On July 5, 1996, after 276 failed attempts, a team of scientists at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh achieved something remarkable: They managed to clone a sheep. The sheep, named Dolly Parton because the cell from which they'd cloned her had been taken from a sheep's mammary gland, would be the first cloned mammal to survive into adulthood.

Dolly's existence was kept under wraps until February 22, 1997, when she finally got to meet the world. Journalists from around the globe crowded into her stable for her unveiling, anxious to see the feat of genetic engineering that the New York Times described as "anticipated and dreaded more than any other." After seeing her, the media went wild, quickly inciting hysteria about what would come next. If scientists knew how to clone a sheep, how soon would it be before they started cloning humans?

"The primary concern about human cloning was the notion of so-called designer babies," Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, told me. "They were ridiculous fantasies about essentially xeroxing people that had no relationship to what was actually going on."

Still, the concerns were great enough that a week after Dolly was unveiled, President Bill Clinton issued a ban on the use of federal funds for human cloning research until a national bioethics advisory commission had time to consider the implications. Charo, who served on Clinton's advisory commission, said they "recommended that human cloning not be pursued at that time because it was simply too unsafe to come close to an ethical approach to reproductive medicine."

But that was two decades ago. Since the Clinton moratorium on federal funding for reproductive human cloning, has anything changed?

Today, as in 20 years ago, there are three main types of cloning: gene cloning, reproductive cloning, and therapeutic cloning. Gene cloning reproduces segments of DNA, and therapeutic cloning creates embryonic stem cells with the goal of growing tissues that could replace damaged tissues in humans. Reproductive cloning, the type used to create Dolly, produces genetic copies of an entire animal.

Reproductive cloning is accomplished through a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. This involves taking the nucleus from any adult cell and inject it into the cell of a fertilized egg whose nucleus has been removed. "You're essentially hijacking the fertilized egg's cellular machinery to take this adult nucleus," said Charo. In the case of Dolly, that adult cell nucleus was taken from the udder of a six-year-old sheep.

Over the last two decades, a number of different animals have been cloned in the same way—cows, horses, cats, dogs, pigs. Even Dolly has a number of ancestors from the same cell line, many of which are alive and kicking today. (Dolly passed away in 2003 due to a lung disease, unrelated to cloning.)

Despite the success in cloning various mammals through nuclear transfer, cloning is still very difficult to pull off. The process is prone to introducing genetic errors, which results in many cloned offspring dying young.Some companies, like South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, have offered the service to pet owners, who can get their pets cloned for about $100,000. In the past decade, the company has cloned about 800 dogs for individuals and government agencies, and as of 2016 was producing about 500 cloned embryos every day.

While cloning animals like sheep and cows is no small task, cloning humans and other primates through nuclear transfer has proved even more difficult. The main reason has to do with spindle proteins that are located very close to the chromosomes in primate eggs. When scientists attempt to remove the nucleus from the primate egg, they also end up removing or destroying the spindle proteins, which makes it impossible for the cell to divide and grow into a human.

That hasn't stopped a number of organizations from falsely claiming to have successfully cloned a human. In 2002, Clonaid—the human cloning branch of the Raelian UFO cult—claimed that the first cloned human baby had been born, although no evidence was ever provided to substantiate these claims. In 2004, a South Korean researcher published two papers in the journal Science, where he had claimed to have cloned human cells, but the research later turned out to be fake.

These days, Charo said no one is really researching reproductive cloning for humans. It's simply too inefficient and error prone to make it worthwhile. Some researchers have suggested cloning technology could be used to rebirth lost children or prevent disease, but Charo said no one has filed an application with the Food and Drug Administration to get started on this kind of research.

There is the potential for therapeutic cloning in a human context, which involves cloning a human embryo from which embryonic stem cells with the same DNA as the original cell can be harvested. Embryonic stem cells are unique because they can develop into almost any type of cell in an organism, which means they have the potential to one day be used to grow healthy tissues in a lab that can replace diseased tissues in a human. So far, the US government says there is "no evidence" that human embryos have been produced for this purpose. Based on the huge ethical questions raised by producing a human embryo to harvest it for stem cells, it is unlikely that this will change anytime soon.

"Both as a research tool and as a reproductive option, cloning is still theoretically available, but is not as nearly as often used," Charo told me. "The deeper ethical issue is really how you determine when something is safe enough for particular use. That is not just a technical issue, it's an ethical question about value judgments. If this is going to be used for human reproduction, what's the level of safety that's required before we permit it? It's a question public health and obligations to future generations who might be affected by your actions today."

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Inexplicably popular Twitter celebrity @norm—also known as Toronto City Councillor Norm Kelly—has been calling himself the 6 Dad ever since the summer of 2015. It started with Drake's beef with Meek Mill—a multi-week feud over allegations of ghostwriting and cowardice thrown at Drake by Mill, the vitriol of which caused Kelly to tweet his first online diss.

"You're no longer welcome in Toronto, @Meek Mill," the councillor—little more than an online anomaly at that point—tweeted at the Philadelphia-based rapper. Later, when Mill criticized Kelly (a white politician in his mid-70s ) for telling a black man where he could and couldn't go, @norm responded in the only way he knows how: by not apologizing.

"Aye American @MeekMill. Didn't say don't come. Just puzzled why you'd diss a Canadian hero a week before coming to his city."

Since that time, @norm has been the centre of intense online debate both inside and outside Toronto's hip-hop community. Why was this random, white politician—formerly the deputy mayor who took over for Rob Ford after the late mayor admitted to smoking crack on video—transforming his online identity into a series of pop culture clap-backs and memes? And, if he cared about black people's music and their vernacular so much, why wasn't he posting with as much passion and prose when Toronto police killed one of them?

Some have also pointed out that Kelly's voting history is extremely questionable. The 6 Dad was one of eight council members to vote against Toronto becoming a sanctuary city in 2014—a motion which allowed individuals to access city services (excluding health care and education) without ID. Kelly has, since his election to the Ward 40 seat in the 1990s, been one of council's more right-wing members: in the past, he has voted against multicultural initiatives, and openly denied climate change (while chairing the city's parks and environment committee).

The narrative of Kelly as a culture vulture isn't new: in February 2016, Toronto rapper Jazz Cartier went on record with NOW Magazine denouncing the councillor as an opportunist trying to profit off black music.

"Whether he writes his tweets or not, I think he's just trying to cash in on black culture. He needs to do his job and stay out of rap. He needs to get back to work," Cartier said. "He is a politician. He will never be hip-hop. Where are his tweets and RTs when it comes to real issues in this city - poverty, racism, youth unemployment, Black Lives Matter?"

Cartier, who declined to speak further on this issue when asked by VICE—noting that he had said his piece already—is not alone in his criticism of Kelly. This past weekend, Kelly—during the height of the chaos that broke out across American airports after foreigners were detained and deported under President Trump's travel ban—tweeted out a link for a shirt reading "I'm Moving To Canada," for sale on his own merchandise website.

