From Michael Jackson to Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen to Queen, few have ever captured legendary musicians quite like photographer and photojournalist Neal Preston. Over the course of his 48-year career, the New York-born, self-taught shutterbug witnessed the rise of rock and roll and the global culture shifts that came with it. He’s shot books for Led Zeppelin as their only tour photographer, calendars for Elvira, and was tapped by Bob Geldof himself to photograph his 1985 “Live Aid” spectacular—and he did it all without ever taking a single class in photography.

As a freelance photographer and all-around creative here in New York City, Preston’s work inspires me every day. His level of mastery and versatility illuminates what you can accomplish through passion and dedication to your craft. When I heard he was releasing a new book, Neal Preston: Exhilarated and Exhausted, with a foreword by Cameron Crowe, I leapt at the chance to interview him. Preston was generous enough to offer insights into his craft and speak on a variety of topics including his legacy, the fate of the music industry, and the mindset that took him from high school hobbyist to living legend.

VICE: For the uninitiated, who are you, and what do you do?
Neal Preston: I’m a guy who believes in good fortune, and I fell into a job that I never intended to make a career out of. I didn’t go to college because I was in the middle of starting a career. So, I’m a guy who discovered rock and roll music the day The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, and also had been given a camera around 11. Both those things were my hobbies, and those two things morphed into my super-hobby.

When you got your first camera, did you know anything about film?
I was given a camera by my first of three brothers-in-law. It was an Ansco Speedex 4.5. There was this lens with all these numbers on it, and there was also another dial which was the shutter speed—I had no idea what that meant. Then I realized there was this thing that, if I cocked the shutter, it would go like this. So I cocked the shutter, took the picture, and now I was at least able to take a photograph. But that’s all I knew about photography, other than what everyone else knew: Take a camera, make sure the sun is over the shoulder...

My dad was a Broadway stage manager for all these big musicals. He was considered a real important guy, you know, golden age of musical theater. He worked on My Fair Lady, Camelot, Fiddler on the Roof, these big, big shows, and my favorite thing to do was to go visit him for a Saturday matinee. This was when I was old enough to get on the subway by myself, and I snuck a photo once of Harry Goz. It’s the first performance photo I ever took and made a print of. My dad gave it to Harry, and I guess Harry had been a photography buff because he had a series of books about photography. He gave them to my mom and dad to give to me, and I probably read them all within an hour. Other than that, I figured it out on my own. To this day, I’ve never had a class.

Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury. Photo: Neal Preston

Were there any photographers who inspired you?
I didn’t know a lot of their names, but now that I’ve been in the business a day or two, I know who they were: Philippe Halsman, Allan Grant, whose widow is a good friend of mine... These were the guys who could shoot anything. I didn’t know about editors or editorial departments, so that's what I was drawn to. My favorite fashion photographers back then were [Richard] Avedon [and] Norman Parkinson, who I realized later in life was the genius of all geniuses. I knew about the [Henri] Cartier-Bressons and Ansel Adamses, but they didn’t really appeal to me. I'm more aware of the guys who shot music and founded music photography.

Do you feel like having versatility is important as a photographer?
As a photojournalist, absolutely. Generally, photographers tend towards one area—advertising, fashion, editorial, which comprises photojournalism, corporate, all the different slices of that pie. For me, even though I gravitated towards music, I knew I could shoot a bunch of different things and different subjects and styles. Even if that style wasn’t my style. Case in point: for the movie ‘61 that Billy Crystal directed, about the home run race Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris had in 1961, I spent two days recreating baseball cards with these two actors in place of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. I can look at picture and tell you exactly how it was lit—I mean, as best as possible, using the equipment that I knew existed—then or now. So I can recreate anything. Somehow, I became known in the business as someone who can do that really well.

Led Zeppelin. Photo: Neal Preston

What’s one of your most memorable moments on tour?
It’s not moments as much as vignettes. Being on the Great wall of China with Wham! and George Michael. Going to Russia with Billy Joel for two weeks. I grew up in the heat of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and going to Russia was as surreal as going to Uranus or Pluto. Also, South Africa with Whitney Houston. Going through Checkpoint Charlie in the Berlin Wall with Bryan Adams. I've shot six Olympic games, so Torino, Italy, and Yugoslavia… those types of things.

But if I had to pick one single memorable moment, you can’t discount Sly Stone smoking crack in my car while I'm riding down the freeway. Sly Stone pulling out a little anvil case, dressed in Army fatigues. It’s 1979—and I'll the whole story of the shoot another time, it's fantastic—he’s opening up this case and pulling out a fucking butane torch, smoking a pipe that still I can't see, and now it’s a Cheech and Chong movie with smoke billowing out. That was a single memorable moment. You can't top that.

What do you do on off-days?
Well, off-days are golden because you rarely have them. What do I do? Assuming it’s a real off-day, where no editing is involved—don’t forget [I shoot] analog—a true off day, besides trying to get a modicum of sleep, would be comprised of partying. Doing the stuff people think happens all the time on rock tours, which doesn’t. It’s about catching my breath and taking care of my responsibilities, while also trying to get some sleep. You don’t get a lot of sleep on the road—I don’t care if you’re on the road with Captain and Tennille.

In the trailer for your new book you say, “I’m not the story, what I do is the story.”
I truly believe that. We all know photographers who say, “It’s about me.” I’m not going to name names, but again, it goes back to how I perceive how I do my job. Everyone has an ego to satisfy, mine is less about, “Do you know who I am?” as opposed to, “Haven't you seen that picture?” And that's the story, which is why I wrote this book. The way I went about the job, about the potholes, the stresses, the deadlines, the constant travel, the little bit of personality management, all those things the people don’t think when they see that picture of Jimmy Page drinking Jack Daniel’s, those are the interesting things. There are tons of books like, “Here is a photo of Bruce Springsteen and we had a cheeseburger after the shoot and he is a great guy.” That's been done a million times—I have a stack of books like that. That is not this book.

Peter Frampton. Photo: Neal Preston

What’s your mindset when shooting shows?
Well, I’m there to do a job. The minute you walk on stage at any rock and roll show, you are no longer in the United States of America. I don’t care if the show is in Topeka, Kansas, Manhattan, LA, wherever. You are now in the roadies’ nation state. As such, they are in charge even though the band is on stage, and there’s protocol that you have to be very aware of. You learn by common sense, keeping your eyes and ears open—and your mouth shut. Don’t step on anything, don’t touch anything, don’t breathe on any instruments, that’s the obvious stuff. Make sure your pass is visible at all times, because you are being tracked by 12 pairs of eyes, those roadies. And, most importantly, don’t fuck up. The minute you do, you’re gonna be shot down like an enemy aircraft straying into Russian airspace. You do not want to screw up the roadies’ job, because they are gonna get yelled at. If I trip on a cable and it gets pulled or unplugged, which, thank God I’ve never done—I came very close—I’m done! It’s their domain.

And, as I like to say during load out, be very, very careful. It’s not worth being impaled by a forklift because you’re trying to impress some chick from Memphis who you will never see again. Get out of the way!

Bruce Springsteen in 1985. Photo: Neal Preston

What is something you would want a young photographer to take away from your book?
Well, my book is not a “how to,” it's more of a “how did,” or, “how do I?” So much has changed in the business and the world since I started. I grew up before the internet, before cell phones, before declining photo budgets… A lot of kids ask me, “How do I bust into the business?” It’s good news/bad news. The good news is there are a lot more outlets for people to look at your work, given the internet. The bad news is, there is very little money, which I find very insulting. The best advice that I give to up and coming photographers is: latch onto one band you love. Ride that pony. If they become successful, you are their guy. Then they will tell people, “These are the photos to use.” That’s how you will become known to people in the industry—the best way to establish yourself, generally speaking. You’re not going to get far by calling Rolling Stone and submitting 18 portfolios.

Bob Marley. Photo: Neal Preston

Something that stands out is the high contrast, deep blacks, and intensified highlights of your black-and-white photos. Would you call that that “your style?”
It's a style I like. It’s called “high-key.” If anyone has a style, my style when shooting live is indigenous to me. I wouldn’t say that about anything else I do, but when it comes to that on-stage stuff, I know what I'm doing. I like inky blacks, which is a term Woody Allen used when filming Manhattan. I like clean backgrounds—the less crap in the background the better. Get rid of the microphone if you can. As far as the high-key stuff, there is a little more drama to it, and I’ve been doing that since I was a junior in high school. There, in the Bob Marley original frame, there is a background singer who ruined the frame. When I gave it to my silver gel guy, I said, “Burn that part in,” so it made the photo. I know a strong image, but I’ve told that to hardly anyone. I don’t like to pull stuff out unless it's absolutely needed.

Freddie Mercury at Wembley Stadium. Photo: Neal Preston

What was going on in that famous Freddie Mercury photo?
It was the beginning of the show. It was the first song. I realized it was the third frame I had gotten. That said, I’m in work mode. I'm not thinking, Oh, I have an iconic shot, I'm just shooting, and I see the film the next day. Any photographer who tells you, ten minutes after shooting, “I have an iconic photo,” doesn’t know what they are doing, and hasn’t shot an iconic photo—you need the benefit of time and insight into the past.

What’s the one thing you want to be remembered for?
I wanna be known as a professional. I learned a lot of that from Ken Regan, who owned the Camera 5 picture agency—very famous for photojournalists—just by watching and listening. He was a big brother to me, and a consummate professional. So, I want to be a consummate professional to deliver the goods. Your body of work at the end of your life speaks for itself. Treat people fairly, and have it not be about me. My ego doesn't need it. Get the photos, and appreciate the masters who came before me.

