselves medically examined. At the end of the month it turned out that the editors on average had 15 percent less fat in their liver—and fat can lead to liver damage—and 16 percent less glucose in their blood. Aside from having less fatty livers and lower glucose levels, the team also on average lost three pounds without having changed their diet.

That's all making a lovely factual case for not drinking for a while, but unsurprisingly, the editors also reported that their social lives were negatively impacted by the experiment. Floor van Bakkum of the Jellinek clinic told me: "For many people, it's not quitting drinking that's the hardest, it's dealing with comments from other people. You're bound to hear: 'One drink won't hurt you!' or 'Are you pregnant or something?'"

On top of the fact that everyone else wants to see you fail, it seems that even your own body will want you to return to the bottle. Clinical psychologist Bart Vemer tells me that when your body is used to having a beer at 5 PM, your brain will start preparing for that beer at 4 PM—getting your body ready to process an alcoholic beverage. "Your liver goes into a different state, the part of your brain that thinks of alcohol activates and starts asking: 'Are we there yet?' Those impulses are chemical at first—your body responds in a certain way, and that releases feelings and thoughts. When you stop drinking, those needs don't go away. You'll be grumpy and tired – or you'll channel that activity into something else that's bad for you. Those symptoms will lessen after a while, when your body starts to realise that it's not getting a drink."

But there's something you can give back to your body to make it stop whining: rest. "After three weeks of not drinking, the quality of people's sleep is generally greatly improved," van Bakkum tells me. "People who drink a few beers before bed tend to fall asleep easily, but end up sleeping lightly. On alcohol, your body doesn't rest as well as it should." Getting more and better sleep is important if you want to keep your resolutions, because a shortage of sleep is disastrous for your willpower, says psychologist Kelly McGonigal, who teaches the science of willpower at Stanford University. Not getting enough sleep disrupts the part of the brain responsible for taking decisions and controlling impulses.

Generally, your mental wellbeing improves after a month of abstinence—you'll feel healthier, more focused and your memory will be better. But both van Bakkum and Vemer say that depends on what kind of drinker you are—if you drink to forget, quitting will obviously make you have to deal with whatever issues are upsetting you. Doing that won't improve your mental wellbeing in a month, but it's healthier nonetheless.

I finally asked if there is anything you can do to make not drinking in January easier. Van Bakkum says that by not drinking, you'll start to realise that there's alcohol involved in way more situations than you think. She advises to think about those situations in advance and prepare for them. "It's smart to think ahead about what you're going to drink instead, or how you're going to decline when someone offers you one. Or consider whether it would be too hard to even go at all." It's obviously also a good move to drag others into your arid abyss. "When you do it together, you don't have to justify your actions constantly. Some people have WhatsApp groups to talk to each other when they're having a tough time of it."

Giving up booze for a month will get you into a better physical and mental state but the real question is what good it'll do, if you're only going to get back on it as soon as the clock hits midnight on January 31st. The one thing no one will be able to take away from you after Dry January though, is that moral higher ground. You will have exhibited enough discipline and therefore be officially better than everyone else. Bar pregnant women.

More on VICE:

How Giving Up Drink and Drugs in Your Twenties Can Change Your Life

I Have a Drink Almost Every Day. Am I a Problem Drinker?

I Spent a Night Getting Wasted to Find Out Why Women Are Now Drinking as Much as Men

It's finally happening; the robots are finally taking over. All the vast techno-nightmares that hacked into your imagination are about to come true. The self-driving cars will carry out their massacres on the streets, ramming into crowds of innocent pedestrians according to their obscure and misanthropic moral code. Your fridge and your kettle—isn't it cool that they're connected to the internet, I can tell the kettle to boil using the app!—have already risen up in revolt, smashing their data-chains, taking away the only thing that can still give you pleasure.

Panic in the cities, toasters burning their owners, washing machines eating you alive with their flappy Perspex mouths. It can't be long now: the war of the machines is clanking horribly on the horizon, and soon every person will have their weak organic flesh churned up in the spinning teeth of the robots, to be turned into lubricant or biofuel; the globe-straddling technical apparatus has no need for us any more, and with a computer's cold precision it'll decide to kill us all off. It's already started.

Automation is no longer just a problem for people who do actually useful work—building things or knocking them down, driving stuff around, tilling the fields, putting products together in factories or digging through the earth. It's come for your job. It's come for the boring respectable office work you're trying to avoid by reading this right now. In Japan—of course it's Japan—the Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance company has fired 34 of its workers and replaced them with an artificial intelligence system. After all, computers don't take endless tea breaks, or get pregnant, or read vice dot com instead of doing what they're paid to do. The IBM Watson Explorer system is better than you in every conceivable respect. Not just at work: one day you'll come home to find a touchscreen in your house, sleeping with your partner, raising your children, watering your allotment, algorithmically generating that novel you've always wanted to write. You're done. Get over it.

At least, that's one way of looking at it—one that's shared by all the people quite reasonably afraid of losing their jobs, the plutocrats giggling to themselves over the prospect of a fully-automated money-generator, and the new brand of techno-leftists seeing in our crisis the prospect of a future without work. But their mistake is imagining that the robots are only taking over now. In fact, it happened a very long time ago.

What are the jobs that are starting to be taken over by machines? The 34 white-collar workers about to lose their livelihoods to a sophisticated tin-can opener work at an insurance firm; their job is to look at legal data and calculate the lowest possible payout their company can give to sick and injured people while still not breaking the law or their contract. What this job really consists of is the bloodless, inhuman, mathematical administration of other people's lives. And to be clear, this isn't their fault; it's a job, everyone needs one, and in a world whose main output is small anonymous tragedy none of us can really escape being complicit. There are very few people who grow up with soaring dreams of being a claims adjustor—it tends to just kind of happen, as if automatically; all the machinery is already in place. Our form of social organisation is one that's already robotic—it functions all by itself, entirely alienated from the wants and needs of the people who use and operate it. It's just that its moving parts are made of human bodies, sat behind millions of desks, doing all the meaningless and unrelated bits of paperwork that together compromise the code for an enormous, stupid engine. If so much intellectual labour can be done by machines, what kind of work is it that we're doing?

