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A Family Is Still Being Terrorized by the 'Watcher' Stalking Their House

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In June 2014, three days after purchasing a $1.4 million home in New Jersey, the Broadduses got their first letter. It was a dark warning from someone who called himself the "Watcher," claiming the couple's new home rightfully belonged to him. The Watcher had a terrifying, albeit simple message for the family: Get out.

Now, the couple's lawyer claims the Watcher has struck again—sending them a letter at the end of February after a new renter moved in that was "more derogatory and sinister than any of the previous letters," the AP reports. But it's hard to imagine anything creepier than what the family received in the past.

"Have they found what is in the walls yet?" one letter read. "In time they will. I am pleased to know your names and the names now of the young blood you have brought to me."

The Broadduses, who have young kids, understandably freaked the fuck out when they started hearing from the Watcher and tried to move out ASAP, but under their unfortunate circumstances, they couldn't find anyone who wanted to buy their home.

The family then sued the previous owners of their house in 2015, alleging they too had received letters from the Watcher but failed to disclose that pretty important piece of information during the sale. The old owners countersued for defamation, claiming that though they had received a letter, it wasn't threatening, and the media attention they received from the whole Watcher scandal gave them a bad name.

Recently, the Broadduses filed another suit against the town of Westfield, which has refused to allow the couple to demolish their house and split their property into two lots, on which they could build separate homes. For now, at least, the family is stuck renting out their million-dollar mansion some mysterious stalker insists is his.

"All of the windows and doors in [the house] allow me to watch you and track you as you move through the house," a previous letter reads. "Will the young bloods play in the basement. Who has the rooms facing the street? I'll know as soon as you move in. It will help me to know who is in which bedroom then I can plan better."

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.


Life, Death, Sacrifice: The Beautiful Tragedies of 'Nier: Automata'

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Scant things bother me more than when a video game wastes my time. It's why, at first, I was bothered by the notion that I needed to finish Nier: Automata multiple times to fully appreciate it. Such tactics are usually deployed as a cheap trick to pad a game's length. Nier avoids this problem, for the most part, and it's best to think of the endings as chapters. Forty hours later, I've now seen Nier's final conclusion—ending E—and I'm still thinking about it. It was devastating.

Nier's premise is simple: humans have retreated to the moon following an alien invasion, and use increasingly advanced machines to fight on their behalf, as they attempt to retake Earth. If you only complete the game's first ending—ending A—you're left with some sense of hope. 2B and 9S, the androids at the heart of the story, have dealt the alien forces a sizable blow. But the questions Nier has raised—what meaning and purpose should the machines' lives have in the absence of humanity's limitations?—continue to haunt.

It's only when you begin playing again, prompting the perspective to shift from 2B to 9S, that everything begins to unravel. 9S has the ability to hack into machines and objects around him, occasionally providing glimpses into the mental state of the machines the two are pulverizing.

Continue reading on Waypoint.

The Woman Determined to Be the First Trans Person to Sail the World Alone

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A version of this story appears in the March issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Men and women have lost their lives on senseless quests into the unknown—frozen to death on the steps of Mount Everest, or drowned by a storm in the ancient Indian Ocean. Yet modern man is pathetically moored to expectations in our daily lives, to family, to company, to country. Sometimes these conventions defy our true nature, becoming intolerable.

This fall, under the moniker God's Wind 2017, Sabreena Lachlainn will set out in a 34-foot sailboat, to be carried around the world entirely alone, without stopping. Her interest in sailing began when she was a child, and has lasted throughout her life, but for many years she felt held back by her circumstances, uncertain if she has what it takes to sail. "Through the years I was just telling myself, that's not true; you're the only one stopping you from doing this," Lachlainn said.

The feat will take about seven months and, if she succeeds, Lachlainn will become to first transgender woman to accomplish it. Less than 100 people, she told me, have ever done it; meanwhile, she said, more than 500 have entered outer space. "I'm somebody who has hopes, who has dreams," Lachlainn said. She believes the journey will prove both to herself and the world that it is possible to achieve such dreams, even when people believe that who you are is itself a limitation.

Continue reading on Broadly.

George W. Bush Thought Trump's Inauguration Was 'Some Weird Shit,' Apparently

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After seeing photos of George W. Bush fighting with his poncho during Donald Trump's inauguration, one could assume that the former president may not have been paying very much attention to the ceremony. But according to New York magazine, which cited three sources who were near the former president, he had some strong opinions about it. Specifically: "That was some weird shit."

Bush declined to give New York a comment, so this alleged remark remains cryptic. What did he think was weird? Was it the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? Was he was thrown off by Trump's dark, possibly Bane-inspired inaugural address? Or was he just surprised by the turnout?

While you can't exactly picture Bush saying something so crass, it doesn't seem too far-fetched that the president who voters saw as "the guy you'd want to have a beer with" would have that takeaway—especially about a man who continually called his brother "low-energy Jeb" on the campaign trail.

Whatever the case, we can only hope some late-night talk show host asks him about it while he's off touring his new book of paintings and that whole cute grandpa act he's got going on.

Snowmobile Nation Part 3

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In Quebec, there is a saying: “if you don’t do snowmobiling, you don’t like sports.” Rural Canadians are known for loving their snowmobiles - and nowhere is this bigger than Quebec, where Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented it. There’s hundreds of thousands of licensed machines in the province, and countless rural snowmobile clubs. In this short video series, DJ Tommy Kruise explores the subculture of this winter machine. We visit the biggest snowmobile event of the year, and uncover a side of rural Quebec that’s by turns dedicated, extravagant, trashy, and fiercely proud.

Snowmobile Nation Part 2

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In Quebec, there is a saying: “if you don’t do snowmobiling, you don’t like sports.” Rural Canadians are known for loving their snowmobiles - and nowhere is this bigger than Quebec, where Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented it. There’s hundreds of thousands of licensed machines in the province, and countless rural snowmobile clubs. In this short video series, DJ Tommy Kruise explores the subculture of this winter machine. We visit the biggest snowmobile event of the year, and uncover a side of rural Quebec that’s by turns dedicated, extravagant, trashy, and fiercely proud.

Snowmobile Nation Part 1

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In Quebec, there is a saying: “if you don’t do snowmobiling, you don’t like sports.” Rural Canadians are known for loving their snowmobiles - and nowhere is this bigger than Quebec, where Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented it. There’s hundreds of thousands of licensed machines in the province, and countless rural snowmobile clubs. In this short video series, DJ Tommy Kruise explores the subculture of this winter machine. We visit the biggest snowmobile event of the year, and uncover a side of rural Quebec that’s by turns dedicated, extravagant, trashy, and fiercely proud.