Order a copy of Neal Preston: Exhilarated and Exhausted.

Follow Elijah Dominique on Instagram.

When David Bowie died last January, people the world over mourned the loss of the great musician. Among them was UK-based writer Darryl W. Bullock, author of David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music, out today. Bullock, of course, doesn’t actually think Bowie made him gay—rather, inspired by the late, great Ziggy Stardust/Thin White Duke/Goblin King, Bullock shares in the book a history of the LGBTQ community’s work in the music world, one of the first ever books to do so.

But why Bowie? The artist told Melody Maker in 1972 he was “gay and always [had] been,” not a thing your regular famous musician did at the time. “For the generation that would spawn the out-gay pop stars of the 1980s, Bowie’s outrageous campery and sexual androgyny was a revelation,” Bullock writes, making them feel validated, less alone, and inspired to create their own work. Though Bowie would later redefine his sexuality over the years, the 1972 statement is the one that always mattered, Bullock suggests. “For thousands of young LGBT people across the world,” he continues, “life was suddenly a little less suffocating.”

David Bowie Made Me Gay runs from what may be the first record made by a queer person—in 1916—through the births of jazz and blues, the post-World War I “Pansy Craze,” to the swinging 60s, the glam 80s, Bowie’s death and everything in between. Bullock spoke with VICE about the inspiration for his book, the most surprising revelations it led to about the role of queer people in music history, and more.

VICE: What initially made you decide to write this book?
Darryl W. Bullock: I wanted to write a book about LGBTQ people making records, but to be honest it was a bit dull. It was starting to look a bit like an encyclopedia, an A-to-Z of gay musicians. Then, maybe three or four months into the project, David Bowie died, and his death struck me really viscerally.

But it was while I saw how others reacted to his death, especially the stars I grew up with—the Boy Georges and the George Michaels and the Madonnas—that I realized I was going down the wrong track. I realized the book shouldn’t just be about LGBTQ people making records, but how they influenced each generation that followed. You start to build up this timeline, and it stretches back over 100 years, almost back to the birth of commercially available discs.

It was also a definite decision to include voices you don’t hear of. It would be easy to write a book just about Elton John, George Michael, Boy George, Freddie Mercury, those kinds of people. But I really wanted to document the lives of people like Patrick Haggerty, Blackberri and John “Smokey” Condon, people who have made incredibly important contributions to music and to LGBTQ lives but have been basically ignored by the mainstream media.

What was the most surprising thing you learned about the LGBTQ community in music while working on the book?
The biggest surprise is this idea that LGBTQ music or LGBTQ artists didn’t suddenly become visible with Stonewall, that there were periods or little pockets throughout the century where LGBTQ people were making music, making records, were out in their own lives, were performing as out and they weren’t receiving the censorship we’d expect. Obviously I knew of things like the Weimar era of Berlin cabaret, but I really wasn’t aware of how big that scene was and to find in pretty much every major city in America at that time, in every capital of Europe that similar scenes also existed. I suppose this new sense of freedom that people felt immediately after the first World War allowed people to be a bit more free, to express themselves more openly and readily.

What was your perception of the role of the LGBTQ community in music history before starting the book, and what was it after?
When I was much younger I thought “gay music” meant disco. I learned gay music actually meant a lot more than that—for instance, that punk wouldn’t have happened without LGBTQ musicians. In Britain, if it hadn’t been for gay clubs in London giving the early punks a place to congregate, drink and play, then British punk as we know it—the Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and the Banshees and those kinds of acts—may never have happened. I knew that the punk movement and the LGBTQ movement had rubbed side by side with good relations, but I didn’t really know until I started writing the book how punk wouldn’t have happened in that way if it hadn’t been for the gay community.

Do you think LGBTQ music should be labeled separately from other music?
If everything was equal, I would gladly not have to worry about labels, but everything isn’t equal. There are still people who are shocked that I’m a man married to another man. If labels help someone else search out that particular product or piece of music or musician or whatever, then they’re helpful. You could be in living in a tiny little village in the middle of nowhere, your parents don’t understand you, your classmates bully you, your church has disowned you, and turning on the radio or picking up a record and hearing a voice come out of that speaker telling you things are gonna be alright is incredibly important. I’m sure someone, somewhere put on an Elton John record once and decided not to kill themselves. I know firsthand how important certain gay musicians were to me. If it makes it easier for your intended audience to find you, to feel comforted by you, and to then branch out, grow and think about how they live their life and how they are going to impact other people, then I think in that case labels are incredibly important.

What do you think modern music would look like without LGBTQ people?
I don’t think it would exist! That’s a really flippant thing to say, isn’t it? But it’s true. Music would be so different. In the 1960s, the British pop music scene was almost entirely run by gay men. You wouldn’t have had The Beatles without Brian Epstein, a gay man. You wouldn’t have had David Bowie without Kenneth Pitt, a gay man. You wouldn’t have had the 80s bands, like Culture Club or Frankie Goes to Hollywood, without David Bowie. The influence of LGBTQ acts is insurmountable, and it’s certainly far greater than anybody’s ever given it credit.

I really hope this book helps people recognize how important LGBTQ people have been in every single genre of popular music. We were there at the beginning of jazz. Blues wouldn’t exist without the number of lesbian and bisexual women involved in it, like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Billie Holiday. If it wasn’t for Wendy Carlos, a queer woman, we may not have had popular exposure to the Moog synthesizer. People do forget this stuff if they’re not reminded.

Interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Follow Elyssa Goodman on Twitter.

When Hastiin Yazhi started a new woodworking business, he knew he would have to market it online. That sounds easy enough, but he lives on lands in northern New Mexico belonging to the Navajo Nation, which he describes having “lots of mesas and plateaus.” Because of the terrain, and the very rural setting, Yazhi lacks landline, cell, and internet service.

The former IT worker invested in a 4G booster and an antenna mounted on his TV antenna so he could get online and make calls. He was online, and could show his work to the world, but it was expensive. For a time, Yazhi was spending $400 to $600 monthly for the increased data. As for phone calls, with no firms willing to run landlines out to these remote areas and cell towers few and far between, Yazhi at one time resorted to a common tactic on reservations: “I used to drive my Jeep up to the top of a mesa so I could make calls,” he said.

Like many Native Americans, Yazhi doesn’t have access to the easy, affordable communications technology most people take for granted. And now the federal government is going to make it even more difficult for people like him to be connected to the wider world. In fact, most Native Americans who were counting on the Federal Communications Commission to continue with policies that many tribal communities were counting on to bring more service to far-flung tribal lands may see even cell service reduced.

On Thursday, the agency’s commissioners voted 3-2 (split on party lines between the three Republicans and two Democrats) to make deep cuts to the Lifeline Program, which provides discounted telephone and internet service to low-income Americans, including many Native Americans. Begun in the Reagan administration, it gives a discount of up to about $9 a month to Americans who make less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level. Although it doesn’t sound like much, it means that some carriers simply provide the service at no charge. And, tribal members receive an even deeper discount, up to $34 a month, to obtain essential phone service or to provide basic internet connectivity. For the poor, that matters a lot.

The discounts also serve another purpose—they provide revenues for telephone and internet service providers who normally wouldn’t enter certain rural markets. “Phone and internet service providers don’t see any profit potential out here,” said Yazhi from his home west of the tiny community of Cuba, New Mexico. But the companies receive the Lifeline discounts as reimbursements, ensuring a steady stream of income and a return on their investment.

Though it received less attention than another Thursday 3-2 FCC vote that scrapped rules intended to prevent media companies from forming monopolies, the Lifeline decision will make many people’s lives demonstrably harder. The ruling will cut off Indians not living in “rural tribal lands” from receiving an enhanced $25 monthly discount, bar cellphone resellers from offering the service, and places a cap on Lifeline services to all low-income Americans. After the vote, Native Americans who need a phone to call 9-1-1, apply for work, or talk with health care providers or teachers will have a much more difficult time obtaining sometimes life-saving telephone service.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has on numerous occasions noted that the Lifeline service is rife with fraud, an assessment partially borne out by a Government Accountability Office report in July 2017. The agency surveyed 3.5 million households of the 12.5 million who are in the program, and couldn’t verify 36 percent of the enrollees qualified.

But Teresa Hopkins, the executive director of the Navajo Nation Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, told me that the GAO report shouldn’t be used as an excuse to take resources away from Native Americans who badly need them. “Fraud happens in urban areas, not here on the reservation,” Hopkins said. She also noted that the FCC’s proposal to use third-party verification to root out potential fraud will be difficult on the sprawling Navajo reservation, which is the size of West Virginia and spans parts of three states. “We use Navajo speakers to verify our enrollees,” many of whom have limited—or no—English proficiency, Hopkins said. “But the FCC wants to bring in people from outside the community. Our elders won’t know who they are and will likely just hang up on them, and be disqualified from service.”

FCC Commissioner Migdon Clyburn believes the move is simply a cost-cutting measure. “Even when the Commission said that additional Lifeline money would have the effect of infrastructure deployment in the context of tribal Lifeline, it was said that the primary goal is to reduce the monthly cost of service,” Clyburn said during the hearing as she cast her “no” vote. “Most disheartening, however, is the immediate impact this proposal will have on tribal lands,” she said. “And all of this is occurring during Native American Heritage Month.”

