Steph Curry was living his best life at his 30th birthday party, and we have the Snapchat videos to prove it. On Wednesday's episode of Desus & Mero, the hosts shared some of the best footage of the basketball star going all out and it is glorious.

On the eve of his party, Curry pulled up on a yacht, ate a plate of ribs wearing a white shirt (!) while E-40 performed, and danced alongside a shoe-less, swagger-less Klay Thompson. Even Curry's grandma turned up.

You can watch the latest episode of Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

In March 2018, VICE travelled to the Beqaa Valley with photojournalist Andrew Quilty and World Vision Australia to document stories of refugees on the seventh anniversary of the Syrian War.

Seven years ago, the Arab Spring was sweeping across the Middle East. A generation of young Arabs called for revolution, toppling governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Many thought the protests that broke out in the Syrian city of Daraa would spell the end of the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. But things quickly turned violent.

The war that's followed has seen nearly five million Syrians flee the country in fear for their lives, many of them children. These kids are sometimes called Syria's "lost generation." Some of them have crossed continents and oceans in search of safety. Others only made it past the mountains that flank Syria's western border, to the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon.

Australian photojournalist Andrew Quilty travelled with VICE to the Beqaa to meet Syrians who've turned 18 this year, just before the war's seventh anniversary. He photographed them outside their tents, many made from old advertising billboards, emblazoned with the splurges of another life.

These young people were 11 years old when the war broke out. They've spent their entire teenagehood in the Beqaa, some just hours from their hometowns. Most pass the time working in manual labour jobs, very few go to school. Fewer still celebrated their 18th birthday.

Zakaria. Photo by Andrew Quilty

Zakaria, 18
Aleppo

Zakaria is from the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria. He has lived in one of the Beqaa Valley's many Informal Tent Settlements (ITS) for the past two years. He left home because the situation in Syria became too dangerous, thanks to constant bombings from regime aircraft. He also said it just became too expensive to survive.

On his 18th birthday he says he "did absolutely nothing, honestly."

In different circumstances, he says he would've wanted to throw a party and celebrate the day with his friends. The last birthday he celebrated, he says, was his 15th.

Nasir. Photo by Andrew Quilty

Nasir, 18
Afrin

Nasir is originally from the Syrian city of Afrin, about an hour and a half north of Aleppo. It is currently held by the Kurds but just this week was encircled by Turkish forces, according to media reports.

Since fleeing his home in Afrin six years ago, Nasir has lived as a refugee in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley. He says he left Syria mostly because all of the work dried up when the country's civil war broke out.

He didn't celebrate his 18th birthday. Had he been back home, he says, he'd have invited friends to celebrate under his family's olive trees. The last birthday he remembers celebrating was in Afrin, back in 2013.

WATCH: VICE Australia travelled to Lebanon to meet the young Syrian refugees living in limbo

Mirvat. Photo by Andrew Quilty.

Mirvat, 18
Raqqa

Mirvat is from Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the Islamic State. She has lived in Lebanon's central Beqaa Valley for seven years, since the very beginning of the war.

She did nothing to celebrate her 18th birthday. Partly, she says, this was because her family was still grieving for the death of her sister.

Issa. Photo by Andrew Quilty

Issa, 18
Aleppo

Issa celebrated his last birthday before he left his hometown of Aleppo, six years ago. His family fled Syria after his father rolled the family car while driving through active fighting. Since leaving, he has lived only in the Beqaa Valley.

For his 18th birthday, Issa didn't do anything to celebrate. "If the situation was different we would have enjoyed [it] a little bit," he says, "but there's nothing to do here."

Rajab. Photo by Andrew Quilty

Rajab, 18
Aleppo

Rajab is from Aleppo, Syria. He left his home five years ago because there was no work, and the city was under bombardment. Since then, he's been one of the hundreds of thousands of temporarily displaced people living in the Beqaa Valley.

He celebrated his 18th birthday alone, he says, because his friends are all far away. He didn't have a birthday cake, but he did buy himself some new clothes for the occasion. He says the last time he properly celebrated a birthday was when he was 13. Back then, there was a cake. And music.

Mohammad. Photo by Andrew Quilty.

Mohammad, 18
Daraa

Mohammad is from Daraa, the small Syrian town where a revolt against the Syrian regime ignited the war that followed. For the past five years, since leaving Daraa, he's lived in this ITS in Lebanon's central Beqaa Valley "because it [his city] was ruined."

He didn't celebrate his 18th birthday, but he does remember the last birthday he celebrated in Syria. It was just a small party with family. They ate sweets, drank juice, and listened to music. He doesn't have any relatives living in Beqaa other than his mother and sister, he explains, so he doesn't celebrate birthdays anymore.

Ramia. Photo by Andrew Quilty

Ramia, 18
Aleppo

Ramia is from Aleppo, Syria but she's lived in the Beqaa in an Informal Tented Settlement "since the beginning of the war" seven years ago. For a while, she says, her family tried to stay in their hometown while a city nearby was being bombed. Ultimately though, they had to leave.

She says she didn't celebrate her 18th birthday because none of her friends are here. But she definitely would have had she been back home, under different circumstances. The last time she celebrated her birthday was back home in Aleppo, the day she turned 11. She had a small party at home and brought sweets to her friends.

Kousai. Photo by Andrew Quilty.

Kousai, 18
Raqqa

Kousai is from Raqqa, Syria, the former de facto capital of the Islamic State. He says he left Syria with his family because the war broke out, and because he didn't want to be conscripted into the national army.

He celebrated his 18th birthday with his friends in the ITS he now calls home. Because he doesn't have any documentation to prove his refugee status, he isn't allowed to leave the camp. So instead of going out, he bought sweets and arguile [hookah] into the camp.

He's one of the few Syrians in the Beqaa who are able to celebrate their birthday. He says it's because his friends have money to spend on such things because they work, and they have nothing else to spend their money on.

Malak. Photo by Andrew Quilty

Malak, 18
Aleppo

Malak doesn't remember the last birthday she celebrated.

Originally from Aleppo, she has been in an ITS in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley for "a long time. Since the start of the war."

She says she didn't do anything to celebrate her 18th birthday. "We stayed at home" she says, shrugging her shoulders. Had circumstances been different, she says she "would have thrown a party."

Ahmad. Photo by Andrew Quilty

Ahmad, 18
Aleppo

Ahmad is from the outskirts of Aleppo. He fled his home six years ago, and has lived as a refugee in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley ever since.

He says he didn't celebrate his 18th birthday. Not even with a cake. In different circumstances, before the war, he says he would've celebrated with his friends. The last birthday he remembers celebrating was when he was back in Syria.

Ghouroub. Photo by Andrew Quilty.

Ghouroub, 18
Aleppo

Ghouroub is from Aleppo, Syria. She fled over the border to Lebanon four years ago with her mother and father, after their house was destroyed, killing one of her brothers. Her surviving brothers and sisters remained behind in Syria. Ever since, she has lived in an ITS in the Beqaa.

Because her family was still grieving for her brother three years on, she didn't celebrate her 18th birthday. She's not even exactly sure of the date of her birthday, she says, because celebrating them has never been a tradition in her family.

Ismail. Photo by Andrew Quilty.

Ismail, 18
Aleppo

Ismail is from Aleppo but says the Syrian War gave him no choice but to leave. He fled six years ago, and has been living in the Beqaa Valley ever since.

He did nothing to celebrate his 18th birthday but he says he definitely would have if circumstances were different. He knows he used to celebrate his birthdays, but he only remembers through the photographs he's seen.

Andrew Quilty is an Australian photojournalist, based in Afghanistan. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram

This article originally appeared on VICE AU.

This article originally appeared VICE Denmark

Casper Hilt is a social worker and animal rights activist from Copenhagen. The 35-year-old is the founding director of the group Fremtiden er Vegansk (The Future is Vegan), and an active member of animal rights organisations Anonymous for the Voiceless, Go Vegan and Direct Action Everywhere.

Casper spends most of his time organising protests and campaigns aimed at informing the people of Denmark about the plight of animals in industrialised farming. "Animals feel things, just like you and I, and they suffer every day, all over the world, for no reason whatsoever," he tells me. "People label me an extremist or a fanatic. Either that or I’m sanctimonious, and have a holier-than-thou attitude. But the only difference between me and those people is that I recognise the fact that animals suffer, due to our taste for their flesh. That's what I want people to understand."

I spoke to Casper about whether he thinks an animal's life is worth the same as a human's, whether you can be prejudiced against a chicken and if keeping pets is wrong.

VICE: How do you feel about slaughtering animals, but treating them humanely during their lives?
Casper Hilt: Try turning that around. If someone is killed in the prime of his or her life, the automatic response isn't, "Well, it's a good thing they died while they were young and happy."

So do you think the life of an animal is just as important as a human's life?
Honestly, there's no easy answer here – you have to factor a lot in. Is the life of a terrible person worth more than your pet dog? On the most basic level, a human's life is not worth more than an animal's life, but in the end, it's much more complicated than that.

If you could only save one, would you save the life of a chicken or a baby?
That's an impossible question to answer. I guess my heart would tell me to save the baby, because it resembles me and I can relate to it. But I would do everything in my power to save both. And if I couldn't save both, it would haunt me for the rest of my life.

Watch: 10 Questions You Always Wanted to Ask a Serial Killer Profiler

Are there any people you wouldn’t save over the life of an animal?
It's a pretty unrealistic scenario, but for the sake of the argument, lets take some random animal, like a two-year-old wild boar, and a convicted serial killer. In that hypothetical situation, I would say that it's not just about who they are, but also about what they've done. And considering the boar would never wilfully harm anyone, I'd probably save the animal. But the decision would still haunt me.

In your campaigns, you talk a lot about speciesism. As a carnivore, am I a speciesist?
Speciesism means that you condone the poor treatment of other living beings simply because they belong to a different species, and it's at the root of the specific kind of evil that I campaign against. It's the dominant culture and ideology, and the reason why you love and protect your dog but have no qualms about a pig having to die a gruesome death so you can eat it. From a logical standpoint, it makes no sense – it assigns animals a lower value just because they are of a different species. It's the same skewed logic as with sexism and racism, but I think speciesism predates both.

So yes, you are a speciesist, but it's probably not a conscious decision on your part. We're all raised in a society that condones the mistreatment of some animals.

In the past, you've compared eating meat to the Holocaust. Why?
I very rarely make that comparison, and I want to make it extremely clear that in saying that, I am in no way comparing Jewish people to animals. I would never do that. I have, however, compared the crimes committed against Jewish people during the Second World War to the way pigs are treated today. I think the atrocious treatment is the same – the difference to me is that the victims look different and operate on different levels of consciousness.

Watch: 10 Questions You Always Wanted to Ask an Ethical Hacker

So if you consider pork production to be a form of genocide, shouldn't you be doing a lot more to end it?
I ask myself that every day. As an activist, you can easily trap yourself in a wicked spiral of self-doubt, where you keep questioning whether or not you are doing enough for the cause. One vegan can't change the world, but I am one amongst millions and we are growing in numbers by the day. Eventually we'll change the world.

What's your opinion on keeping pets?
If the animal has been rescued from a cruel fate, then I think it's OK. But buying another individual for companionship is, in my view, no better than buying them for entertainment purposes or for food. I think it's fine to get a dog from a pound, but not from a breeder. Breeding is never in the interest of the animal.

So do you think keeping a hamster in a cage is the same as keeping a child locked up in a basement?
The short answer is yes. I think the experience is the same because both will experience emotional stress, anxiety and grief. But humans have the cognitive ability to conceptualise freedom and hope. And as far as we know, animals don't. So I'd say being incarcerated is worse for them, because it's a never-ending experience. Think about it – would you rather be locked up with or without at least the hope of being able to escape?

Have you ever killed an animal?
I often went fishing as a child. At the time I was under the impression that fishing was just a fun hobby. But I hated the smell and the taste of fish, so I never ate any of the ones we caught. Eventually as a teenager I realised how crazy fishing was, so I stopped.

I feel bad that I've killed and eaten animals in my life, but I feel even worse about all the milk, cheese and eggs I consumed when I was a vegetarian. I'd rather be a pig with a short life than a dairy cow being exploited for years. But yes, I do feel remorseful and that's why I work so hard as an activist today. I feel terrible about myself when I think of all the innocent animals I have helped exploit and kill, just for the sake of my taste buds.

This article originally appeared on VICE DA.

The scandal over the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal in the Salisbury branch of of-the-shelf Italian restaurant Zizi continues to damage relations between the UK and Russia. Britain has sent 23 Russian diplomats packing, and Boris Johnson has accused the Kremlin of being “smug”.

As Britain considers further sanctions, a potential ban on Russian backed news channel RT is one possible retaliatory measure. Soon, we may have to look elsewhere for neurotoxic opinions. The modern executive’s alternative to InfoWars has been the butt of a thousand jokes. Yet it has also proved remarkably popular. Are RT and its sister, news website and radio show Sputnik News, just lousy low-down Kremlim shills? Or is there a deeper truth in their cranky perspectives?

I phoned up Sputnik News’ UK bureau chief, Egor Piskunov, to ask whether he’s living on borrowed time.