The American sociologist Lewis Mumford called these forms "megamachines", the machine seen not as a distinct object but as a way of looking at hierarchical organisations. The pyramids of Egypt were built through the power of "murderous coercion", one capable of "turning men into mechanical objects and assembling these objects into a machine", something vast and intricate, even if the most sophisticated objects involved were ropes and pulleys. Later machines, he noted, weren't necessarily new inventions; they only replicated the work already being done by humans, but cut down on the amount of human labour-power required; all our sophisticated robotics is just a faint echo of the whip and the chains of ancient slave societies. (And, as Marx pointed out, with every new generation of technology the whole apparatus becomes less able to sustain itself and more expropriative.) The megamachine isn't for anything; it has no object other than its own reproduction. And since the Industrial Revolution they've grown more totalising every year. In commodity-production, all people are reduced to their labour-power. We don't need to worry about people being minced up by indifferent mechanical wheels in the near future; it's already happening now. It's been happening for centuries.

Replacing human bodies with software is just the final step; it can only happen once what we do is already robotised, once people have already been turned into objects. Another detail: elsewhere in Japan, the economy, trade and industry ministry is introducing another AI to take over the work of bureaucrats and researchers, spitting out stats and information for ministers before they face their colleagues or the press. If the rational and vicious micromanagement of human existence is becoming fully automated, then of course it's politics that's next.

In the United States, it was announced after the election—in what was hoped to be a triumphant flourish, but turned out to be more of a measly, shamefaced excuse—that the Hillary Clinton campaign's strategy was devised not by human tacticians who actually knew about the people who would be going to the polls, but by a sophisticated AI nicknamed Ada. The computer was fed vast amounts of polling and demographic data, and attempted to reasonably predict what Donald Trump would do, and the best way to counter it. As we all found out, reasonably predicting what Donald Trump will do is a pretty stupid game. But again, the automation was just the last step. Throughout the campaign, Hillary Clinton gave every impression of being a faulty machine: stiff and inelegant, prone to suddenly crashing, spitting out the same information over and over again, running through what was clearly a set of optimal programming rules. She was something imposed on the world, like so much new technology, not anything it ever really wanted. Or look at that old video of George Osborne repeating the same drab soundbite over and over again to a news team, stricken and sweaty, utterly mechanical. The machine war already happened. We lost.

@sam_kriss

Talks are taking place in Geneva this week between the Greek and Turkish leaders of Cyprus in what is seen as the last real hope for securing a unified island.

What's happening?

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish-Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci are holding talks to try and find a compromise to reunify the island, which has been divided for the past 40 years. If the discussion progresses well, the leaders will be joined by those from Greece, Turkey and the U.K.—the three parties who guarantee Cypriot independence and security. This would mark the first direct talks since 1974.

Because there have been so many previous reunification efforts, many believe these negotiations to be the final shot at a unified Cyprus. As he arrived at the United Nations European headquarters, Anastasiades was asked if he was optimistic, to which he replied: "Ask me when we are finished."

Read more on VICE News

Britain has the highest per capita prison population in Western Europe. It almost doubled between 1990 and 2015, and the prison system has buckled under this increase – a story told by numerous reports of staff shortages, cramped conditions, rampant drug problems and poorly trained guards. Last year, more than 100 inmates took their own lives, the highest number of prison suicides in recent memory.

In recent weeks there have been major riots in prisons across the country. In HMP Birmingham last month, more than a third of the prison's 1,450 inmates were involved in a 12-hour riot. It was the worst since the notorious Strangeways riot in Manchester 26 years ago, when a 25-day riot and rooftop protest killed one and injured more than 200 people. Perhaps surprisingly, the Birmingham riot didn't happen in isolation, but was quickly followed by riots at HMP Swaleside on the Isle of Sheppey.

It's common for street riots in one city to spark unrest in another, but how do riots spread from prison to prison, when inmates are supposed to be cut off from most communication? I spoke to Frances Crook, Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform – which campaigns for changes to the criminal justice system and better conditions in prisons – to get to grips with what is going on.

VICE: Hi Frances. Why are so many prisoners rioting at the moment?
Frances Crook: There have been disturbances for a long time in places like Moorland, Lewes, Bedford and Birmingham, but things have been deteriorating over the past three or four years. The riots are one of the symptoms of the problem... the suicide rate is the highest it has ever been in the last 40 years, so there are serious problems in prisons, and riots are one of the expressions of extreme distress. Another is staff, who went on strike. It's a perfect storm, if you like.

What causes the prisoners to rebel?
Prisons are in such a terrible state that sometimes it's just the little things that break the camel's back and tip them over the edge. I've just heard from a mother of a prisoner in one of the big prisons, where none of the cards from families were given to prisoners before Christmas. It's the little things like that that can trigger absolute misery. If you think your wife or kids have forgotten you because they haven't sent a card – and you're only likely to get one card – then it's really, really distressing. Don't forget families cannot phone in. You have to phone them, and if you haven't got any money or you're not getting out of your cell to get to the phones, you can't phone them. It's little things like that. Also, the budget for prison food has been cut back. It's around £2 a day for all the meals.

What kind of things are prisoners being served at meal times?
They will get a breakfast pack, which will be a handful of cereal and 200ml of milk. That's breakfast. Then they may get a hot meal at lunch – chips, tinned vegetables and a pie, or something. Then they'll get a baguette for supper with either a small pot of yoghurt or an apple and a couple of pieces of bread. That is what they give grown men. It's the grind of it all. You can't get post, nobody answers any questions, you're locked in your cell all day, it's filthy, you haven't had a shower for three days and you're wearing the same clothes for days, you can't get to a phone. It's the grind, the misery, the loneliness and the pointlessness of it all.