The Universal Service Administrative Company, the firm that administers Lifeline and other programs designed to meet the goal of universal service for the FCC, plans on offering customers an online option for the periodic requalification required by the feds. But Hopkins is leery. “Our reservation is so large that people’s physical addresses sometimes don’t match their mailing addresses,” she said. “We have people with a physical address in New Mexico and a mailing address in Arizona. Also, many of our rural tribal members only have a post office box,” which the online service is liable to reject because it requires a street address. And that spells trouble for the 65,000-plus families—about 225,000 people— who Hopkins said rely on Lifeline for their phone service, including some 85 percent of all Navajo families residing on the reservation.

And, since most Navajos don’t have internet service, just logging on to the site will mean driving to a library or chapter house (the equivalent of a county courthouse), and uploading the required documents requires a scanner.

The Navajo Nation is just one of the tribes across the US affected by the changes.

Before the hearing, the National Congress of American Indians, the US’s largest Native rights advocacy group, issued a statement opposing the action. “Lifeline was always intended to be a telephone service affordability program, and this proposed action will make telephone service more expensive for people living on highly populated Tribal Lands,” the statement said. “This proposed action will result in widening the Digital Divide that persists in Indian Country.” NCAI also asked the FCC to “engage in meaningful consultation with Tribal Nations before adopting rules that will directly impact Tribal Nations and their citizens.”

During Thursday’s meeting, Pai said he had conducted three meetings with Western tribes, including the Navajo Nation, and with Native Hawaiian communities. Hopkins says that just meeting with elected officials didn’t give him the real story. “They could have done more with tribal consultation,” she told me. “Washington needs to go to the real rural communities and make an effort to meet with those very rural residents for whom phone service is a life-or-death situation.”

Pai also singled out two cities—Reno, Nevada, and Tulsa, Oklahoma—in which he said some 97.5 percent of all residents had access to enhanced communications and broadband internet service. Both those metropolitan areas would be ineligible for the extra discounts for tribal members.

However, the original land base of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony is home to 150 households on 27 acres just east of downtown Reno, and more than 43,000 Native people call Tulsa, which was founded by members of the Muscogee Creek Nation in about 1830, home. The Reno tribe, which also includes a community north of the city, has a 36.8 percent family poverty rate, according to the US Census.

Although the FCC believes the move will spark more telecommunications infrastructure development in these remote areas, it’s not likely to happen soon, according to at least one expert. “Large reservations are challenged to provide cell service,” Edward J. Hermes, an attorney at Phoenix law firm Quarles and Brady, told me. Hopkins said that rural providers will most likely have to pull out of reservations if they can’t recoup their investments—some $25 million in Navajo alone—in cellular and internet services, since the FCC also enacted a new $280 million cap on the program. This could also lead to fewer customers once the cap is reached.

Hopkins’s department plans several meetings to take a proactive response to the dilemma. She plans to talk to phone and internet providers and resellers, other Navajo Nation departments that she hopes can help tribal members with verification for further enrollment in the Lifeline program, and with Universal Service Administrative Company officials to discuss a possible compromise on verification for Navajos who need the service.

“I heard from one young Navajo woman in New Mexico that, without her Lifeline phone, and without the Lifeline program, her community would really be living in the 1800s,” Clyburn said.

Hopkins said that the situation would be even worse than that: “What they’re going to do is widen the digital divide,” she said. “We’ve gone backward.”

That lack of progress is going to hurt people like Hastiin Yazhi. “I know how hard it is to run a business without the internet or a phone,” he said.

Tucked on a side road in a grand four-storey building a few minutes’ walk from Old Street station is 23 Paul Street, the first strip club in Europe to accept cryptocurrency as payment.

But as VICE discovered, the same awkward interfaces, user-unfriendly tech and lengthy periods of silence staring at a screen with a furrowed brow is just as prevalent when you’re using Bitcoin or Etherium to buy time with a naked woman as it is when you’re picking up a gram of contraband from AlphaBay.

Accepting payment in Bitcoin is a new thing for 23 Paul Street. In fairness, it’s a new thing for the sex industry at large, with only one other strip club claiming to do it – The Legends Room in Las Vegas.

"This is going to sound really bad, especially working in the sex industry," said Owen Planchart, the affable managing director of 23 Paul Street, when I met him in the club before it opened. "But it almost feels like, every time I do it, I’m breaking a hymen."

That metaphor hung there alongside my awkward laugh for a beat or two after he said it. I was unsure how to react, so he just carried on.

"There’s a threshold there that everybody involved knows that something that hasn’t happened before is happening for the first time," Planchart went on. "People here are trying to have a good time without accountants knowing about it, without partners knowing about it – that’s really important."

I visited the club an hour before it opened, so there were no women working yet. But even without the 35 or so stripping employees slinking around the building, the club has a strong Soho House meets Eyes Wide Shut vibe.

"We want to appeal to the straight-up technology guys. They’re the perfect client for a venue like this, because they’re socially awkward – more money than they know what to do with."

This is reflected in the quirky English townhouse décor, the big box of fancy dress in front of the second floor DJ stand ("A lot of the stuff that happens here is Burning Man-esque," explained Planchart) and the jaw-dropping prices.

Punters pay upfront for their time. On the second floor, which offers some privacy via slinky material hanging from the ceiling around comfy leather two-person sofas, the cost is £220 for half an hour or £420 for an hour. Head upstairs and you can expect to stump up £720 an hour before booze. Champagne is the most well-stocked drink in the mini-fridge behind the bar. This is definitely not the sort of place found in nearby Shoreditch that sends a bored lingerie-clad dancer around with a jar, into which guests are supposed to deposit £1 coins.

These kinds of prices generally herald the stomping ground of investment bankers from the City or commodity traders based in the West End, but 23 Paul Street reckons that by offering time with its women for cryptocurrencies, it can mine an untapped source of wallets that are filled to the brim with disposable money.

"What I really like to appeal to, and every now and then we do get them, is the straight-up technology guys," said Planchart. "They’re kind of the perfect client for a venue like this, because they’re socially awkward – more money than they know what to do with."

Planchart continued: "Where investment bankers have a lot of things they can play with, I don’t feel like anyone has really tapped into what the technology guys are entertained by."

READ:

The first Bitcoin sale was for the equivalent of about £1,200, a few months back. It was made by someone who does TED talks but wanted to remain anonymous, according to Planchart. In return for more time with the girls, the TED talking, bitcoin-paying strip club enthusiast agreed to teach the dancers about cryptocurrencies.

"I want these girls to be set up when they leave this club. We want to make sure that the net result of what we do is a positive one," said Planchart.

A noble statement – and while the club was too empty for me to check the veracity of the claim, there was a woman who showed me in when I arrived. She didn’t give her name, but said she had recently started dancing at the club after working there in a clothed role because she found it to be such a "safe, welcoming space".

Planchart took me through a dummy run of paying with cryptocurrencies. I used the Jaxx wallet on my mobile while Planchart used Coinbase – two of the more popular interfaces that I have used to transfer cryptocurrencies in the past. In a club that prides itself on its slick but convivial atmosphere, the process was painfully clunky.

There were numerous awkward silences as Planchart fought with Coinbase ("So I’m buying bitcoin," he said at one point. "Or am I selling bitcoin? No, I’m buying"). In the end the dummy transaction had to be abandoned well before the point of sale.

"The new Coinbase interface has baffled me there," he explained. "But [usually] we just tap phones and that’s pretty much it."

Lucky, really – no way a mere journalist could have afforded a dance there anyway.

This article originally appeared on Garage.

When I’ve had a little too much Internet for the day, I often find myself recalling a not-too-distant past: 2012, to be exact, when Obama was reelected, when we all thought the end of the Mesoamerican calendar would bring the world to an end (in retrospect, maybe it did), and when Instagram was little more than friends’ dogs and office lunches left barely legible behind saturated filters. Today, Instagram has become a very branded articulation of our lives—“Myself Inc.”

The notion of “me” as a corporate enterprise has become somewhat inconvenient as Instagram becomes ubiquitous—and in some cases, a social or career necessity. For younger social media users, for example, Instagram is the app of choice—even when compared to Facebook, which once seemed invincible. Many teens report even feeling “out of control,” or “isolated” when not using Instagram, and have many unofficial rules when it comes to likes and posts. And for “creatives” and those in entertainment, Instagram may even be a sort of resume, outperforming LinkedIn or other comparable sites. In many cases, companies in fields beyond the arts demand a certain sort of “social media etiquette” to ensure an employee’s reputation—and transitively, that of the brand—stays in tact.

In these cases, a profile is more of a portfolio, which has recently given rise to an alternate portal to display our true selves—a modern-day equivalent to the diary hidden in a box under the bed. A Finstagram, or “Finsta”—i.e. a fake/secondary Instagram account to be shared with trusted friends—is just that. Finsta is like the side of yourself you are hesitant to share—the inner shell that has watched every episode of S.V.U. six times, likes really esoteric philosophy memes, and wants to rant about being catcalled. Or maybe that’s just me. But if mindlessly posting about the meaningless seems desirable to you, but mindlessly posting where your ex-boss, ex-partners, and those you respect can find and judge you seems less desirable, you might be a good Finsta candidate. This could, understandably, seem like a lot of work, but most (if not all) things that are anecdotally beneficial for us tend to take some work; just as writing in a journal or venting to a friend can be cathartic, so can a Finstagram. Such revered Instagrammers as Hari Nef, Lorde, and Tavi Gevinson are rumored to have Finstagrams—so you know they must be worth it.