VICE: Hi Egor. How much are you in contact with head office? Is the word coming up and down the line from Moscow?
Egor: No no, that's not the way it works. We coordinate with the editors in Moscow and in America so that you know we don't do the same stories or just to keep things in order. But when it comes to picking stories that’s us here in the UK. I come to the office and my team presents me with their pitches for what stories they want to do.

But is there a core mission statement in terms of whose views you're supposed to be representing and how you come by that perspective?
There's no such statement.

There's a, let’s say, “anti-globalist” feel to RT – that sort of alternative perspective of Max Keyser, of the people who rant about GMOs. It’s anti-system.
The journalists themselves are not allowed to have an opinion. But the contributors, we just provide them a platform to express their views. We look at the way things are presented by mainstream media, and we try to explain what’s often being either ignored, or not enough attention is being paid. For instance, the story with the former double agent, and this tragic incident. We think that little attention is paid in the mainstream media to the fact that no evidence has been presented.

So if you had to shorthand the mission statement, is it a general deep-rooted skepticism about the global order, or is the aim to represent what you might call “ a Russian perspective”? Not necessarily a Kremlin perspective, but a Russian perspective, on current events?
I wouldn't really say a “Russian perspective” because the hosts are really not Russians, they're Scottish, or English, and in that sense, I wouldn't really say anti-globalist. I’d like to think of it as an alternative source of open news from mainstream media, which may offer a platform to those who don't get that platform. We just try to question stuff.

Why was it important to the Russian state to set up news agencies to question global events? What’s the benefit of all this “questioning”?
There was a general trend in the world, in the middle of the last decade, when a lot a lot of countries basically launched their channels or agencies aimed at the global audience.

But what did the Kremlin hope to gain? What was the lens on the world they wanted to create?
It's not about the Kremlin launching something. It's more about how we found our niche, you know, the way we compete with our rivals.

Okay. So what are the alternative facts about Sergei Skripal that we’re not getting?
I think that much more attention needs to be paid to the lack of evidence. I was just watching the discussions in the British Parliament, and it's interesting how it works. It starts with this presumption that might make sense – there’s a chance that it's a Russian. And then two minutes later they’re discussing sanctions. Then it’s already presented as fact that Russia was involved. The only person who actually questioned it was Jeremy Corbyn. And he was basically shouted down.

Right.
The other thing is that I think that’s never said is the fact that this incident happened near a chemical laboratory. In as far as I understand, this was a nerve agent produced in the Soviet Union. So when the USSR collapsed, it created a whole list of countries it could have come from.

Why do you believe the British press is singing from the same hymn sheet on this one?
It's just the general anti-Russian feeling.

Russophobia?
You might say.

Is that sad?
I grew up partly in the US, so I do consider myself an international person. l would love for Russia and the West to have a great relationship, But just right now, things like these are complicating this relationship a lot.

I mean, some would say that chopping bits off of the Ukraine is complicating that great relationship…
Are you talking about the reunification with the Crimea? That's something for the Foreign Ministry to comment on really.

Do you think Mr Putin is capable of assassinating people on British soil?
I don't really think that's something that I should be commenting on.

If you value your life?
I mean have to ask yourself, what would be the benefit to Russia? This is just this is the worst possible time for or something like this.

Who stands to gain?
That is a good question, and I'd love to know.

I think we all would like to know who is behind it, because whoever's behind it is clearly behind a far bigger crisis in international relations.
I mean I would myself be very keen on finding out.

I know. And then perhaps that same person could have done the same thing to Alexander Litvinenko 12 years ago, whoever that person was.
I think it's two different cases and perhaps that's why – with Skripal – that's why they are trying to represent him now as a critic of the of the Kremlin to make people link those ideas.

Do you think Mr Putin had Litvinenko bumped off?
No, I don’t. It's kind of odd that you're asking me these questions. I don't think Putin bumped anyone off.

Right, but that's not an odd view for me to have. I feel like for a lot of people in the West, this is canonical for us. There was a public inquiry was there not?
And what did it conclude?

You tell me?
I know for sure that it didn't conclude that the President of Russia assassinated anyone.

Wait. Not the President literally, but the powers vested in the President. I don't think Putin himself went along with the poison-tipped umbrella…
I don't think Russia took part in any of those things. But that is something you should really be speaking to you a specialist on espionage or intelligence officers or something.

So it says here: “The inquiry concluded there was a strong probability of agents acting under the direction of the FSB, approved by both the FSB chief and President Putin.” But let’s move on. How much of the anti-gay opinions of [the boss of Sputnik’s parent company] Dmitry Kiselyov percolates through into what you put out in the West?
Yeah, we don't have an anti-gay agenda. Personal opinion is something else. I don't even know – I mean you're putting me in a position – I don't know him personally. I don't know what his agenda is, but I know for sure that the agenda that I approve every day is definitely not that.

I mean, he did say that the hearts of gays were not fit for transplant and should be taken from their bodies and burned.

…

Which might be a, um , you know… a mistranslation… Anyway, any final thoughts?

Okay, so we're the Russian media, but that doesn't mean that we're like Communists robots. Many people unfortunately still live by that stereotype. But so much time has passed since then.

Okay, thanks Egor!

@gavhaynes

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The people who work in hotels have seen a lot of shit, both literally and figuratively.

Tantrums, orgies, heart attacks, nudity, even the occasional hostage situation—going on holiday can bring out both the best and the worst in us, and the stalwart men and women of the hotel industry are often the ones left to play clean-up, in the process becoming more acquainted with the details of their guests' private lives than they ever needed (or wanted) to be.

VICE has collected tales from the back side of the front desk, stories that are one part The Hangover and one part The Shining—stories of needles and broken dildos, code names, piles of cash, and enough bodily fluids to fill a complimentary ice bucket.

For us, it's a vacation. For them, it's a multi-night stay in Hell with two king-sized beds, no A/C, and a fully-stocked minibar of human depravity.

*All names have been changed to preserve anonymity

'Dicks Everywhere'

When I was 19, I was working in a five-star hotel in Auckland, and one night we got a noise complaint about a “banging sound” coming from someone's room. So, two of us—both women—go upstairs, knock on the door, the door flies open, and out wafts the smell of sweat and semen. And in the background, it's no longer the boring old hotel room, but instead a full-on porn set with an all male orgy happening right in front of us. The assistant or whoever who answers the door is all pissed-off that we've ruined their take, and neither of us knows where to look, because there are just dicks everywhere. So, I tried to politely stutter through a sentence asking them to, you know, maybe keep it down, at which point one of the men in this orgy starts freaking out because he's now lost his boner. Long story short, the assistant says—snarkily—that they only have one more scene left then they'd be keeping the noise levels down.

I didn't argue and left them to it. — Janet, 35

Hostage situation

I had been working at this downtown hotel for about three months. We were getting into the slow season, and I was working the night shift with my supervisor—I was the front desk, he was in the back office. Around 9 PM, as I'm winding down my night, these two women approached the desk, and told me I might want to have security check their floor, as there was someone banging on the door of the room next to theirs. But before I could go mention it to my supervisor, the switchboard starts going off. Sure enough, it was the guest in the room these two women had mentioned—he told me someone was trying to break down his door, and that I needed to get security up there. I told him I'd look into it, but before I could do anything else, the phone rang again—this time from an outside line. Now there's a woman on the phone, saying “Someone's holding my friend hostage in one of your rooms.” Again, same room.

Now this was a moderately-sized downtown hotel. We had security on the overnight shift, but they didn’t start until 11 PM, so really, this situation was going to be my supervisor's problem—except when I went to find him, he wasn’t in the back office. And he didn’t have his radio. So there I was, with a major situation on my hands, and the only people in the hotel were me, and two janitors, both under five-foot-five, with the collective threat level of a fucking koala bear. A minute later, there was another call from a different guest on the same floor, the woman on the other end telling me she was too scared to leave her room. The two women from earlier returned to the front desk insisting I call 911.

So, I did.

I told them what I'd heard. And I used the word “hostage.” And in the meantime, the fucking switchboard wouldn’t stop ringing. I put the 911 operator on hold. The man from the room screamed at me to get security up to help him. The woman from the outside line screamed that her friend was in danger. I told her the police were on their way. I went back to the 911 call, and the person on the other end was like: “Sir. You can't put 911 on hold in the middle of a hostage situation.”

After a few minutes, eight police cars showed up. They started planning their assault, and in the meantime, I tried to remain calm and got back to helping some other guests—in this case, a British woman and her daughter. Suddenly the two women shouted, “That’s the guy!” pointing at a man who had just hurried out the front doors. I heard a gun being cocked, and suddenly all eight cops poured around the corner, racing out after this guy—the last of whom was a giant, seven-foot-tall black guy carrying the largest shotgun I’ve ever seen. We found out later that our guest had ordered a sex worker, they'd fought about the price, she'd stolen his wallet and locked herself in the bathroom. She'd called her pimp, who'd tried to beat down the door, and she'd called her friends, who had been phoning the hotel saying she was a hostage. It was a fucking mess.

A few minutes after it was all over, my supervisor returned from what turned out to be his dinner break. And of course, he walks past eight cop cars, and goes: “What the hell did you do?” Of course, we kicked the guest out. Even after all that, he still didn’t get it, asking something to the effect of: “Why aren’t you protecting me from these sluts?” — Brad, 32

Airline debauchery

For us, airline crews were always the most disgusting guests. Without fail, room service would deliver food to one of their rooms only to find a group of them, all butt-naked. One time, one of my workmates knocked on the door and the guy who answered had a full hard-on but was still wearing a condom. They didn't care one bit about being naked in front of us. Worse was, they'd leave their rooms in such a gross state the housekeepers should have worn hazmat suits. They'd often leave *actual shit* in their beds or behind the front door, leave used condoms all over the place. Just awful. — Kara, 42

'I want your most expensive room'

Back in 2001, my wife and I took over a hotel on a small island—probably 5,000 people. It's an eclectic place that attracts some very intense people—wild, artistic, interesting folks—and one January night, back in 2002 or so, I get this call on the night phone, and the woman on the other end says, “Hey, I'd like to rent a room.” This is about two in the morning on a Wednesday, but there's not typically a lot of action in January, so I jump out of bed, and when I get to the front desk, there's this dishevelled-looking woman in her 40s and a guy—really muscular, same age, looks like he just got out of prison, and he's just baked out of his gourd. And she says: “I want a room for tonight. Actually, no. I want three rooms.”

“Okay. For how many nights?”

“One night. No. Fifteen nights. And I want your cheapest room.”

“Okay, that'll be $79.”

“No. I want your most expensive room. Three of them. Also, I'm being followed. This is Mike, my bodyguard. You'll see a man out front in a white pickup truck smoking a cigarette. He can't know I'm here.”

And I'm going: Oookay. But I decide to play along, and suggest that maybe she needs a code name.

“That's a great idea. What should my code name be?”

“How about Neo?” I'd just seen The Matrix.

“Neo. I like that. What's yours? You'll need a code name, too.”

“Call me Morpheus. And how would you like to pay for your stay?”

“Cash.”

And she reaches into her handbag, and—I shit you not—pulls out a roll of hundreds that's probably seven inches across, and starts just peeling off bills.

“How much do you want?”

And I said: “Well, let's start with $2,000, and we can just run you a tab.”

“OK. And I want to leave you a tip.” At which point she peels off another $1,200.

By this point, I was curious, so I asked her for a bit of backstory. And she says “Oh, I own a very prominent trucking company that everyone in North America knows the name of. I'm being followed, and I just want everyone to leave me alone.”

Sure. Whatever. That's cool. So, I gave them their room keys. Then, 10 minutes later, I get a phone call. “Morpheus, it's Neo. We need food. Do you have room service?”

We didn't, but I brought them up some soup and bread.

Then, the next morning, the bodyguard comes down—super baked, again—looking for an Xbox he can borrow. He asked if I'd seen his client so far that day, and as we're both standing there pondering where she is, suddenly this pickup truck comes flying down the driveway, squealing tires, and takes off up the road with her behind the wheel. And the bodyguard goes: “Um. That was my truck.” She'd just randomly stolen the guy's vehicle.

Then, a bit later that day, I get a call from a friend who says “Hey, some lady who says she knows you just wandered up my driveway and offered me $700,000 for my house.” She ended up buying his house, as well as two other houses while she was there. Eventually, she checks out of the hotel, but now she has houses, so she ends up hanging around the island, and I see her around the community for months. Like I said, it's a small place, so everyone knows everyone, and probably two months later, I get word from somebody else that now she wants to have a baby. She ended up making arrangements to get pregnant by this guy in town—this dude who's sort of a local fixture with big dreadlocks, probably 50 or so—but he doesn't know anything about the pregnancy, or even who this woman is.

And then after that, she just disappeared. This was all about 15 or 16 years back. But the fucked-up part is, two weeks ago, I wander into the hotel one day—I don't work the front desk anymore—and there's this incident report. A woman has fallen down in the restaurant and says she broke her back. She'd checked in saying: “People are following me. I need multiple hotel rooms for a bunch of days, and we need to be left alone,” and I'm going Fuck me. This all sounds really familiar. And I checked back through the guest logs, and sure enough, it's the same lady again, 16 years later. Apparently she still owns the houses, so I have no idea what she was doing back in the hotel. She just did the whole thing over again.