So what actually happens when prisoners riot?
There's nothing organised. These are young men who've taken advantage of grabbing the keys from a prison officer because they may be alone on a landing. Prison guards have keys on them and they have to go up and down the cells letting people out so they can get food. Normally what happens is a prisoner grabs the keys – it's nothing organised or planned – and they let each other out. They're locked in on the wing and the prison service sends in the riot squad and they take it back. It's usually only one wing because they are shut off from each other.

Why is this happening now?
What happened is people in Bedford had rioted, so they sent a whole lot up to Birmingham prison, which is already overcrowded and understaffed, so they rioted in Birmingham and took a load of people out from there and sent them to other overcrowded and understaffed prisons. In Birmingham, a whole wing was put out of action because they lit fires and flooded it, so they had to ship out several hundred prisoners. They shipped out the prisoners who had not been involved in the riot, so that meant the people who had been compliant and well behaved with visits arranged – legal visits, their families were coming to see them – all of a sudden they're put on a bus and shipped out to Durham or Cornwall or somewhere miles away from home – so everybody's punished.

"They're 25-year-old men who have been locked up with nothing to do all day and no exercise. They explode with energy, testosterone and fury. They go berserk."

Do the riots have anything to do with staffing cuts?
It's pretty difficult to riot if you're all locked in your cells, which is why the death rate has gone up – people take it out by trying to cut themselves or hang themselves. More than 100 have killed themselves in the last year.

What's the aim of it all? Do the riots achieve anything?
I don't think there's an aim. Imagine if you put a 25-year-old in a bathroom and left him in there with another man who he didn't know for weeks on end without letting him out and not giving him enough food, and then suddenly someone appears at the door and lets him out. He would just explode with energy, testosterone and fury, and particularly if someone gave him some drugs. That's what happening. They're 25-year-old men who have been locked up with nothing to do all day and no exercise. They go berserk.

Could there be a whole spate of riots coming? Could we see another Strageways situation?
There could be. Not because it's planned, but because these places are explosive. People are really angry and frightened and bitter, and so are the staff. There's a slight difference in that Strangeways became more political because they got on the roof and there were more of them involved. The men were making demands about a change in the system. I don't think the riots this time have developed into that level of organisation; it's mostly been just an explosion of frustration.

Is the anger towards staff or the system?
I think it varies. The staff are disaffected and there's very few of them, and so there are certainly a lot of assaults against staff, yes. None of the staff are qualified at all – you don't have to have a single GCSE to be a prison officer. They're barely trained. Prison officers should be like nurses; it should be a vocation degree, and it's a profession. It should be seen as a profession. They're not guards; they're prison officers.

Are prisons in a worse place because of cuts made by the Tory government?
It goes way back. Labour policy was [to create] an explosion in prisons, and in the good years it was funded. The real problem came with Chris Grayling [former Conservative Secretary of State for Justice] who closed 15 without reducing the numbers – so those people were redistributed to already crowded prisons – and then he cut the staff by 40 percent. So you have a growing prison population in fewer buildings with a significantly reduced staff. That's what the problem was, and that was Grayling's policy. He then privatised the probation service, which meant that there's now no confidence in community sentences because they're an absolute shambles as a result. The courts are using prisons more because the community sentences aren't working – they were before and now they're not.

What about Liz Truss, the new minister for justice, has anyone got any faith in her?
She's only been there a few months – give her a chance. We'll see what she does.

More on VICE:

Stories of Christmas Behind Bars

Why Are Prison Suicides in the UK Still Increasing?

We Spoke to Prisoners About Their Failed Escape Attempts

Paul Seesequasis, a Saskatoon writer of Willow Cree background and a member of the Beardy's and Okemasis First Nation has been documenting the lives of Indigenous people living in Canada through a digital series of photos posted on Twitter. What started off as a labour of love and a visual testament of Indigenous resistance, has become symbolic of the power of social media to share marginalized stories, and also an avenue for Seesequasis to tell the history of Indigenous Peoples and highlight the strides made in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds such as racism, discrimination and state-sanctioned violence. Via Twitter, Seesequasis has crafted a lingua franca for marginalized voices and VICE sat down with him to talk about how his digital gallery began and the changes he hopes to see through this representation.

VICE: How did you get started sharing these images ?
Paul Seesequasis: It began two years ago in a discussion with my mother, who is a residential school survivor. She was reacting to media coverage on the radio and she longed to hear more positive stories about the Indigenous experience, in particular the strength of families and communities in admittedly hard times.

From there, I began researching and posting photos from First Nation Métis and Inuit communities, with a focus on a 50 year span up to the 1970s. These photos came from public archives, libraries, museums and local historical societies. It was a very engaging project and it generated lots of comments and feedback from followers on Twitter and Facebook. As it evolved, the engagement took on its own momentum with people naming relatives, locations or context to the photos themselves. In many instances, family members were not aware of the photos so there was also an act of reclamation in that.

Thematically, the photo feed was centred on resilience, resistance, and endurance.

It's very difficult finding archives on any media platform that prominently feature Indigenous people. Has it been hard finding these images?
As I learned more in the process it became easier to locate the photos and also to identify the travels of certain photographers, time periods, and the photos they took. In many cases, these photographers built a rapport, a trust, and a place in the communities they were photographing. Those are the photos in which the process of freezing a moment in time can lead to intimacy, beauty and integrity of subject.

As well, there are Indigenous photographers like Peter Pitseolak (Inuk), George Johnston (Tlingit), and James Jerome (Gwich'in) who were early creators in the development of Indigenous photography.

One of my favourite pictures from your feed is the one of Mary Baillargeon & eagles. It's a picture of a young Aboriginal girl standing alongside two giant eagles. It's such an evocative and powerful picture. Can you tell us the story behind it?
The eagles were orphaned and found and raised by Alexie Crapeau and her brother, over 50 years ago. In the photo you are referring to, taken in 1956, by Henry Busse, the woman with the two, now grown, eagles, is Mary Louise Baillargeon (Dene). It is a breathtaking photo.