Although Kelly claims that the proceeds of all of his merchandise sales go to charity (he could not provide exact numbers upon VICE's request, but urged us to call the list of organizations themselves), many users on Twitter still came at him for trivializing the severity of the American immigration crisis, and for using the instance to heighten his own popularity.

During a phone interview with VICE, the councillor defended himself against accusations of being opportunistic, arguing that Cartier and other critics "should have done [their] homework" before coming at his career as a politician. He also said that there is a difference between what he does in real life, and how he presents himself on Twitter.

"These are the guys that Drake describes as 'haters.' Their critical remarks were not new to me," Kelly told VICE when asked about criticisms of his dismissive style of online politicking.

"One of the reasons I think that the account has become so successful is that my tweets are so unconventional. It's funny because, on Instagram, the comments are almost all positive. The Twitterverse tends to attract the social justice warrior types," he said.

Drake and Norm pose back to back at a September 2015 Ryerson University concert. Photo by author.

When asked about issues such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and police carding, he said that he supports BLM's right to protest and thinks that carding should face "abolition or serious reform." Still, when questioned whether he regrets not making a bigger effort to actually affect these issues through his social media, Kelly says that his Twitter has never and will never be used for political effect.

"I have three rules for Twitter:First, it will not be a personal-public diary. Secondly, it will not be an extension of my political beliefs. The final one is, if I'm going to stress anything political, it will be City of Toronto-related," he said.

Kelly, throughout the interview, consistently described having a "deep relationship" with Toronto's black community, and a record that could speak for it. He cited helping to open some community centres around the city, helping to keep Afrofest from losing its permit last year, and working with the Raptors/Drake's community-focused initiatives as examples.

Dewitt Lee, who ran for mayor during both of the last mayoral elections and as a Liberal candidate for the 2016 Scarborough Rouge-River provincial seat (eventually won by PC candidate Raymond Cho), says that his relationship with Kelly has been complex. While cordial and professional, Lee says that Kelly's continued appropriation of hip-hop culture while ignoring issues the black community faces has "reached a boiling point."

"Look, there's no hip-hop council—no one can say, 'Stop doing this,' but it's getting a bit ridiculous," Lee told VICE.

"I've heard a lot of politicians claim they've served the black community, but a lot of those interactions are one-offs. You have to ask: who's still benefiting years down the road? Most of the time, it's a flash-in-the-pan—small gestures that are a show of good face but don't actually fix anything. The black community doesn't need superficial support, we need long-lasting support to help with deep-seeded issues," he added.  

Lee also explained that he's worried about the grey zone that Kelly might be occupying by both holding political office and building an online brand that could one day be used to turn a profit. Lee cited the case of Tiffany Ford—who Lee describes as a good friend—in which Ford was accused of using her name and position as a Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustee to push sales for her private water bottle company.

"Is this not a grey area? I think there has to be a conversation about this, because if [the people] aren't capitalizing off [his Twitter account], you gotta ask who is."

Perhaps the argument is, like Kelly says, that he is not a policy politician, but a figure of change bridging the cultural gap between old and young. After all, if he isn't going to support black people by being their champion in their political arena, then maybe he can use his platform like a megaphone for aspiring black artists. Lee told VICE he hopes Kelly sees this going forward.

"If he doesn't have a Scarborough artist under his wing, that'd be an absolute shame."

Which is why it's surprising that, when asked if he could name five Toronto rappers, Kelly could not do so.

"Well, right now, I would stick with the two successors: Drake, obviously. I've also been very appreciative of The Weeknd, being a fellow Scarborough boy and all…Y'know, I get a lot of messages and I listen to so many YouTube rap songs, I couldn't pull their names immediately for you," he conceded, completely forgetting to mention Cartier, who was brought up numerous times earlier in the interview.

"Oh, you can put down Dutch! He's a Toronto rapper. Also, 416 TN$. So, that's four."

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Lede illustration by Jane Kim.

A couple in New Brunswick reached new levels of petty after they allegedly used a big pile of cow manure to get revenge on their neighbours. And yes, it did smell—it was unbearable, according to targeted neighbours David and Joan Gallant, the Calgary Herald reports.

The Gallants' neighbours, Lee and Shirley Murray, allegedly put the pile of shit on the property line, where it stayed for a year, further escalating tensions between the already-feuding couples.

"The manure was fresh, unseasoned, wet, raw manure. The smell was disgusting," David Gallant said. At one point, the Gallants claim, they were awoken at 4 AM to hear a loader dumping manure at the edge of their property. David then called his neighbour, Lee Murray, who hung up on him. The Murrays and Gallants have been feuding for several years since the Gallants bought their property in 2001, located in Indian Mountain, New Brunswick near Moncton.

The poo seen in Google Earth. Photo via screenshot

In his decision on the case, Queen's Bench Justice George Rideout said, "I have little doubt these activities were initiated by the Murrays and designed to inflict fear, nuisance, and harassment against the Gallants." The Gallants were awarded $15,000 in damages and the Murrays were forbade from stepping foot onto their neighbours' property and from putting manure less than 300 metres from it.

Feuding is a common theme for crime on Canada's east coast. Just take a look at the following: the bizarre, violent story of the Melvins and the Marriotts in Halifax (basically the real life Trailer Park Boys) and, of course, the "murder for lobster" trial (which is exactly what it sounds like) in Cape Breton.

Lead photo via Pixabay

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On an all new episode of BONG APPÉTIT, Abdullah travels to Northern California to meet up with Nonna Marijuana and prepare a cannabis dinner full of classic infusions.

BONG APPÉTIT airs Wednesdays at 10:30 PM on VICELAND

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

It'll be a little harder to get a deli sandwich Thursday in New York because almost 1,000 bodega owners across the city are closing their doors to protest Trump's controversial immigration ban, BuzzFeed News reports.

After Trump signed the controversial executive order barring refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US, Yemeni Americans who run the New York City bodega scene decided to plan a strike. The protest was then announced on Facebook and asked bodega and grocery store owners across the five boroughs to shut down Thursday, from 12 PM to 8 PM, as a public show of solidarity for those affected by the ban.

"Many of these bodega owners have a story to tell about a loved one being detained, or being sent back, or not being able to enter on a green card or visa," one of the event organizers, Dr. Debbie Almontaser, told SPIN. "The message we believe this would send is really helping New Yorkers as well as Americans across the country realize that the Yemeni community is a vibrant part of the American fabric."

Along with the eight-hour strike, the organizers will hold a public protest outside of Brooklyn's Borough Hall at 5:15 PM, where people are encouraged to come and share stories about how their friends and family members have been affected by the immigration ban.

"The prayer will be followed by several Yemeni merchants and their families sharing personal stories of how their lives and families have been impacted by the ban," according to the event description, "as well as stories read on behalf of families who are afraid to come forward."

The bodega strike follows the protest New York City taxi drivers held last Saturday, when the New York Taxi Workers Alliance told members not to pick anyone up between 6 PM and 7 PM at J.F.K., where 12 people were detained because of the ban.

