My wife disputed the holiday this morning, saying "no holiday is legit without holiday music." Well, here's a really stupid theme song for today.

I hope your meat is tenderized and your balls are clean, because today is Steak and Blowjob Day. If you haven’t heard, S&BJ Day is an annual holiday where men sit around eating red meat and getting blown. Its origins are something of a mystery, but Kelly Shibari, 2013 BBW EXXXOTICA Performer of the Year and S&BJ expert, thinks it can be traced back to a horny DJ in the pre-internet era. Yesterday, Kelly hosted a Steak and Blowjob workshop in Santa Barbara, California, for couples looking to prepare for the big day. We figured she would be the perfect person to speak to on this sacred occassion, so we caught up with her after the class to discuss the Japanese version of Steak and Blowjob Day, whether gay men or porn stars give better hummers, and how vile and disease-ridden most penises in mainstream society are.

VICE: What do you know about Steak and Blowjob Day?
Kelly Shibari: I heard about the holiday in college—possibly even before the internet was big. I remember some morning radio disc jockey came up with it and then some men’s magazines picked it up and it became this underground thing for a while, then with the internet it blew up overnight. It’s based on the running joke that girls want all this romance for Valentine’s Day and all guys really want is a beer, a steak, and a blowjob. That’s not necessarily true, but that’s the premise of the holiday. In Japan March 14 is called White Day and it’s very similar, but they don’t talk about steak and blowjobs. It’s just the day when men receive gifts from their girls—the opposite of Valentines.

Most unromantic men are only romantic on Valentine’s Day. Do you think this holiday creates a slippery slope where women will only give head on Steak and BJ Day?
That’s the best question ever because I thought you were going to go into a feminist slant because there are women who complain that today is misogynistic. And I’m like, “What about Valentine’s Day?” And for couples that are not necessarily heterosexual, the holiday can be between two guys, it can be between two girls; I know plenty of girls who pack a strap on and identify as boys or queer and they get blowjobs all the time—there’s no semen, but the ritual is still there. It’s kind of like Christmas or Thanksgiving or any of the holidays. I think in general if people have a good experience with something maybe they’ll be like, “Hey, that was really fun. Why are we only doing that one time a year?” Hopefully they’ll be doing it every month.

Or every day.
That would get tiring. And the steak would get expensive. By the end of the year you’d be eating Salisbury. Or like, “Let’s go grab a burger and I’ll give you a handy in the car.”

You just hosted a steak and blowjob workshop. What makes you such an expert on steak?
Well, I’m not a Michelin-star chef. If I were I wouldn’t be doing porn. I like steak, and I have had enough of it to know what I like. I’m also a bit of a foodie. My dad has always had his steak burnt to a crisp, but I have it as rare as humanly possible. I tell them to just slap it on its ass on the way out of the kitchen. For the workshops we talk about vegetarian options for the couples that don’t do meat, but the whole purpose of the workshop and the day is to have fun. 

And what makes you an expert on blowjobs?
Well, I’m in porn. Although these days that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an expert.

No, I’ve seen a lot of really boring hummers in porn.
Out of all the sex acts out there, my personal preference is giving BJs. I’ve always enjoyed it. I personally am not a big fan of having guys go down on me because I just feel awkward laying there. But on the other hand I love giving blowjobs! I pay a lot of attention, I take my time—it’s not a quickie. I like to get down there and explore, and the guys I’ve been with have enjoyed themselves, so in that way it kind of makes me an expert. Again, like the steak thing, I don’t have a PhD in fellatio, but I try everything because every guy is different. I think enthusiasm goes a long way and I worship the male anatomy.

I’ve never had a blowjob from a guy, but I would assume that a man could give superior head. Do you have any insight on this? And how do you stack up?
Well, I don’t have a penis so I don’t know what a gay man’s blowjob feels like, but I think practice makes perfect. So if you’re a gay guy who likes to give blowjobs, then I’m sure you give an amazing blowjob. But then you’re going to have guys who are tops who say, “Guys suck me off; I don’t suck them off.” There are all sorts of dynamics. I think chemistry plays a lot into it. A guy could be really, really hot and give a really bad BJ. Same with a girl—she could be super hot and give a “Really? That’s your best?” kind of BJ.