I also really like how your pictures show Aboriginal peoples doing what some might call the most mundane of activities. Why is this type of representation important to you?
The photos chosen represent day-to-day life. They often catch humourous moments or people at play, people at work or living off the land, or, they are facial portraits of elders or younger people in the communities. When I can they are named as listed in the digitized archival source, but in many cases they are not named. This is where feedback from followers has led to many subjects or situations being identified. And often there is a story, that is still remembered, that goes along with the story. There is a sense of urgency in this, as many of the contemporaries of people in these photos are now elderly, and when they are no longer with this, the stories these photos capture may also be lost.

In the picture titled 'Leslie Carpenter welcomes the New Year' there is a young child sitting on the floor next to about 5 people, but all we see of them are their brightly coloured mukluks. There is so much cultural significance in that picture that speaks to Aboriginal traditions and that being passed onto the future. How are Aboriginal elders living in Canada ensuring that Aboriginal culture and traditions are not forgotten by the younger generation?
There is beauty in the child, Leslie Carpenter, but also in the craftwork of the mukluks which are a labour of love. It is a nice juxtaposition of the two and I do think it speaks to the endurance of familial bonds and of artistic and cultural practice. In some of the interviews I've done since this project began, many elders have talked about 'the old ways' and their hope that a new generation doesn't lose this. Many communities are working at this, whether it is ways of living off the land, cultural camps, language (which is vital) and, in some cases, archiving elder's voices, digitizing old recordings, or digitizing photographs. Many of these projects are under funded or done as a labour of love.

There should be more government support available for this but then the whole colonial apparatus and bureaucracy is still there. It is a tragedy that so many stories and so much language have been irretrievably lost.

Are you in touch with some of the people whose images you shared on your feed? People who were toddlers when the pictures were taken and are now in their adulthood?
Constantly. People who were children or teens in the photos and are now much older. Cousins and aunts and uncles of people in the photographs, and that is the most useful and rewarding part of the project. For myself, there isn't a day were I don't learn something new. That is both exciting and humbling.

What has the response been like?
The response has been very accepting and encouraging on social media. I hope it is a useful project in that regard. As we know, there is much darkness, misogyny and racism on social media. This project has felt very positive and I hope it comes across with the integrity and the respect I endeavour to put into it. Other than my own family photos, these are decidedly not my photos or my story to tell. They belong to the families and communities they come from. There is an open door of dialogue and I hope they feel this belongs to them.

Beyond that, there has been media coverage on radio and in print. I hope that whatever coverage this project warrants, that it also helps with things like Project Naming, which is the work of Indigenous archivists and local community projects.

Are you going to only focus on growing the digital gallery or do you also hope to have a physical exhibit of the pictures you have collected?
There will be a photographic book, inspired by the project, released by Knopf Canada in the spring of 2018. Other things may arise.

What methods of Indigenous representation would you like to see exhibited in mainstream media?
For the integrity and the diversity of Indigenous voices to be acknowledged and that mainstream media no longer relies on a few spokesmen, almost always men, to speak for all, which is both a false and impossible position. Also, more respect to women's voices, Two-Spirit and youth. And most importantly, that there be more attention to the many excellent Indigenous media outlets and commentators.

A new Toronto committee created in response to the opioid crisis in Canada is meeting for the first time this afternoon. Called the Toronto Overdose Early Warning and Alert Partnership, the formation of the group was sparked by a conversation between Toronto Mayor John Tory and Vancouver's mayor, Gregor Robertson.

"I don't think that we can sit back and be complacent for one moment," Tory said during an interview. "The first thing you have to do is to form a partnership that sort of says everybody is going to be at the table, exchanging information, exchanging knowledge."

While some language and reporting surrounding the committee's first meeting suggests the opioid crisis has yet to reach Ontario, for those on the frontlines, it's already here.

"There are people using heroin that they know is cut with fentanyl, there are people who are using fentanyl that they have bought off the street… We are definitely seeing it," Zoe Dodd, who works at the South Riverdale Community Health Centre in Toronto, told CBC News.

Though recent numbers on opioid-related overdose deaths are unavailable in Ontario, what we know so far is troubling. Ontario reported 166 deaths linked to fentanyl in 2015, according to preliminary data from the chief coroner's office. 2016 numbers are not yet available in Ontario, but in two provinces known to be hit hardest by the opioid crisis, BC and Alberta, numbers have been climbing since last year. Fentanyl was linked to more than 500 overdose deaths in BC and Alberta combined in 2015. For 2016, BC reported 374 deaths related to fentanyl so far; between January and October of the same year, Alberta reported 193 fentanyl-related deaths.

According to Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Toronto's acting medical officer of health, there were 45 fentanyl-related OD deaths in the city in 2015—up from 23 deaths the previous year.

"We don't know if it's all related to fentanyl overdose—people do have a lot of vulnerabilities when they're street-involved, when they're on the streets, when they're homeless," Dodd said. "We do have a high population of homeless people in Toronto, just like Vancouver. Some of the issues that Vancouver is experiencing have also to do with the fact that people are homeless and that they're much more vulnerable to overdose."

READ MORE: Supervised Injection Sites Are on the Way. Here's What They Look Like Now

Dr. David Juurlink, a drug safety researcher at University of Toronto medicine, said that a committee like the one Tory has set up is a "good idea."

"The response to the opioid crisis is going to require collaboration across all levels of government, and every large municipality should have a committee of this sort," Juurlink told VICE. "That said, the value of a committee is in its accomplishments, not its existence. I'll be very interested to see what actions this committee takes."

Today's meeting in Toronto will likely be the first of many of its kind and will include first responders, the coroner's office, public health workers, community organizations, and others. Tory has also said that he plans to bring up the issue of fentanyl at a big-city mayors meeting this year.