Preface: This article will not be linking to any of the articles or videos that call the shooting a hoax or use the shooting to further a xenophobic agenda.

When any tragedy occurs, humans tend to show the best of themselves.

In response to the Quebec Mosque shooting, vigils were held across Canada in memory of the six men who were shot while praying. Over $100,000 was raised in a GoFundMe page for the victims' families and politicians of every stripe denounced the attack. However, while most of the world was in shock, some set to work discrediting the shooting as a hoax or are actively using it to further a xenophobic agenda.

Simply put, a truther movement surrounding the Quebec shooting has started.

While there is still much we don't know about the attack we're starting to get a picture of what happened. According to police Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old Quebec man, walked into the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec and fired into a crowd, killing six men. We know he called police and surrendered later in the evening. Bissonnette has been described by people who knew him as a far-right online troll, but at the moment the motive behind the shooting is still unknown. We likely won't know the full story until the trial but every day a clearer picture is painted of what happened.

During the beginning of the news coverage, scarce bits of information were released rapidly without much time or opportunity for confirmation. It was difficult to tell what was true and both left and right wing outlets were forced to correct some of the early reports of second shooter—much of which has since been debunked. We know that a man named Mohamed Belkhadir was arrested at the scene, and was released twelve hours later as a witness. Belkhadir described what happened to him that night to the Toronto Star.

For some though, those facts aren't enough.

The two most prevalent media outlets pushing truther narratives, either explicitly or implicitly, are the usual suspects: InfoWars and Canada's Rebel Media (think a b-rate Breitbart). Apart from these outlets, many other independently produced videos have already been published to YouTube "debunking" the shooting and thousands of misleading words have been written in blog posts. The Trump administration also used the shooting to justify its ban on people from seven majority Muslim countries from entering the US.

Lenny Pozner, who lost his son in the Sandy Hook shooting and founded Honr, an anti-hoaxer organization, said that he's not surprised a truther movement was created around the event.

"It's a social movement, all of this, the patterns are the same. Any mass casualty event is labeled a hoax, any errors in news reporting is immediately used as evidence as a hoax," Pozner told VICE.

"They way they're motivating [their base] is they're agitating them with anxiety. The term 'fear porn' has been used to describe some of these YouTube channels. That's what they do, they instill fear in people... they generate anxiety and draw people in."   

The godfather of modern-day conspiracy theories, Alex Jones, had Matt Bracken, a former Navy Seal and "terror expert," on his show Tuesday. Together the two discussed how the Quebec attack is a "classic profile of a false flag." They say the reason it was carried out was to hurt Trump or to incite riots over the Muslim ban.

"There is some Dr. Raul X out there that's organizing these," Bracken told Jones. "It won't be the last, believe me, it won't be the last." 

Matt Bracken, the InfoWars "terrorism expert." Photo via screenshot

Jones adamantly agreed with Bracken and said that the false flag operation was botched because Bissonnette wasn't killed.

"It would legitimize the 'oh look, Trump supporter goes and does this' but he lived, the dumb mind-controlled or easily influenced idiot lived, you can see it now," said Jones. "Matt you're absolutely right, they absolutely had the whole thing set up."

The two also focused upon Mohamed Belkhadir, who they believed to be involved saying that if you were going to do a false flag on a mosque you would do it with a Muslim. They also quickly discussed Belkhadir radicalizing Bissonnette as an Islamic terrorist. Jones and Bracken ended their conversation by saying it's likely Bissonnette will be killed in prison and the murder will be made to look like a suicide—then Jones, as he often does, took to hocking his wellness products to his listeners.

Pozner, a former believer in conspiracies, called Jones one of the leaders in the "mass hysteria social movement."

"Alex Jones is obviously charismatic, he's a leader and for something like a social movement you need somebody like that. It's almost like a cult, there is a cult behaviour to it, they have some general rules to their belief system. And it's grown, this social movement has really expanded."

It's not just Alex Jones though. Alfred Webre, a lawyer and conspiracy theorist, said on Press TV (Iran's state-owned TV network) that Bissonnette "fits all of the facts of a CIA patsy in this case." Webre went on to say during the live interview that because Bissonnette is a twin and his father is in the military, he "fits all the profiles of MK Ultra."

Several other videos and blog posts echoed Webre's belief.

Alfred Webre, on Press TV, talking about MK Ultra. Photo via screenshot.

The Rebel Media, much like InfoWars, seized on the idea that Belkhadir had more to do with the crime than simply being a witness. Even before Belkhadir's named was announced, they released a video implying Muslims from another mosque may be responsible for the attack. When that was debunked they carried on a similar narrative.

In a video published to YouTube, Faith Goldy, the host, sows doubt about the official story under the guise of "asking the difficult questions." She focuses on the fact that several witnesses heard the shooter yell "Allahu Akbar" during the attack. Before going into any information on Alexandre Bissonnette, Goldy speaks at length regarding Mohamed Belkhadir and implies he may have more to do with the mass murder than most believe.

She also raises questions about the motives of the police saying of the CCTV camera outside the mosque, "when did police review the footage and why did it take them more than 12 hours to determine that Bissonnette was their sole suspect?"

Several blog posts follow Goldy's logic regarding the CCTV footage to the extreme and accuse the Quebec police of covering up an Israeli Mossad attack. Pozner said it's not that difficult for the conspiracy minded to build upon the initial ideas with further "proof."

"You can make a YouTube video using your cell phone about any conspiracy theory in two minutes and it's online for the entire population of the world," Pozner said.

"If you have a collective of all the village idiots in the world collaborating together at the speed of light with their crazy ideas and developing them, you'll get this alternative reality social movement. We're in the middle of that right now and nobody knows what is true anymore and they're questioning the mainstream media."

Faith Goldy "reporting" from Quebec. Photo via screenshot

In the Rebel Media video, Goldy cherry picks facts and ignores the journalists who spoke to people who knew Bissonnette and described him as a far right troll, rather she implies they are getting this information from "Facebook likes."

"The mainstream media couldn't be bothered to ask the tough questions, quickly obsessed with the new narrative based on a few likes on [his] Facebook page," she says in the video.

Goldy then goes on to decry the fact that news outlets were using up to date information. She speaks of Bissonnette as a "polite and introverted individual from a good family" who wasn't violent and then plays a video of his ALS ice bucket challenge.

The video has over 60,000 views and has been shared wildly among many on the alt-right. In the most recent video, Goldy posits five questions to the audience and, again, spends a significant amount of time focusing on Belkhadir and asks "why is Justin Trudeau micromanaging this situation?"

The YouTube comment section on the videos are full of people calling the attack a false flag or "Muslim on Muslim violence." While the majority of the videos and blog posts present different theories, they all imply that a cover up may be or certainly is occurring—something that, according to Pozner, is par for the course.

"Eventually the narrative gets more crystallized and gets repeated. Now there are many different narratives about how it is a hoax and it's still evolving," said Pozner. "Hoaxer narratives are usually very elementary and don't get very complex."