But establishing a whole secret second life is no small enterprise. Perhaps you’re worried about privacy or, though seemingly petty, the careful algorithm of social capital calculated by “mutual-following.” So here is a step-by-step guide to doing it right.

First, pick a username. If you’re into puns, make your username something only friends would know about you—mine is a play on a Soviet policy of the 1980s, which sounds much like my name. Name obscurity, of course, depends on how much privacy you care for, if any. For some, a simple privacy setting is sequestered enough. But please, stick to a funny, coherent name so if people find you, it’s chill.

Second, hide in plain sight, Make the account private, follow who you know and actually like, and decline other requests. It’s oddly refreshing to keep things intimate.

Now you’re ready to share. Personally, I share a wide variety of posts, ranging from the banal meme, to ugly mid-sneeze pics, to angry tirades, to explicit and annoying messages I receive on my normal DMs. I like outing people. Some (like my mother—hi mom!) like to think that a Finstagram only showcases the more scandalous, but as far as I’m concerned, most Finstas are extraordinarily indiscriminate. A stream of consciousness if you will. So next time you have a pic that you want to spare from your friends’ mom’s eyes, make a chia pudding or some shit that looks really good, are having a rough day or want to be a bit cynical—spare your regular Instagram feed and save it for those special individuals that actually care about you. Social media attention is fickle, fictitious, and fleeting. Finstas are for who count.

And yes, having two accounts, caring about what you post, and curating even one aspect of your life is all extraordinarily vain! But narcissism hardly has its origins in Instagram, or even in social media for that matter. Hell, if you had the money to do so 300 years ago, you'd grab your entire family and sit still for hours to have your (glorified) likenesses painted and hung on the wall. Humans have always been narcissistic, and above all else, we crave shared sentiment with others. Rousseau called it “amour proper”; I just call it validation. It’s not one of our finer qualities. Capitalism knows how to offer us products that satisfy our, well, baser instincts, so here we are, double-tapping our way through life. Finstagrams allow you to do to all the things that marketing gods purport to sell us in millennial pink: be authentic, connect with others, and forget the pressure to be so perfect all the time. If you've already drunk the social media Kool-Aid and aren't yet ready to repent, make a Finstagram. It might just bring you back down to reality.

Ever since former premier Christy Clark stepped out of the public eye earlier this year, British Columbians haven’t been hearing too much about the liquified natural gas sector her government built and subsidized. What seemed like a lot of bragging and bending to international investors a few months ago has been replaced with Premier John Horgan’s much quieter investment pursuits.

Now a pilot study from Université de Montréal researchers has reminded us there’s still a lot we don’t know about shale gas extraction in northeastern BC. Specifically, there’s not a lot of science digging into how fracking-related chemical exposure in the region might be impacting local people’s health.

Élyse Caron-Beaudoin is a postdoctoral fellow and coauthor of a new pilot study that aimed to fill this “data gap.” The study builds on American research that found fracking and other oil and gas development releases volatile organic compounds like benzene into the environment.

Fracking is the process of injecting massive amounts of water mixed with chemicals at high pressures into shale rock formations hundreds of metres below the surface. Elyse told VICE that companies don’t have to publicly disclose exactly what chemicals they are mixing, and that toxicity data doesn’t exist for hundreds of them.

The researchers tested urine samples of 29 pregnant women in Chetwynd and Dawson Creek, two small communities near heavily-fracked shale gas fields in BC’s Peace River Valley. They measured two "biomarkers" that our bodies produce when we're exposed to benzene, a carcinogen that’s been linked to low birth weights and some defects.

Caron-Beaudoin told VICE benzene is a byproduct of any combustion—so smoking cigarettes or driving around the city will also cause some exposure. But the research findings, which will appear in the January issue of Environment International, suggest that exposure levels in these remote communities fall outside what’s normal.

Caron-Beaudoin says her team found the women’s urine samples had 3.5 times more of these biomarkers than the average Canadian. Of the women who identified as Indigenous, those markers were six times more concentrated. But because the sample size is so small, the authors say more research is needed to be sure benzene is really the cause.

The researchers chose benzene biomarkers because the Canadian government already has solid data on it, and it’s much easier to test for than benzene itself. "Because benzene is volatile and those tests need to be done quickly, we decided it's not possible to measure benzene directly in urine,” Caron-Beaudoin told VICE. “With those little molecules it's easier to freeze the samples and analyze later."

But, Caron-Beaudoin says this isn’t a perfect indicator, because some food preservatives also create the same biomarkers when our bodies try to break them down. "It's not 100 percent specific to benzene, but it gives a good idea,” she said, adding diet or second-hand smoke exposure alone were unlikely to account for such high concentrations of the markers.

Caron-Beaudoin said more research is needed to determine how much benzene is present in the area’s air and drinking water, and how much of an impact that’s actually had on pregnancies. Her team is already planning to spend the next two years digging into 6,000 birth records to see if any local trends emerge.

“What we will do, is we will look at associations between density and proximity of fracking wells and some birth outcomes in the past 10 years in northeast BC,” she said. “So looking at birth weight, gestational age, which gives an idea of preterm birth or not, head circumference, and birth defects.”

When complete, the study will be the first of its kind in Canada.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Last week, the Expat City Ranking System voted Dublin the second worst European city to emigrate to. Globally, the Irish capital ranked just slightly better than Lagos, the sixth worst city for crime throughout Africa, and Riyadh, where women can now drive but still can't play sports.

I'm not going to suggest that the quality in life in Dublin is good. It's not. But I do think the survey got it wrong by asking in the first place. As everyone and anyone who's ever spent any amount of time in the city knows, moving to Dublin for quality is like moving to the Outback for the vibrant cafe culture.

The failings in the city's housing market mean that, as an expat, you will probably not sleep easy. The market for rentals in Dublin is so desperate and lucrative that landlords can charge about €1,000 a month for converted closet space or rooms so tiny you can cook from your bed.

READ:

The city, by European capital standards – and considering it was more or less spared from bombing during WWII – is no great beauty either. It has its moments, like we all do on certain days in certain lights, but if you want to wake up next to Dublin for any period of time, you'll need a great capacity for loving what's on the inside. The city-planning can sometimes feel like jobs are won by the project involving most disruption, longest turnaround and the greatest number of overground cable boxes left behind in the city centre.

People in Dublin walk at pace. One reason is the cold and the wind. The other is that, often, what's out there isn't nice to see.

Or hear. Walking through the city, you're bombarded by a trifecta of national embarrassments: our problem with alcohol, our problem with homelessness and our problem with dealing fairly with our own past. Viking tours float through the city on motorised long-boats, encouraging the tourists on board to roar at the locals, reminding anyone who might have forgotten that the Vikings actually raped their way onto this island.

Temple Bar, Dublin. Photo: Richard Wayman / Alamy Stock Photo

This country has never been a sanctuary for women. Irish writer Iris Murdoch once said, "I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time." Any female expat to move to Dublin will have to live with some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

The majority of expats move here for two reasons: a job at one of the tech giants to bolster their CV, or a chance at EU citizenship followed by a move to somewhere sunnier in Europe.

Few stay long enough to get more than an anecdotal sense of the place. Yes, they learn to hate it like a local – the last survey done on Dubliners and their city revealed that only one in every four people feel any sort of emotional connection to the town – but they rarely learn to hate it to the point where all that negativity gives birth to something constructive, or to quote Yeats wildly out of context, "a terrible beauty is born".

READ:

When I was a student I lived in a shared house for a time on Thomas Street. We were six altogether, living in a home on three levels, connected by a staircase that was only safe to use one person at a time. Going up had right of way.

One housemate was a musician. He spent the entire day at home going over bass scales. He stank. He stole our food, then insulted our intelligence by suggesting that mice had done it. Common frustrations with this housemate brought the remaining five of us closer together. We'd gather in the pub next door and complain about him, but as he was the landlord's nephew we ultimately understood that we could never kick him out. All five of us were bound by a kind of collective trauma. We developed a telepathy. Like dogs who know when their owners are on the way home, we could sense when this horrible housemate was outside the door. Our friendship continued long after we left the house. Two of the housemates even got together, married and had a kid. We still meet at that pub. We still talk about that housemate and shudder into pints. We reminisce like war veterans, and when we look into the distance we stare.

Dublin, similarly – and this goes for the expat as much as the locals – has a way of bringing people together in shared misery. It makes you feel alive. Each price hike or loose flagstone sets your pulse racing. This city needs another yardstick: not the quality of life, but lack of it. Give us abstract points for that! We're onlookers to a slowly unfolding disaster; we watch as the city booms, dives and refashions itself anew. We huddle in the shelter of a vandalised bus stop on a street where the wind blows in all directions, and feel the warm, unmistakable glow of Guinness farts – but, more importantly, rare human connection.

@conorcreighton

More on VICE:

The Bizarre World of Ireland's Celebrity 'Gangsters'

The Irish Prime Minister Keeps Embarrassing Ireland and Irish People

Meeting the Unlikely Amish-Mennonites of Rural Ireland

What is this, a city for ants? That's what Belgian photographer Jasper Léonard's photos make New York City, the tenth-largest metropolis in the world, look like. In a new photo book called New York Resized (Lannoo Publishers), Léonard uses a very long, jerry-rigged lens to create super impactful tilt-shift photos that make it look like he's got the whole world in his hands.