"If this was some other kind of illness that was entering Canada and killing hundreds of people... I think you'd have more focused attention being paid to it by everybody," Tory said. "I just think I have to join together in common cause with people like Mayor Robertson and say this is a national crisis."

Follow Allison Tierney on Twitter .

Grace Jones was nine years old when she was found hiding inside a barrel. She was with a boy from her hometown in Jamaica, and they were both discovered by someone from her grandfather's puritanical Pentecostal church. It took the church community two weeks to decide how they would punish her. In her words: "A little natural, tingling curiosity about how I was really feeling—not how I was ordered to feel—led to a trial that implied I had broken the law and infuriated their malicious God. The blows came thick and fast. Punishment was their way of keeping us in line."

It's no wonder she escaped to New York as soon as she hit 18, growing her hair into an afro, dropping a shit ton of acid, and having as much casual sex as she wanted. But that's not to say her newfound existence in the US equated to total freedom. While her deeply religious upbringing overbeared her in more extreme ways, the society around her contained subtle, but nonetheless very real, sexual oppressions as well. Needless to say, to be a woman—particularly a black woman in the 60s—was (and is) to be expected to contain yourself. Because to express sexual desire without shame isn't just uncomfortable for certain people—it's scary; an adjective that has been used to describe Grace Jones more than once.

Read more on Noisey

Perhaps taking his costume a little bit too literally, a man dressed as a character from the video game Angry Birds beat another man unconscious in Toronto on Halloween.

On Monday, Toronto police released a call for assistance with an "Angry Birds Aggravated Assault investigation." According to police, a 24-year-old American man was walking along Queen Street West and Peter Street in the early morning hours of Sunday, Oct. 30, when he passed by a man in an Angry Birds costume.

The 24-year-old made a "harmless comment" about the costume, Const. Jenifferjit Sidhu told Global News, at which point police say "the man in the Angry Birds costume suddenly turned around and began to assault the 24-year-old man and knocked him to the ground." He continued to kick and punch the victim, who sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries.

Police are now asking witnesses of the assault—which took place at around 2:30 AM—or those who may have video footage to come forward.

The Angry Bird suspect is described as being approximately five-foot-ten to six-feet-tall.

Police say the because the victim was knocked unconscious, there are few other details available.

This is even more shameful than the movie. 

Follow Manisha Krishnan  on Twitter.

A version of this article originally appeared on the Trace.

The number of Republican lawmakers serving in capitals across America sits at the highest level in nearly a century. The gun rights advocates among them head into 2017 eager to make this year a momentous one in their crusade to dismantle state firearms restrictions

"This is our historic moment to go on offense," Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association's executive vice president, told his members in a post-election video.

Already, two contentious proposals are underway. The first would eliminate licensing and training requirements governing who is authorized to carry concealed handguns. The so-called permitless-carry measures are poised to take on extra importance as a federal bill requiring all states to honor each other's concealed-carry laws gains steam in Congress. Under that legislation, states that mandate permits for carrying hidden handguns would be forced to allow visitors from states that no longer require such licenses to carry concealed guns.

The second push would allow guns onto more college campuses, which gun advocates have targeted for years in their campaign to make firearms commonplace in places where deadly weapons have long been barred.

Democrats, who generally support tighter firearms regulations, do not have the numbers to defeat the pro-gun bills in party line votes.

Across the country, 3,973 state lawmakers now claim a grade of A- or better from the NRA, according to an update of an earlier Trace analysis. That's 54 percent of all state legislators. Within that majority, 3,544 are members of the GOP.

There are now 32 states where more than half of the legislature has received at least an A- from the gun group. In 14 states, that majority is two thirds or greater, making pro-gun bills virtually veto-proof. In Oklahoma, Arkansas, Indiana, Idaho, and Missouri, the number is 70 percent or higher. In Kentucky, the figure is just shy of 90 percent.

For opponents of relaxed gun laws, hope will have to come instead from wary Republicans in and out of public office who in recent years have blocked permitless and campus carry in otherwise gun-friendly Southern states.

The question for 2017 is whether that GOP reluctance will again serve as a brake against gun advocates' more aggressive policies. Or whether Glocks on the quad and streets patrolled by unlicensed, untrained, gun-carrying citizens will become the new normals of the Trump era.

Permitless Carry

Lawmakers sponsoring permitless-carry bills have momentum on their side. Until recently, such measures were considered extreme. But in 2016 alone, Missouri, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Idaho enacted or expanded laws allowing gun owners to take concealed firearms into public spaces without meeting training requirements or securing a government license. Legislatures in Missouri and West Virginia did so by overriding the vetoes of their respective Democratic governors.

With the passage of those laws, permitless carry is now legal in ten states.

The number will likely increase this year. The most prominent state gearing up for a permitless-carry push is Texas. Similar legislation is pending in Montana, Utah, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

John Harris, the executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association, counts his state as a certain addition to the list. A permitless-carry bill stalled last year in Nashville, but Harris said he is confident that its sponsor will reintroduce the measure during the upcoming session.

"I've seen and worked on the draft," he said.

Lawmakers who support permitless carry frame the issue as a matter of life and death. Existing concealed-carry licensing requirements can be as minimal as completing a two-hour class; in about half the country, permit seekers do not have to show that they can capably fire their weapon before receiving a license.

But proponents of permitless carry believe that any obstacles that could delay the exercising of a person's right to self-defense are unconscionable.

"I think it's immoral to deny innocent people the right to defend themselves when society is breaking down," said State Representative Jim Lucas, an Indiana Republican who is sponsoring a permitless bill. "I don't want to play doom and gloom, but we're seeing riots play out."

While versions of this year's permitless-carry bills fizzled in past legislative terms, proponents point to reasons for optimism in 2017.