Traditional logic would dictate that we ignore these people, that we don't "feed the trolls." However, Pozner said these traditional tactics haven't been working and the "mass hysteria movement" is growing. Furthermore, they're not benign. Pozner routinely receives death threats and takes care not to have any information on how to find him on social media. It's likely these hoaxers could come after Belkhadir with the same intensity.

"These online ideas cross over into the real world, there was an event where someone travelled to a pizzeria with a weapon to investigate a child sex ring. That's a crossover from the bizarre fiction that exists to the real world," said Pozner. "The internet has motivated people to action in the real world, it completely doesn't remain online."

Ponzer said he believes the best way to counter the fake and manipulative information is to take it head-on. Not to let it fester in a corner of Reddit, YouTube or Facebook.

"The way to balance out hate speech is through counter speech, that's what works through the framework of freedom of speech in society," he said. "If you're going to be silent to hate speech then the only thing that remains is hate speech."

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Following a massive spike in overdose deaths beginning last fall, British Columbia's government has confirmed that the super-potent opioid carfentanil has tainted the illicit drug supply in Metro Vancouver.

Today the government announced the drug is showing up in urine tests taken at several Lower Mainland treatment centres. Out of 1,766 tests, carfentanil was found in 57 samples across Vancouver, Surrey, New Westminster, Maple Ridge and Richmond.

"This is a limited sample size but does provide confirmation of the presence of carfentanil in BC," reads a government statement.

Carfentanil is commonly used as an elephant tranquilizer, and is 100 times more potent than fentanyl. According to the government, a dose the size of one or two salt grains is enough to kill a person.

British Columbia has been hardest hit by a Canada-wide opioid crisis. In 2016, 914 people died of illicit drug overdose across the province.

Carfentanil has been suspected as the cause of a dramatic spike in overdose deaths in BC beginning in November 2016. Between October and November, the number of deaths nearly doubled, from 67 to 128. December proved to be the deadliest month of the year, with 142 overdose deaths recorded.

That overdose rate has continued into January, overloading emergency services across the Lower Mainland. Frontline activists working at overdose prevention sites say that the opioid antidote naloxone is no longer reviving some victims. 

Read More: How North America Found Itself in the Grips of an Opioid Crisis

Police and border security have found carfentanil in several other provinces including Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. It has turned up in recreational drugs like cocaine in at least one case in Toronto, and has been linked to two deaths in Alberta.

BC's coroner only recently acquired the technology needed to test for carfentanil, and will begin testing in March.

The government also announced that border security will soon have new powers to inspect packages under 30 grams, if proposed amendments to federal laws are approved. The province says the new powers will help intercept traffickers shipping the drug to Canada from China.

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"My shoots are never planned out," photographer Ren Hang told VICE in 2013. "I get ideas on the spot, as we're shooting. My inspirations are derived from my life experiences up to that point... I use whatever flash of inspiration I get. I can't control my thoughts. They just come naturally. "

2013 may have been a turning point on Ren's journey to becoming the internationally-renowned photographer he is today; in that year, he published four monographs of his work and exhibited in 15 group shows around the world. Since then, he's become celebrated as an artist producing controversial work—his photos almost all focus on the nude body of friends and admirers—in communist China, where public vulgarity is verboten.

Ren has grown more reclusive in interviews since 2013. He's repeatedly insisted that his art is apolitical, and continues to do so, though his social media profiles and website are often shut down by the government and he's frequently compared to other censor-challenging Chinese artists like Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan. When asked by photo editor Dian Hanson whether he identifies with those artists' work, he said "I don't know, I've never thought about this." But no matter how obliquely he may approach the idea that his work is an act of political and cultural resistance, it's driven a huge amount of interest in his art over the past decade, as China's cultural mores begin to meet the realities of a global world.

Hanson is the editor of a new collection of his work, Ren Hang, which sees its American release today from Taschen books. It's one of the most comprehensive retrospectives of his nearly decade-long career to date, and flipping through, it's easy to see why his work has captured the world's attention. His photos—of cherries in orifices and knives and forks poised above delicate areas, of nude women lying on vertiginous ledges, of genitalia placed into all manner of compromising situations—set our idea of the human body askew and celebrate the banality of sex. It's likely we talk about censorship when we talk about Ren because it distracts us from having to confront the deeper truths about human sexuality his work reveals. In this gallery of selections from Ren Hang, you can decide for yourself what those truths might be.

All photos copyright Ren Hang 2016, courtesy TASCHEN.

There are plenty of bad tattoos in the world. And while most of them are just plain ugly, others are hateful and unable to evolve the way your beliefs might. But now, a tattoo shop in Brooklyn Park, Maryland, is helping those who want to hide their offensive tattoos by covering them up free of charge.

"Sometimes people make bad choices, and sometimes people change," Elizabeth Cutlip—who owns Southside Tattoo with her husband, David—said in a Facebook post earlier this month. "We believe that there is enough hate in this world and we want to make a difference. Please call the shop and set up a consultation with any of our artists."

As of Wednesday, the post has been shared on Facebook more than 26,000 times, far more than David or Elizabeth originally anticipated. The pair has heard from many people looking to erase past mistakes, and David, who is a tattoo artist, told Baltimore's WAMR that he's booked up for the next six months doing pro bono work.

During his first session, David covered up a man's SWP tattoo (which stands for "Supreme White Power") with some Dia de los Muertos–inspired skulls. When WAMR visited the shop, David was tattooing an anatomical heart over the words "white power" that Casey Schaffer had tattooed on his forearms when he was in prison. It's a tattoo that normally would have cost $700, but the Cutlips are only asking those that receive the free service to "pay it forward" by doing something to help the community.

There are programs around the country that currently offer similar services, but focus more on tattoo removal, rather than coverups. In East Los Angeles, Homeboy Industries helps pick up the tab for people who want their gang-affiliated tattoos removed, and Beutologie in Fresno offers pro bono tattoo removal for victims of human trafficking who have been "branded" with tattoos by pimps.

Elizabeth and David Cutlip have started a GoFundMe page to help pay for supplies needed for their charitable endeavors and are starting a foundation called Random Acts of Tattoo, that they hope will inspire other tattoo parlors around the country to do similar work.

Under Obamacare, you can't be discriminated against by a healthcare company for having a pre-existing condition. This is unlikely to remain the case under the Trump administration, which has already started the process of repealing the ACA. We asked people with pre-existing conditions what they're thinking and feeling right now.

Katie, 22, New Jersey

Diagnosis: Psoriatic arthritis

What kind of condition do you have?

I have psoriatic arthritis, and I was correctly diagnosed in September 2015. Compared to other patients, I got lucky; it only took about seven months During that time I saw five others doctor who all gave me the wrong diagnosis, and the wrong medicine. I tried 11 different medications (shots, pills, injections) and all they did was make me throw up. I'm now on a medication that is not FDA approved for what I have, but works and doesn't make me sicker.

Have you benefited from the ACA?