Would you make a good gay man?
I think I would make an OK gay man, but I’m still exploring the whole anal sex part so I’d only be a half-assed gay man, no pun intended. But I like guys—I like stubble and body hair, I like the way men smell, and I have pseudo-masculine mentality about most things in the world when it comes to sex. At the same time, I’ve had my share of anal in private, but I haven’t had any porno anal because those things are just too big. I also have friends who are super hardcore bottoms and like to get fisted. Sorry, but that’s not going anywhere near my butt! So that might disqualify me as a gay man. I’m glad I have a pussy.

You did an 18-guy fan-blow-bang in Overloaded. How was that?
Yeah, 18 guys. All fans. It was like a chubby guy blowjob fest. They were chubbies with chubbies. It was a two-hour live streaming show and most of them came twice. We had one guy who had some problems, but he was older so I think that was the issue.

How does one keep the salivation up for two hours?
Hydration! Lots of water. It was 110 degrees and no humidity, so it was hot and sweaty. There was a case of water just for me.

How was it dealing with fans? I’m so grossed out by humans in the private sector. No one gets tested.
When we initially put out the call on social media over 200 people applied. I was like, “Whoa! That’s going to be a long day.” Then we said, “By the way, everyone needs to get tested by the adult industry testing facility,” and that dropped the number down to 18 people. I know, at $150, it’s a bit pricy.

That’s really not a bad price to pay for a good blowjob.
True. But I’m sure there were still a group of guys who didn’t do it because they knew what their results would be.

I’m sure. I always say that I’d rather have unprotected sex with someone in the porn industry because I feel safer about it with all the testing than with someone in the private sector who never gets tested.
Yeah, before I did porn and I was dating, no one was tested, and no one wanted to use a condom, whereas in the porn industry everyone gets tested every month so it seems safer than just hooking up with a random and then finding out you’ve got chlamydia or gonorrhea or worse because the guy never got tested in his entire life. A lot of people feel that way. It was a huge deal five or six years ago when Scarlett Johansson was all over the news, like, “I go to the adult testing place to get tested every month.” She wasn’t in a full on relationship, but she was dating, and she wanted to get tested at the best place possible, and as far as she was concerned that’s the adult industry.

Follow Kelly on Twitter or or go to KellyShibariXXX.com

And you can vote for her in this years Exxxotica Whole Lotta Love category here.

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or @Nieratko

This story came from Motherboard, our tech website. Read more at Motherboard.tv. 

Last we checked, Isaac Wilder had had enough of New York City. Isaac, who heads up the Free Network Foundation (FNF), had woven himself and the FNF's vision of an open-access, community-controlled mesh network into the Occupy movement. But by February 2012, with the movement semingly peetering out, Isaac looked west. Along with his buddy and FNF partner Tyrone Greenfield (the son of Jerry Greenfield, of Ben & Jerry's fame), Isaac packed up his hardware and set out for Kansas City, Missouri.

It was a bold, if strategic, move. Still is. Kansas City, of course, is one of a handful of Google Fiber test beds. It's here that the FNF has steadily rooted its community-based Kansas City Free Network (KCFN). With Google Fiber's expansion moving quick, and the web turning 25 this week, it felt like a good time to check in with Isaac. We caught up, appropriately enough, over email.

MOTHERBOARD: How are you, Isaac?
Isaac: I'm great! It's finally getting springy here in KC, and that means it's network-building season!

It's been a while since we last spoke. A year, at least. What have you been up to?
We've had an incredible year. We're putting finishing touches on our annual report right now, but to put it succinctly: There is an emergent international coalition of free-network orgs, with strong participation from Guifi.net (Catalonia), Altermundi (Argentina), FFDN (France), Wlan Slovenjia (Slovenia), People's Open Network (Oakland), and KCFN (Kansas/Missouri).

The FNF is expanding its role as a steward of key accords/covenants/definitions/licenses, and helping to foster international cooperation. We are on the ground in Kansas City and Austin, developing, improving, and teaching the theory and practice of free networks. Personally, I just bought a house in Kansas City and am planning to be based here for at least the next couple of years.

What's the scope the FNF's community mesh network out there now, anyway?
Still here, growing strong. We've got seven major sites throughout the city, with about 500 families served by KCFN, mostly in public housing. That's basically where we landed at the end of last building season. This building season, we plan to see drastic expansion, including construction of a 24 gigahertz, gigabit backbone through the urban core.

You once told me that, while you weren't sure Google Fiber will succeed in the end, you were confident the FNF (which isn't "in the same business as Google") and GF could ultimately coexist. Do you still feel that way? 
More or less. GF is an interesting product aimed at a particular market. The reality seems to be something of a letdown from the hype. KCFN is able to offer a very different value proposition. It's the same reason that a high-end specialty store and a food co-op are able to coexist. We have different values, different offerings, and different markets.