Tilt-shift, or the blurring of the background and foreground of a photo, isn't a new technique—in fact, you've been able to simulate it with an Instagram filter since 2011. But as you can see in New York Resized, the effect can be riveting in the right place at the right time. "Our brains know that this kind of blur is a signal that ‘the scale must be something small,'" Léonard says. His innovation for this series is a homemade adaptor combining a mirrorless Sony camera body with a Canon lens and attachments, which he says allowed him to "cover many different angles... and still be able to carry the camera gear around the city (without collapsing)."

Perched on rooftops and in helicopters, or occasionally using a drone, that mobility allowed him to capture unique "Only in New York" moments like Big Bird chilling in Central Park, bagpipers marching down the middle of a large avenue, and a chintzy white limo doing a late night bodega run. Thanks to the tilt-shift effect, each scene feels like it was assembled LEGO-style in a toy chest. Heavy-duty construction equipment becomes Tonka trucks, townhouses look like dollhouses, and highways are transformed into Hotwheels tracks. Léonard has given Antwerp and other cities in Belgium this treatment, but it feels ideally suited for this city of small villages on the Hudson.

Check out the mesmerizing effect of Léonard's photography in the images below. New York Resized is out November 20.

New York Resized is out November 20 with Lannoo Publishers. Learn more about Jasper Léonard on his website, and pre-order the book here.

This article originally appeared on Tonic

You might be a sapiosexual—someone who sees a person's intelligence as the most valued trait in romance—and not even realize it. The term only gained prominence in 2014 when OKCupid included it as a new choice amongst its sexual orientations. Since then, it's been quietly spreading to other corners of the online dating landscape: Last October, a swiping app called Sapio ("The Intelligent Dating App") launched that caters specifically to the intellectually aroused. Young sapiosexuals are suddenly coming out in larger numbers than ever. But how difficult is it to find true love in a world that frequently criticizes the orientation as nothing but pure snobbery? We asked a few of them to give us a lesson.

Katie, 32, New York, NY, Strategy for a Startup Investor

Was there a turning point for you in terms of finding smarter men more attractive?
College, when seemingly out of nowhere intelligent boys appeared and I realized I was only attracted to boys who could manage a feisty and logical argument in class. I've tried dating guys who weren't very bright but were ridiculously good looking, and I was bored within a week. One guy I was off and on with for three years used to ignore me after romantic dates because he found an algorithm that made the fan on his computer go faster. I thought it was a turn-on, but in hindsight that was one of many red flags.

Do you have a top turn-on?
Photographic memories are really sexy to me, but they can be a massive annoyance in a relationship.

Some people say that sapiosexuals are just snobs. What do you think about that?
I think it's true. I am a snob about it.

Tanoya, 23, Salt Lake City, UT, Hemocompatibility Study Director

What turns you on intellectually?
I am black, female, 23, have a BS in microbiology, am adopted, bisexual, and an atheist in an extremely religious society. In my experience, being all of these things makes it hard to have relationships. Being sapiosexual has been the best way for me to develop these relationships, romantic and otherwise.

When did you realize you were sapiosexual?
I was 18, very tired, and waiting outside a classroom for a philosophy of science class. This guy was scrawny looking. I told him I was trying to get into a lab and he told me he already had a lab job. He was telling me all about this bug that was found on this kind of tree in the Amazon and how it was his job to count all the different kinds of bugs. Physically he's not attractive, but I started to become attracted to him. It was then I realized I was more interested in conversation about science and things.

Amir, 29, Orange County, CA, Physician

Why do you identify as sapiosexual?
I've always been fascinated by science and knowledge. I have a masters and a medical degree and I'm doing my MBA. I like [to date] people who have the same mindset and who can carry on a conversation.

There's a lot of negativity online towards the designation—people saying this is just a way of being pretentious.
If you say you're against someone who went to school and is smart, that should say something more about you rather than smart people who are attracted to smart people.

Are looks still important to you?
Looks are a starting point, but after five minutes of conversation, they can fade away completely. Okay, it was great meeting you, I'll think, but I'm never going to talk to you again.

Megan, 29, Grand Rapids, MI, Sexologist

When did it click that you were primarily attracted to intelligence?
I think I really became aware of my sapiosexual nature when I told myself I had to stop hooking up with this smoking hot guy. Good dick is hard to quit, but I was just feeling this total lack of brain attraction. The sex was stellar, but we didn't have anything of substance to say to each other.

What is the most exciting thing about dating someone smart?
I love the idea that my partner is stroking my brain. Whether he is making me think or just dropping impressive knowledge bombs, that feeling has a whole-body effect. I love witty quips and word play, or situational observations. Anything that makes me say 'Oh! This dude came to play.'

Stephen, 29, Dearborn, MI, Researcher and Grad Student

What's the hardest aspect of identifying as a sapiosexual?
It was being introduced to the word, as opposed to the process of discovering how important intelligence is for me when determining what I find attractive.

Do you have one particular thing you look for in a partner?
A woman who can actually win debates against me is unbelievably hot. Oh, and yes, a library is a turn on as well, as long as at least one classical work exists in it.

Steve, 28, New York, NY, Online Dating Consultant

When did you first hear the term sapiosexual?
I first encountered it in the profile of an OkCupid user in August of 2012. Her profile had blown me away, so I was curious whether that "sapiosexual" term was the strongest explanatory variable for why I found her so compelling. I quickly discovered that many of my top matches on OkCupid identified as sapiosexuals, and that I could reliably find highly compatible individuals simply by searching that keyword.

If every sapiosexual has one particular quality they look for, what would yours be?
I seek out people with limitless curiosity and generativity. If you put them in an empty room, they'll create a game out of it.

Mariana, 28, Brooklyn, NY, Full-time Psych Student

Have you identified as a sapiosexual for long?
Not until fairly recently—maybe a couple of months ago. It all started with a couple of older female family members telling me that I should start lowering my standards; according to them, I could not expect to find an attractive man who met my tastes and who also happened to be smart. That, they claimed, did not exist. It was then that I realized just how important intelligence and knowledge were to me. That, by definition, I was a sapiosexual.

How does that choice play out for you day-to-day?
It plays out terribly! Meeting guys is not difficult per se, but the novelty wears thin quick, even more so when you realize that the guy you are with has no idea what you are talking about half of the time, or that they hold no interest in picking up a book or learning anything new outside of their comfort zone.

So how much do looks matter to you?
Oh they do matter! We are humans after all, so attraction and sexual desire works the same way for us. The only difference is that they don't take the main stage. Someone who turns on my brain is far more enticing and desirable than someone who only turns on my girly parts.

Mark, 29, Asheville, NC, R&D, Sales, Customer Service

So when did you even realize sapiosexuality was a thing?
Not until I saw it on OKCupid. When I saw it, my first reaction was, "That's so pretentious!" But then it occurred to me: If people cared more about my brain and less about my face, I'd probably get to go on more dates.

Why do you think there is often such negative reaction?
Part of the backlash here has got to be from people who are just having a meltdown over the dissolution of the traditional gender and sexual binaries. Also, I think declaring you're a sapiosexual is an inclusive and body-positive way to signal that you're open to people who may not consider themselves conventionally attractive.

Do you tell people that you consider yourself sapiosexual?
I don't, but I can understand why others would. If it's a dealbreaker for you that someone self-identifies as sapiosexual, then you're probably just as insufferable as you think they are.

Zack Baazov, 32, New York, NY, Medical Massage Therapist

When was the first time intelligence affected your decision to date someone?
I must have been 19 or 20. I was dating a pretty young blonde from school and I was pretty blinded by her beauty. I still remember how turned off I was when she and I were discussing the upcoming election, Bush versus Kerry. She told me she was voting Kerry, which was fine to me, but her reasoning for it was that she'd heard the Bush family eats children. At first I thought she was being facetious—but no—she actually believed that nonsense. Since then, I haven't been able to bring myself to have a one night stand with a woman who is lacking in intelligence, no matter how physically attractive.

How you would describe the type of intelligence that you look for specifically?
I am by no means considered educated, but I am confident in my own intelligence. Intelligence and education are two very separate categories. I've met highly intelligent bums and slackers and highly educated imbeciles, some of the latter having graduated from Ivy League universities.

Slippery Stairs is a Japanese game show in which a bunch of contestants donning bright bodysuits climb a flight of lubed-up stairs in order to win a prize. On Monday's episode of Desus & Mero, the two VICELAND hosts watched the bizarre contest unfold, commenting on the gushing waves of what appears to be KY Jelly tripping up the contestants, who look a little like drunk Power Rangers.

"Every time you think you've seen the weirdest thing from Japan," Desus said, "you haven't."