I mean, over the years, there have been plenty of weird guest experiences, but that's the one that left the most lasting impact. It had it all: drama, fanfare, pregnancy, and of course, huge piles of cash. — Aaron, 40

The case of the missing half-dildo

One night, some guest complained that a smoke detector on their floor kept going off. I checked the 21st floor and it didn't seem like a big deal—someone in room 2104 was taking a hot shower, and the steam was causing the smoke detector to go off. So I went back down to the front desk. Probably 40 minutes later, I got another call regarding the same smoke detector. I went back up—same room with the shower on, 2104. I thought, OK, something's wrong here. No one showers for 40 minutes. I went back down to the front desk to grab keys and had a coworker come back up with me. It was pitch dark in there, but we managed to fumble our way to the bathroom, asking if anyone was there. No one responded. And when I turned on the shower light, we found bloodstained towels, used syringes, and a big, broken dildo. As in: broken in half. And the top end was missing.

It was like a crime scene in there. My coworker and I were both just like “Holy shit. What is going on?” Then, when I got out of the bathroom and turned on the rest of the lights, we found a naked dude in his 30s lying on his side on the floor by the balcony. I thought he was dead. My coworker saw his naked ass and started shaking and wanted to throw up. She ended up going out into the hall, and I called 911. So, I had to stay with the guy—which I really didn't want to do, because I was thinking he might suddenly wake up and start going crazy. The 911 attendant asked if he was breathing, so I went to take a closer look. Luckily, his chest was moving. His heart was still beating—thank God—but it was so unstable. It was beating insanely fast, like it was in overdrive. Then, the woman on the phone told me to lie him on his back—which I also really didn’t want to do, considering he was fucking naked.

So, I grabbed the dude's leg, but then he started twitching. And I'm thinking to myself: Shiiiiit. This is too much. This 100 percent isn't in my job description. The dude just curled up on his side, so I went back, lied to the woman on the phone and said: “Yup, he's lying on his back.” The paramedics were there so fast—probably within five or six minutes—and they took it from there.

We never did find the other end of the dildo—although I have my suspicions about where it ended up. — Danny, 30

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

US News

House's School Safety Bill Passes Without Gun Control
The House of Representatives easily passed a bill funding extra school security measures aimed, in part, at showing teachers and law enforcement officials how to handle mental health issues in order to "identify and prevent threats," according to Speaker Paul Ryan. Still, Democrats were enraged that the bill didn't specifically address gun control. “This is a pretense that we are doing something while assuring the NRA that we aren’t doing anything,” said Congressman Steny Hoyer.—CNN

Another Trump Lawyer Linked to Stormy Daniels Payment
In newly-disclosed documents, Trump Organization employee Jill Martin was named as the attorney representing the shell company Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen set up to give Daniels $130,000. Cohen had previously claimed to be acting on his own, stating: “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford.”—VICE News

Trump Admits Making Shit Up in Meeting with Trudeau
At a Missouri fundraiser Wednesday, the president admitted bluffing his way through a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, mistakenly saying the US had a trade deficit with Canada. Trump said: “I didn’t even know. I had no idea. I just said, “You’re wrong.”” The US runs a trade surplus with Canada, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative.—VICE News

Sessions Considers Firing FBI's Former Deputy Director
Jeff Sessions was reportedly mulling whether to axe Andrew McCabe just days before he officially retired Sunday. The FBI’s former deputy director went through a disciplinary process related to his handling of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. If Sessions approved a recommendation to dismiss McCabe, it would put his pension at risk.—The New York Times

International News

Russia Promises to Retaliate Against UK
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow would “certainly” throw British diplomats out of the country after Prime Minister Theresa May decided to expel 23 Russian officials over the poisoning of a former spy and his daughter. Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the UN, told the UN Security Council the US “believes that Russia is responsible for the attack."—AP / Bloomberg

Bomb Attack in Pakistan Leaves Seven Dead
A suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated a device at a police checkpoint in Lahore on Wednesday. Four of the seven killed were cops, according to the deputy inspector general of police, and another 18 people were injured. The Pakistani Taliban claim to have carried out the attack.—Reuters

Libya Cracks Down on Human Trafficking
The Libyan attorney general’s office put out 205 arrest warrants for those suspected of organizing “the illegal immigration and the human trafficking” of people into Europe. Suspects included everyone from members of the security forces to staff at embassies in the country.—BBC News

Top North Korean Official Heads to Talks in Sweden
Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho was expected to touch down in Stockholm Thursday, with Pyongyang indicating one purpose of the visit was to discuss “effective implementation” of recent UN Security Council resolutions with Sweden's foreign minister. The Scandinavian country has traditionally served as the chief go-between for the US and North Korea.—AP

Everything Else

Prosecutor Not Opposed to Bail for Meek Mill
The imprisoned rapper received good news Wednesday when the office of the Philadelphia District Attorney said it was “unopposed” to his release on bail. Prosecutors said there was a “strong likelihood” Mill’s conviction for violating probation would be reversed.—The Philadelphia Tribune

Harper Lee’s Estate Sues Over Aaron Sorkin Script
The celebrated author's estate went after production company Rudinplay over an adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird for the stage, claiming Sorkin’s script deviated too much from the novel. Lee agreed to the play shortly before she died in 2016.—The Hollywood Reporter

Drake Plays Game on Twitch, Breaks Records
More than 600,000 people watched the rapper play Fortnite Battle Royale on the streaming platform Wednesday night, setting a new record for Twitch viewership. Drake went up against popular gamer Tyler Blevins, better known as Ninja.—Motherboard

Key and Peele Reunite for Netflix Animation
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele will voice characters for a stop-motion film about two demon brothers called Wendell and Wild. Peele has also reportedly agreed to co-write the script for the Henry Selick-directed Netflix project.—VICE

United Accidentally Flies Dog to Japan
The airline sent a German Shepherd bound for Missouri all the way to Japan. “An error occurred during connections in Denver for two pets sent to the wrong destinations,” United explained. Both dogs involved were safe, the airline said.—VICE News

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we're hearing about the street artist known as Girl Mobb, who started an all-girls graffiti camp in Oakland.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Police are looking for three suspects who were seen on video beating a man with autism at a bus terminal in Mississauga, Ontario. The incident occurred Tuesday at approximately 10:45 PM at Square One terminal on Rathburn Road West in Mississauga.

The video, which shows graphic violence, can be viewed below. In it, three men surround and beat a man sitting on a staircase who appears to be putting rollerblades on. The men walk down the stairs, then immediately start kicking and hitting the victim. It’s not clear what—if anything—provoked the attack. The suspects then quickly leave the scene. Investigators are looking for help with identifying the suspects:

Police described all three suspects as men of South Asian descent and 5’10.”

The victim, who is 29 years old, was taken to the hospital with serious injuries. Peel Regional Police called the attack a “vicious assault.”

Bruce McIntosh, president of the Ontario Autism Coalition, told VICE that an attack like this would likely cause serious trauma for a person with autism.

“On top of all the other challenges that people with autism have to overcome to function in a world that wasn’t built for them, then to have complete strangers do something like that,” McIntosh said.

“It’s more than just a beating,” he said. “There’s a lasting impact there.”

McIntosh referenced how social interaction can be extremely challenging for people with autism. “You never know just to what degree these things will set a person back,” he said.

Studies show people with autism are more likely to be victims of hate crimes and violence.

If you have information about the incident, contact 12 Division Criminal Investigation Bureau at (905) 453-2121, ext. 1233.

In one of the least surprising news stories in recent times President Donald Trump apparently lied straight to Justin Trudeau’s face and then boasted about it to potential GOP donors.

According to the Washington Post, in a fundraising speech in Missouri Wednesday, Trump told a crowd that he lied to the prime minister about trade deficits during a NAFTA meeting. In Trump’s account of their exchange, the president repeatedly told Trudeau he was wrong in what seems to be a bizarre effort to knock Canada’s leader down a peg. [Full disclosure: this is a transcription of a Trump speech so it’s going to be a little difficult to follow.]

“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin,” Trump said, according to the Washington Post. “He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please.’ Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in—‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’”

Don gets a bit sidetracked talking about how “proud” both the leaders are before launching into his big prank. “I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. … I had no idea. I just said ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid. . . . And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong Justin.’”

Trump said both he and Trudeau sent “a guy” to check out the deficits—in his comment Trump said “his guy” agreed and that the US runs a trade deficit of “$17 billion” with Canada. However, according to both the Washington Post and CNN, the US government's own numbers show that the country runs a trade surplus with the Great White North. Indeed, even the 2018 Economic Report of the President (which has been signed by Trump) states that the US runs a surplus with Canada.

It’s an accepted fact that the sitting US president lies with the frequency of a seven-year-old kid but, much like a kiddo, he typically doesn’t admit to his lies. While the president seems to have snitched on himself so that he could brag about putting one over on the Canadian leader, his actions have been widely panned as stupid and meaningless.

In a couple of tweets, Bruce Heyman, the previous US ambassador to Canada, went to town on Trump lying to Trudeau, saying that the actions of the president are “so incredibly detrimental to our relationship with our best friend.”

“Creating a crisis where none existed before is no way to run our country,” he wrote in a follow-up tweet. “Canada is our best friend and don’t ever forget it! We should never put the relationship at risk.”

President Deals responded to the Washington Post’s report Thursday morning on Twitter, stating, “Justin Trudeau of Canada, a very good guy, doesn’t like saying that Canada has a Surplus vs. the US (negotiating), but they do...they almost all do...and that’s how I know!”

Thanks for clearing things up, Don!

It’s unknown exactly how Trump’s mockery of Trudeau went down—if it was all high pitched and screechy or nasally like an 80s villain would mock a nerd—but up here in Canada we know there are far more subtle ways to go about it. However the president did acknowledge that Trudeau was a “good-looking guy,” so at the very least Canada’s ever image-conscious leader can cling to that.

Trudeau has not yet responded publicly to Trump’s comments. VICE has reached out to the PMO and will update this story if we receive a response.

On the same day students at more than 3,000 schools across the country walked out of their classrooms to protest gun violence, Morgan Roof—the sister of convicted mass shooter Dylann Roof—was arrested for bringing a knife and pepper spray into her South Carolina high school, CNN reports.

The 18-year-old also wrote what her school's principal called an "extremely inappropriate" and "hateful" message on Snapchat, which surfaced on Twitter Wednesday.

"I hope it's a trap and y'all get shot," Roof wrote of the walkout, a memorial for the 17 people killed in last month's school shooting in Parkland, Florida. "We know it's fixing to be nothing but black people walkin out anyway."

Roof's brother, Dylann, was sentenced to death last year for gunning down nine black parishioners at a church in South Carolina, a crime for which the self-identified white supremacist showed no remorse.

A resource officer found the knife and pepper spray on Morgan Roof at school, along with a small amount of weed, according to CNN. She was charged with simple possession of marijuana and two counts of carrying weapons on school grounds, and a judge set her bond at $5,000, local NBC affiliate WIS reports. She's also been ordered to stay away from school grounds.

It wasn't the first scare at Roof's high school this week: According to the Post and Courier, two students were arrested Tuesday for bringing a handgun and ammunition to A.C. Flora High School, though the incident was reportedly unrelated.

In response to the arrests of Roof and the other two students, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster wrote on Twitter that "potential tragedy was avoided" at the school. A.C. Flora's principal Susan Childs sent a letter to parents letting them know that the incidents had been handled.

"I realize that rumours and the tragic school shootings in Florida are events that can cause anxiety for our students, parents, faculty, and the community," Childs wrote. "Be assured that the safety of our students will always be our top priority."

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Related: Students Across the Country Walked out of School Today. They Told Us Why.

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“This shit is from yesterday,” Lil Gnar says, lifting his shirt up at the restaurant we’re having lunch at to show me his enormous chest tattoo featuring a black panther with wings sprouting from its head. It still has clear wrapping on it to help the tattoo heal.

Gnar, a 21-year-old skater turned clothing designer with a burgeoning rap career, has been getting new tattoos at a rapid clip over the past several months.

“I gotta get ‘em all before I blow up,” he explained on the patio of Beacon, a slightly upscale (two Yelp dollar signs) cafe on the edge of Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles. He and I are the only people of color at Beacon that Friday afternoon. He is the only person there with neck tattoos, colored dreadlocks, a gold chain, and grills.

“In a few months I’m gonna be a lot bigger you know and so then I’m going to be doing shows. I’m not trying to be on the road and doing shows with fresh tattoos,” he says, with an air of inevitability.

Though it’s early in his career, the aplomb isn’t misplaced. His music has racked up millions of plays and earned him over 100,000 social media followers. He’s caught the attention of up-and-coming rap gatekeepers like music video director Cole Bennett and legends like Travis Barker—both of whom Gnar says he’s recently spoken with.