In both 2015 and 2016, for instance, the New Hampshire legislature passed permitless carry, only to have the bills vetoed by Governor Maggie Hassan, a Democrat. Hassan won election to the US Senate in November and was replaced by Chris Sununu, a Republican with an A rating from the NRA, which has thrown its weight behind the bill.

In Tennessee, permitless carry got sidelined last year as lawmakers dealt with two other high-profile gun-related bills. One measure, which passed with NRA backing, allowed state college and university employees with concealed-carry licenses to bring their firearms onto campuses. The other, which the NRA successfully spiked, sought to require gun owners to store their weapons in such a way that they could not be accessed by children. Those efforts came at the expense of a permitless-carry bill sponsored by Republican State Senator Mark Green, which never made it to the floor for a vote.

Harris, the Tennessee Firearms Association head, said he hopes to see the NRA make a more aggressive push for permitless carry in his state this time around.

"If in the NRA gets involved, it'll absolutely help," he said.

Sixty-nine percent of the Tennessee General Assembly has a grade of A- or better from the gun group.

For the permitless-carry movement, the biggest prize would be Texas, where Representative John Stickland, a Republican, is shepherding a bill. Its passage is the state Republican Party's top legislative priority for 2017.

"I think the fact that Texas would be the 11th state with constitutional carry kind of makes it the norm," Stickland said. "If it gets to the floor, Republicans can't vote against it, politically."

Campus carry

Campus-carry bills are percolating in at least four states: Florida, Arkansas, Georgia, and South Carolina. Another was proposed in Wisconsin, then shelved while its sponsor builds support for it. The measures (and those likely to join them as lawmakers get down to work in other states) come at what could be a pivotal stretch in the fight over firearms on college campuses.

Republican state lawmaker Charlie Collins is a key campus-carry booster in Arkansas.

"The purpose is to deter these crazy killers who choose college campuses to murder a bunch of people," he said.

Collins said he is confident his state will pass the legislation he's advancing after enacting a watered-down version of campus carry in 2013.

But pro-gun politicians have had a tough time opening colleges to concealed pistols, even as they've allowed firearms in churches, bars, daycares and government buildings over the past half-decade. The wariness of some establishment-leaning Republicans toward campus carry has halted its progress in states where the NRA has an otherwise strong hand.

To date, the biggest win for the campus carry movement came in 2015 in Texas, which passed a bill that went into effect on the anniversary of the Clocktower Shooting at the University of Texas in Austin in 1966. In 2016, two large states followed with their own, narrower versions of permitting guns on campus. In December, Ohio became the 24th state to authorize a some form of campus carry. Its version of the law, unlike Texas's, leaves it to colleges and universities to determine whether their schools will allow the practice. When Tennessee passed its own limited campus-carry law last spring, the state's Republican governor let the controversial measure become law without his signature.

Confronted with his own campus-carry decision around the same time, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, a pro-gun Republican, reached for his veto pen.

"The right to keep and bear arms in sensitive places," including university campuses, "is not guaranteed by the Second Amendment nor the Georgia constitution," he said in a public statement.

Last month, Georgia House Speaker David Ralston tipped his plans to reintroduce campus carry in 2017. Sixty-two percent of lawmakers in his state have a grade of A- or better from the NRA. Ralston said he was open to modifying the legislation, but that he wouldn't "support a tweak that's going to open up a bill to looking like a piece of Swiss cheese."

The hardest-fought campus-carry battle is set for Florida, a gun-friendly state that has eluded backers of the laws for at least the past five years. The most recent campus-carry push there died in the state's upper chamber when Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, a Miami-area Republican who was then the chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee, refused to bring it up for a vote.

Diaz de la Portilla lost his re-election bid to a Democrat in November, vacating the committee leadership role from which he'd made himself a bulwark against the NRA's agenda. (He also single-handedly quashed an open-carry bill.) His replacement as chairman is Greg Steube, who as a Florida House member from 2010 to 2016 sponsored a series of unsuccessful campus-carry bills.

In 2015, Steube published an op-ed on the issue in a local paper. According to public records obtained by The Trace, Steube's column was drafted with help of Marion Hammer, the Florida-based NRA lobbyist who is the architect of Florida's "stand your ground" law.

"Defending yourself and others is one of the most fundamental rights that we as Americans enjoy," Steube wrote. "Why would we take that right away on a college or university campus when there is not a legitimate reason to deny it."

After Steube won his state Senate seat in November, he waited roughly a month before introducing his latest campus-carry proposal, part of an omnibus gun bill that would also allow guns in parts of airports, elementary and secondary schools, and at legislative meetings.

Even with Steube replacing campus-carry foe Diaz de la Portilla, the bill is not considered a cinch to pass. The new Judiciary Committee still includes two Republicans from Miami-Dade County, where the NRA is less feared than it is elsewhere in Florida.

Steube will need those colleagues' votes to get the bill to the Senate floor.
"If I were betting man," said Senator Oscar Braynon, the Democratic minority leader in the upper chamber, "I would say the bill won't make it to the floor."

Anna Boiko-Weyrauch contributed data analysis to this piece. Graphics by Francesca Mirabile.

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

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android.

When the original One Day at a Time premiered in 1975, executive producer Norman Lear made television history by launching a female-driven sitcom about a divorced single mom. The show aired for ten years and lived on in syndication. Queer television writer Michelle Badillo grew up on reruns, watching it in her Forest Hills, Queens apartment with her own divorced mom. Now living in Los Angeles, Badillo, 24, is the youngest writer on the newly revamped One Day at a Time, premiering this weekend on Netflix.

"It freaks my mom out that she loved the show so much as a kid, grew up to live that exact life, and now I'm writing on this show," Badillo says.