Let's talk about Occupy for a minute. How do you view the movement in hindsight?
I said it from day one, and I will say it again: It was just a practice. We have a great deal of infrastructure to build before we can really start to talk about independence/autonomy/liberty/justice.

Over two years on, do you think the movement was a concerted effort? How did its goals stack up against the crushing political and technological realities of the System?
I think it was a pressure-relief valve. I think that valve got bolted down, and then exothermically welded. You know what happens when you seal a pressure vessel and continue to apply heat? It fuckin' explodes.

What was Occupy's biggest mistake?
Framing our agenda in terms of what we didn't want, instead of what we did.

And what about Occupy's biggest success?
Building something closer to what we did want, even if it was deeply imperfect and ephemeral

How do you feel when you look back on your time with Occupy NYC? Maybe even on a specific moment, like when you tried to reclaim your belongings that had been seized in the raid on Zuccotti Park.
It's not particularly emotional for me. Occupy, for me, is subsumed in the larger narrative (in my life) of the free-network movement. I view it as one (early) chapter in a much longer story. If anything, the memories are enveloped in the unavoidable haze of nostalgia. Even just a few years out, it is far easier to remember the beauty, the realness, the feeling of electricity, than it is to remember the noise, the grime, and discord.

Personally, do you have any regrets during your time in NYC during the height of Occupy?
No. No regrets. I don't believe much in regret.

Could something like Occupy ever happen again?
Could, should, probably will. Pressure valve. I've maintained contact with a lot of folks from Occupy, and I continue to meet new ones. The solidarity is still there. The real, meaningful long-term projects are still active and growing. We will be better-equipped, better-trained, and better-informed next time.

How might democratized tools and technologies play into popular unrest in the future?
We will not rely upon tools that are designed to sell us out at our moment of greatest need. We will have longer standing, more robust trust networks (on a human level) to serve as a foundation for deliberation and organization. We are learning, building, communicating, every single day. As the spectacle fades, the dire urgency of our cause comes back into focus.

We know without a doubt that governments are watching and listening to us. Can we ever create a truly free network beyond the specter of, say, the NSA?
Yes. Empires rise and fall. Especially in cyberspace. The NSA has a strong hand, but we are like sand—the more tightly we are gripped, the more we slip through the cracks. The Seleucids thought they were invincible, too, but the Maccabees were nimble, no?

What's next for you and the FNF? What's on the horizon six months, a year, five years from now?
The next six months will see drastic expansion of KCFN, and the initial release of the Network Commons License. There will be a lot of operator training that goes along with that. A year from now, I hope to be doing equal amounts of support and training. The next year is also going to involve a lot of R&D into tower construction and design. At least, that's what I'm excited to hack on. There's lots in the pipeline. Five years from now, I think we will be knee-deep in high-altitude platform and payload design. Eventually, we probably are going to need some of that fiber. :-)

Along the way, what'll be you biggest challenge?
Finding ways to expand our coalition (and political bloc) without compromising our principals.

To switch gears, how's Tyrone doing? 
Tyrone is doing well. We shaved all his hair off last night, so he looks like a sexy mole rat/actual 25-year-old.

Anything else?  
All glory to the most high. Make your life beautiful, strange, unnerving, because it is so damn paltry. Sub specie aeternitatis, we are nothing—at the very least, let's have some fun. :-)

Watch Free the Network, Motherboard's 2012 documentary about big dreams, cloudy missions, complex affiliations, and what happens when a DIY hack-tech movement confronts the force of the state.

It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Randall Scott

The incident: A teacher who repeatedly tweeted "OBAMA IS A PUSSY" was not invited to an event that Obama was attending. 

The appropriate response: Nothing. 

The actual response: He wrote letters to various news outlets and politicians, claiming his right to free speech was being violated. 

Randall Scott is a social-studies teacher at Coral Reef Senior High School in Miami, Florida. He describes himself as a "virulent anti-Communist and hater of Obamism."

He likes to express his anti-Obama views on his Twitter account, where he has describe the president as a "weed smoking Kenyan," a "pussy," and a "commie bastard." He's also called Michelle Obama "evil" and referred to Hillary Clinton as a "hoe."

Earlier this month, Obama delivered a speech at Randall's school. In the run up to the event, the school's principal reportedly sent out an email to staff asking them not to post about Obama on social media until after the event. 

Randall responded to this by posting several anti-Obama images to his Twitter and Instagram accounts with the message "OBAMA IS A PUSSY."