Donald Trump Is Mad Online Again

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Stop me if you've heard this one before: On Thursday morning the president got on Twitter and said something that riled everyone up. This time, Donald Trump was taking aim at the Freedom Caucus, the group of hard-right conservatives in the House who recently helped kill the Republican healthcare bill because they didn't think it'd do enough to get the government out of the healthcare system.

Trump has reason to be angry that members of his own party handed him a defeat of course, but it's not exactly clear how he's going to "fight" them. Members of the Freedom Caucus, which has become famous in the past few of years for opposing moderate Republicans as well as Democrats, come from very conservative districts and likely aren't too worried about Trump attempting to push them out of Congress. They are more than comfortable being outsiders pushing back against the powers that be and painting themselves as rebels.

Thursday morning, Freedom Caucus member Justin Amash hit back by openly mocking Trump for becoming co-opted by the DC establishment; his colleague David Brat smiled through a CNN interview and had no regrets about working to derail an unpopular healthcare bill.

"Everyone is saying we saved the Republican conference," he said.

Though both sides of this spat have launched rebellions against the Republican establishment—the Freedom Caucus by unseating former Speaker of the House John Boehner, Trump by beating all those career politicians to become the presidential nominee—they aren't ideologically aligned, as conservative writer Rich Lowry pointed out this week.

"Trump is more naturally an ally of the moderate Tuesday Group, except with a flame-throwing Twitter feed," Lowry said in Politico. And that was written before the president turned his fire to the most prominent House conservatives.

If Trump's policy matched his campaign rhetoric, he might have endorsed a more left-leaning healthcare plan that gave insurance to more people—a policy some of his voters would have embraced, and which might have attracted Democrats. Instead, he supported Speaker Paul Ryan's bill, which was despised by both the left and the Freedom Caucus.

A different president might pause and reassess why that bill stunk up the joint, and maybe even reassess how to build a coalition that could actually pass a bill. Instead, Trump is attacking politicians to his right and his left—which makes for a fun morning of reactions, but doesn't get anything done.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.


I Braved Talking to the People Behind a University’s ‘Masculinity Confession Booth’

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A Saskatchewan university group recently made international headlines for hosting a so-called "masculinity confession booth," which encouraged bros to share their "sins" and change their behavior. This was one of several events planned by the Man Up Against Violence organization at the University of Regina over the course of four days this week. The confession booth was run by faculty and university student union members and sought to denounce "hypermasculinity." Obviously, online commenters inevitably voiced disdain and hostility toward the event, labeling it as anti-male and as social justice warrior rhetoric. Therefore, I went to Man Up Against Violence to find out if the backlash was an overreaction or nah.

I arrived at the Man Up Against Violence social house event at the campus pub and saw a dozen tables decorated with balloons and and pamphlets with messages like "Your bro says he's excited to hit the the club Friday and pick up drunk girls. Do you go along with it?" About 20 people sat around drinking beer and chatting.

As I surveyed the event, I thought about my own masculine sins, wondering if I would be forced to confront them. Given what I'd seen in online comment sections (a reliable source for information) about the booth, a part of me was expecting combative academics to take me down a peg. After all, I was walking into a liberal den of politically correct mind control operatives bent on emasculating the West, wasn't I? Would they make me give up doing my still-topical Borat impressions?

But there was no confession booth on this day.

Instead, I met Roz Kelsey, a faculty member with kinesiology and health studies and the founder of Man Up Against Violence. She called it "a movement" started in 2014 when Jackson Katz, a "gender violence prevention training pioneer," spoke at their first event. The organization now delivers "education, training, partnerships and awareness … to prevent violence," according to their website. Event topics throughout the week include teaching consent, how to be be an active bystander, and how to practice "healthy masculinity."

When asked about the attention they received for the confession booth, Kelsey said, "When you say to someone, 'I'm going to challenge a norm,' they think, 'I'm comfortable with that norm. How dare you challenge it.'" She went on, saying, "The minute men talk about masculinity, it's emasculating." Confessions the group heard ranged from people telling others to "man up" or "women putting someone in the 'friend zone' because they weren't man enough." Kelsey saw the booth as a fun way to start a conversation.

"In no way did we force people to do it," she said, "Even the concept of talking about it gets people upset. It's anger. We get mad when something hits home."

Man Up Against Violence, a university trademarked brand, was established around the time when a tape of Ray Rice assaulting his then-fiancee-now-wife Janay Palmer and questions about the death of NHLer Derek Boogaard dominated the news cycle.

Kelsey focused on Boogaard's death as an example of the effects of "toxic masculinity." "Here was a guy in chronic pain and dependant on prescription drugs and subsequent issues from chronic brain injuries because he's a big fighter."

Man Up Against Violence has received funding from a handful of major organizations, including the potash corporation Mosaic, Alliance Energy and the Government of Saskatchewan's Status of Women Office. A spokesperson for the provincial government voiced support for the university initiative, which they funded in 2016. "Saskatchewan's high rate of violence affects all communities and people of all ages, and cannot be tolerated," a statement read.

I spoke to Darius Mole, the event manager with the University of Regina Students' Union. He had just completed the Man Up Against Violence outreach program, which he says gave him the skills to educate others about the cause. He said having an open mind is key, especially for anyone planning to work around kids.

Throughout his time on basketball teams, he said a common insult in sports is to compare someone to a girl. "We have to learn not to generalize women as having weaknesses," he said, "Man Up teaches you that it's okay to feel emotions and it's okay to react in certain ways … It teaches you how to help people open up and help others."

Kelsey said she understands where the misconceptions and criticisms against Man Up Against Violence come from, citing terms like "safe space," which can be used to belittle the campus-born movement.

"I think we get criticised as an organization for challenging power structures," Kelsey said, "Since men hold power, when we challenge them, they wonder what that means. They get a little bit of discomfort … There's the idea we're all snowflakes. We have this resistance that sits upon the terms that identify what challenges something."

Follow Devin Pacholik on Twitter.

'The Globe and Mail' Reportedly Suspended a Columnist Over Her Creepy Breastfeeding Column

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The Globe and Mail has reportedly suspended its columnist Leah McLaren over a column in which she fessed up to trying to secretly breastfeed Conservative MP Michael Chong's infant son at a party while she was in her 20s.

In the column, which was published March 22 and then silently unpublished by the Globe, McLaren said she was 25 when she wandered into a bedroom and found Chong's baby and then was inexplicably overcome with a desire to breastfeed him, despite the fact that she wasn't lactating at the time. She said Chong walked in and reclaimed his baby before she could go through with the act.