I'm a reporter so having a stable, steady job in one place forever is unrealistic. With the ACA, I knew I could move to a less liberal state, freelance, switch insurers, have flexibility in my life and career, and companies wouldn't be able to deny me coverage or charge me more just because I'm a disabled woman. It let me make the kinds of choices my able-bodied friends take for granted. I'm terrified when I turn 26 I'll become uninsurable but still have to take $80,000 in medications I can't pay for. I'm scared I won't be able to see my doctor, who is out of state and rather expensive. We have no idea what's next, and that scares the shit out of me.

Read more on Tonic

Brett Johnson's fall/winter 2016 presentation sticks out in my mind for a lot of reasons. Handmade in Italy and inspired by the American West, the collection featured gorgeous burnt orange cashmere turtlenecks, luxurious embossed nubuck leather coats, and smart nylon outerwear. The men modeling the clothes stood on elevated platforms, posing in front of a rustic set of tree branches that helped evoke the presentation's rugged spirit. And everyone from former America's Next Top Model judge Jay Manuel to stylist June Ambrose was in attendance. Needless to say, the scene and the clothes were about as far as you could get from the hypebeasts who line up outside of Supreme in their Bape hoodies and Foamposites sneakers, waiting to cop the latest box-logo drop. And yet, to my surprise, I overheard a white woman say to a friend as she gazed at the immaculately tailored clothes, "Brett Johnson really does this high-end streetwear well!"

In the months since that presentation, I've thought a lot about that woman's comment and what it signified. When I told Johnson about it last week, he laughed.

"If you're purely looking at the clothes, they don't tell a streetwear story at all," the 27-year-old designer told me. "But obviously, I'm a black designer and a lot of people try to say you're related to streetwear just because you're an African American designer. But that's really not the aesthetic, nor the brand."

Johnson's not the only black designer who resents his work getting lumped in with streetwear. In 2014, Hood By Air's Shayne Oliver called the term "lazy" when it's used to describe his gender-bending, deconstructionist wares. And just last month A Cold Wall's Samuel Ross referred to the term as "naive and miseducated" when it was applied to his handcrafted garments.

Pyer Moss's Spring/Summer 2017 Collection

Other successful emerging brands helmed by black designers have been called streetwear at one time or another. Virgil Abloh's Off-White was dubbed "elevated streetwear" by Vogue. WWD claimed that Maxwell Osbourne and Dao-Yi Chow's Public School were "bringing streetwear back." And The New Yorker said that Hood By Air gave a 'radically aggressive' take on streetwear. Sure, they may be inspired by streetwear. But none of these brands actually fit the strict definition of streetwear. Off-White produces its collection in Italy, offering items like mohair sweaters and flouncy dresses. While HBA pushes the boundaries of traditional silhouettes and proportions. And Public School serves up modern, avant-garde tailoring.

In contrast to the way these brands approach design, the hallmark of streetwear is graphics. "It's a lot of pre-made merchandise," explained Kerby Jean Raymond, the creative director and founder of Pyer Moss, a brand that is also often mistakenly associated with streetwear. "You buy an American Apparel T-shirt and you put a graphic on it."

Like many of his peers, Raymond has been influenced by streetwear and has even worked in the realm of streetwear in the past, but streetwear is not the totality of what he brings to fore in his art. Raymond's been studying design since he was 14, having attended the High School of Fashion Industries in Manhattan. In his teens, he was an apprentice for Kay Unger, a veteran New York designer who's retailed at stores like Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom. He designed for the womenswear brand Marchesa before breaking out on his own. His collections for Pyer Moss features pricey tailored leathers, futuristic anti-bacterial fabrics, and luxurious details like horse-hair lapels. When it comes to his work, his designs have much more in common with Alexander Wang than a brand like 10.Deep.

Raun LaRose fall/winter 2011

Although it's incorrect, it isn't hard too hard to figure out why he and other young black designers like him are put into the streetwear box.

"I always felt like there was an underlying notion of people wanting to call me street as opposed to the brand," Raymond said.

Johnson agreed. "I think it's funny because people will see me at the show or the presentation, and they will label it as such. But when [my clothes are] sitting next to the Cucinelli's of the world and people come in to shop, it's a totally different response," he explained to me. "I think the perception from when I'm in the room and when I'm not, it's just a completely different mix."

Designer Raun LaRose, who has been creating avant-garde fashion for six seasons, has experienced this phenomenon first hand. "One season, when I was doing market, a buyer came up to me and said 'You do the streetwear, you do the streetwear,'" LaRose said to me. "But that season, the majority of what I was presenting was suiting."

The effect of this categorization is an evolving one. In years passed, it hurt the business of black owned brands. Some believe that labels like Cross Colours from the 90s had their success stunted by not being able to get the accounts they needed because of their "urban" or "streetwear" categorization.

Raymond explained to me that for his brand, it was also more difficult at the outset to get into specific stores or gain the high gloss, press mentions from publications like Vogue specifically because Pyer Moss was seen as a streetwear brand. Of course, that has begun to change. Right now, the "streetwear" market is more popular than ever and the price point of it runs the gamut. What bugs many of the black designers is the second-rate nature of the term.

"When you call something streetwear, people become very dismissive because there's the assumption that it can be done very easily," LaRose said to me. "Like there's no processes to your design. Like you're just screenprinting a T-shirt."

Brett Johnson fall/winter 2016

Raymond concurred. "It puts an expiration date on your work. You are expected to have this wave: You have your stuff on Kanye West, you get your stuff on Rihanna, you get yourself on a few celebrities, you have this high point, and then you're done. That's why it's unfair."

"But there's a high level of education that goes into this. There's a high level of storytelling that goes into this. You're talking about shows that cost upwards of $100,000 and global recognition and a full team of experts in their field that are behind this thing. To get labeled as streetwear is to say 'You don't deserve to exist in this space.'"

So what exactly is there to do about it? At the British Fashion Council's 2016 Fashion Awards, they created a new category. European labels like Gosha Rubchinskiy and Vetements were placed in the new "International Urban Luxury Brand" bracket. However, this term is not likely to catch on in America, considering the term urban has its own racialized history here.

But even if we could come up with a neutral way to describe the brands who chafe at the category of streetwear in the US, that doesn't solve the real problem, which is a subtly dismissive perception of brands run by black people. To fix that, we need to take a note from Martin (Luther King Jr., not Margiela) and judge each emerging brand by the content of their collections and not the skin color of their creators.

Follow Mikelle Street on Twitter.

(Top image: Screen shot via Twitter)

So I'm, like, 20, and my university girlfriend is taking me home to meet her dad. This is fine – beyond the fact that I had to go to Dudley, the greyest and most rotten town I ever have seen – and the trip went off mostly without a hitch *1. But a week or so before it, she said something to me, the university girlfriend, in a low and warning voice: "He… my dad thinks handshakes are important." And so it was explained to me: her dad, a perfectly round bald man who bought a new TV every year and a new car every three and read The Sun and once drove me two-and-a-half hours home so he could explain to me why plans for the new mosque were bad – her dad was going to judge everything about me based on the strength and dominance of my opening handshake. He was planning this. He was going to dad me out of town.