You can watch last night’s Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

DHS to Scrap Humanitarian Protections for US Haitians
The Department of Homeland Security is withdrawing “temporary protected status” for roughly 59,000 Haitians who came to the US after the devastating earthquake of 2010. They have until July 2019 to leave the US or will be at risk of deportation, despite a request by the Haitian government to extend the program. Separately on Monday, the DHS’s own watchdog said it had breached two court orders regarding President Trump’s initial travel ban order.—The New York Times /Politico

Feds Sue to Block AT&T/Time Warner Merger
The Justice Department filed suit against AT&T Monday to prevent it from acquiring Time Warner for about $85 billion. The department is arguing the mega-merger would harm consumers by raising prices, among other effects. The DOJ recently demanded CNN, a Time Warner network President Trump has publicly bashed, be sold before the merger could be approved.—VICE/VICE News

Border Patrol Agent Was Killed in Ambush, Union Claims
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council union, said the 36-year-old agent killed in the Big Bend area of Texas Sunday was hit “multiple times with a rock or rocks.” Judd said the victim, Rogelio Martinez, “appears to have been ambushed by a group of illegal aliens whom he was tracking.”—Los Angeles Times

Charlie Rose Accused of Serial Sexual Misconduct
At least eight women accused the longtime TV host of various forms of sexual harassment and worse over several years, including groping and appearing nude around them. Rose said he “always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.” PBS and Bloomberg TV announced the suspension of his show, and CBS also suspended him from broadcasting.—VICE News

International News

Bashar Al-Assad Thanks Putin for His Help
The Syrian president praised Vladimir Putin for “saving” his government from rebel forces with military support. The pair met at the Russian city of Sochi, marking just the second time Assad is said to have left Syria since fighting began in 2011. Putin said the military campaign was “wrapping up” and called for a political solution to the conflict.—Al Jazeera / Reuters

Impeachment of Mugabe Set to Begin
Zanu-PF officials were expected to votes in Zimbabwe’s parliament Tuesday to kickstart the impeachment of President Robert Mugabe. The recently fired vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa—an ouster that triggered last week’s military seizure of power—called on Mugabe to make way.—VICE News

Dozens Killed in Nigeria Suicide Attack
At least 50 people were killed when a suicide bomber detonated a device inside a mosque in Nigeria’s Adamawa state. Police said the bomber was a teenager who had pretended to be a worshipper. No group claimed responsibility, but Boko Haram militants have carried out similar attacks.—AP

Angela Merkel Says She's Prepared for Another Election
The German chancellor said she was “very skeptical” about trying to form a minority government after her plan to establish a three-party coalition fell apart. Merkel indicated she was willing to go through another federal vote early next year, describing herself as “a woman who has responsibility and is prepared to take responsibility in the future.”—The Guardian

Everything Else

Trump's Charity Foundation Is Shutting Down
The president’s advisors have begun to “wind up” the foundation and will give its final funds to other charities, according to a spokesperson. The organization’s latest return showed assets of around $970,000 at the end of last year.—NBC News

Colin Kaepernick Says Meek Mill in ‘Good Spirits’
The former San Francisco 49ers star said he spoke to the imprisoned rapper and that he was “in good spirits and humbled by the support the people have shown him.” Mill was sentenced to two to four years for violating the terms of his probation.—XXL

NAACP Announces Image Award Nominees
JAY-Z and Mary J. Blige are both up for five awards at the January ceremony. JAY-Z joins Chance the Rapper, director Ava DuVernay, and Issa Rae among the nominees for entertainer of the year.—Los Angeles Times

30 Accuse Ohio Lawmaker of Sexual Misconduct
Wes Goodman, an anti-LGBTQ Republican state legislator who resigned last week after being caught in a tryst with a man in his office, is now facing allegations of sexual harassment from 30 young men. Goodman is accused of sending explicit photos and messages soliciting sex to individuals who didn't want them and in some cases tried to block him.—VICE News

Shirley Manson Lets Morrissey Have It
The Garbage singer called out Morrissey for defending Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, as well as for making dismissive comments about their accusers. “Morrissey has lost the fucking plot," she wrote on Twitter. "Weinstein + Spacey unfairly attacked?...Fuck U Morrissey! Fuck YOU.”—i-D

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we explore how to ward off hackers armed with a device called the Wi-Fi Pineapple.

Lots of people are interested in serial killers. And right now, in the wake of the death of notorious 1960s cult leader Charles Manson at the age of 83, pseudo-psychological op-eds are being written in newsrooms around the globe, frantically trying to explain why.

But what’s it like being so interested that you decide to become penpals with a killer? Here’s Rocco Casella, who, briefly, became just that with Manson.

WATCH: Inside a Gang Initiation with the Silent Murder Crips

VICE: Hey Rocco. How did you come to be interested in Charles Manson and the Manson Family?
Rocco Casella: Just reading [1974 true crime book, by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry] Helter Skelter after seeing the 1970 miniseries with Steve Railsback in it. I would have been 17. I was a pretty average kid. Football team, C student, interested in computers and art – but I was really into horror movies at the time. This would have been 1988. But this stuff scared me much more than horror movies. Charlie and the Family were real, whereas Jason and Freddy were fiction.

Did you have an interest in serial killers in general?
Not really. Charles Manson was actually the first one I was interested in. I knew of John Wayne Gacy, obviously, because I lived in Illinois, Chicago, and he was local, and all the kids would share stories they’d heard about him. But no, I wasn’t really interested in this stuff before I read about Charlie and the Family.

When did you decide to write to him?
It would have been the same year, so 1988. I worked in a bookstore at the time, and someone came in asking about a book called The Garbage People, which is a book by John Gilmore and Ron Kenner about the Manson Family. He came in the next week with the addresses of the institutions where they were being incarcerated. I think he was trying to show off or something. I mailed all the Family. Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten, Lynette Fromme and Charlie. Only Charlie and Lynette wrote back to me.

The drawing Manson sent Rocco Casella

What did you say in your letter to them?
I sent basic letters saying that I had read all about them and was wondering if I could have their perspective about what happened, in their words. I heard back from Charlie and Leslie about four months later. I wanted to know if the media got it wrong back then. I’d watched a documentary about the Family, where the girls said that a lot of what was said about them wasn’t true. I was interested to know what they thought the truth was.

What did Charlie say in his letter?
Charlie sent a Photostat drawing and the single phrase, "Look down at me, you will see a fool, look up at me, you will see your lord. Look straight at me, and you will see yourself."

Did that creep you out?
When I saw the letter, I was disappointed more than anything. I’d already heard what he wrote in an interview. I think it was a go-to saying of his. There was nothing original or personal at all.

There’s a website address on the Photostat. What’s that about?
It was for the Family's conservation project. It’s no longer a reputable address. ATWA is short for air, water, trees, animals. I think Charlie valued those things more than humans, to be honest.

What did Lynette say?
Lynette responded with a postcard. She said, "I like – and I think most people like – to hear from the principles of any news story, rather than hearing an interpretation of what was said from the reporter. Reporters used to be much worse in always leaving out what was actually said. I’d like to see newspapers phased out as they are notoriously inaccurate, are produced from vast quantities of trees and are effemeral."

The postcard Rocco received from Lynette Fromme

I’m not sure effemeral is a word. Do you think she meant ephemeral?
I don’t know what she meant!

Sorry, go on, what else did she say?
She said, "Today’s news is tomorrow’s trash. That leads to more incredibly bad reporting. As for my opinions – they haven’t changed much from the day I came to jail, but I’ve seen more to support them. Lynette,"

Did your friends or family, no pun intended, know you’d written to them? What did they think?
My friends at the time knew. I showed my mom the letters when they arrived. She called me an idiot. That said, she was a bartender and took them to work to show everyone.

Did you ever consider keeping up the correspondence?
I never contemplated writing to any of them again. Around that time I got interested in the new FBI personality profiling they were doing on all the living killers, a project Agent John Douglas was conducting [the inspiration for the Netflix TV show, Mindhunter), and I kinda wanted to do that for a job. When I got the kooky letters from them I thought it was a waste of time if I wasn’t getting paid for it. I realised, if I wanted straight answers from these two, I’d have to dedicate more time to get through the babble. I grew into other interests, like girls, and my hobby of rollercoasters and travel. The only regret I have in writing them was I put more time into them than they deserved.

What did you feel when you’d heard Charlie had died?
I was a little sad when I heard he died. Not for Charlie, but for the families whom he hurt with his masterminding. And knowing what I know from reading about them so much, he was a deeply troubled person from the start, and never actually had a chance to ever be normal from birth. He was in abusive foster homes, in and out of boy’s homes and juvenile detention the first 15 of his 20 years. I think that shows that he just couldn’t adjust to what real life was. He was in jail or in institutions for 68 of his 83 years of existence. It was all he ever knew.

@jamesjammcmahon

For Valerio Cancellier and Cammy Stewart, tattooing is about pain: how much you can tolerate and what happens when you test that limit. They started the Brutal Black Project to push the boundaries of just how excruciating tattooing could be, offering free pieces to anyone brave enough to get them.

On this episode of Rites of Passage, VICE met up with Cancellier and Stewart as they prepared for a session with Frankie, a client from the Netherlands. After hearing what motivates the artists' violent work—and talking to Frankie about why he decided to get a piece—we sat down for his grueling, three-hour session, seeing what it's really like to get inked by the most hardcore artists in the game.

In the past week, Minnesota Senator Al Franken has been accused of sexual misconduct by two women. Talk radio host Leeann Tweeden on Thursday accused the former SNL star turned politician of kissing her without her consent and groping her while she was asleep—with photographic evidence to prove the latter—and on Monday, Lindsay Menz, a 33-year-old woman now living in Texas, came forward with her story of the former comedian groping her butt while taking a picture at the 2010 Minnesota State Fair, in a move we now called "the George HW."

Almost universally, the response to all this has been, That's terrible and Al Franken should be condemned! Some people (including me) think the Democrat should resign. Though he seems unlikely to do that, a Senate ethics investigation is underway, and Franken might eventually be censured, if not expelled. But there is one group of people willing to defend him: Franken's former SNL colleagues. On Tuesday morning, 36 women who worked with the senator during his time on SNL released the following statement:

We feel compelled to stand up for Al Franken, whom we have all had the pleasure of working with over the years on Saturday Night Live (SNL).