An archived version of the piece made the rounds on Twitter Sunday night.

The following day, Chong tweeted that this really went down.

"Incident happened over 10 years ago. It was no doubt odd, but of no real consequence. Let's focus on the important challenges facing Canada," he wrote.

Read More: The Five Signs You've Written a Bad Column

Other than retweeting him, McLaren hasn't spoken publicly about the incident, which has made international headlines. Neither has the Globe.

But according to the Toronto Star, McLaren has been suspended.

There's no doubt McLaren made herself out to be pretty creepy in this story (though it was nice to have a break from hearing about how she lives in London for half the year). But it does seem odd that a writer is taking the fall for an outlet that chose to publish a morally/legally questionable piece.

Some editor presumably hit publish, no? Makes you think.

The Globe has been criticized in the past for protecting its high-profile columnists. Margaret Wente has repeatedly been involved in plagiarism scandals (which the paper has apologized for) but has remained gainfully employed.  

Follow Manisha on Twitter.

Get Ready for More Mosquitoes and Ants Thanks to Climate Change

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

Bugs are everywhere—you're surrounded by them right now, wherever you are, and as the news is always eager to remind us, they could team up to destroy us at any moment they wanted. Insect species make up an estimated 80 percent of all species on Earth, and an estimated 80 percent of plants rely on insects to help them reproduce. Humans, in turn, would starve without those plants. So when you wonder how insects will be affected by climate change, what you're really asking is how everything will be

In fact, we're already experiencing the effects of climate change via bugs in surprising (and potentially catastrophic) ways. Last summer in California unusual levels of fire danger, at least partly because rising temperatures force certain native beetles into different environments, and the trees in those environments that can't handle beetles die by the thousands. When a forest has thousands of dead trees just chillin, without having fallen over yet, that forest becomes a tinderbox.

Though we might not immediately notice how climate change is affecting bugs, and how that in turn will affect us, by 2050 our world will be subtly altered. There's mundane stuff, like potato bugs showing up earlier in the year, which could lead to problems with farming, alongside really scary consequences like increases in diseases spread by the ticks and mosquitoes that will start wandering outside their normal habitats. There will also be fallout due to increases in invasive wasps, certain butterflies, and crop-destroying aphids. One upside to climate change? We'll have fewer fruit flies to deal with.

As for spiders—which are colloquially "bugs" though not insects—those are already cropping up in new places, and climate change is getting blamed. Horrifyingly, some research indicates that at least one species of already very large spider will get even larger, though some species will get smaller.

To get a sense of what the larger trends are, I called up Clint Penick, an integrative biologist who performs climate change experiments on the local insects at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Penick told me what bug-related patterns are emerging in the next three decades thanks to climate change. Most of them don't sound very fun.

VICE: How will climate change hit bugs by the year 2050?
Clint Penick: It's hard to say a blanket statement about how climate change is impacting insects. For one, it's just that the sheer number of insect species on Earth [is too high]. There's been over a million species of insects described, and to understand how the bulk of the species respond to something as complex as climate change is a challenge, and it's impossible with the amount of time, and the amount of researchers that are working on these.

OK I'll narrow it down: Will any bugs be physically different in the next few decades?
We've been studying the 17-year cicadas—really long-living insects that live in rural areas and cities. One thing that happens with a lot of insects is that they just grow bigger when it's warmer. So, we're actually finding changes in cicada size with urban warming. You could predict something similar might be happening as we have climate change, we might get bigger cicadas.

Will any bugs die off?
The main thing that people have looked at is called the "critical thermal maximum." That's really just the temperature at which a species goes into heatstroke. Humans get to a certain temperature go into heat stroke, and the same thing goes for insects. You can measure the temperature that an insect gets heat stroke for a whole bunch of species, and then make broad generalizations about how they might be impacted by warming. Unsurprisingly, there are species that can tolerate warmer temperatures, and they tend to do better in climate change.

Could you tell me about some of those sweeping generalizations?
What we think will happen—and what is happening already—is that when it gets warmer, a species that can't tolerate the heat will either move north, or it's going to move up the slope of the mountain, where it's cooler.

Watch: The hidden effects of climate change

Makes sense. But what about bugs that already live in northern climates?
The species of bugs in northern areas can actually tolerate pretty broad temperature span. Because they experience really big swings in the north, it gets pretty hot in the north, then really cold in the winter, they can tolerate wide spans. But, if you go to a warm place like Florida, the average bug you pick up on the street can't even tolerate the same breadth of temperature change. If you look at the tropics, there's also much less room for species to migrate. So in an area like the eastern United States, there's a lot of room for species to move up the mountains that are in lowland areas or ways to move further north.

So possibly more bugs at higher altitudes, and higher latitudes. But what about heat-intolerant bugs who can't escape?
So if you go to a place like Costa Rica, where they don't really have very much room to move, and it turns out they can't tolerate temperatures that are much higher than what they're already living in. So, that's one of the big things that we're having to deal with. Everyone originally predicted that northern species were going to be at risk, but [in] tropical areas, the species that live there don't really have anywhere to go.

Aren't there bugs already living at the tops of mountains that are fucked too?
Yes, exactly. If you're a species that really can't take very warm temperatures and you're at the top of a mountain already, and now you have all these other migrants in your territories, you're going to get knocked off.

Let's get specific. What are some bugs who will move around in the next few decades?
In the Smoky Mountains, for instance, there's a warm-tolerating species of ant that's moving it's way up the mountain over the last couple decades. So these things are already happening on a small scale.

What about the bugs around our houses?
Good question. So down here in the South, everyone hates fire ants. They were about at their northern limit here in North Carolina—so they're limited by heat. In a warmer world, you would predict that fire ants are going to go a little bit more north, whether that's ten miles or a hundred miles north. [So] some people that were just out of the range to find fire ants might find that in the next decade or so that they have fire ants in their yard.

Can we say anything about the bugs living north of the Mason-Dixon Line?
You could expect things like the odorous house ant—which is the species that's on kitchen countertops especially in New York—to come out sooner. But I don't know if we can say too much about how warming is going to affect them. For one thing, if they're living in your house and you have A/C, the environment they experience is going to be a little bit different than it is outside.

In your area, what effects have you studied that don't involve ants?
The bulk of all the other insects after you remove ants are these things called fungus gnats.

I know the bastards very well. What about them?
They were the most abundant insect outside of ants in our study, and they [experienced] the strongest negative impact from warming, particularly in spring.