In his words, “getting good tattoos is money,” and Gnar has money now. His streetwear brand, Gnarcotic, is doing well enough for him to afford new ink, a Porsche and a Mercedes Benz, an upcoming trip to Europe, and whatever else he wants. His signature tri-color camo pants have been worn by Lil Yachty and cult favorite skater Stephen Lawyer, and he’s collaborated with the skate brand DGK on clothes and skate decks. His music is giving him the kind of attention that could attract a record deal, which would pump even more money into his bank account. And though he’s not making direct money off it, his persona is becoming more valuable as he gains attention by posting videos of himself driving around in Lamborghinis, smoking blunts, and shooting various guns into the air, sometimes while on a skateboard.

Though he’s yet to play a full show or release a mixtape, his first official single “Ride Wit Da Fye” has over two million plays on streaming websites like Spotify and Soundcloud, and his new joint EP, Big Bad Gnar Shit, is getting attention from internet tastemakers. He says his four-year-old clothing business nets him “well over six figures” a year, but “not a million yet.”

Before he started making music, his initial business ventures were fueled by slightly under-the-table means. Starting a company requires capital, something that the son of a single mother in a lower-income East Atlanta neighborhood didn’t have.

“Without illegal shit, my brand wouldn’t be where it is,” he tells me between bites of a Japanese beef burger on a brioche bun.

Today, his ascent is fueled in part by an uncanny ability to get attention on the internet with absurd and aggressive posts on Instagram and Twitter. When I noticed him on Instagram in late 2017, he had around 30,000 followers. As of mid March he is at 125,000.

“He’s viral minded. He’s gone viral a lot of lot times in the past year even before he had the following he does now,” says Adam Grandmaison who hosts the rap podcast No Jumper, which has been described as an authority of what’s next in rap music (Grandmaison also has his own collaboration in the works with Gnarcotic).

Even in a saturated market of internet flexing, Gnar’s social media presence is enthralling. In one video, he speeds around a corner in his Porsche and brakes before hopping onto a skateboard, popping a nollie varial kickflip and then firing a handgun into the air while flipping the camera off. In another, he does the same thing, but in a different car (his Mercedes), doing a different trick (a 180 no comply) with a different gun (an assault rifle).

He’s been skating, mostly sans firearms, since he was 13, when his older half-brother stole a skateboard from a kid living down the street. He loved it and quickly saved up to buy his own board. “Skating – it just feels good. It’s freedom,” Gnar says, grinning, when I asked why he was drawn to it. Even though he started late, Gnar still excelled, and has skated with Lil Wayne and gotten invitations to skate legend Stevie Williams’s private skatepark in Atlanta.

“He actually rips, which is tight, because most rappers just be flexing that shit, but they ain’t really about it. He’s really about it,” says Travis Glover, an Atlanta-based skater who grew up riding with Gnar. Glover describes Gnar’s skating style as similar to his music and persona: “fast-paced, kind of powerful but makes it happen type shit.”

Gnar’s now busy with his clothing business and music, but still skates whenever he has free time, occasionally Instagramming himself when he does. His non-skate videos prominently feature his collection of guns, women, stacks of money, and pounds of weed. In this way, he says his Instagram feed is a constantly updating homage to his hero Pharrell, whose brand Ice Cream blended hip-hop braggadocio with skateboarding.

“Ice Cream Skate Team Vol. 1. That was actually my first skate video I watched ever,” he said.

“It was the first time you see kind of what I do now, which is like black skating, but like stunting. Kind of a mixture of rap culture and skating. There are parts of the video where Pharrell has a Ferrari burning out and shit and then it cuts to somebody at a skatepark. That’s what really inspired everything I do, low-key.”

It’s too early in Gnar’s career to know if his trajectory will reach the Pharrell-like heights he wants, but he’s certainly got promise. “He’s got that effortless cool. He doesn’t come off like a thirsty fucking kid. There’s tons of good talented rappers. Most of them won’t make a dollar,” says Grandmaison. “When I’m picking out who I think is going to be successful, it’s just got way more to do with personality than anything else.”

To Grandmaison, Gnar has that personality. For starters, he’s brazen about his passions.

“For me, it was like I’m trying to get out here. Just being brazy... putting Xanax in girls’ butts and just wyling out and living life,” he says as we’re driving down the 101 in his 2009 midnight blue Porsche Cayman with “Lil Gnar” vanity plates. We’re headed to his childhood friend and fellow Atlanta skater turned rapper Germ’s apartment in Studio City. Gnar is carefully smoking a cigarette out the window, trying to make sure that the smell doesn’t linger on the tan leather interior.

Like most 21-year-olds, Gnar’s attention span can be short. He flips between apps on his phone and answering questions as he drives. He has an edge to him, but he’s still gracious and forthcoming. He’s also very confident that his ascent to the upper echelon of hip-hop is impending.

“I just want to blow up and tell everyone to suck my dick,” Gnar says just after we get to Germ’s apartment. He flips an axe that was sitting on a table and shares a blunt with Germ and producer Don Krez. They blow the smoke into an air purifier to mask the smell from their neighbors who keep complaining. Don Krez explains that he and Germ, two artists who seem to smoke prolific amounts of weed, live in a smoke-free apartment complex. There’s also a shopping cart in the middle of an otherwise normal living room. When I ask why it’s there, Germ shrugs and says “I needed it.”

“Gnarcotic, it’s gonna grow into a whole movement, the clothes, the music,” Gnar says, before he starts reading the number of plays he and Germ’s new joint EP, Big Bad Gnar Shit, is getting. “'Ride Wit Da Fye' is over a million. I think the lowest one is going to have 100 [thousand plays] by the end of the week.”

When I ask him about his goals for the next year, his answer comes quick, in a way that suggests he’s thought about it before. “I want to buy a Ferrari. I want to put a down payment on a house for my mom. And I want to meet Kanye. Not just meet Kanye on some fan shit, but actually talk to him as an artist.”

Gnar is hesitant to give exact details on his future plans, but says that he’s sitting on an unreleased mixtape and he's slated to perform at SXSW as well as the Rolling Loud festival in May.

I ask him if he’s nervous for the Rolling Loud show.

“Fuck no. I’m so ready. I just want to get big by then. I just want to be huge so everyone knows my words and I can go crazy. I want to fucking rage.”

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Earlier this month, 29-year-old Alex Lovell had to "Wing Chun [his] way to survival" after his jealous girlfriend allegedly tried to hack him to death with a samurai sword—an attack he says he fended off thanks to his martial arts training and love of kung fu movies, Lovell told Oregon Live this week. Wing Chun, of course, is the close-range kung fu style that Donnie Yen uses to kick some serious ass in Ip Man.

On the night of March 2, the Washington State man reportedly woke up to his girlfriend of two years wielding a samurai sword. The woman, Emily Javier, had allegedly taped the sword and two knives to her bed in preparation for a brutal attack—she was furious that Lovell had Tinder on his phone, and suspected he was cheating on her. Police say she laid into Lovell with the blade after he fell asleep, hacking at his hands and slicing deep lacerations across his body before he could get his arms around her and restrain her.

"I didn't freeze. The Wing Chun came out," he explained in a separate interview with Buzzfeed News. "I was able to stand on a knee that was just almost chopped in half and a foot that was hanging on by a thread."

Apparently having second thoughts about what was she was doing—namely, brutally stabbing her boyfriend with a sword she bought at the mall—Javier called 911, and Lovell was raced to the hospital with "life-threatening injuries," according to Oregon Live. She's now facing first-degree murder charges.

"I was just so proud for beating this samurai wannabe crazy lady with hate in her heart," Lovell told Oregon Live. "I've been preparing my whole life for something like this."

Lovell told Oregon Live that he has some "gnarly injuries" and is looking at months of physical therapy to get him back to normal, but the guy is surprisingly chill about getting hacked to bits by his girlfriend—likely another thing he learned from Ip Man.

"The feeling I had when I won the fight with my bare hands is just absolutely the best feeling," he said. "I've played all the sports, won big games, landed some decent tricks on my snowboard. This was better."

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Related: Confessions of a Serial Cheater

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In the fall of 2013, I was quoted in Maclean’s magazine saying I felt, “very confident” McGill University would listen to our student-run campaign and pull its investments out of the fossil fuel industry “by the end of the school year.” It was the first time I had given a media interview and I was worried I would say something dumb. “Not bad,” I thought, “A little optimistic, but can’t be that far off.”

I was, of course, very far off. McGill hasn’t stopped investing in fossil fuels. In the four years that have passed, almost no-one in Canada has, except Laval University and a handful of small charities, faith groups, and academic associations.

We are alone in this industry love-fest. Multiple universities, city governments, pension funds, and other institutions in every other rich western country have committed to divestment. So far 133 schools including Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge and Yale have divested. Most recently Ireland, Norway, and New York City committed to divest their publicly-owned funds, and the World Bank did the bank-world equivalent of divestment, ceasing all financing for new fossil fuel projects. To date, organizations with assets worth a combined total of $6 trillion have said it no longer makes sense to have their money in oil, coal, and gas.

Because of course it doesn’t. The case for divestment from fossil fuels was air-tight when I talked to Maclean’s as a baby-faced activist in 2013, and it has only gotten stronger. Fossil fuel companies have blocked the climate policies we need for decades and have business plans that are reliant on carbon emissions that will bring about the extreme warming scenarios keeping me, David Wallace-Wells, and most teens up at night.

Their Indigenous rights abuses are incompatible with the reconciliation rhetoric Canadian institutions have been showboating around. Financially, fossil fuels are increasingly seen as a risky bet. They're no longer creating good stable jobs. Politically, divestment sends an important signal that fossil fuel companies’ social license to operate is running out, one that has worked in the past with campaigns around tobacco corporations and South African apartheid.

Even Australia—where coal looms as large as the oil sands do here—has had 27 local governments (including Sydney & Melbourne), and five universities (including big, fancy public ones) make a full or partial divestment commitment.

There are long-running, brilliant, dogged campaigns targeted at dozens of Canadian institutions, camping on their lawns, invading their boardrooms, writing fat reports, compelling their alumni to stop donating, yet none (except Laval University! You go Laval University!) have prevailed. Under great duress from campaigners, some of our other universities have made weird, strained nods at the concept—like Concordia making a stunning three percent of its endowment fossil free, and Ottawa pledging a 30 percent lower-carbon portfolio.

What makes our institutions so uniquely reticent to condemn the industry bent on cooking us? To me, it’s a symptom of just how baked-in our culture of resource extraction is. As Naomi Klein puts it, “Canada was an extractive company—the Hudson's Bay Company—before it was a country. And that has shaped us in ways we have yet to begin to confront.” Following fish, fur, and forests, fossil fuels are just the latest in a series of resources whose extraction whose exploitation we have organized our society around.

I’m going to use the example of universities because it’s the sector I know best, but there are also many ways other Canadian institutions—from pension funds to museums—are tied to fossil fuel sector interests.

Most directly, universities receive research funding and donations from fossil fuel companies—some blatant like the University of Calgary’s "Enbridge Research Chair in Psychosocial Oncology" or the University of Waterloo’s “Imperial Oil Seminar in Computer Science for Young Women” and others less so. Against a backdrop of creeping cuts to government funding for Canadian universities since the 1980s, increases in these kinds of private-sector contributions have helped fill the gaps (with help from tuition hikes and underpaid temp workers).

Dalhousie University has been the most explicit in connecting the dots between the funding they accept from fossil fuel companies and their reluctance to divest. The school receives an average of $1 million a year from the industry, and their Dean of Science Chris Moore was quoted in a 2016 report from the university’s senate saying, “A senior executive at Shell... told me directly that the company is monitoring the university divestment movement closely and would look unfavorably on any university that divested in regard to future investment.”

(For the record, this is a dumb reason not to divest because (a) universities that have done it have not actually seen changes in the research funds they are offered from oil, coal, & gas companies, and (b) a university shouldn’t be accepting money from any industry that compromises its decision-making this way, let alone one like the fossil fuel industry.)

Beyond their direct financial ties to oil, coal, and gas corporations, Canadian university boards are making their divestment decisions against a backdrop of politicians, media, and business leaders who refuse to admit aloud that oil sands expansion is incompatible with our commitments to climate change or Indigenous rights. Under this narrative, fossil fuel companies can be willing, valuable partners in climate action and reconciliation, so divestment wouldn’t be a useful step in working towards either.

The university board members who keep voting against divestment either buy into this story or they feel it’s not worth the potential backlash from the rest of Canada’s powerful institutions—for the university or for their own (mostly corporate) careers.

Lest calling our country a low-key oiligarchy sound overblown, consider Trudeau’s current fave talking point, that building Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline is a ~necessary~ part of Canada’s climate strategy. Or recall the time politicians fell over each other to wear “I for an industry PR campaign. Recall in 2015 when federal NDP candidate Linda McQuaig said that climate science requires us to phase out the oil sands and her party loudly distanced themselves from her position. Recall when we let fossil fuel companies write everything from energy literacy curriculum for kindergartners to our federal environmental policies. Recall that in 2013, just as the divestment movement was getting started, a bunch of our meetings were put under surveillance by the RCMP.