What Al did was stupid and foolish, and we think it was appropriate for him to apologize to Ms Tweeden, and to the public. In our experience, we know Al as a devoted and dedicated family man, a wonderful comedic performer, and an honorable public servant. That is why we are moved to quickly and directly affirm that after years of working with him, we would like to acknowledge that not one of us ever experienced any inappropriate behaviour; and mention our sincere appreciation that he treated each of us with the utmost respect and regard.

We send our support and gratitude to Al and his family this Thanksgiving and holiday season.

A man not behaving inappropriately with you does not preclude him from behaving inappropriately with other women. This letter is not a testament to Franken's character, nor is it a legitimate refutation of Tweeden or Menz's claims. Rather, it's a demonstration of what it looks like to be complicit, to provide cover for someone because they were a good person in your presence.

So how should have Franken's former SNL colleagues responded to the sexual misconduct allegations? Well, they didn't have to address them at all—saying nothing is highly underrated. As Lena Dunham demonstrated during her latest PR disaster—during which she defended a Girls writer who was accused of rape, then apologized for the defense after an outcry—sometimes silence really is golden.

Franken's former coworkers could've taken a note from current SNL cast members, who addressed Franken's sexual harassment allegations on Saturday's show. On the photo of Franken groping Tweeden as she slept, Weekend Update's Colin Jost remarked, "I know this photo looks bad. But, remember, it also is bad."

"And sure, this was taken before Franken ran for public office," Jost continued. "But it was also taken after he was a sophomore in high school. It's pretty hard to be like, 'Oh, come on, he didn't know any better. He was only 55.'"

If 36 of Franken's former colleagues felt compelled to issue a more supportive statement, they could've issued something similar to what Sarah Silverman said about her longtime friend and admitted sexual predator Louis C.K. On a recent episode of her Hulu show, I Love You America, Silverman said, emphasis mine:

One of my best friends of over 25 years, Louis C.K., masturbated in front of women. He wielded his power with women in fucked up ways, sometimes to the point where they left comedy entirely. I could couch this heartwarming stories of our friendship and what a great dad he is, but that's totally irrelevant, isn't it? It's a real mindfuck because I love Louis, and Louis did these things. Both of those statements are true. So I just keep asking myself, "Can you love someone who did bad things?" I can mull that over later, certainly, because the only people that matter are the victims... So, I hope it's OK if at once I am very angry for the women he wronged and the culture that enabled it, and sad because he's my friend.

There's a nonzero chance that any woman—any person—knows someone who has sexually abused someone else. (One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped during their lifetimes, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.) They might be generally kind to the people they don't abuse or harass. Like Franken, they might pursue laudable goals that benefit women in general. They have people who love them. Those people may still love them despite the horrible things they have done, or, like Silverman, they may feel conflicted.

As more and more alleged predators are outed, there are going to be many, many people stunned by the accusations against their friends and family. But that doesn't mean they should come out and stand publicly with the accused. As Silverman said, "The only people that matter are the victims."

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

It’s not very often you get to give advice on how to pull off a murder—like four times tops—but, just so you all know, it’s probably best to know the name of the person you ask to kill someone.

It’s advice that an owner of a Winnipeg bodega (or convenience store, depending on where you live) should have heeded because he’s been sentenced to five years for asking a customer—whose name he didn’t even know—to kill his business partner.

According to the court documents (which can be read in full here) the whole thing started with Amare Gebru, 44, and a female business partner purchasing Teddy’s Convenience store and accompanying laundromat with a 50/50 agreement. The partnership turned sour pretty quickly so Gebru decided to “punish” his partner. So, to do this, Gebru sought the help of one of his frequent customers.

The 28-year-old man said that Gebru first approached him in a laundromat, and testified that “prior to this time they had exchanged nothing more than the usual perfunctory comments related to making purchases and cashing cheques.” He also testified that at this time he did not even know Gebru’s name as prior to the laundromat meeting, the two would only call each other “bro” and has no idea why he in particular was asked to be a hitman.

They kept calling each other “bro” well until a murder plan came together.

The man said that, at first, Gebru asked him to rob his business partner and “was to use pepper spray or punch her” as she deposited money at a nearby bank. Over time, this plan morphed into Gebru asking the man to kill his business partner—he told the man he would buy him a house and give him $10,000 if he did this. Gebru apparently wasn’t the pickiest of murder customers though, asking the man to “use a gun or a knife or do whatever he had to do to kill her.”

Well, at this point, shit was getting a little too intense for the customer and he met with Gebru’s business partner in the parking lot where the original robbery was to take place and told her about the plan. He urged the woman to contact police because “if it was not him who would kill her it would be somebody else.”

The woman called the cops and Gebru was arrested shortly afterwards.

As a defence Gebru told the court that this customer was not hired for murder by him but his business partner. He said that the man jumped into his car with a gun but didn’t kill Gebru because “he was a good man.” Gebru also said that he scared this man away by raising a fist in front of him. The court, uh, found his testimony “not plausible.”

The CBC reports that after being found guilty to one count of both counselling to commit murder and counselling, Gebru and his lawyer fought for a sentence under six months, fearing the mandatory deportation order that comes with longer sentences. The two argued that it would see Gebru sent back to Ethiopia which he immigrated from in 2006. Gebru and his counsel said that he opposed the Ethiopian government and would likely be jailed and possibly tortured upon his return.

In the end though, Gebru was found guilty of one count of both counselling to commit murder and counselling to commit robbery and received five years as a result.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

Ariela Barer was told that one day she’d be a superhero, although she didn’t believe it at the time. While practicing complex physical movements during a theater class, she said the teacher told them, “You’ve got to get good at this. You guys are the superheroes of the future.”

“I always thought, I can never play a superhero. People like me aren't superheroes,” Barer told me in a phone interview. But now she’s starring in Hulu’s Marvel superhero drama Runaways, portraying Gert Yorkes—a highly political, nerdy Latina teenager who finds out she has a telepathic link with a genetically engineered dinosaur. You know, a superhero.

Runaways tells the story of six teenagers who find out their parents are actual supervillains in a powerful group called the Pride. After the discovery, each finds out that they have gifts of their own, from all-out super strength to alien DNA. Considering their ages, backgrounds, and mess of teen-related problems, it’s surprising that the Runaways could even be superheroes—emphasized even more by the diversity represented by the core cast, a stark contrast to the rest of the MCU canon. Out of the six leads, four are people of colour and four identify as women; Barer represents one of two Latina characters, the other played by newcomer and actual 14-year-old Allegra Acosta.

“Growing up I never had a real strong, not-a-stereotype-of-a-race character I could look up to,” Acosta said. “A lot of times, the Latin community pushes to be showcased in television.” Lyrica Okano, who plays Japanese American sorceress Nico Minoru, has similar things to say about her experience. While Acosta is relatively new to show business, Okano says that she’s been struggling for years to play an Asian character with depth.

“As an Asian American in this industry, you don't get a lot of roles that call for backstory and exploring relationships,” Okano said. “Growing up, I never had a character or superhero that I could look up to—a superhero that looked like me. I felt like going into this, preparing for Nico, I did feel this pressure of doing it right and making Nico feel as real as possible.”

Marvel Studios has been hit with some criticism over the years regarding the diversity of its movies and TV shows. In The Avengers in 2012, the group was all white with one woman; in Doctor Strange, the studio came under fire for casting Tilda Swinton as a whitewashed version of the Master, a character that’s normally Tibetan. Marvel is slowly making strides, with Black Panther out next year and Captain Marvel in 2019. On Agents of SHIELD, two of its leads are women of Chinese descent; in the Netflix universe, Luke Cage garnered rave reviews partially for leaning into its culture.

The Runaways property, which debuted in 2003 in a comic by Brian K. Vaughn, is remembered for being diverse for its time. It, at least, was a start towards building groups of superheroes that weren’t all white. In the original pitch for the series, Nico was originally a girl named Rachel Messina before Vaughn decided to make her Japanese. In later issues, writers introduced characters to the team that were Latino and genderfluid. So it makes sense that Runaways showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage would build on this legacy. Molly and Gert, who were white in the original comics, are now Latina.

“We're still not quite there yet at this industry, but this show is a huge step into that path to making this a normal thing to see on TV: A group of diverse characters that have different backgrounds and different stories to tell,” Okano tells me.

After reading the comics and noting how unique the core group was, actress Virginia Gardner, who plays Karolina, says that it made her see the show in a different light: “I saw what a genius Vaughn was, breaking those six stereotypes. I saw the importance of Karolina Dean, a gay superhero...it's a very special role.” (While the episodes available to critics didn’t show Karolina struggling with her sexual identity, Gardner confirms that it’s a core part of her character’s arc this season).

Even in its typically white characters, like Chase (played by Gregg Sulkin), there’s some subversion. While Chase in the comics and in the show is first portrayed as a stereotypical dumb jock, his story reveals that he has some depth. “I think it's amazing that it's six lead characters with different backgrounds and from different parts of our lives,” Sulkin explains. “The charm of the show is that six kids you don't expect to be friends end up becoming a team to potentially save the world and to do something for the greater good.“

Rhenzy Feliz, who plays the de facto Runaways leader Alex Wilder, is aware of how important it is to play not only a black character at the forefront of a series, but as the leader of a superhero group. He said he dressed up as Black Panther for Halloween as another way to celebrate. “It's a great feeling. It feels like you're helping Hollywood, you're helping somebody out there,” he explains. “People are starting to realize it matters what it sees on our televisions, what we see on our movie screens.”