Should I care? Gnats suck.
[I] started to read through old literature about what fungus gnats do, what we know about their biology, and almost nothing is known about them. I think that's one of the craziest things we find with insects: [They] could be spore-dispersers, they could really be doing important things but we don't know.

Ah, so you're going to tell me that even the loss of an annoying insect has an unpredictable butterfly effect, right? Like when Homer Simpson goes back in time?
That's what we talk about a lot! Like this wildflower, trillium: Their seeds actually have a little thing stuck to them that's ant food. They eat that part of the seed, then chuck the seed somewhere far once they eat it. There's mutualism between ants and these wildflower species in eastern forests. And that's going to get broken, potentially.

The 800-pound gorilla in the room here here is disease-carrying insects. I recall there being warnings about an increase in malaria because the climate will be better for mosquitoes, but there's been a decline in malaria instead.
It doesn't have to do with the mosquitoes moving. It has to do with aid.

Could we still see more malaria in the near future because of mosquitoes?
One example I think you might look into is in Ethiopia. to escape disease, what a lot of people do is just move to the top of a mountain where it's too cold for mosquitoes. So people built larger communities on tops of mountains, and they had lower malaria rates. So now you have deep human populations, and now that mosquitoes are starting to move up to the tops of mountains with warming temperatures, they're at new risk with malaria due to climate change.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

No Matter Who He Eats With, Mike Pence Is Bad for Women

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The juicy details of Mike Pence's marriage have captivated the American public for the opposite reason Donald Trump's marriages did: The vice president is excessively faithful. Not only does the conservative Christian affectionately refer to his wife, Karen, as "Mother," according to a Washington Post story this week he "never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won't attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either." For the past couple days, Twitter has been locked into a battle between people who think this is kind of weird and people who think that this actually is normal, or even good.

Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffrey took to everyone's least favorite microblogging platform to weigh in with a perspective echoed by other liberals. "If Pence won't eat dinner alone with any woman but his wife, that means he won't hire women in key spots," she tweeted. "If Pence won't eat with a woman alone, how could a woman be Chief of Staff, or lawyer?" The Atlantic published an article with a similar sentiment, using Pence's dinner preferences to expound on the plight of working women on Capitol Hill. (For the record, Mike Pence has four women on his staff, two of whom split their duties between him and the office of the second lady.)

Religious conservatives, on the other hand, rallied to Pence's defense. In many observant Christian circles the rules of the Pences' marriage weren't that weird. For instance the Federalist's Mollie Hemingway penned an impassioned op-ed asserting that Pence is "a smart man who understands that infidelity is something that threatens every marriage and must be guarded against." It got to the point where Christian writer Matt Walsh claimed that "normal" straight married men like him didn't go looking for female friends.

Discussions about a stranger's marriage are usually just gossip, and it was striking that even serious comments about who Pence was allowed to eat around came off as jokes. The issue isn't whether Pence has a business dinner with a woman or even whether he hires enough women—the problem with Pence is that he has devoted a significant part of his political life to annihilating the rights of women?

On Thursday, as everyone chattered about his dining arrangements, Pence cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate that advanced a Republican effort to eliminate an Obama-era policy that prevents states from taking away funding from healthcare providers for political reasons. This would presumably allow conservative state governments to defund Planned Parenthood and other contraception providers.

Thanks to the Hyde Amendment, it's already illegal to use federal funding for abortions, but if places like PP lost the ability to be reimbursed by the government for services, women could lose access to birth control and things like cancer screenings. This isn't surprising: Pence is staunchly anti-choice, and is willing to deprive women of healthcare if it also means restricting access to abortion.

I can't express to you how much joy mocking Mike Pence's marriage brings me personally, but making it into a political issue is either incredibly misguided or straight-up disingenuous. The rules of his marriage are meant to prevent any chance of him having an affair, but that doesn't matter—there are still plenty of ways for him to fuck over women.

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

Are Home Drug Testing Kits Actually Helpful?

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(Top photo: a reagent drug test. Photo: Michael Segalov)

Today is the inaugural Drug Checking Day. A collaboration between an international band of harm reduction organisations, it has been conceived to raise awareness of drug checking services across the planet and generally remind us all to keep educated about the drugs that we're chucking in our bodies. One of those organisations is The Loop, the UK company that undertook drug testing at Secret Garden Party and Kendal Calling last year, and are hopefully going to become a regular feature at our festivals over the coming years.

Last year, Newcastle Student Union started selling DIY drug checking kits in a bid to encourage undergrads to take a more proactive approach to harm reduction when they're on the sesh. After all, the frequent and sometimes lethal distribution of impure drugs has been well reported, whether it's PMA, PMMA or even actual concrete.

The kits themselves are straightforward to use: most come with a selection of Austro-Swiss sounding chemical reagents – Liebermann or Froehde or Mecke – which you then drip, separately, onto a small bit of your pill, powder or blotter. The colour it turns then matches (hopefully) with a colour on your chart, and you can (hopefully) affirm that it is indeed the drug you splashed the last dregs of your loan on.

The concept behind the kits is that they give the user a better insight into the drugs they're imbibing, and give them the chance to say no before its too late. The problems for critics lie in the fact the reagents a) don't test for all chemicals, b) tell you nothing about the strength of the drug, and c) don't come with any face-to-face harm reduction advice.

To work out whether they are in fact helpful or not, I spoke to Guy Jones, the founder of Reagent Tests UK, and Harry Sumnall, a professor in Substance Use for the Public Health Institute.

The Loop drug testing at Secret Garden Party (Photo: David Hillier)

VICE: Let's start with the big one. Are DIY drug testing kits safe?
Guy Jones: Drugs themselves are not safe and will never be safe. What we are trying to do is make them safer, and any level of improvement of safety to drug users is, to me, a success. Because that results in, ideally, less injuries, less hospital admissions, less deaths. So I completely agree that they are not perfect.

Do you consider your kits to be a middle ground between no testing and the more comprehensive testing offered by The Loop at festivals last year?
Yeah, I guess. I actually work very closely with The Loop and, in a way, that's a terrible decision, because the more widespread their service becomes the less people have a need for reagent tests. But it's a passion project in which my goal is for users to to be safer, have better information and get it at accessible prices.

Surely a big part of the problem is people, who aren't chemists, not really being able to evaluate the results properly/ The colours on the chart you give out aren't cut and dry.
Absolutely, but I do a lot of Facebook outreach work. People can contact us through our page, and I'm an admin on the SeshSafety group. We'll often have people post pictures saying they don't understand why it hasn't gone the colour it should do for their drug. It's not so much that people don't know how to use the kit, it's that they are in such disbelief that their dealer has ripped them off. I also encourage users to email me for advice; people will send us results which we'll guide them through, like, "Yes, there's a little bit of purple but can you not see this big red patch as well? You need to be careful."