So, cool, great, if basically everyone powerful in Canada is an oil sands stan or in some way reliant on one, what do we do about it? I’d maintain that divestment is still one of the best places to be pushing (though obviously lots of other tactics are needed too). Universities and the other relatively local institutions divestment campaigns target all have missions to act in the public interest and constituents who are increasingly pissed off with Canada’s climate inaction and ongoing colonialism. They hold a unique level of influence on our public discourse, and through divestment can push our provincial and federal governments to adequately reckon with the need to transition away from our fossil fuel economy. Even while stonewalled, these campaigns are forcing a public conversation about Canada’s reckless support for new fossil fuel extraction and highlighting the extent to which austerity has made our local institutions reliant on corporations.

I’ve been wrong before, but I’m hopeful that as more universities, pensions, and cities elsewhere take this step towards a fairer, climate-safe society, some Canadian ones might actually soon listen to the campaigners telling them to follow suit.

Follow Bronwen on Twitter.

On March 8, Seren Sensei went viral with her cultural appropriation accusations against Bruno Mars. In a video clip taken from a recent episode of The Grapevine, a YouTube talk show focused on issues important to black millennials, Sensei confidently stated that Mars "is not black, at all, and he plays up his racial ambiguity to cross genres." The comments sparked a dialogue around the exploitation of black cultural products that went from Black Twitter to the Washington Post.

Despite this notoriety, there is much more to Seren Sensei than that buzzy clip. Since the death of Michael Brown, she has been on YouTube preaching the virtues of buying from black-owned businesses. As Sensei Aishitemasu, a name taken from a line spoken by Idris Elba’s character in Pacific Rim, the 30-year-old advocates for nothing less than a black economic revolution. On YouTube and on her site, the Washington, DC resident regularly makes posts covering everything from sharp takedowns of popular advertising and black-owned gift guides to movie reviews and stories of black history’s hidden figures like Queen Anna Nzinga.

Inspired by Toni Morrison, Dr. Joy DeGruy, Angela Davis, and Nina Simone, the published author is constantly asking, “What am I going to spend my hard-earned money on?” As a result, she’s galvanized a community of over 55,000 followers (34,000 on YouTube, 3,000 on Tumblr, 7,000 on Instagram, and 11,000 on Twitter) who are looking for tangible ways to support one another. “Money talks and bullshit walks,” she said of the ways that the black community can reinvest capital back into itself.

Currently, Sensei is at work on a short story collection and a speculative fiction manuscript, both on reimagined black communities outside of the white gaze. She’s also working on an essay series on black artistry and value, and finding it outside of traditional capitalist practices, for Riot Material. Over a couple of phone conversations, I spoke to Sensei about black-owned businesses, why the black economic revolution is nigh, and the economics of cultural appropriation.

VICE: Your viral comments sparked a conversation around cultural appropriation. But what is the relationship between that and the bigger issue of white supremacy?
Seren Sensei: Cultural appropriation is a system of white supremacy, especially here in the United States. Racism touches every aspect of our lives, including the art and entertainment industry. Like I said in the video, we want our black art to come from non-black bodies, because we live in a system that devalues blackness. We see this play out with other cultures as well. It’s not a Bruno Mars-specific problem, or a music industry problem. It’s a symptom of the racist society that we live in.

What’s special about this moment right now?
In the last four of five years, we’ve gotten to the point where we can say that the Iggy Azalea stuff is not cool. But we cannot really speak enough about the fact that non-black people of colour can benefit from racism because they are not black. Once they realized they couldn’t package blackness with a white face like Iggy's, they moved on to a brown face like Bruno's. And you see how it went. He won the album of the year. To me, Bruno Mars is blackface karaoke. He dresses up in signifiers that have become stereotypes, like gold chains, unbuttoned silk shirts, and gold rings. He has a bunch of black bodies around him like props and accessories. It’s just like Miley Cyrus, but people are OK with Mars because he has a brown face. But the truth is, he is not black.

What is the economic impact that cultural appropriation has on black artists and black entrepreneurs?
Black artists can’t get ahead, they can’t get on, they can’t get amplified. They can’t get their careers or businesses off the ground. Thug Kitchen is an example. It was a blog that posted their recipes in ebonics. Like, “Yeah bitches, it’s time to make some bad-ass pie.” They got a book deal and blew up because no one knew who they were. When it came out that is was two white, suburban people, everyone realized it was cultural appropriation. White people like that don’t have to worry about anti-black racism—they have the privilege of crossover appeal. With black people, it’s taken for granted that, “Of course they can rap, play basketball, and cook. They’re black.” But when a white person does it, society heaps all this praise on it. That is racist.

What can black people do as consumers do to fight cultural appropriation?
Support other black people. All the black people who are coming out now and defending Bruno Mars are crazy. I’m like, where were you when Jeremih was fighting with his label to release an album? Where was all this energy when people were pitting Beyonce, Rihanna, and Nicki Minaj against each other? We hate ourselves and we prefer to see black art come from non-black bodies. We have to be more supportive of our own people and our own culture. We have to have more pride in our self-worth and our culture and uplift each other. A lot of black people look to non-blacks for validation. They say that we should be flattered that non-blacks like what we are doing. But that statement puts non-blacks on a pedestal and blacks on the bottom. We have to get out of that mindset.

How did you begin your journey towards only buying from black-owned businesses?
I started researching more about what businesses are out there. At this point, it was 2015-ish. A lot of businesses that I initially saw were the same over and over, like clothes, hair products, and stuff like that. I started digging even more for essential items that we use every single day, like soap and your toothbrush.

So if I have to spend money on these items every day, why don't I start trying to get these items from black-owned businesses? And then I just went down the rabbit hole. I was finding all these black-owned businesses on Instagram and Tumblr. I started following Official Black Wall Street on Instagram, whose founder, Mandy Bowman, just launched an app.

Once I really started looking and digging, it was like a whole world opened up. That was when I decided doing black-owned business unboxings on my YouTube channel, which I do the last Friday of the month, every month. It snowballed and now it's to the point where practically everything in my house is from a black-owned business.

What can you tell me more about the "economic revolution" that you talk about on your YouTube channel?
I am American, so I am speaking about black Americans and what's going on here. Black people here set the trends, we create culture. If we could switch into a mindset of just not being consumers, and start consuming from our own people, we could be investing money back into black-owned businesses and utilizing that to create more jobs in our communities.

You see the job creation, you see the economic revolution, you see the power when you divest your money from white-owned, racist corporations, and invest it back into black-owned businesses. You're reclaiming your monetary power. That, to me, is the building block. That, to me, is the first step to an economic revolution.

You emphasize businesses owned by black women. Why?
I am a black woman, so I clearly like supporting other black women. I like to support black men too, obviously, and black people in general, but we do live in a patriarchy. In the system of racism and white supremacy, there is a structure that gives black men... I don't want to say an advantage, but certain privileges that a woman aren't going to have. It’s very easy to settle into supporting the default. We black women are doubly impacted.

Why don't more people buy black?
I think the biggest problem all of us have to deal with is our internalized anti-blackness, which is a consequence of living in and growing up in a racist, white supremacist society. All the major corporations and banks are white-owned. We grow up with that being the norm and the standard.

We have to break that mindset and break that conditioning, and it's difficult because we're bombarded with these images and these ideas at on both conscious and subconscious levels, basically from the moment we are born. Once you get into the proper mindset, it's kind of like, How do I start? How do I find the business that has what I need?

How did you do it?
It becomes a lifestyle change. I can buy from Freedom Paper Company, but it's online and they don't have a store, so I have to plan it out in advance and give myself enough time to get it, instead of the convenience of I'm just going to buy it from Walmart. Now I have to keep an eye on my tissue supply because I have to wait two weeks for it to come in the mail. A lot of people don't want to make that adjustment, they just want that ease.

Everything you get easily is paid for somewhere else. You get it easy from Walmart and you get it easy from Amazon, but that's because they're huge conglomerates who don't pay their workers enough. It's an adjustment all around, and a lot of people aren't there yet.

Do you have a list of alternatives for random items you wouldn't think there are a black-owned companies for?
I actually keep lists of black-owned businesses everywhere. I have a list on my phone, computer, and on Instagram. I also run a Tumblr called Black Spring Essentials, which is basically nothing but everyday items from black-owned businesses. It’s not just like one brand—it's a ton of different types of brands. People are always asking me, "Oh, do you have a suggestion for this and that?" I’m a list person. I keep mad lists everywhere.

Where do you find the black-owned businesses you buy from?
WeBuyBlack.com. They call themselves the Amazon of black-owned businesses. It’s basically a search engine where you can literally type anything you want in, like socks and mouthwash, and it pops up with a black-owned business that sells those things. It’s probably like my number-one best resource.

Then, there's Official Black Wall Street, which started on Instagram as a kind of directory. They recently launched an app where you can search for black-owned businesses near you. They also launched a full website that's really good, too. If you type in the hashtag #blackbusiness into Twitter, Instagram, or Tumblr, you can also come across a lot of stuff.

How do you feel about black-owned businesses that sell to white-owned businesses?
Personally, I think that sucks because, again, black people and black women are the biggest purchasers of hair care products. To sell your company instead of doubling down and continuing to be with your company in the long run is a bit short-sighted. It's all about taking the money and running.

Which, you know, is capitalism. It's a byproduct of our capitalist society. It’s like, How much money can I get for me, instead of thinking about the larger picture: How can I possibly grow this business for my family? How can I grow this business for my children? How can I create more generational wealth for my family? How can I potentially grow this company for the community and hire more black workers? When they sold Shea moisture, they got a whole new branding team of white women. I'm not about that. For a long time, black Americans weren't allowed to own businesses or be entrepreneurs. We're just starting to play catch-up and a lot of us have the mindset of surviving instead of thriving. But I think that mindset is slowly changing now.

How so?
A lot of people are putting more of an emphasis, and there have been really high-profile acquisitions, like Carol's Daughter by L'Oréal, which upset a lot of people. People are questioning the value of sell, sell, sell. I think people are getting tired of capitalism. I'm anti-capitalist, and I think people are realizing that it's more important to keep their businesses and grow them and to figure out ways to continue grow. A lot of the younger generations are feeling different with regard to black pride and black power. You have to support each other.

Can you tell me some of your favorite black-owned products?
That’s hard! I love my toothbrushes from Coral Oral and True Laundry Detergent, both available on We Buy Black, because of their quality and effectiveness. Coral Oral comes in a four-pack—which is a year worth of toothbrushes—and really leaves my teeth feeling squeaky clean, while True does the same for my clothes. I also love Freedom Paper Company, which sells a variety of home goods like toilet paper, napkins, paper towels, and trash bags in affordable multi-packs. My favorite soaps are from Monie Squared and they come in a variety of scents with all-natural ingredients formulated to clean skin without drying it out.

I’ve tried so many hair products, but my favorite right now is Alikay Naturals, which was started by a fellow YouTuber, BlackOnyx77! I’ve used her Moisturizing Black Soap shampoo on my hair when I had dreadlocks and I still use it as a loose natural. I love it! Alikay Naturals is also readily available at Target, Rite Aid, Sally’s Beauty Supply store, etc. I also mentioned CHRiS CARDi for clothes and luggage, as well as soleRebels for eco-friendly, fair trade shoes.

What do you want to see in the future?
I just hope that it becomes the norm and the standard for us to support our own the way that our society is set up is to support white brands and businesses. I would like for our new normal to be to support our own and also not to cash out and run when our companies do well. We need to build them up into something bigger and better, into something that can be the backbone of future generations and future generational wealth. It’s a lifestyle choice to make the conscious effort everyday: I’m going to support a black-owned business or another black person. I’m going to put my money where my mouth is because, yet again, money talks and bullshit walks.

What's intrigued you most about the dialogue you've sparked around cultural appropriation?A lot of people don’t know the difference between ethnicity, nationality, and race. Puerto Rican is a nationality, not a race. Bruno Mars can be Puerto Rican and not be black. People also have short attention spans. That two-minute clip is from an hour-long conversation. People have been trying to come up with points that we already addressed on the show. But most people are just angry because they like Bruno Mars. But I said on the panel, I think he is extremely talented. What I’m saying doesn’t take anything away from his talent. He’s a great entertainer and performer. But that doesn’t change the fact that he is benefitting from anti-black racism. Stan culture like that is really toxic when it gets to the point that your favorite artist is above critique. What we do on The Grapevine is have conversations. Some people might agree and some people might not agree. But I am a freethinker. I’m going to think what I want and say what I want and no one is going to stop me.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

This story is a part of VICE's ongoing effort to highlight the contributions of black women around the globe who are making a difference. To read more stories about strong black women making history today, go here.

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I might lose my press credentials for saying this, but there are a lot of terrible horror movies on Netflix. I’m all for sharing creativity, so I commend the streaming giant for housing all the movies that wouldn’t even be on the shelves at Blockbuster. But I swear “shlock” would be offended if it were used to describe titles like American Poltergeist, The Disappointments Room, and #Horror.

Anyways, the genre isn’t for everyone. That's why I've previously made lists of shows to watch when you're stoned and the finest Oscar-nominated movies new to Netflix. But any gorehound will tell you, there is nothing quite like the thrill you get from watching a really scary movie. To help you give you that feeling, I culled Netflix for its most frightening films. Here's what I found:

The Descent

When it comes to terrors of the natural persuasion, there’s nothing scarier than getting lost in a place where no one can find you. Add in some mutant cannibals and ultra-claustrophobic camerawork and you’ve got the recipe for British director Neil Marshall’s hyper-violent adventure-horror about six women spelunkers who get trapped in an unexplored Appalachian cave system after a rock fall. Yodel and you die.