Like Badillo, the characters on the new show are Latina. The remake centers around a Cuban mom and her kids living in an apartment in Echo Park, the traditionally Latino Los Angeles neighborhood that has recently been gentrified by coffee shops and vegan restaurants. Legendary EGOT Rita Moreno joins the cast as the grandmother Lydia, a Cuban immigrant who has lived the Latina American dream. This week, we sat down with Badillo to talk Latinos on TV, queer culture in mainstream Hollywood, and that time Mischa Barton played a lesbian on The O.C.

Read more on Broadly

The massive storm that hit California and Nevada this past weekend was too much for Calaveras Big Trees State Park's iconic Pioneer Cabin Tree, which toppled after attracting tourists for more than a century thanks in part to its signature hollow base.

SFGate reports that the giant tree was originally tunneled through in the late 1800s and had been an attraction ever since, though in recent years it was closed to vehicles—cars once passed through—and open only to hikers on foot.

According to a park volunteer, the storm flooded the trail around the tree, most likely loosening the sequoia's root system and causing it to fall on Sunday afternoon. Before it came down, the interior of the tree's tunnel was covered in graffiti capturing its storied history. The tree shattered when it hit the ground.

Sequoias are some of the largest and oldest trees in the world, growing hundreds of feet tall and living for millennia if undisturbed. The Pioneer Cabin Tree was reportedly still living when it came down, though another park volunteer told SFGate it was "barely alive" and that there was "one branch alive at the top" that was "very brittle."

The massive weekend storm has caused widespread damage and flooding across California and Nevada. The National Weather Service called it a "once-in-ten-year event," according to LA Times.

"Everyone loves Marineland!"

If you've lived in Canada for any significant period of time that catchy as all hell hook to the Marineland jingle has been stuck in your head. It's, hands down, the best thing about the Seaworld rip off located in Niagara Falls.

But, with the film Blackfish spurring resentment against aquatic attractions and repeated charges of animal abuse it's probably fair to say that the "love" sentiment from the jingle doesn't hold truth anymore.

On January 9, the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (OSPCA) laid six new charges against Marineland under the Ontario SPCA Act. Oddly, these charges, as are the others, are in regards to alleged abuse/neglect against elk, red deer and fallow deer—not for abuse against aquatic animals.

This now makes it a total of eleven accounts now have been laid against Marineland since a OSPCA investigation in 2015.

In late November, Marineland was once again in the news for animal abuse. The Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (OSPCA) charged the company with five accounts of abuse in regards to the way they treated its black bears, guinea hens and a peacock. At the time, OSPCA said that their investigation was ongoing and further charges were pending.

The majority of the eleven charges are related to permitting an animal to be in distress and failing to provide a prescribed standard of care to the animal. The animals in question are still at Marineland.

At the time of the November's charges, Marineland responded by denying the charges and saying they will fight them "vigorously." Marineland will get their chance to defend themselves in court on January 27.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter .

"See, in the Bay Area, we dance a little different," Mac Dre explains matter-of-factly in "Get Stupid." The 2004 hit became a blueprint for the hyphy movement, the freewheeling, party-centric subgenre that reigned the Northern Californian rap scene in the 2000s. At local warehouse parties and clubs—even nowadays—teenagers and twenty-somethings rap along to every word of his iconic tracks while twisting their lips into thizz faces and throwing their T's up like Mac Dre did before his untimely passing in 2004.

Mac Dre unapologetically celebrated his eccentricity, and that attitude extends to the Bay Area's rap scene today. The Bay Area has always been an underdog to Los Angeles, and locals rep its underground countercultures with fierce pride. LA is home to the music industry establishment, but in the Bay Area, artists have always had to do it themselves, from selling CDs out of the trunks of their cars—like most of our rap icons did from the 80s through the early 2000s—to starting their own labels and, in recent years, inserting themselves into the national conversation through viral anthems such as Kamaiyah's "How Does It Feel."

The region's sprawling geography and lack of a single cultural capital makes it all the more unique. Vallejo, the Solano county city about 30 miles north of San Francisco, gave us Mac Dre and E-40, the enduring hitmaker who's had more longevity in the rap game than any other living artist—period. Oakland produced pimp rap extraordinaire Too $hort; hyphy icons Mistah F.A.B. and Keak Da Sneak; and conscious hip-hop pioneers Souls of Mischief and Hieroglyphics. Pittsburg gave us The Jacka, a street rap kingpin that was senselessly murdered in Oakland in 2015.

To understand what's going on in the Bay Area today, it's imperative to learn about the various rap movements that have existed here over the years. Mobb music was our answer to LA's g-funk during the early-90s gangster rap era, and platinum records such as E-40's In a Major Way and Too $hort's Life Is… Too Short emerged from this homegrown style of hard-edged street rap.

Read more on Noisey

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

When there's a fatality on the train tracks in Germany, the national railway company Deutsche Bahn calls it personenschaden—"damage to a person." It's a rather sober, bureaucratic term for a bloody, messy, and shocking reality. The driver of the train involved in the fatality usually carries the trauma for the rest of his or her life.

Michael Dittmann, chairman of the Train Drivers' Union of Cologne, told me that, in Germany, train drivers on average experience two rail-related deaths during their career—some accidents, some suicides.

Peter Gutwasser, 54, drove the S-Bahn in Berlin for 20 years and was directly involved in three rail-related deaths. Today, he works as a therapist and lives with his wife and two cats on the outskirts of Berlin. I visited him there to talk about what it's like to run someone over.

Peter Gutwasser at home with his cat. Photos by Grey Hutton

"The most awful experience I ever had was when I hit two children at the same time, in October 1996," he said. "They were two little boys, a three-year-old and a six-year old. It was just after 1 PM on the last ride of my shift when those two boys suddenly ran onto the train tracks to play there. I pulled the breaks and switched on the warning signal, but it was just too late. When the boys saw the train, they went into a state of shock and froze. I heard a loud bang, and after what felt like a hundred seconds, the train finally came to a standstill. I got out and didn't see anything at first, but when I walked back a bit, there was this enormous puddle of blood, and I heard a whimpering. They were both badly hurt. The older brother asked whether I had a plaster for his brother. I went back to my cabin to get my first aid kit and call the emergency services, but when I got back, they suddenly tried to run away—in their heavily injured state. The ambulance managed to pick them up. I later found out that the youngest brother died of his injuries. He had got under the train and dragged his brother with him. I'm not entirely sure if the older boy survived—he must have had a lot of internal injuries."