This, if you've ever met a girlfriend's dad, is de rigeuer: dads, their dominance and testosterone fading, just on the cusp of realising their generation is no longer the active one, ballooning around the waists, no longer vital or attractive, the dads, hairlines receding to their backs: dads don't have a lot of power left. But they can exert it in some little way, and every chance they get to, they will. They can put importance on a handshake, like it matters.

So what I did was: I read a couple of GQ articles online about how to shake a hand, practised on a few mates over the course of a week and then, on the day, I hit him with the sucker: right foot striding forward, firm-yet-balanced grip, two pumps up and down, consistent eye contact, break. An immaculate handshake. The perfect handshake. Great handshake. Enormous. Huge.

Related: what the clean fuck is this?

First second of this is like: "You are going to have to pick up a lot of the slack of this handshake, my friend, because I have arms short and tiny like a Tyrannosaurus";

Second move is… kind of… I mean, he is patting him like you would a good boy, a good dog boy, just a good dog boy who, sadly, you have to put down. This is goodbye, boy, I love you;

Then the third section of the shake is like: "This is my arm. I want it. This is my arm, now. Donald Trump. Three arms."

I mean, handshakes aren't important – we've established that. But then this isn't a handshake; it's essentially the movement of a dog yanking a bone that is still attached to something heavy, only transposed onto the human arm of the most powerful man alive. If I can learn how to handshake – and, as we have established many, many times over, I am essentially an idiot; if adulthood still adhered to the "Year" system of schools then I would be held many times back – then why can't Trump?

As Mashable points out, Trump has form for this: beyond the "you have an arm and I want it" yank-and-pull method (often described as a "power play" by psychologists), he also did this zany shit in the first series of The Apprentice:

And this just absolutely mad crap:

This all, of course, adheres to the wider theory that Trump is not a human, but rather a BP Richfield-shaped robot designed during WWII by the bad guys. The robot, in its age, is malfunctioning: the human tics and intricacies that made it "pass" for so long are starting to wear. I know I just made this up, but I think it has legs – Trump's body definitely is the size and has the box-like shape to contain robotic parts and engines instead of organs; the hair definitely looks like something someone found in one of those "walled up room that hasn't been touched since 1945" things that happen sometimes. Also, the fascism. If a Subreddit could take the rest of the work on this one and incontrovertibly prove it then I really would appreciate the help.

Anyway, to recap: the President of the United States cannot neatly execute the same simple human function that you perform when you agree an overdraft extension with the bank, or thank the bossman for extra chips, or greet literally any human male in the pub of their choosing. Does that fill you with a small dark feeling of dread? That fills me with a small dark feeling of dread. Here's to the next four years.

RELATED READING: [wikiHow – How to Shake Hands]

@joelgolby

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*1. This is a lie, actually. To get to my university girlfriend's parent's house from the bus stop I had to walk through a small park – damp black tarmac pathway, edges crumbling into the grass, that sort of thing – and on this pathway there was various half-arsed graffiti sprayed. I say "half-arsed" because nobody sprays graffiti on the ground until they are really on the dregs of their aerosol can, do they? You don't waste the first sprays by writing your name on the ground. It's a waste. So I'm walking along this path, lumbering a big adidas bag full of T-shirts and appallingly fitting jeans, and a small child makes a show of hopping off a swing, sprinting around the playground through the gate, and then up to me. I mean this kid is like seven. He has the flint eyes and shaven head of a particularly bleak Kez extra.

He holds one gnarled, scabbed finger up to me. And then he says, in the broadest Dudley accent possible – the most absurd of all the accents – he says: "YOW'M GAY. YOW FUCK THE FLOOR WHERE IT SAYS IAN." And, lo and behold, I looked down at the path, and there it was: the word "Ian", sprayed in thin yellow streaks. I am so gay, this boy is saying – so wildly, wildly gay – that even seeing a man's name – on the floor! – moves me to fuck it. I am so gay, this boy intimates, I have transcended gayness and come to a point where I can fuck concrete. Anyway, that's the most complicated bodying I've ever been subjected to. Wonder what that kid's up to now?

Image above is a drawing by a child refugee in Athens via

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece

When I was one, my parents fled from Albania to Greece in search of a better life. They left Albania on the 17th of January, 1990. A van picked us up and took us to the border, which we managed to cross when it was dark. For a day-and-a-half, my parents hiked through the snow that covered the mountains between Albania and Greece, carrying two small children.

While the two countries are neighbours and weren't all that different culturally, the Greeks generally weren't very welcoming towards us. My parents fled the country shortly before the communist Albanian government decided to open the borders to Greece, which led to huge migration flows from Albania – the likes of which Greece hadn't experienced before. For years, many Albanian immigrants lived on the sidelines of Greek society and were victims of racist attacks; in the year after we came to Greece, 15 immigrants were killed.

Today, you'll hear the same arguments from fascists and xenophobes about the influx of migrants into Greece as you heard back then – that their culture is so different they won't be able to assimilate in Europe. That they're dangerous, they'll ruin us, rape, steal, lie and carry disease. It shows they haven't learned much from history, because the Albanians, Bulgarians and Romanians they said it about 20 years ago are now an integrated and mostly accepted part of Greek society.

Of the first year of my life, my parents could only keep two photographs and the shirt I was wearing the day we fled. When you have to carry a baby on your back for days, you can't take much with you. Fortunately for us, Greece was just across the border – compared to what many refugees go through today, our journey was pretty short. I don't remember anything, of course, but the stories my parents told me about fleeing their homeland always chilled me to the bone. I can't imagine how desperate the situation must be for refugees coming all the way from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan.

Once we had arrived in Greece, my parents met a former policeman, who drove us to a town called Filiates. We spent the night there in a former school that offered shelter to refugees. The next day, we took two buses to Agrinio, where we lived for almost two years. My parents did a bunch of odd jobs to survive – as is the case with most refugees, their higher education was deemed worthless in their new country. My mum was a food chemist, but after we left Albania she only ever used that knowledge to make jam. My dad recited War and Peace around the house, but to his boss he was just another Albanian labourer. He did the kind of jobs Greeks didn't want to do at the time, which later turned into "Albanians stealing our jobs".

We later moved to Athens so my brother and I could go to school. My mother started working at a house across from ours – cooking, ironing and taking care of the family's children. My parents both left for work at 6.30 every morning, and my mum wasn't allowed to leave work for a minute, so she woke us up at 7.30 every morning by throwing small stones against our bedroom window. I remember she made hot cocoa for us every morning before she left, which had turned cold when we got to the kitchen, the cocoa floating on the surface. I was five at the time, my brother was eight. Every morning he made sure I got out of bed, helped me wash my face and got me dressed for school.