Who is your average user? I thought it might be the hook-up guy who always gets everyone's stuff in before a party.
It's actually not. It's young people – I would guess mostly 20 to 25, with an even male / female split – who don't have the experience and the confidence, and want to make as sure as possible that they're safe. I think it's getting cooler to be clued up, educated about it, rather than being hardcore and getting really messed up

What sort of thing do you regularly find?
We see a lot of Alpha PVP pretending to be MDMA, but it's about five times as strong and is normally cut and sold as MDMA. It creates a more paranoid high; people have a lot less of the desirable, empathogenic effects, so take more to compensate for that. They then can't sleep for a day, which has psychosis risks and isn't much fun.

Definitely not. Thanks, Guy!

A reagent drug test (Photo: Michael Segalov)

VICE. Harry, same question: are DIY Drug Checking Kits safe?
Harry Sumnall: These kits are primarily orientated – although not exclusively – towards testing ecstasy-like drugs, but deaths from ecstasy-like drugs, including MDMA, are rare and often unpredictable. Looking at clinical cases and coroner's reports, deaths aren't usually – although there are of course always exceptions – a result of taking harmful substitute drugs or harmfully high doses, which current DIY colour change kits can't assess anyway.

So it's more that they're a bit redundant?
I'm not in any way downplaying the tragedy of these events, but there's little that could have been done to avoid the death apart from not taking the drug in the first place; testing wouldn't have helped these people.

Should it not be embraced as a stepping stone?
Supporting people to take action around drug use behaviours is to be encouraged, but for me many of the most serious recreational drug risks are beyond individual control. I think we should be directing our energies and limited resources into looking at actions that take a broader perspective. There's an argument to be made that it is the responsibility of the state to keep its citizens safe through actions such as market regulation, but because possession and supply of drugs is illegal, the state limits its responsibilities and obligations.

So they're not just better than nothing?
I've heard persuasive arguments for handing out DIY testing kits, with the justification that they're "better than nothing", but I don't necessarily agree with this point of view. I would prefer that, where offered, these kits are part of a wider package of harm reduction training and support and that they come with warnings about their limitations, but I'm not sure if that's affordable or feasible to implement

Do you think the average recreational user would bother with them?
It's important to bear in mind that most people who use drugs, whether regularly or experimentally, don't have a high level of drug or harm reduction "literacy". They don't meticulously plan their drug use… drug use is just an opportunistic leisure activity. Because of the size of this group, they're also going to be the ones most likely to experience death and other harms. How do you reach this group and get them engaged with discussions around drug use and potential health risks? Giving out DIY testing kits is not going to have much impact.

Thanks, Harry.

@Gobshout

How it Feels to Ditch Your Religion

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Abandoning religion doesn't just mean turning your back on God. You're potentially losing your closest family members, friends, home, lifestyle, and your own sense of identity. It's kind of like a breakup except it's with yourself, and afterwards you're reborn as someone completely new. It's an existential journey in every sense. We spoke to three people about this process. Both what lead them to this point, and what happened afterwards.

Image from JW publication, "The Watchtower." Via Wiki Commons

Trishy, 48
Ex-Jehovah's Witness

My mother was stuck at home alone with five kids when she was converted by door-knocking Jehovah's Witnesses. They prey on the weak and needy, you know? She started taking us to the Kingdom Hall three times a week and Dad would beat her for it. You never forget that sort of thing.

I grew up believing that an armageddon was going to cleanse the "wicked" and all Jehovah's Witnesses would live in an eternal paradise. If you weren't in the religion you weren't good enough for me. I would go witnessing all weekend and could only date with view to marry. I now look at my honeymoon photos and I look about 12 years old. It's so sad. I always knew subconsciously that religion wasn't inside my soul. I stayed in it for my family. Then I started questioning things, did some research and became a closet apostate.

Ultimately I wanted my kids to have a normal life and I wanted be able to celebrate their birthdays. So finally, after feeling this for some so many years, at the age of 38, I told my ex-husband I thought we were living a lie. Funnily enough, he had also lost faith and we were both exhausted from going to three weekly meetings, so we left the religion together. My entire family cut me off for life. Close friends of 20 years would turn their backs on me in the street. I knew then for sure that wasn't pure love.

I started going out, visiting bars, dancing until sunrise and beyond. I'd never done that and I felt alive! I thought, "I'm not going to my grave with regrets, I want to live now!" I was a kid in a candy store and the gays took me in with open arms. I got a boob job, started wearing risqué clothing, and became a party promoter. Hot Kandi is my brand.

At my parties you walk through the door and lose yourself—I guess that's why I throw myself in there, to block out the past, because it hurts to remember. These days I accept every walk of life. Sure I have a few haters, but my life is about bringing people together. I think that religion gave me a strong moral code. It keeps me grounded and sends me home around sunrise.

Moses and the 10 commandments as depicted by Rembrandt. Via Wiki Commons

Gavriel, 26
Formally Jewish

My grandparents survived the Holocaust and were disillusioned with religion, whereas my parents became die-hard Jews after marriage. So I grew up the same, and from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown I lived without electricity or money. I always stood out in my kippah at school and I had to wrap leather straps around my arms and head home every day, with bible passages inside this little box. Then in school, girls had different classes and play areas, which really fucked up our social skills by pigeonholing women as sex objects.

I'm super angry about it these days, like I'm just super anti-organised religion. In the bible, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son and before he goes through with it an angel stops him, saying he's proven himself as God's servant. That story gets a lot of praise and I used to wonder if my Dad would be willing to sacrifice me. Also just generally, I feel the world is messed up and it's a bullshit answer if I throw a rock through a building and say, "Oh sorry, I work in mysterious ways.

I started having doubts about religion very young by I never admitted to my atheist beliefs, until I was 16 and my actions started reflecting them. I partied, ate what I wanted, and hung out with girls. It was hard to hide my actions, even though I kept a kippah in my pocket walking down the street, but rebelling caused turmoil in my family. Honestly though, my drug problems caused bigger family fights than my atheism.

Now I'm 26 and I have no sense of deep fulfilment. I have things that I like: books, TV, laptop, porn, cigarettes, cameras, and whatever… but I have nothing that fulfills me. I'm looking for an ideology but I don't believe in religion, so what the fuck is there? In a sense there is no benefit to atheism. I would have been happier believing there was a purpose in the world, there was justice, and that I'll one day see my grandmother in heaven and Hitler won't be there.