Twenty years later, the noises and smells of that day remain with Gutwasser. "I can still hear the bang when the youngest boy hit the train—I can still see the blood," he said. "I'll carry that with me for the rest of my life, but I learned to control it. I gave the boy a name for myself, so I could give it all a place and move on from it."

Gutwasser's first fatal accident as a train driver was in June 1990, when a woman tried to open the door after the train had started moving and she got stuck between the train and the platform. At the time, train doors could be opened while the train was moving. "She was squashed, basically," said Gutwasser. "I was in shock. My mind tried to tell me what just happened, but my emotions blocked it. I had spoken to that woman on the platform, just moments before she died."

Another time, someone died on his shift, though he only realized it later. "It was an S-Bahn surfer, who was climbing around on the roof of the train when he smashed into a signal post and died. I had no idea—when I got to the next station someone from the federal police asked me whether I had noticed anything. That guy was 22—at that age you should know what you're doing. I was angry, and I didn't feel sorry for him, to be honest."

The fatalities Gutwasser was involved in were all accidents, but he also witnessed a suicide on the tracks during one of his shifts, when a man jumped in front of a train on the other tracks. His body smashed from the first train onto the one Gutwasser was driving. "What was left of him landed on my windshield," he said. "It was a nightmare. My first instinct was to switch on the windshield wipers. You have to be pragmatic in situations like that. People committing suicide on the train tracks really do tick me off. Why drag others down with you in your misery?"

Gutwasser didn't get any psychological help after the fatalities he was involved in—"Each time I had to drive the smashed up train back to the yard and clean it myself," he said—which is why, together with a colleague, he formed a self-help group for train drivers in the late 1990s. Today, drivers are much better cared for after fatalities—colleagues take over the shift, and the drivers in question are offered psychological help.

Psychologist Wilfried Echterhoff treats people who have been confronted with the death of others in their jobs, and he knows it can leave long-lasting psychological trauma. "Some people have never been confronted with death before," he explained. "To suddenly be confronted with it in such a violent way can lead to PTSD or a serious depression." Echterhoff thinks talking about the accidents as much as possible helps people find a way to start over.

That happened for Gutwasser—he accepted death as part of his life. "If you're a train driver, it's just a fact that someone could jump in front of your train," he said. "But you need to distance yourself from the fatalities to protect yourself. These people died—there's nothing I can do to change that. Dealing with death is a long process; I worked very hard on it. I think it might have helped that I've been interested in philosophical subjects since I was little. And you need to reflect on death with humor, too. No matter how tough the situation is, you still have to be able to laugh about it in some way."

The fact that Gutwasser quit his job as a train driver and now works as a therapist has nothing to do with the accidents on the job. "I started working as a train driver for financial reasons and because it gave me a sense of freedom. It was fascinating," he said. "But the hours were very long, and it wasn't a very family-friendly job. I always wanted to be a therapist; I like helping people. I still think about the people I saw die on the tracks, but I don't feel guilty. I didn't do anything wrong. I was just doing my job."

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

President-elect Donald Trump will bring his son-in-law Jared Kushner into his administration as a senior advisor, a source involved in the transition team told NBC News on Monday.

Kushner, like Trump, is the scion of a New York–area real estate family who has become a Manhattan celebrity—though he rose to prominence more quietly than Trump. He married Ivanka Trump in 2009 (she converted to Judaism for him) and during Trump's campaign was one of his father-in-law's closest advisers. He defended Trump from charges of anti-Semitism in public; in private, he reportedly had a major role in kicking New Jersey governor Chris Christie off the White House transition team. (Not incidentally, Christie was the prosecutor responsible for putting Kushner's father, Charlie, behind bars over a scandal that was sordid even by the low standards of tristate shenanigans.)

Anti-nepotism laws bar a president from appointing family members to federal agencies—but appointing son-in-laws to positions in the White House may be OK under those rules. There are also questions about Kushner's potential conflicts of interest as a real estate developer: He was recently courting a joint venture with a company with ties to the Chinese government. Kushner's lawyer said in a statement that they are "committed to complying with federal ethics laws" and have been "consulting with the Office of Government Ethics regarding the steps he would take" to keep the new position above board.

News of Kushner's potential new position isn't a shock, given how much Trump reportedly relies on his young adviser—and given that Kushner and Ivanka are reportedly relocating to a $5.5 million home in DC's Kalorama neighborhood, only blocks from where the Obamas plan to move after the White House.

Check out Dame Darcy's website, Instagram, and Twitter.

We live in dangerous times.

We don't need to enumerate the perils of the modern age here, because you're here to read about food—presumably to forget about said perils. But while we're on the topic of food, it's only fair to shout out the brave men and women who deliver pizza for a living. Driving around with hot pizzas might sound like a humble, even monotonous job, but that couldn't be further from the reality of the streets.

It's actually one of the most dangerous jobs in America, and the risk is inherent to the occupation. A total stranger summons you to deliver pizza—unaccompanied by any type of security—to an address of their choice, and you then have to handle a bunch of cash at their door.

While there can also be fun aspects of the job—like occasionally getting invited into parties or tipped with weed—many drivers would argue that being a soft target for petty, violent crime is not worth the minute chance of receiving a beer or even a blow job from a customer. All you have to do is Google the words "pizza delivery" to see the almost-weekly news stories of pizza deliverers being brutalized while they sling pies. Sadly, beatings, robberies, and on some occasions, even machete attacks are not uncommon in this line of work. In 2014 alone, 20 pizza delivery drivers were shot while on the job.

Read more on MUNCHIES