According to a spokesperson for the school district, the venue was not big enough for all of the school's staff and students to attend. They say they had to decide whom to exclude from the event.

Shockingly, Randall was not invited. 

The next day, he posted an open letter about the incident to his Instagram account. In the letter he explained that he had been "excluded" from the event. Adding, "I feel I was singled out for using my right to free speech."

He also claimed to have sent copies of the letter to "my senator, congresswoman, every local TV news channel, every cool person at Fox News, and Rush."

In an interview with his local news station, WPLG, Randall said that he wanted "whoever is responsible for this to publicly apologize for discriminating against me because of my political views."

The station also reported that several students have asked to leave Randall's class due to political statements he has made. 

Randall plans on retiring at the end of this school year. 

Cry-Baby #2: The parents and busybodies of Putnam County, Florida

The incident: A class of children were shown an anti-bullying film.

The appropriate response: Nothing. 

The actual response: Parents and local religious leaders complained to the school board, saying that the film was anti-Christian.

Last month, 100 students aged 14 to 18 were shown an anti-bullying film called Love Is All You Need at Palatka High School in Putnam County, Florida. 

The film is set in a fictional world where heterosexuals make up the minority and homosexuality is the norm. In the film, gay kids pick on a straight girl for being straight, causing her to commit suicide by slitting her wrists. It is, obviously, to make the point that bullying someone because of his or her sexuality is a bad thing to do. 

Many people were upset by this. 

Failing to see the irony of the situation, dozens of parents, local religious leaders, and general busybodies piled into a school-board meeting on March 4 to complain that their children had been forced to watch something that featured gay stuff. 

Speaking at the meeting, John Iskat, a local pastor who was one of six pastors that spoke during the meeting, said, "That video had nothing to do with bullying. It had to do with a militant sodomite agenda."

Timothy Hall, another pastor who spoke at the meeting, said the film "was intended to indoctrinate and persuade students to a particular point of view."

Sandy Parker, a mother whose child watched the film, objected to "the very idea that parental protectiveness has been overwhelmed by relentless pressure from a society that seems determined to expose its young to every perversion and peril in an effort to prepare them for harsh and dangerous future." 

Speaking to the Jacksonville Times-Union, the film's director, Kim Rocco Shields, defended the film. "I firmly believe in 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,'" she said. "How can we love someone as ourselves if we don't put ourselves in their shoes?"

Jeremy Rhoden, the teacher who showed the film, received a verbal reprimand for screening it without first seeking permission from the principal. He said that he'd decided to screen the film to students because he had previously endured bullying as a gay man. 

Which of these clowns is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A girl who sued her parents because they wouldn't pay for college vs. a couple who set fire to a restaurant because they refused to serve them

Winner: The girl who sued her parents!!!

Follow Jamie on Twitter.

This story came from Motherboard, our tech website. Read more at Motherboard.tv.

When I meet artist and musician Phillip Stearns at his Bushwick studio, he's at a desk working on a light display project running on an Arduino microconroller. In boxes leaning against walls, or stored high up on metal shelves, are a collection of neon tubes that he's using for his latest project. This is Stearns' domain, and while it's not exactly a mad professor's lab, it's definitely a nexus of creation. 

I'm here to discuss Stearns' High Voltage Image Making series, which he crowdfunded with a Kickstarter campaign, surpassing his goal five times over. With the project, Stearns is developing a body of work that explores the introduction of high voltage onto instant photography chemicals and technology. The resulting images manage to look simulatenously psychedelic, neural, biological, viral, painterly, and even three-dimensional. And, because of the branching electrical discharges, each photograph becomes a Lichtenburg figure—fernlike, self-similar tracks with fractal qualities.

"These treatments approach the film technology as a recording media, capable of creating images from physical, electrical, and chemical transformations," Stearns writes on his Kickstarter page. "The project takes its cues from artists such as Man Ray (photogram), Pierre Cordier (chemigram), Marco Breuer (scratched expose and developed c-prints), Chris McCaw (sunburned prints) and Hiroshi Sugimoto (static discharges on photopaper)."

In our chat, Stearns discussed how he originally began experimenting with high voltage and instant photography, and what he plans to do with the money raised on Kickstarter. He also talked about how his work is, like hacking, really about opening up systems beyond the narrow focus of their original design and manufacture. 