Not the author, but an onlooker at a football match between refugees and the Greek homeless football team that happened last October. Photo by Alexandros Avramidis via

I had a great time at infant school, but at primary school I was quickly made aware that the other children in my class were different from me. In Year 3, for example, I remember a teacher coming into our classroom, taking notes and asking who among us was from another country. I raised my hand, to which she said, "Oh, we found one." She asked me where I was from and how long I'd been here. I told her.

The next day, no one wanted to sit with me any more. The girl I usually sat next to stopped speaking to me entirely, because another classmate of ours had told everyone that his dad had warned him not to hang out with smelly Albanian thieves. When I came home that evening I asked my mother if I could have a bath every day from now on, instead of every other day. She cried when I explained to her why I had to up the frequency of my baths.

TV reports at the time highlighted crimes committed by Albanians and claimed immigration led to increasing crime rates. In the media, Albanians were always the ones who robbed, ruined, destroyed. Some of my teachers explained to my classmates how wrong that perception was – others made it worse. One of my teachers in primary school made me sit all by myself because she wasn't sure whether I had been vaccinated or not. She tried to punish my classmates by forcing them to sit next to me. I can't tell you how many times in secondary school I apologised to teachers and classmates for crimes I didn't commit, on behalf of other Albanians who apparently had stolen or killed.

I was conditioned to feel shame without understanding what I'd done wrong. It continued after school. When there was a theft reported at my first job, I was immediately the primary suspect, even though I didn't have a shift that day. It's exhausting having to constantly prove that you're not to blame for everything, and difficult to find a comfortable place in a society that doesn't seem to want to treat you fairly or equally. The word "Albanian" was used as an insult in Greece.

Our residence permit cards used to be pink, and when you showed them to any official they would, without fail, question their legitimacy. Every six months my family had to queue at the central migrant office at 5AM to renew them. The fee was €100 per member of the family, and receiving it involved some shoving and a fair amount of insults from the police. And it wasn't just police officers questioning them – on the first day of the national university placement exams, teachers made me lose an hour of exam time because they wanted to make sure I had the right papers to take the test. They didn't trust the pink card. We received normal identity papers and Greek nationality 20 years after arriving in Greece, after 20 years of paying taxes and having all our paperwork in order.

I felt I was being held accountable for other people's crimes throughout my childhood. As children, my brother and I knew we couldn't pull the same stunts as other kids in the neighbourhood – run around, yell and scream, misbehave. We felt we didn't have the margin of error other kids had. So we studied instead, trying to be the best students we could be. Which was also our way of paying back our parents – they were able to go on their first holiday in their fifties, when they were finally done paying for our tuition.

The result is that I never felt like I was enough to be Greek, and I didn't truly feel Albanian either. I've visited Albania twice in my life. I have at times hated the world because I felt so unwelcome. I have at times hated my parents who brought me to Greece to give us a better life. I have at times hated my brother who declared to his friends that he felt Greek and hated Albanians, just to fit in.

Thankfully, I've come to realise over the years that identifying with a certain demarcated piece of land and the people living there is overestimated. I consider people who treat me like an equal and make me feel human like my fellow countrymen, wherever they're from. For all the teachers who humiliated me, there were those who didn't single me out from the other children. I've seen mindless hate and discrimination, but I've also seen solidarity and kindness. And it's important to remember that racists don't all share the same nationality – there are Albanians opposed to helping refugees in Greece; there are Albanian members of Golden Dawn. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so revolting and dangerous.

Today in Greece, hardly anyone shits on Albanians any more. The more recent influx of refugees have replaced them as the supposed threat to Greek society. Refugee children in Greece will likely struggle to understand why they're being marginalised. I wish them many, many understanding neighbours, sympathetic teachers and school friends who don't care what other people say. They deserve it as much as everyone else.

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This article originally appeared on VICE Romania

Above image by Răzvan Băltărețu

On Wednesday night a protest of about 150,000 people in the Romanian capital of Bucharest was interrupted by a fight between football hooligans and special police forces. The former had started throwing torches and ice at police and other protesters, which led to several people ending up with head injuries. A German freelance reporter was detained during the protest.

Over 150,000 people protesting in front of the seat of the Romanian government in Bucharest on Wednesday evening. Photo by Iulia Roșu

The protests started after the current Romanian government passed a law making it impossible to convict people in political office of crimes that are punishable with prison sentences of five years or less. This has all but officially legalised corruption in the Eastern European country. The law also implies that thousands of prison sentences will be commuted – especially those of politicians sentenced for corruption and misappropriating millions in public funds.

Anticorruption expert Laura Ștefan told VICE Romania that "the main beneficiary of this law is Liviu Dragnea," the leader of the current ruling party PSD. Dragnea was convicted of organising electoral fraud in the 2012 presidential impeachment referendum, and this new law will absolve him of that crime and allow him to return to public office.

Hooligans set fire to plastic objects around Victoriei Square in Romania. Photo by Răzvan Băltărețu

Another rule under the new law is that victims of a crime can't press charges more than six months after the fact. That means it will be a lot harder for victims of especially traumatising crimes – like rape and child abuse – to seek justice.

Protesters watch the confrontation between riot police and hooligans taking over their march. Photo by Răzvan Băltărețu

Romanians have been protesting these special government decrees for over two weeks. Because of the unrest, government officials were wary of discussing the law during a normal legislative session and passed it on Tuesday night during what was announced as a debate on the national budget.

That same night, about 15,000 people gathered in the cold in front of the seat of the government in Bucharest to protest. When Florin Iordache – the minister of Justice – was asked in a press conference that evening why this law was passed so quickly, he refused to answer and asked if there were any other questions.

Photo by Ioana Epure

On Wednesday, ten times as many people as on Tuesday gathered together in Bucharest. But Romanians in other cities in the country and around Europe (like Berlin, London, Paris and Brussels) took to the streets, too, bringing the estimated total number of protesters to 300,000. These protests are the largest the country has seen in 20 years. Several European leaders have warned the Romanian government that backtracking on corruption will hurt the country. Unfortunately, so far, that doesn't seem to have made much of an impression.

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President Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court, federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch, has not ruled on cases involving LGBTQ rights in the past, but if he's confirmed to the nation's highest court, he certainly will in the future.

If confirmed, Gorsuch will likely rule on a case involving Gavin Grimm, a transgender teenager whose fight against his Virginia high school's bathroom policy exemplifies the nationwide "bathroom bill" debate over whether trans people can use the bathrooms corresponding to the gender they identify with or must use bathrooms that correspond to the gender shown on their birth certificates.

The case, Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., hinges on a challenge by a Virginia school district to an Obama administration Title IX mandate that schools allow trans students to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity.

The Gloucester County School Board adopted a policy in 2014 requiring trans students to use private bathrooms. Grimm's lawyers from the ACLU challenged that policy, filing a motion for a preliminary injunction that was rejected by a district court. That initial ruling was overturned by a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the Gloucester County School Board in turn appealed the case to the Supreme Court.