The one thing I miss about Judaism is there's no emphasis on the superficial. I know so many rich Jewish people who live in shabby houses. They think it's wrong to flaunt wealth. Whereas the modern world is about showing everything you have—a good ass, a good car, jewellery.

Isfahan Lotfollah mosque ceiling, via Wiki Commons

Shirin, 21
Ex-Muslim

I think I was religious for my dad, not for God, and maybe the definition of a good daughter. I grew up telling him I never missed my five daily prayers. I thought I was purer than everybody, including my sisters. But then one day I missed a prayer and thought, If I'm going to hell for one slip up, I may as well stop wasting my time.

Suddenly I was googling stuff like "Proof God exists," and educating myself about theories of evolution. I realised religion is a game of Chinese whispers played over hundreds of years. Islam became illogical to me. I was 19 when I solidified my beliefs as an atheist. I told my friends, but never my seniors. It's best not to. Muslim parents feel like failures if they don't pass on their religion to their children. Even though my Mum is not a "good Muslim," they think it's better to change religions than become atheist.

My Dad recently passed away and the process of putting him to rest was a massive burden… like every Muslim event I attended. Having to bathe him in rose water, pray, chant, and cook for strangers on five different occasions… it was weird. Before I was doing things only because I didn't want to go to hell. Like giving someone money gave me something in the after life. Now I'm behaving with no bias. I wear tank tops, I have gay friends, I've experimented sexually with women, and my life is not dictated by tedious routines or fear.

I tolerate all religions as long as they are not forced on me. People always want to debate me about it, but I just think they're afraid to let it go. They need it, right? They think there are great things ahead because God loves them… even if life is shitty now, they'll be saved later.

Holding on to concrete things, here and now, that makes me feel much more secure.

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Glossy Photos of Paraguay's Miss Gorditas

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This article originally appeared on VICE France

The Miss Gordita beauty contest – which translates to "Miss Chubby" – was founded by Mike Beras in 2012. It's held in April every year, in Paraguay's capital Asunción. Out of the hundreds of women who register on Facebook, 14 are chosen for the contest and only one is crowned Miss Gordita. Last year's winner was Romina Verna.

Bernas also started a model agency called Plus Size, in 2012. With the beauty contest and the agency, Mike and the models are trying to change how Paraguayans view overweight women. While almost half of the of the country's population is overweight, heavier women face discrimination every day.

Mike introduced me to some of the models at the agency, and I made a series about them in 2015. Laura Ochipinti, one of the women I talked to, weighed more than 220 lbs but had always dreamt of working in a showroom. When she went for an interview, the manager told her she was "too fat" and would "scare away the customers". Beras told me that when the models of his agency were invited to a TV show, the host laughed while holding a cake under a model's nose. A production assistant at another show asked the girls to be careful not to break the chairs they were sitting on.

These are just some of the individual experiences the women I spoke to remembered clearly – but they also told me about the more underlying discrimination they face in their jobs, about the looks and comments they're getting on the streets, about what it feels like when you notice that even your boyfriend is embarrassed to be with you in public. It's hard, but by working as models, these women are trying to change the representation of overweight women in Paraguayan media and – hopefully – that will also cause a change in public opinion.

After reading about the Miss Gordita contest in an Argentinian newspaper and meeting these women in 2015, I knew immediately what tone my series about them should have. I wanted to capture them at home or at work, but more through a fashion lens than a documentary one – I wanted to capture their glamour and the harsh reality of their daily lives at the same time.

Scroll down for more of Jean-Jérôme Detouches' photos of the Miss Gordita contestants


A Fish on the Great Barrier Reef Has Venom Like "Heroin"

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The "heroin-like" venom of a fish found on the Great Barrier Reef could be developed into new painkillers, say researchers from the University of Queensland. While a bite from most poisonous fish will inflict excruciating pain on its victims, the fanged blenny—a small, fearless fish found on the GBR and around the Pacific—appears to only use its venom to slow predators down.

The UQ study, published today in Current Biology, reveals the blenny's venom has a very strange effect on its victims. Immediately after a bite, blood pressure drops by around 40 percent. But this doesn't last—the venom merely incapacitates a predator long enough so the blenny can escape the threat.

"Its venom is chemically unique," says UQ associate professor Bryan Fry. "The fish injects other fish with opioid peptides that act like heroin or morphine, inhibiting pain rather than causing it." Because the blenny's venom targets its victim opioid receptors, the predator fish will get dizzy and its movements are slowed right down. Because this venom is chemically unique, the hope is it could be used to develop new painkillers.

Associate professor Fry says the fanged blenny is one of the most fascinating fish he's ever studied, particularly how brave it is despite its small size. "Their secret weapons are two large grooved teeth on the lower jaw that are linked to venom glands," he says. The UQ study, which involved collaborators from the Netherlands and the UK, found these fangs make the blenny fairly unique within the animal kingdom. While most venomous creatures use their poison to kill predators or to stun prey to eat, the blenny's fangs are purely for self-defence.

This was discovered by tracing the blenny's evolution back through generations—it was found the fish developed its long fangs before its venom glands. For most venomous animals, the venom comes before the stinger or teeth. Bryan Fry argues the uniqueness of the blenny, from its venom to its evolution, highlights why conservation of the Great Barrier Reef is vital. "If we lose the Great Barrier Reef, we will lose animals like the fang blenny and its unique venom that could be the source of the next blockbuster pain-killing drug," he says. "This study is an excellent example of why we need to protect nature."

Recent studies of the GBR have found it's dying at a far faster rate than scientists initially believed. Terry Hughes, director of an Australian government-funded Centre for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, told the New York Times his team found two-thirds of the reefs in the GBR's north were already dead. "We didn't expect to see this level of destruction to the Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years," he said.

In March, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority announced the reef is experiencing yet another mass bleaching event is underway. It marks the first time bleaching at this scale has happened two years in a row. The Australian Government's plan to save the reef—focusing on water quality and land management—has faced broad criticism that it fails to tackle the underlying problem that's killing Australia's iconic reef: climate change.

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How an Opera Singing WWII Veteran Founded One of the World's Largest LGBTQ Charities

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It's easy to forget exactly how stigmatized LGBTQ people were in the 1950s and 60s. Before Stonewall was a blip on the horizon, queerness was a DSM-classified mental disease, and those who had it were subject to draconian government witch hunts. LGBTQ folks were deemed a national security risk, gay sex was illegal, and bartenders were even prohibited from serving drinks to known homosexuals in some states. While California had legalized gay bars in 1951, police raids were still common, and patrons would be arrested, then outed the next day when their names and addresses were published in local newspapers.