Children of the Corn

Bucking the then-popular slasher trend for a pastoral vibe that hits closer to home, this adaptation of a Stephen King short story about possessed children who murder all of the adults in their Nebraska town was lampooned in a South Park episode, so you know it’s part of the cultural unconscious. Watch this one if you’re not sure about having children.

It Follows

For an 80s-horror update that won’t leave you scratching your head wondering why we’re so obsessed with station wagons and ranch-style homes lately, check out this self-assured seat-gripper from Detroit director David Robert Mitchell. It's sexy, respectful of the audience’s intelligence, and—unlike Stranger Things—actually cool, not just pretending to be. It Follows is the kind of horror film that will make you second-guess yourself next time you decide not to wrap it up.

The Human Centipede

Is there a more horrifying death than having your elbows and knees broken and mouth surgically attached to someone else’s asshole, while having someone else’s mouth surgically attached to yours, and suffering in agony for a few days as some sicko trains you to be his housepet until you inevitably succumb to the slow, nauseating delirium of sepsis? You decide.

The Babadook

Grief can be a slow-moving shadow that infiltrates every aspect of your life until it fully consumes you. Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent’s feature-length debut is like the death-meets-Dr. Seuss literalization of that. While it’s not as scary as you’d expect from the trailer, what The Babadook lacks in brutality it makes up for in its realistic depiction of psychological breakdown.

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser

OK, if you’ve seen Hellraiser and want to claim it’s Not That Scary, fine. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate Clive Barker for being Tom of Finland from Hell can go jump in Camp Crystal Lake like a jock normie. But if you are into demons, leather, and flaying, well you can slide right into my S&DMs. Hellraiser is basically Cruising with dimension-hopping jizz-gods. Come to daddy...

30 Days of Night

What began as a short run of comics turned into a pretty solid vampire film starring Josh Hartnett’s best tragic-hero character (his specialty) since The Faculty. When a remote Alaskan town just trying to cope with a month of darkness attracts a coven of sadistic vampires, a literal Hell on ice unfolds. The adventure-survival subgenre may not leave you fearful, but it’s certainly worth watching for a supremely satisfying final act.

The ABCs of Death

Ben Wheatley, Ti West, and Lee Hardcastle lend their talents to this anthology film where not every chapter is terrifying, but the ones that get under your skin will stay there for a long time. It’s sort of like the Mario Party of horror movies, where there’s something here for everyone, so maybe save The ABCs for your next actual get-together.

Veronica

Georgie Wright at i-D wrote a great explanation on why you should watch this Spanish horror addition to Netflix. But it's safe to say that you might rethink your position on the supernatural altogether after you dive into the true story.

Dreamcatcher

I’ve never met anyone else who’s seen this adaptation of Stephen King’s sci-fi body horror screamer, and that’s a shame because the terrifying and surprisingly poignant story was translated well by William Goldman. He's the same guy who wrote Marathon Man and Heat. I don’t want to give too much away but when four friends find something unnatural on a hunting trip, it’s up to them and a dead-serious Morgan Freeman to save no less than the entire planet. Also, even if Stephen King said he doesn’t love the book, it’s grisly, heartbreaking, and totally worth the vacation-read.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

American actor Jennifer Carpenter looks remarkably similar to Anneliese Michel, the German 23-year-old who inspired Carpenter’s character with her own brutally sad true-life story. The resemblance lends a gut-wrenching realness to this wildly successful demonic possession film. While I, a scholar, was disappointed by how succinctly the film did away with the allegations of religious abuse that loom over the real events, I did leave the theater considering a secondary career in exorcism (which is apparently more needed than ever these days!).

The Ravenous

A peculiar air of mystery hangs over this Quebecois zombie survival film, making it all the more compelling than the seemingly endless melodrama of The Walking Dead. It’s also way more brutal than the AMC series: Real hopelessness comes from horror that happens in broad daylight and The Ravenous is about as out-in-the-open as it gets.

The Sixth Sense

Last Halloween, I wrote about how and why this movie traumatized me as a kid. Three reasons: Haley Joel Osment, gun violence, and totally helpless adults. Honestly, if you haven’t seen The Sixth Sense by 2018, you might be one of them.

The Good Son

If Kevin McCallister’s experiences with the Wet Bandits left him traumatized and he instead applied his Rube Goldberg-level genius towards becoming a depraved homicidal maniac, you’d wish they’d have left him Home Alone for good. This is perfect for fans of The Bad Seed, The Omen, and We Need to Talk About Kevin.

The Conjuring

Sorry, but if you think I’m leaving one of the highest-grossing horror films ever made off of this list just because it’s "mainstream," you've wildly overestimated my hipsterdom. It’s time you get acquainted with what the entire rest of the world is talking about.

Coraline

There are memes about how chilling this goddamn stop-motion animated film is. The story comes from a Neil Gaiman premise, and while it’s not as objectively scary as some of the other titles on this list, I guarantee you’ll never look at buttons the same way again.

Scary Movie

Run, bitch, ruuuuun!!!

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I first encountered the #DepressedWhileBlack Twitter account through her brave, real, and sometimes painfully-funny tweets like “I honestly feel I’m the most depressed mental health advocate ever” and “A suicide attempt costs thousands of dollars. Like, it is so expensive.” and “Don’t know if I can go back to not having a black therapist. Nothing like talking about how fine Nas is during therapy.”

Later I learned that the account belonged to DC area-journalist Imade Nibokun, and that Depressed While Black is a much larger project: an online community and in-progress book that explores race, religion, and romance—all within the context of living with depression.

What I love about Nibokun’s writing is not only her sardonic humour, but her refusal to define healing as a linear journey. She provides trenchant commentary on self-improvement concepts like “overcoming depression” and “self-care” that are so pervasive in contemporary media narratives around mental illness.

I talked with Nibokun about humour, the “persona” of depression, other people’s perceptions, as well as the specific challenges she faces at the intersection of depression and blackness.

VICE: What is the significance of the “while” in “depressed while black”? In your experience, how do these two facets of identity intersect, relate, influence one another? What about in terms of social perception?
Imade Nibokun: Great question. “While” to me represents two experiences that are ongoing. Depressed While Black is not a story about a black person who “overcame” depression because my condition is very much chronic.

“While” also means that these two experiences of blackness and depression do intersect and feed off each other. Some of my worst depression episodes have been triggered by unemployment, and African-Americans experience unemployment at much higher rates than white people. Then when you combine the cultural and financial mental health barriers that are unique to African-Americans, you truly have a depression journey that is distinct from other racial groups.

Even looking within, my original perspective of depression was through the lens of stereotypical blackness. I thought depression was a white people disease when I was diagnosed with clinical depression at 25. My mom raised me to believe that white people are weaker than black folks due to the oppression we faced for hundreds of years. I think that was her coping mechanism to help me feel that I’m not inferior to white people. But embracing our humanity as black people is where I get my power. The more I learn about black people, and how we actually pioneered mental health treatment in Egypt, the more I became open to help and advocated for treatment that was black-centered and black-affirming. It’s like the more I love myself as a black person, the better I respond to mental illness.

It sounds like self-acceptance, and acceptance of mental illness as something that doesn’t “magically disappear forever,” is an integral part of how you manage your depression. What are some tangible ways you express that acceptance, and—as you say—that love for yourself, both as a person and specifically as a black person?
Seeking a black woman therapist was a big one. It’s so easy to fall into a cycle with a “just good enough” therapist where you end up with them out of laziness and not out of actually wanting to go to therapy. It just gets tiring when a non-black therapist keeps responding with, “Wow, that must be really hard” when I talk about the challenges of being a black woman. I appreciate the empathy but I need more than that. So now, having a black woman therapist is huge. I can reach out to her in times of emergency and I know she knows how urgent my situation is.

We both use humour in our Twitter feeds to convey the experiences of living with depression. What would you say to people who say we are romanticizing, sensationalizing, or making light of the topic?
Depression humour is the best humour. It really is. There’s a reason why so many comedians deal with depression. We have a lens into the human condition that most non-mentally ill people do not have.

When I attempted the first time in 2015, my mom and brother sat me down to talk about it. I was told that my brother and sister thought my Depressed While Black blog encouraged people to attempt suicide because I shared my struggles with suicidal thoughts. I felt I was ganged up on, so I didn’t have the time to properly arrange my thoughts.

But I would say now, where do you want us to go? Do you want us to not tell you that we’re struggling with depression and hide our issues? Do you want to be the family member that says, “I didn’t know” at our funeral? Because for so many of us, speaking about our mental health is the difference between life and death. We are fighting to live and our humour is a way to inch towards life. Punishing people for being honest about their mental illness can actually make the mental illness worse, so let’s just chill out, OK?

I identify with your experience with your mom, and the cultural myth as coping mechanism. My mom always said Jews weren’t alcoholics. But I’m 100% a Jew and 100% an alcoholic and addict (in recovery). It was easier for her when I was falling down the stairs drunk at Thanksgiving—but not identifying as having a problem—than when I said “I’m an alcoholic” when I started recovering. She also expressed a lot of shame when my So Sad Today book came out. She still hates that it exists, which hurts. How are things with your mom in her acceptance of your depression? Is there anything you feel you’ve maybe taught her about perceived strength and weakness?
My mom is getting better. She offers to pay for some of my expensive therapy sessions, which is huge. Sometimes she does a wonderful job listening and offering childhood memories that help me put the pieces together of how I’ve been dealing with depression for a very long time. It’s very easy to assume you don’t deal with depression when that’s all you know. So it helps when my mom brings up memories of when I was actually dealing with depression as a child. She’s also great with pep talks as well.

She does have to make up for a lot of ground. She raised me in an environment where God “fixed” everything immediately. If something is wrong, you pray about it and then testify that God fixed it that Sunday. The struggle in between is difficult for her to understand without implying I’m doing something wrong. So I think she doesn’t fully understand open-ended illnesses. Everything has to have a sudden resolution. There are moments when I just want to give up and never talk to her about depression again. She’ll say that prayer worked for her, as if there’s something wrong with me. It’s an up and down relationship.

My mom came of age during the Black Power [movement] in the late 60s and 1970s. There is literally a Black Power fist on her college yearbook. She could have a full conversation with a wall about how she was the first person to wear an afro in her high school. I would make a joke that when I was growing up, she would point to random objects and say a black man invented it first, but a white man stole it.

I think she was reacting to the librarian who told her she didn’t expect black children to get a library card as a child. I think she was reacting to how much her blackness was suppressed and maligned, even by her own family members growing up. So liberation for her was projecting black people as perfect, and invulnerable to mental illness.

So “I’m fine” as protection. How did you first discover the pioneering of mental health treatment in Egypt and how did it make you feel? Are there any resources on that you recommend for people who might want to explore that heritage?
I learned when I was at Columbia, getting an MFA in Nonfiction Creative Writing. I was writing Depressed While Black—it was a thesis then—and I wanted to include historical facts that undermined the stereotypical beliefs I had that only white people go to therapy. This was around 2013 when I first committed to sharing my story.

When I studied healers like Imhotep as well as post-colonial practitioners like Dr. Thomas Lambo and Franz Fanon, I felt I finally knew the pioneers who normalized my advocacy.

As influential as black people are all over the world, I just couldn’t understand how the contributions of Africans were omitted from Andrew Solomon’s pivotal “Noonday Demons” book. That really bothered me. He discussed the history of Western mental health medicine, but it felt like a small portion of the overall picture. And this is what we often do in mental health discussions. We often begin at the middle, but not at the beginning, and we leave black heroes out of the conversation.

I’m shifting to a mentality where I want to stop discussing blackness as a mental health problem. We pathologize blackness in the way we exchangeably refer to blackness and stigma. But blackness existed well before stigma that is informed and structured by white supremacy. Blackness isn’t just “praying it away” or not going to the doctor. We are doctors, therapists, and peer group counselors as well.

I was introduced to Depressed While Black through Twitter, but I now know that it’s only one piece of a much larger project. When you are booking speaking gigs, or writing professionally, do you ever feel self-conscious or like you have to “present” yourself a certain way in light of the topic? Sometimes, when people meet me, they are disappointed that I’m actually a big and frequent smiler. It’s as though there is a perception that depression is a monolithic identity, as though depressed people aren’t supposed to laugh. Professionally, I feel an extra need to “prove” that I “can keep it together.” Like, “Don’t worry, it’s OK to work with me, I’ll be functional! Look how functional I am! Professional as fuck!” This is probably less about the people I interact with and more about my own desire to people-please, and fear of not being enough, but I’m always aware of it.
So, I was invited to this event where all the full-time mental health advocates were going to share their thoughts. And one of them tells me, “You’re a mascot.” As in, mental health advocates are treated as mascots. I was so naive and just happy to be there, so I didn’t fully understand what he was saying until later.

But essentially, it’s expected of us to either perform depression, or perform overcoming depression. And that’s being a mascot. It’s unfair to people like us who are simply trying to find healthy ways to manage our condition. It is not our responsibility to fulfill who you think we should be.