Read more on VICE News

Breakups have always been messy, but social media has made them even messier. Bitter exes now have a variety of ways to seek viral revenge, like sharing passive-aggressive posts to shade their former bae. Or, if you really want to get your ex-significant other, why not just post an ambiguous photo of you casually hanging with your ex's nemesis?

That's exactly what happened between Nicki Minaj, her ex Meek Mill, and his hater Drake this week.

To investigate this particular celebrity InstaGate, Desus and Mero dove into the possible meaning behind the photo, which both Nicki and Drake shared on their respective accounts. There's pettiness all around, and it's pretty fun to watch. Sure, the three might be famous, but let's face it: We've all been there.

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

This story is part of VICE's ongoing look at how climate change will have changed the world by the year 2050. Read more about the project here.

In 2050, your average trip to a sushi joint will most likely be demonstrably worse in one of two ways thanks to climate change: It'll either be ruinously expensive for those outside the One Percent—particularly if you enjoy tuna—or you'll be gobbling down all-you-can-eat sushi made of mostly unrecognizable fish byproducts.

A drop in the quality and abundance of a luxurious restaurant meal won't have an everyday impact on your your life unless you're some kind of Hollywood douchebag. But what the topic of sushi lacks in earth-shattering urgency—in contrast to the deadly flooding that will hit New York—it more than makes up for in inconvenience. Sushi might be a bougey luxury, but it's worth talking about because world of the future won't just be torn apart by disasters, it'll suck in a million tiny ways.

William Cheung, an associate professor and researcher at the University of British Columbia's Changing Ocean Research Unit, crunched the numbers on fish and climate change for a 2010 report that forecasted as far into the future as 2055. "After we compiled all the data, the first thing that struck us was that we would be seeing really different fish on a sushi table in a couple of decades time," he told me. "Some of the fish that we can easily get in the average sushi restaurant across the street may not be so easy to get in the future, as they become really premium fish."

Cheung is familiar with how the supply of fish changes over time. "In Hong Kong, where I grew up, there were a bunch of fish we ate every day, but now it's become like a delicacy—things like yellow croaker, a fish that used to be one of the [most plentiful]," he said. "Now it's become so expensive that wild-caught yellow croaker is really difficult to have on the dinner table even in a restaurant."

Cheung and his colleagues at the Nippon Foundation-Nereus Program created a guide for the Japanese sushi market—essentially which fish stocks to buy, and which to sell. Their video is in Japanese, but it's pretty self-explanatory. Squid, shad, tuna, ark clams, shrimp, and salmon are all in trouble.

That's most of the sushi menu.

Warmer water and greater water acidity—both indicators of climate change, according to the EPA—will make life in the ocean tough or even impossible for many of the animals people like to eat with rice and tsume sauce. But these trends also dovetail with overfishing and habitat destruction, which will make these critters even scarcer.

Hotter weather may be the easiest part of climate change to wrap your head around, but the effect of all that carbon in the atmosphere is especially hard on the oceans, which act as carbon sinks. "Right now, a lot of it is staying absorbed by the oceans," according to Prosanta Chakrabarty, an ichthyologist at Louisiana State University. Much like that dorky friend who hangs onto your weed because the vice principal won't search his backpack, the oceans temporarily hold onto our carbon emissions for us. But that doesn't mean that metaphorical weed won't cause problems for your metaphorical buddy in the meantime. To wit: "It makes the water more acidic," Chakrabarty said.

Ocean acidification is wreaking havoc all over the sea, including in coral reefs. "As acidification happens, corals are bleached—they turn white and die because they can't maintain the symbiotic relationship with the invertebrate," Chakrabarty told me. You've probably heard this part before: Corals are dying quickly, so quickly they may soon be gone. Unless you're one of the relatively few people who visit coral reefs, this is an invisible consequence of climate change (you don't eat most of the reef fish that make up the colorful subterranean neighborhood at the beginning of Finding Nemo). But you'll notice acidification when you go out for sushi.

Right now, sushi fans mostly eat bigger fish like bluefin tuna—for those juicy, fatty toro rolls—and certain kinds of mackerel, sold as shiny, salty-sour "saba." According to Chakrabarty, these are in trouble. "Because they're at the top of the food chain, they rely on those coral reefs," he said.

When I spoke to Daniel Pauly, principal investigator for the Sea Around Us, a research initiative at the University of British Columbia, he doubted the shortage in tuna food would present too much of a problem for consumers by 2050, because tuna "opportunistic." Additionally, since they're in such high demand, he figures fishermen will find them wherever they decide to spawn.

But a recent finding showed that acidic oceans may have a more direct impact on the reproduction of sushi fish. Cod—a non-sushi species thought to have been rendered endangered by overfishing—were shown last year to have been devastated by ocean acidity, he pointed out. "What it does to tuna eggs, I don't know," Pauly said. But, Pauly added, "I wouldn't bet on tuna being very abundant in 2050."

Pauly's forecast for shellfish sushi was similarly dire. Clams and scallops, he said, have a hard time creating the calcium carbonate they need so their shells can form and take root. Aquaculture farms in the Pacific Northwest—systems designed to churn out clams in large numbers—are watching clams fail to thrive, and it's an indication that young shellfish throughout the oceans are struggling to create shells. "They're having a hard time now, not later," Pauly said, and that means the pricetag on your "akagi," or "surf clam" sushi morsels, could skyrocket in the very near future.

If there's any hope for the future of sushi, it may lie in creativity. "There may be new inventions of new sushi using new fish that may become available," Chueng suggested.

To cope with the disappearance of popular fish, some sushi chefs like Bun Lai of Miya's restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut (see the Munchies video above), are tossing out unsustainable fish like salmon and tuna and physically going out and gathering more ecologically-conscious options from their surrounding ecosystem. In Lai's case those options include invasive local crabs, Asian carp, insects, and foraged Connecticut plants for vegan rolls.

Sushi chefs who don't go Lai's route will be in for a rude awakening, according to Chakrabarty. He says in the sushi markets he visits for his research, the trends don't look good. Bluefin tuna are reaching outrageous prices—one fish recently sold for over $600,000. Meanwhile, fisherman are plumbing deeper and deeper into the depths for fish that used to be abundant at shallower levels. In the process, Chakrabarty told me, they're also pulling out higher quantities of less popular deep-sea monsters like anglerfish. "You can tell that they're going deeper, and that's the future of fishing in the long term."

According to Chueng's forecast, other options for keeping future sushi shops alive include something called "surimi," which his report encourages Japanese sushi chefs to use freely, since it's derived from an otherwise un-tasty fish called pollock, and it's what Cheung calls "a really low-priced sushi product." You've had surimi. It's that stuff they cobble together from odds and ends and call "artificial crab" or "krab"—essentially the seafood version of a hot dog. In the future Chueng sees, all-you-can-eat sushi buffets will have to get more creative than ever with the ways they market their surimi.

Citing a dark joke from one of his colleagues, Chakrabarty gave me an equally unappetizing long-term forecast: "The yuppies of the future are going to be eating jellyfish, because there aren't going to be enough fish to eat," he told me.

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