But during a decidedly dark period for LGBTQ Americans, José Sarria was a beam of light. A fearless and outspoken drag performer, Sarria would go on to become an under-celebrated, larger-than-life activist for queer rights—and a founder of the Imperial Court in 1965, which, according to them, has since become the second largest LGBTQ organization in the world. With a blend of high royal drama, queer pageantry and serious activism work, the Court today has over 70 chapters across North America. Each chapter raises funds in their local area through annual balls, the money from which is used to support a variety of causes.

This Saturday, the exhibition, Over The Top: Math Bass & the Imperial Court SF opens at the Oakland Museum of California, featuring Imperial Court artifacts displayed alongside the work of Math Bass, a contemporary California artist. The exhibit will be a portal into decades of essential queer history, but for those who don't live in the Bay Area, the first step to getting to know the Imperial Court is getting to know Sarria.

After being honorably discharged from the Army during WWII, Sarria headed to San Francisco, and began working as a drag queen at the Black Cat Café in the city's North Beach district. Patrons were known to push tables together upon which Sarria would belt out arias from Carmen, modifying the story to suit herself. Then billed as "The Nightingale of Montgomery Street," due to her love of opera, she developed a cult following.

In 1961, Sarria moved into politics, becoming the first openly gay candidate to run for political office in the world, amassing 6,000 votes and finishing ninth out of 33 candidates in a bid for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The show of support crystallized the gay community as a formidable voting bloc, making one of the first historic turns in the gay rights movement.

The following year, Sarria and gay bar owners from across the city formed the Tavern Guild of San Francisco (TGSF)—the first gay business association in the country—to combat police harassment of gay men and gay bar patrons. As recounted by historian Nan Alamilla Boyd in Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 , TGSF grew into "a marketplace of activity that, in order to protect itself, evolve(d) into a social movement."

As a member of the group, Sarria convinced gay men to demand fair jury trials instead of quietly pleading guilty after police roundups. As a result, San Francisco's courts soon became so overloaded that judges began requesting prosecutors produce evidence before going to trial. And when cops arrested drag queens under an archaic city ordinance that outlawed men who cross-dressed with an "intent to deceive", Sarria distributed name tags to fellow drag queens that read "I am a boy." Offending queens need only display the tag to disprove an intent to deceive, and Sarria successfully helped put a halt to discriminatory police raids.

Sarria collaborated with TGSF to raise funds through social gatherings, dances and events. Chief among them was the legendary annual Beaux Arts Ball, and in 1965, TGSF members showed their appreciation for Sarria's contributions by crowning him queen of the ball. But Sarria wanted to be more than just a queen, and during the ceremony, she proclaimed herself to be the "Absolute Empress of San Francisco."

As Empress, Sarria worked with TGSF to establish "The Imperial Court," as a project that focused on raising money for civic causes. Sarria formed a council to govern her office, and based on European royalty, appointed "czarinas" to preside over San Francisco's historically LGBTQ districts: Polk Street, South of Market, and the Castro.

The Imperial Court system evolved and proliferated in the early 1970s, establishing courts in Vancouver and Portland. In 1972, the Court began crowning Emperors, too, with each elected leader reigning for one year. Over time, District courts steadily spread across the country. Empresses rode live elephants through the city's Gay Freedom Day parade, and celebrities like Mel Brooks emceed Imperial Court festivities. In 1978, Carol Channing was crowned Honorary Empress of California.

As the Court grew, Sarria never lost his flair for dramatics. At some point, he assumed the suffix "The Widow Norton"—a reference to Joshua Norton, a San Francisco oddball and local celebrity during the 19th century who once proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States. Thus, Norton was posthumously declared the father of the Imperial Court, in the same way that Sarria is considered by the group as its mother. Sarria started an annual pilgrimage to Woodlawn Cemetery in Colma, California to visit the grave of her imagined husband, with coronation ceremonies for San Francisco's elected royalty taking place at the site.

In the 80s, at the peak of the AIDS crisis, the Court assumed a more serious tone, concentrating their fundraising efforts to support HIV/AIDS research and services. Sarria's annual pilgrimage to Norton's grave assumed new meaning as the LGBTQ community began participating to mourn their dead.

In the years since, the Court's fundraising has touched countless causes beyond HIV/AIDS. According to the Imperial Court SF's official historian, Matthew Brown, the organization has dedicated funds for everything from victims of domestic violence and the homeless to emergency relief rescue dogs—even the construction of a youth swimming pool in the city's Hunter's Point district.

Sarria passed away in 2013 at the age of 90, having lived, he said, to see the Court evolve past his wildest aspirations. And the Court has since aimed to expand and reinvent itself while still retaining Sarria's penchant for theatrics. Current Chairman John Carrillo said one key to the Court's future lies in inclusivity. "We've created "Mizz" and "Mizter" titles and drag king categories, so lesbians, trans people, and our straight allies can participate as well," Carrillo said.

This year, the reigning Empress and Emperor of San Francisco, Mercedez Munro and Nic Hunter, have created a collectively-owned scholarship program for trans students. "I want the trans community to know that we see them, and that they have an ally," said Munro. "We are most definitely stronger together. The LGBTQ community is my family. And when we see each other as family, we can accomplish great things." It's a sentiment Sarria would surely love, and one that lay at the heart of his life's mission.

Over The Top: Math Bass & The Imperial Court is on display at the Oakland Museum of California from April 1st to July 23rd, 2017.

Follow Kyle Casey Chu on Twitter.

'Alien Comic,' Today's Comic by Michael Sweater

We Talked to Jason Segel About the Afterlife

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Jason Segel made his name working in comedy—nine seasons on How I Met Your Mother, numerous big-screen collaborations with Judd Apatow's camp, rebooting the Muppets for a new generation of kids—but lately, the 37-year-old actor is interested in projects that tackle the "big questions," as he calls them. That's how he ended up following his acclaimed turn as David Foster Wallace in 2015's The End of the Tour with the lead role in The Discovery, the second full-length feature from Charlie McDowell, the director behind 2014's mind-bending marriage thriller The One I Love.

The Discovery depicts a world in crisis: A scientist (played by Robert Redford) has proved the existence of an afterlife, which spurs millions of people around the globe to commit suicide, just so they can cross over to the other side. This dystopian premise is the bleak backdrop for a romance between Segel's character and a woman who's fighting the urge to self-destruct, portrayed by Rooney Mara.

Describing the plot in any further detail would spoil the film, but suffice it to say, Segel's latest movie indeed deals with some big questions. It's a quiet film, one that tries to offset its melancholy with humor, and one that's draped in fog as it ponders what makes life worth living and what happens after we die. In the spirit of The Discovery, I recently tried to get some answers to these questions from Segel himself. Our discussion is below and has been edited for length and clarity.