Follow Carli Velocci on Twitter.

"Uh, please can you take your hand out of my hair?" – every black woman in the western world, at least once in her life, if not many, many times more.

Solange wrote a song about this – "this" being people, everywhere, thinking it's totally fine to touch the hair of black people they've never met – and she's not the only person to have come up with a creative response to the problem. After multiple, multiple strangers grabbed at her hair, Portland-based art director Momo Pixel took her frustrations and turned them into the genius Hair Nah, a video game where you swat away all those annoying, hair-hungry hands. Understandably, after a tweet of Momo's went viral last week, the internet is very excited about this game.

I spoke to Momo at 4AM her time about being a viral sensation, and how, when it comes to diversity, things are slowly and surely getting better.

This article has been edited for clarity and length.

VICE: Was there one specific incident that prompted you to create Hair Nah?
Momo Pixel: I wouldn't say there was an instance particularly. I was just annoyed, because [people touching my hair] happens more where I live now than any city I've lived in. I was trying to explain how it feels to my boss, and he couldn't understand, so he acted it out – and when he was doing it, oh man, he looked ridiculous. I said in my head, 'Oh, this would be a funny game,' but I think I said it out loud, because he was like, "You should. You should make it." I already had a script called Hair Nah! because I write about this often.

Why do you think strangers feel entitled to touch black women’s hair?
The obvious answer is just slavery. It’s not as bad [as back then] – of course not. But as a white person in general, you just have a freedom nobody else has. You’re allowed to have things and you can be whoever you want to be and people have to adjust to you. I think when [non-black] women are walking down the street they’re like, 'Oh, I like it,' and it's intuitive or just automatic to them to touch it, because they're allowed to. And I’m like, "I’m not an item. You don’t own me. Your privilege stops here." I definitely think it's an entitlement and a privilege, and, you know, it stems from where it stems from.

How long did it take you to make?
Ten long-ass months. I basically had a creative baby.

WATCH: Being Black in Japan

Oh wow.
It took so long. I had the idea in February, but I work. The thing about my job that's so dope is that they supported this. They were like, "Why not make this game while you’re at work? You can work on it with your co-workers.” I was like, "For real? [laughs] But I still had to do my work, which is why it took so long. There were a lot of all-nighters, a lot of designing. I’ve never designed a game before.

What are your thoughts on the lack of black women in gaming, and in tech in general?
I think it's getting better. But I’ve never been on this side of it. Normally I’m a regular consumer, so I’m usually like, "Oh my gosh! A black girl did what? Yaaas!" This is my first time being the black girl people are saying yes about. But black women are the type who do. If the lane doesn’t exist, we create it. I’m not worried about us. I give us five years, if that. We’ll own a game station or something. Plus, there are all these blogs and stuff. Black girls gamers and black nerds. I see all of those and I follow them, so I know there's improvement.

You chose a wide array of skin tones for the game.
I said to myself, "If I’m gonna make a game I’m gonna do it right." At first, I had three skin tones, but then I was like, 'Three doesn't cover it,' so I kept adding more. That’s also why I did all the different hairstyles, because we change our hair all the time.

Photo courtesy of Momo Pixel

Do you think tech companies need to be more inclusive, or are you more in the lane that we should create our own stuff?
Both. Tech companies should most definitely be inclusive – but I dunno, it's hard. Especially in my industry. This whole diversity thing that’s happening, I think sometimes people hire for the wrong reasons. Of course big companies should be more inclusive, but I hate when people only hire us because it’s a movement, a trend. Like, 'Oh, she’s a black woman, I’m gonna throw you in here.' They don’t actually consider who this person is. They don’t make an environment to keep her. Hiring is one thing, but actually having a working environment to sustain her is another. I would say yes, be inclusive, but be inclusive with purpose. And have a plan to support and build up [POC], and allow them to be them.

Is it important to you to bring awareness to the issues in your community?
Oh yeah. All my work, I always do it for the culture. Even when [my company] worked for Nintendo, we made sure we cast diverse people. I feel like if my work isn't pushing culture forward, or giving commentary or trying to make it easier for us, then there's no point in me doing it. Art and the creative industries, most of it is white-owned, and I feel like you have to do stuff for your culture. I don't want to make art that doesn't relate to myself – that would be weird.

Are there any plans for the game to be a smartphone app?
Yeah! I’m going start on that very soon. I definitely want it to be an app. I want to have a version with black men – I know it happens to them as well. I want to add more levels to the game and keep updating it. I want to have merch, because I’m a fashion designer too, and I was like, ' Hair Nah! outfits and clothes would be amazing!'

Hair Nah! was developed by artist and Wieden+Kennedy art director Momo Pixel. Momo and a team at W+K contributed to the project.

@shaydakisses

Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen will foot the bill for those Czech tourists who were fined for wearing mankinis, Cohen said Monday.

Last week, the BBC reported that Kazakhstani police arrested six Czech men in the city of Astana after they dressed up like Borat for a photo op, complete with Borat-style wigs and matching lime-green mankinis. They were reportedly charged about $67 each for "minor hooliganism" and sent on their way.

Cohen, of course, made the mankini famous in his 2006 film and on the beach at Cannes during its premiere. He apparently felt some responsibility when he heard about the arrest and decided he should shell out the $400 or so for the men's failed Borat tribute.

"To my Czech mates who were arrested," Cohen wrote in a Facebook post Monday night, "send me your details and proof that it was you, and I'll pay your fine."

He also included an email address where the guys should contact him: arrestedforwearingyourmankini@gmail.com.

Borat—or, for the sake of accuracy, Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan—was a massive hit in the United States but didn't go over so well in Kazakhstan, the supposed home country of Cohen's hapless alter-ego. The country banned Cohen from using its .kz domain, threatened him with lawsuits, and floated the idea of banning the film from Kazakhstan entirely.

In the years following the movie's release, though, Kazakhstan has seemingly warmed to the movie. In 2012, the country's then foreign minister said he was "grateful" to Cohen for reportedly increasing the country's tourism ten-fold. Apparently tourists in mankinis is still pushing it.

It's still unclear whether the Czech men have taken Cohen up on the offer—or if they ever managed to get the group photo that started this whole thing.

Lucasfilm released a new trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi on YouTube Tuesday morning, shedding some light on the rift between hermitic Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and his new disciple, Rey, teased in previous clips.

The new footage focuses on Luke's reaction to a vision Rey has while training. She says she sees, "Light, darkness, and something else. It's calling me," and Luke absolutely loses his shit. He screams at her to resist whatever it is she's sensing, and she blows open the cliffs they're standing on. It's no wonder Rey appears to visit Kylo Ren for advice, since her teacher desperately needs to take a chill pill.

Rey's visions of light and darkness are cut with familiar faces, mostly from scenes touched on in that first, epic trailer or the teaser released at the beginning of the month. Stormtrooper-turned-Resistance fighter Finn faces off against the First Order's Captain Phasma, ace pilot Poe Dameron watches ships explode in space, Supreme Leader Snoke reaches out his hand, and General Leia Organa looks off into the distance in a scene it was previously implied Kylo Ren could blow up his mother's ship.

There's less than a month until The Last Jedi hits theaters and the rift between Luke and Rey will be fully explained. But it probably has something to do with his teaching method of shouting, "No no no!" right in her ear to get a message across.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is in theaters December 14, 2017.

Earth is round. This is not a highly disputed fact, unless you're a member of the 16th-century Roman Inquisition or the rapper B.o.B. And yet, thanks to an immeasurably flawed conspiracy theory, a small but dedicated group of people is still convinced that Earth is flat. One of these so-called Flat Earthers is a guy named "Mad" Mike Hughes, and Hughes—a 61-year-old limo driver—has spent the past few years building a homemade, steam-powered rocket in his garage to prove he's right.

This Saturday, Hughes will climb aboard and launch himself and the rocket up into the air, hoping to move one step closer to demonstrating, once and for all, that the world as we know it is actually a flat disk with a giant wall of ice around it, the Associated Press reports.

"I don’t believe in science," Hughes told the AP. "I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that’s not science, that’s just a formula. There’s no difference between science and science fiction."

Hughes will launch his rocket—which cost him about $20,000 to build and is sponsored by the group Research Flat Earth—Saturday afternoon over Amboy, a ghost town in California. He expects to hit speeds of up to 500 MPH.

"If you’re not scared to death, you’re an idiot," Hughes said. "It’s scary as hell, but none of us are getting out of this world alive. I like to do extraordinary things that no one else can do, and no one in the history of mankind has designed, built, and launched himself in his own rocket."

Hughes already took to the skies back in 2014, when he launched himself 1,374 feet into the air in an earlier rocket. He survived, but reportedly needed three days to recover from the effects of the G-forces.

Saturday's launch will be available to watch live on "Internet PPV," according to Hughes's personal website. If he pulls off the mission, Hughes told the AP, he plans to start work on a rocket that will take him even higher, hoping to eventually make it to space and see the big, flat Necco wafer that is our planet with his own eyes.

"Nothing is out of reach," Hughes said. "Anything can be done. You just have to put enough money, time, and thought into it."