We are living in an age now where everyone expects a TED Talk. I’m a writer, so I love the three-act structure, but our messy lives do not fit an exposition, climax, and resolution. If I say I’m having a really hard time on Twitter, it doesn’t mean the next day I’ll talk about the self-care I did and how I feel better. My life doesn’t work that way.

Additionally, I’m a black woman. And it’s expected of us to have an attitude and be difficult to work with. As a response, I’ve gone way over the top in smiling all the time, especially while sharing information that some would deem unpleasant. It’s like a tic at this point. I smiled through my entire video for BET about being suicidal! It’s a mess.

At the end of the day, depression is not a personality. My natural personality is to be super silly and smiley, so if I’m well enough to be who I naturally am, I’m going to enjoy every moment.

I think people who engage with us on a professional level do need to be aware that we are not motivational speakers. I experience the other side where people assume I have it more together than I actually do. I can get assigned a project without anyone asking how I’m doing or if I have the bandwidth to fulfill the assignment. Like HOW SWAY? I’m having a meltdown on Twitter right now. It’s like I want to be respected as a professional, but also as a person who has special needs.

God, you are brilliant. I affirm and echo that dichotomy between the expectation of performing depression, or performing overcoming depression. That has been my experience to a T. Also, fuck a TED Talk. In terms of other people’s perceptions, I wanted to also ask you about the church, which appears in your Twitter as something of a superego or judge that has been internalized. Do you currently have a spiritual practice? Have you found any solace in religion or spirituality in terms of mental health?
The black church, more specifically the Church of God In Christ, the Pentecostal denomination I grew up in, most taught me how to judge people. So you’re spot on in saying that my black church influence appears in my Twitter life as a judge. When depression combines with my judgmental background, I go through this dumpster fire where I constantly judge myself and feel I’m not good enough.

My spiritual practice is on low battery to be honest. There are no words to describe how spiritually ashy I am right now. I just got out the hospital, a.k.a “the hotel.” I feel like the depressed state I’m in right now is the new normal and all hopes of getting that “Yes” from God is gone. At least for now. I constantly feel there’s a barrier between myself and God, as well as other Christians who offer the false hope that my depression will magically go away with extroverted spirituality. It’s so tiring. Top that off with feeling like I’ve outgrown my Christian friends due to a variety of disappointments and evolutions, and well, a spiritual dumpster fire is my home right now.

The only solace I find in spirituality right now is the scripture, “Jesus wept.” As in Jesus saw that Lazarus was dead, Jesus knew that Lazarus will eventually be OK, but Jesus was moved and allowed himself to feel grief—depression if you will—of Lazarus’s friends and family. I find solace that God knows how hard this is for someone to suffer while feeling like the solution exists, but is so far away.

I answered this question in the most depressing way imaginable. But I warned you guys. I’m not a motivational speaker. If you want hopeful optimism, watch a TED Talk or Oprah.

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Earlier this month, two allegedly patriotic Americans brought their kids to a mosque in Tempe, Arizona, to “expose the evil” inside. What that meant in reality was marching into an Islamic community center, tearing flyers off a bulletin board, and yelling at a man standing outside, the Huffington Post reports.

Tahnee Gonzales and Elizabeth Dauenhauer streamed the bizarre, hate-fueled tirade live on Facebook. In the now-deleted video—since reposted by another user—they appear to call Muslims "devil satan worshippers" who rape goats while circling the Islamic Community Center of Tempe on foot. And they encourage the three kids they've brought with them to join in.

"Be careful, because Muslims are waiting to rape you," a girl is heard instructing a fellow child in the video. "Tell the Muslims to call me a cow, I’ll tell them 'moo.'"

At one point, the adult women are seen pushing through a gate marked "no trespassing" and rifling through pamphlets at the community center. They appear to rip several flyers off a bulletin board and add them to a pile of stolen "propaganda," handing some off to the kids they've brought with them.

"Muhammad was married to a little girl, a nine-year-old girl," one woman says in the video. "Pedophilia runs deep in the Muslim community." (She does not appear to comment on the long legacy of pedophilia in plenty of Christian communities.)

After peering into the community center's funeral van, the women come across a man outside the mosque who identifies himself as a Muslim. One starts berating him, yelling that "Sharia is bad in America" and that “you guys even rape goats, that’s how sick you are."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he says. "We’re trying to be peaceful."

The cops are now investigating the two women, who appear to be affiliated with the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim group Patriot Movement AZ, according to an AZCentral report. Officials from the mosque filed a police report and handed security footage over to investigators, who were considering trespassing charges.

"It was really disheartening to see how ignorant some people can be," Ahmad Al-Akoum, the mosque's imam, told AZCentral. "The thing that affected me most was those young children being drafted by their mom and being taught hate and intolerance."

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“We get it, people are curious,” says Scientology leader David Miscavige in the intro video to his new TV channel. “Whatever you’ve heard, if you haven't heard it from us, I can assure you we're not what you expect."

And Miscavige is right. From Going Clear to South Park to that Leah Remini show, almost everything you hear about Scientology is coming from either an outside critic or a former member, rarely someone on the inside. And a lot of what you hear about Scientology is mockery, or criticism for the many, many fucked up things the church has done. (Like forcing people to disconnect from their families. Or allegedly abusing their members. Or using 9/11 and Columbine as tools to push their agenda. Or harassing former members and journalists. Or perpetrating a giant campaign of domestic espionage against the US.)

I’ve probably been exposed to more of Scientology’s words than the average person, because I’ve written about them in the past and read their books and visited their buildings. I also get a bunch of their literature in the mail because the person who lived in my house before me was a Scientologist. But the vast majority of things I’ve seen about Scientology have come from non-Scientologists.

Some of the Scientology stuff I've received in the mail

So I figured fuck it, why not give them a chance to say what they want to say? I decided to watch 24 straight hours of the Scientology Network on its first full day of broadcast on Tuesday to see what it’s all about.

Inside Scientology

When I tuned in at 5:15 AM, a show called Inside Scientology was playing.

I was way, way too tired to wrap my head around it. I'm not entirely sure who the show is meant to be for. Miscavige, in his introduction, suggested that non-Scientologists are the target audience for the channel. But Inside Scientology was so jargon-heavy ("We are here to make the able more able") that it's hard to imagine it appealing to anyone who isn't a Scientologist.

I just kinda zoned out on the audio and admired the shots of the aggressively multicultural, smily, well-groomed Scientologists they had in every shot.

Luckily for me, Scientology Network loves to replay stuff. I saw this particular episode (and almost every episode mentioned in this piece) multiple times throughout the day. After the second or third go-round, I was able to fully take it in. It was basically just explaining what Scientology could do for you. Stuff like get you a better job and make you look "five to ten years younger."

It never got any easier to wrap my head around lines like “Scientology is a technology, the way that building a bridge is a technology,” though.

Also, the show’s titles looked exactly the same as those on MTV Cribs.

Meet a Scientologist

Next up was Meet a Scientologist, a show in which the viewer gets to meet a Scientologist.

The episode I saw four or five times introduced me to Greg and Janet Deering, a Scientologist couple who own a banjo business. It’s easy to see why these guys were included. They seem to be legitimately successful in their field, and because they’ve worked with artists like the Dixie Chicks, Mumford & Sons, and Taylor Swift, it’s a way for the church to get some impressive names on their network.

But god damn are banjos boring. There’s probably an interesting eight-minute video that could be made about these people. But this show was around 30 minutes long, including commercials. Was it interesting to hear about how there was a point in time where banjos almost died out and these guys helped to repopularize them? Definitely! Was it interesting to hear that Janet once went on a road trip with Greg's mother, or that Janet's dad worked as a wind tunnel operator, or that Greg once designed a banjo inspired by Woody Harrelson's character in Zombieland? Absolutely not.

Principles of Scientology

Again, I'm not totally sure who this one is aimed at.

The idea, as per the title, is to convey the principles of Scientology. It started off simply enough, with a voiceover explaining that if you have your appendix removed, it doesn't change your personality, because you're not your body.

Pretty standard spiritual stuff. Fine.

But then they threw it into the highest gear, deployed the nitrous oxide, pulled a donut, and tore the wrong way down the freeway. "You are not your body" became "the eighth dynamic is the urge towards existence as infinity" which became an explanation of how affinity, reality, and communication form the basic components of understanding.

Destination: Scientology

Each episode in this series focuses on a different Scientology church location. The episode I saw many, many times took a look at the church and community center in Inglewood, Los Angeles.

In the episode, church members, local religious leaders, and a representative for the Nation of Islam (!!!) talked about the neighborhood's problems with drugs, gang violence, and unemployment.

Scientology reps explained that they'd chosen that specific location for their community center because it's just a few blocks from where the LA riots started, and they wanted to help the community heal. (The LA riots were in 1992, the Inglewood Scientology centers opened in 2011.)

But then the claims got grander and vaguer, in a sequence I didn't really understand. First a Scientologist talked about Bloods and Crips in Inglewood. Then they showed some kind of Scientology community outreach program that had something to do with telling kids gangs are bad. Then there was an explanation of Mike Brown and the Ferguson protests, with shots of rioting, and a lady saying "It could have gone national." Then the Nation of Islam guy explained that there'd been some kind of gang summit at the Scientology center, which led to lots of LA's gangs agreeing that killing each other is bad. Then the same guy explained that because LA is a trendsetting city, gangs in other cities started calling him, asking for him to do similar events in their cities. I'm fairly sure the implication was that Scientology is the reason that the rioting that happened in Ferguson didn't spread nationwide? But I'm also just confused.

Voices for Humanity

This was essentially the same show as Destination: Scientology, only instead of hinting at the massive influence of Scientology in South LA, it hinted at the massive influence of Scientology in Colombia.

Specifically, the show made the case that, as the result of Scientologists giving talks and handing out literature on the importance of human rights, crime dropped and complaints against the military—who had previously been murdering civilians—fell 96 percent.

They seemed to be saying that the people of Colombia were unable to figure out that murdering or beating or robbing someone was bad until Scientologists gave them a pamphlet telling them that human rights are actually good. Which... is probably a bit offensive.

Commercials

The shows had commercial breaks, but they only showed commercials for Scientology, Scientology-related organizations, and Scientology TV shows. As the shows themselves are basically commercials for Scientology, it meant that, at times, I was in a commercial break, from a commercial, watching a commercial for an upcoming commercial.

Most of the commercials would be really fast cuts of like, sped-up footage of people on escalators/slow motion shots of a bird in flight/a word like "communication"/drone footage of Hollywood/an eagle in flight/a matador / a guy sitting in a dry lake bed at sunset/a title card with the Scientology logo and a lens flare.

They were extremely slick and well produced, like those universe-establishing commercials they have for evil corporations in sci-fi movies. On a couple of occasions, they got me kinda amped up. I could definitely see myself eating an Okja or signing up for a Hunger Game or whatever if they caught me in the right mood.

L. Ron Hubbard: In His Own Voice and L. Ron Hubbard Library Presents

I'm lumping these two together because they were essentially the same show. One looked at the life of L. Ron Hubbard, the other at his writings and speeches.

It seemed like a pretty bold concept, given that L. Ron Hubbard and his church are extremely famous for acting in ways that are in direct opposition to the sentiments being pushed in the shows.

There was a section about Hubbard being appalled that universities and religious institutions don't give out their information freely. "I have never seen wisdom do any good kept to oneself," said Hubbard. Which is an odd position to take when you're famous for founding an organization that allegedly forces its adherents to pay thousands and thousands of dollars in exchange for information.

Elsewhere, someone delivered the message that one of the basic creeds of Scientology is "that all men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions, and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others." Which is probably one I would be a bit embarrassed to stand behind if I were part of an organization that once attempted to frame a journalist in a bomb plot because she wrote critically about them.

By 6 PM I was getting anxious and panicky. I hadn't seen any new content in hours. At one point, while making coffee, I heard the voice of the banjo makers and involuntarily yelled "NO!" (It turned out to just be a commercial.)

But then a miracle happened. New programming appeared!

I Am a Scientologist

This was by far the worst show on the channel, and the one with the simplest premise: Scientologists from around the world explained how Scientology has helped them in their lives.

Each clip was almost identical, with a Scientologist introducing themselves, saying something to the effect of "Scientology helped me in my career because it made me a better communicator," then introducing themselves again. Each one lasted about a minute. Each one was agonizingly boring.

I noticed in one of the shots that there was a theater marquee advertising The Other Boleyn Girl, which came out in 2008. Which suggests this footage was shot for something else and re-edited into this nonsense.

Common Sense for Life

This one featured a series of super short (and super dramatic!) films based on a booklet L. Ron Hubbard wrote called The Way to Happiness—which is kinda like Scientology's version of the Ten Commandments.

This also seemed to have been filmed some time ago. I'm not sure when, exactly, but everything had the same tone and styling as the "Pretty Fly For a White Guy" video.

Eventually, despite the new programming, I started to get sleepy. I spent the final hours of my experiment drifting in and out of sleep on my couch.

I woke up to see a skateboarder rubbing his injured leg against a rail while a voiceover talked about the importance of confronting pain. I woke up to a scene of a woman having an acid flashback during a board meeting. I woke up to people acting out the definition of the word communication" I woke up to a woman saying, "He said he'd love me forever if I smoked crack with him—he lied."