VICE: Did working on The Discovery force you to reexamine your ideas about the afterlife?
Jason Segel: I think that one of the big problems with the world today is that we don't often acknowledge that any idea that we have about the afterlife is a guess. And anyone who proceeds with assuredness in their point of view, they're sort of missing the point that this is a mystery. That's the wonderful point of it—you're supposed to surrender to the mystery of it all, and the second you try to name it, you've really missed the beauty of it in a lot of ways. For me, what's cool about the movie is that it asks questions as opposed to giving answers, and to me the function of art is that you experience the piece and then you go and have a discussion. But I didn't go in with any particular belief about the afterlife. I think what's sort of hard about spirituality... David Foster Wallace put it best in "This Is Water"— the fish don't know what water is. And one of the things that's hard about spirituality is you want to look outside for it, but you're right in the middle of it, so it's very hard to see. You're in it right now.

What's interesting to me is that I don't even know if you can really describe the scenario the film puts forward as "an afterlife." It doesn't conform to the dichotomy of either being in paradise or being punished.
It's funny, because we've talked about the afterlife a bit in talking about this movie, and when you examine a lot of views of the afterlife, some of them feel like this duality of the best thing you can think of versus the worst thing you can think of. It's a little like a Warner Bros. cartoon: When the good guy dies, he floats up to heaven, and there are people playing harps, and all your loved ones are there, and there's a banquet of all his favorite foods, and the bad afterlife is hot pokers, and you're burning in fire and all that. I think that as religion and science start to converge—which is what's happening now; there are semantic differences, but science is starting to talk about multiple dimensions just as religion always has—you start to wrap your head around more sophisticated versions of an afterlife, where maybe the worst thing isn't fire, maybe the worst thing is nothing.

What do you think happens after we die?
I think really the only thing that I've been able to deduce from my short time here is that there seems to be some value in being good to the people around you. And there seems to be a lot of relief found by living in the present. That's really as far as I'm able to go in terms of drawing conclusions.

Were you raised in a very religious household?
I was raised with a Jewish father and a Christian mother, going to Episcopalian school in the day and Hebrew school at night.

So you got a few different perspectives.
I did, and I was very interested in comparative religion when I was younger, and still am now, and I read a lot of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and all that sort of stuff, and it really seems like in the venn diagram of spirituality, being selfless and kind seem to be the ones that really emerge.

That sounds simple, but it seems to elude a lot of people.
Yeah, I think if you get too caught up in what God does and doesn't want you to eat, you're sort of missing the point, you know?

Did you take comfort in the idea of the afterlife in The Discovery?
I don't know that I took comfort in it. I really take a lot of satisfaction in making movies, or books, or being involved in art that broaches some of the big questions. That's been one of the things that has been really interesting to me over the past three years, when I took a minute—my TV show had ended, I had more time on my hands, and I got to think about what I wanted to do, and I realized I wasn't in my 20s anymore, and I wasn't scared of girls anymore. Making movies where that was the premise didn't really apply to what my life was like anymore, being a grown man. [ Laughs] I thought I should start making things I watch. And when I got this script, this was a movie that I would put on the moment that I saw it was available.

What would the worst-case scenario afterlife look like for you?
I actually oddly just did a movie about religion, about hell—a movie about a real minister who started preaching that there was no hell. It was a This American Life podcast, his name's Carlton Pearson. In that process, we talked to a lot of ministers about their visions of hell, and the one that really hits me in a very visceral way is eternal separation from God.

I've heard it characterized that way, and I feel like that's the kind of frightening that sneaks up on you.
You know what the best comparison I can think of is? The day after a breakup—forever.

One of the themes in the film is this idea of getting a second chance. If there was one thing or moment in your life that you could change, do you know what that would be?
One of the things that I've learned as I've gotten older is that I am really happy with where I am right now. And any little change you make affects that—it took every mistake along the way to lead to now. I actually think there's a bit of hubris in wanting to change things, or in thinking you should change things. Wanting to change things is very normal and natural, of course, but in thinking that you should change something, it implies that you know better than whatever might be in play here, call it God or whatever you want. I've learned that some of the moments I thought were the worst moments in my life have turned out to be fundamental anchor points.

Because they're part of the foundation of who you are?
Yeah, and a lot of times they're the incentive for a pivot. The great successes and the great failures, they end up being pretty similar in retrospect.

If it turns out that there is a points system that factors into the afterlife, do you think that being a minister is going to help put you over the edge?
Well, I'm an internet minister—if anything, I think I get negative points for that. I just signed up and paid, like, 25 bucks.

The Discovery is currently streaming on Netflix.

Mike Will Made It Might Be Our Generation's Best Collaborator

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When we meet Mike Williams on a chilly Monday afternoon in East Williamsburg, the sky is the same shade as his cream-colored Metallica hoodie. The Atlanta producer, better known by his beatmaking moniker, Mike WiLL Made-It, arrives calm and collected. I ask if this laid-back demeanor means he's recuperating from a blow-out weekend. On Friday, Will released his newest record, Ransom 2, and celebrated his 28th birthday. But no. "I just tried to take it easy and have a good day," he confesses. "I've had a lot of work going on, so it was nice to slow down a little."

The week before releasing Ransom 2 in its entirety, Will had been dropping its tracks one after another. First came "Gucci on My," an infectiously simple trap ode to the Italian house, featuring 21 Savage, Migos, and YG. It was followed by the Lil Yachty-assisted "Hasselhoff," "Come Down" — with one of Rae Sremmurd's three appearances — and Future's high energy guest spot, "Razzle Dazzle." Will saved some of Ransom 2's best tunes for the final countdown. "Aries (YuGo)" saw an unexpected turn from Pharrell, while "Perfect Pint" united Gucci Mane and Kendrick Lamar over an evocative Rae Sremmurd hook. Both of these bangers arrived in the 48 hours before the full release. You can understand why he wanted a chill weekend.

It's astrologically fitting that Ransom 2 dropped on Will's birthday. Susan Miller recently described March-born Aries as "always full of ideas, always thinking of new ventures to start, and always so enthusiastic about what you are doing." An even more cosmic excerpt from the birthday month reads: "One of your most engaging talents is your ability to build the ultimate dream team that gets results." When Will rolled out the rest of Ransom 2's 17 tracks on Friday, his fans found Young Thug, Rihanna, Big Sean, Ear Drummers signee Andrea, and 2 Chainz also in the mix.

Continue reading on I-D.

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