There are things I remember and I'm unsure if they actually happened, or if I dreamed them. There's a line in my notes that I don't remember writing that says: "shot of a fat person accidentally burning down a business."

When I got into bed at the end of my 24 hours, I had my first nightmare in a long time. An apocalyptic black cloud had enveloped my neighborhood, trapping me inside my house. Then I discovered a man had broken in and started putting up advertising posters in my living room. I noticed a cop outside, and called for help. But when he came inside my house, he started sticking up posters too.

I'm not sure if Scientology inspired it, but it felt poignant.

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For the last two weeks the Sofia House Solidarity Centre has been welcoming homeless people from across London to a legally-squatted vacant four-storey commercial property just north of Oxford Circus – one of the ten per cent of Westminster properties owned by offshore tax vehicles.

The centre was the latest project by homelessness activists Streets Kitchen. They opened their doors on 1st March, offering not only food, clothes, medical care and housing advice, but an inclusive community with no wrong answers and few red lines.

I visited the centre two days after it opened in early March. Behind a narrow, frosted-glass door, tarpaulin dividers between concrete columns broke up an otherwise large, if dingy, space. The tallest volunteers were on step ladders, fixing strings of lights to overhead cable trays. Piles of donated clothes and bedding leaned against the floor-to-ceiling windows facing onto Great Portland Street.

“This is when you see people power at its finest,” explained Sarah, a volunteer. In no time at all, a large kitchen counter was up and a microwave began reheating one of at least fifty takeaway containers of chilli and rice.

“These are perfect community spaces that we can utilise, and turn into something beautiful,” she said, as a plumber wrestled with the toilet while Franco Manca pizza boxes, which arrived full the day before, soaked up the overflow. Not perfect or beautiful in every sense, but I got what Sarah meant.

A week later, I was back at the centre to attend a house meeting. The toilet was in surprisingly good shape by this point. The pile of clothes was now a free shop, with shelves and opening hours, and most of the bedding was strewn throughout the building. But there was a tense Friday night atmosphere. With guests spread out over three floors, maintaining the centre’s drug and alcohol-free policy was getting harder. “I’m sick of being called fucking bitch,” one volunteer told me.

The meeting was messy. The conversation pinballed, and a "hands up and wait your turn" rule lasted about ten minutes. The Sofia Centre opened its doors in a moment of acute crisis, at the peak of the Beast from the East weather front that brought sub-zero temperatures. London eventually thawed, but guests continued to arrive.

The discussion seemed to circle around two questions: How long can Streets Kitchen’s volunteers continue to offer "unconditional care" to an ever-growing group of guests, many with addiction and physical and mental health issues? And: How far can and should they move away from the council model of "providers" and "service users", encouraging guests to share the responsibility of maintaining a sustainable and inclusive environment?

“We're doing our best,” said one volunteer, “but every night more and more people are coming, and we’re having to open more and more beds. We need people who are going to stand up, respect this place and help out.”

“There’s no voices of the residents here,” another responded. “We're imposing our will on the building.”

The phrase "self-aggrandizing circle jerk" was used.

“Let’s just treat each other how we want to be treated,” someone suggested. I hadn’t expected a group of anarchists to talk for an hour and come up with the Bible.

One of the clearest voices in Friday’s meeting was Behar Loshi, a recovering addict and a volunteer mentor in Camden. Softly-spoken and thoughtful these days but by his own admission a rebellious and difficult service user during his addiction, Loshi has been on both sides of a divide that the centre is blurring. I wanted to know whether lessons learned here could ever feed back into professional outreach services.

“You don’t see this in professional organisations,” said Loshi of the Sofia Centre’s approach to its guests. “I’m in those places, and they struggle with these people.”

Escaping cycles of homelessness and addiction, he explained, is only possible from a place of security and ownership. Responsibility is essential to building that sense of security. “It’s quite healthy to be made to feel responsible. These people haven’t been trusted with anything in a long time. We're talking about smart responsibility: specific, measurable, realistic. Bite-sized.”

And his own experiences tell him this works. “My recovery got started accidentally,” said Loshi. “I found a key worker that cared. I was just looking for that glimpse. I recognise it in everyone now: you give them care, instead of giving them targets.”

Behar Loshi

Loshi is far from the only volunteer at the centre with experience of addiction and rough sleeping, and is convincing in his belief that roles like his – where support is provided by people who’ve lived the experience of those they’re supporting – are the future of our approach to homelessness. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that Streets Kitchen’s ethos of ‘solidarity, not charity" will always be irreconcilable with state services, and is often predicated on their shortcomings.

“We’re not a political movement,” Streets Kitchen’s founder Jon Glackin often says, “but what we do is by its nature political.”

Later on, Glackin nudges me as he passes and points towards the kitchen. “Look at that!” Behind the counter, three guests are making lunch, tidying as they go. “It’s happening,” he said mischievously. “It’s fucking happening!”

Here and there, it was happening. Tony, 51, spends his time as the centre’s doorman. He calls himself "Oz 2" after Ozzy Osbourne, and has spent over half his life sleeping rough. More of a "watcher" than a people person, sitting away from the crowd gives him space for reflection.

“I thought it was hell, here, at first,” explained Tony. “I don’t get on well with so many people, but I’ve got a lot more confidence since I came here.” He leafed through the pages of the centre’s guestbook, as he spoke to me. “It’s a bit of space to be what I really am. I might not look it on the outside, but I’m a happy person.”

I asked Tony if he still think this is hell, five days on? “No, no,” he said, half to himself. “I like it here. I’m loving it. I've met a lot of people here I could call friends. I hope I can call them friends.”

Some of the guests, like Sid, slept for days when they arrived. “It’s comfortable, man,” Sid said, “wonderful.” Many guests left behind doorways and cardboard for a double mattress, clean bedding and a community. But when he wakes up, Sid, like many others, is waiting for the axe to fall. “I get the fear, a bit,” he told me, fidgeting. “I can’t stop thinking about it. What’s going to happen when we get asked to leave here, are we back on the streets again?"

Volunteers counted 160 guests on Tuesday night, the 24 hours before the court decision was due. When it finally came, it was expected: the building’s owners were granted the right to evict everyone in there.

“These people are going right back out there,” said Glackin after the verdict. “Death haunts them out there. This is when we need councils to get behind us. Give us buildings. Give us the resources to do this properly. We shouldn’t have to take buildings, we should be given them.”

@bobtrafford

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

When it comes to high fashion in China, there’s nothing quite as coveted as a mink coat. Everyday people save up for months to afford the plush, extravagant outerwear, flocking to malls by the busload every winter to get their hands on one.

VICE China took a deep dive inside the lucrative industry to find out why mink fur is so popular in the country, and to see how the coats get made—visiting the farms that harvest minks, the factories turning their fur into jackets, and the vendors selling them for thousands of dollars apiece.

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This story was produced in collaboration with the Marshall Project.

“Is there a face on Mars?” a prisoner wants to know.

He is standing in the doorway to my office, beaming like a child. After watching a program on the History Channel, he decided there was a real human visage on the red planet, perhaps created by aliens.

We look up the subject online together. It turns out there is a geographical feature on Mars that looks a lot like a face, but the photographs and data, of course, demonstrate that it is just a rock formation on the planet’s surface.

I can see that he is genuinely disappointed—even as an incarcerated person, he had high hopes for a human presence in outer space.

As a prison librarian, you get a lot of interesting reference questions. Inmates do not have regular access to the internet, so while outsiders can Google the slightest question, the incarcerated have to use an old-fashioned form of search engine: the printed encyclopedia.

Or, they can lean on someone like me as their internet intermediary, making formal, written requests for information online. We do our best to provide accurate responses that are current and come from reliable sources.

An inmate hands me what looks like a 15th-generation photocopy, asking about the Social Security benefits available to him when he gets out. The piece of paper promises years of free financial benefits from the government.

This is another prison folktale: the myth of a lucrative handout, post-incarceration. The Social Security Administration is aware of such misinformation and has published brochures explaining how Social Security really works for inmates returning to society.

“But the paper says you will deny this program exists,” the inmate says, after I hand him one of those very brochures.

I am at a loss for words. He leaves my (accurate) brochure behind when he exits the library, a cruel reminder that people hear what they want to hear.

One of the library workers, an African-American man, tells me he goes by Brown-Bey, not simply Brown, because he is a Moorish Science Muslim. Inmates like him, he says, add a suffix such as ‘Bey’ or ‘El’ to their last names, a symbol of their Moorish, not Black, heritage.

The Moors meet on Fridays at the weekly Muslim jum’ah service in the gymnasium near the library. When they walk in, some with flowing robes and turbans, they look more like ancient wise men and shepherds than inmates. Others wear a modified fez, a hallmark of Moorish Science.

Today, the Moorish Science Temple shares a kinship with the Sovereign Citizen movement, which considers itself unbound by the laws and leaders of the United States.

The library clerk goes on to tell me that sovereign citizens don’t have to pay taxes because of the “straw man” theory. The explanation of this is convoluted and takes a while for my brain to process. But the idea is that all humans have two personas, a legal entity and their physical self, and the latter is not responsible for the debts or taxes of the former.

Yet the IRS is very aware of the “straw man” theory and will fine an individual who uses it $5,000 for filing a “frivolous tax return.”

I try to explain this, but to no avail.

“Just write the word Frank where the stamp goes,” I hear another inmate telling a friend in the library.

I have to ask what he is talking about. He tells me that it is common knowledge that a very wealthy man named Frank died and donated his millions of dollars to the U.S. Postal Service. Now all poor people have to do is write his name on an envelope in place of a stamp, and the mail will be delivered for free.

Many prisoners swear they have used this method, and that it works.

The cool and weird thing about Franking is that in the U.S., it was originally used in 1775 by members of the first Continental Congress—it allowed for representatives to mail letters just by signing their names. If you look up the word ‘frank’ in the dictionary, one of the definitions you'll find is, “The signature of the sender on a piece of franked mail serving in place of a postage stamp.”

While it may not work even if the concept has (somewhat legitimate) historic origins, the idea of franking is appealing. It is at times like these that I feel more like an anthropologist than a librarian: Prison can be a Kafka-esque time capsule, the Land That Time Forgot. Ideas from ancient Rome and early America still exist behind bars in the 21st century.

“Is Michelle Obama a Freemason?”

This is a serious question from an inmate. I sigh as I type it into Google. Many incarcerated people I have met are very sure that Freemasons are the real world power. I blame this myth on Dan Brown— The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol are still avidly read books in prison.

“She is at least part of the Illuminati,” another inmate says. “I saw her make a Freemason hand gesture on TV last night.”

Trying to start a dialogue, I ask, “What is the Illuminati?”

“It is the secret society of elites who rule the planet through the New World Order.”

“Who else is part of the Illuminati?” I ask.

According to inmates, there are many famous Illuminati members, including former President Barack Obama, Jay-Z and Beyonce, Justin Bieber, and Bono. I’ve heard many of them reference the Eye of Providence, which sits atop the pyramid on the back of a dollar bill, as proof of the Freemasons’ secret reign over the U.S.

I tell them that current Freemason groups deny any connection to the design of the bill.

“Well, of course they will deny it...”

White supremacism, another conspiracy theory, is very much alive and well in prison. The library books are constantly getting vandalized with racist symbols, such as the tag “14/88.” (Fourteen represents the number of words in the white-supremacist maxim of the convicted felon David Lane, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The number 88 is shorthand for “Heil Hitler,” since H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.)

The circulation clerk blacks out the symbols with a Sharpie, but it’s a futile effort: The books go out and come back with the same markings, over and over again.

Another inmate, with an air of innocence, asks me about the plan for world domination by the Jews.

“And what plan is that?” I ask.

“I read about it in a book. How Jews are smart and stick together and have a plan to take over the media so they can control the world... Don’t the Jews own the media?”

After a few questions and some Googling, I realize that the book the inmate is talking about is “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” It contains false, anti-Semitic propaganda published in early 20th-century Russia.

I talk about it a bit with the prisoner, and I can see some enlightenment happening. He is slightly mortified that he didn’t understand this classic work of hate literature was used against Jews during the Holocaust.

I have not found a copy of that vile book in my library, but I imagine it is also well-worn, often photocopied, and passed around just like the fake Social Security benefits paper. It’s true that conspiracy theories are popular everywhere—perhaps in this era more than the recent past. But they’re especially flourishing in the education-less vacuum of many prisons nationwide, where funding for classes and programming gets cut more every year. Sadly, ignorance is breeding faster than the cockroaches and mice that also inhabit these human warehouses.

At one point, I start bringing in books, two bags a day, to revitalize a prison library that has not seen new ones in years. The inmates are curious. Where do they come from? Am I buying them? Are they donations? How do I have access to so many?

One of the library clerks, a young man from Philadelphia, looks at me with a twinkle in his eye.

“I know,” he says. “You are part of the Book Illuminati!”

I am thrilled and smile back.

Mary Rayme is a recently retired prison librarian who worked at correctional facilities in West Virginia and Maryland. She is currently writing a memoir.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.