MOTHERBOARD: How exactly did you get started on this project?
Stearns: It was sort of a coincidence of materials and ideas. I happened across a collection of neon that was just sitting over at a public theater. A friend of mine named Brendan Burns, who is doing amazing things with self-made synthesizers and instruments, mentioned that they were going to get rid of this stash of neon. He thought we could do something cool with it. 

The tubes require high voltage transformers to power them up. I found that the ones I received were good at being switched, so I started using them in performances. At some point some photographer in my studio building was getting rid of a whole bunch of their equipment. There was a lot of photographic paper, instant color film, instant black and white film. I didn't have the cameras to shoot this 4x5 stock, but now I do with these Polaroid land cameras. Once you take a picture, you pull a tab, which pulls it through some rollers, and you wait a little bit and you have a picture.

I didn't have the camera or rollers at the time, I just had the film and the neon ballast stuff. So, I wanted to see what would happen when I blast the film with electricity. And that idea came from Hiroshi Sugimoto, a Japanese photographer and artist who did a series called Lightning Fields, where he took black and white photo paper and subjected it to static discharges. It was just one discharge. I thought, "Well, he's doing it with black and white, and I have this color film—what's going to happen?"

It's almost like innovation of an established technique in that way.
Yeah, a lot of what happens is that I hear that somebody's done something, and I'm just like, "Okay, cool... what's that like?" Then I just try it out. I'm not so worried about copying someone else's work per se; it's just copying a technique. 

Right. Your respective works look fundamentally different. 
Different ingredients are going into it, but we're still scrambling eggs. 

So, how do you run the electricity onto the photographic material?
I set up a transformer on a table, and at first I had a paperclip attached to one of the electrodes that I taped down to the table. I had the other electrode in my hand, and put the film on top and brought it close until it arced. The first couple of photos didn't do much, but I saw that there was promise, so I refined it. I thought that if I spread the electrodes underneath the film, the electricity is going to want to go across the surface of the film and then around the images. Now that I have this arcing, it produces these Lichtenberg figures. Then I added chemicals on top, and kept going until I ran out of film.

Lichtenberg figures are fascinating. Was that on your mind when you knew you'd be running electricity onto this film?
I had a sense that what I would be capturing would be something like that, but I didn't know until further research that the result would be Lichtenberg figures. I realize now that it helps dissolve scale in a certain sense, and I was getting at that by juxtaposing the scale of electrical activity as it occurs with our vision and scaling up to what we can leverage and amplify with our technology. I knew what I was going after, but wasn't quite sure what to expect. Every time I do it, it's going to be different. There is only a certain degree of control that I have over color cast and the arcing itself. 

What's amazing is this technique's three-dimensional quality, or a sense of depth and layers. 
The film that I'm using is Fujifilm, and it has pigment and silver halide layers. The three pigment layers are cyan, magenta, and yellow. When you develop it, any of the exposed silver halide is going to block the dye transport. In this case, you would expect that when you have a bright source of light from a electrical discharge, you'd have a white figure, but here you have the inverse. And I figured out that what's happening is that the silver halides are actually conducting the electricity and getting vaporized in the process, letting the dyes bleed through. 

The depth is half the temperature of the actual arcs and then half the residual electrical energy pushing the material out of the way, and leaving space for some of the dye to seep through. In terms of the color tints, I'm still trying to figure out the mechanics of how to manipulate what's actually happening. Greater control may not be the end goal after I figure out what's going on, because some of the earlier ones look fantastic. I'd never be able to do it again, especially if I know too much. It will be like, "What was I doing when I didn't know what I was doing." [laughs]

So, how do you want to display these photos?
There is all of this detail, so there are two ways I've been thinking of presenting them. The first is by taking a stereoscopic microscope and having the photos sandwiched between two glass plates so that people can look at them. Maybe having that juxtaposed with the hyper hi-resolution scans and enlargements would give more of the sense of scale and collapsing of scale.

I didn't know that this is what I was doing.The way I came to this was through digital photography, which is electrical, so it's not exactly parallel to how the eye works. But, the idea is the same: you have a sensitive surface that doesn't change. The light causes interaction that then sends a chain of electrical impulses or signals that gets captured and interpreted later on. With photochemical photography, it's just light. It's the primary actor in that process.

Here it's like taking from digital photography to sight, then trying to extract what is common between digital and analog, and take it back to photochemical processes, or so-called analog photography.

In that respect, it's also a bit like painting. 
Yeah, I was trying to figure out if I could use it as more of a painterly medium because the dyes are locked up inside the film, developing and moving, and they're all going to move at different rates. So, if I pull them apart at some point during development, I might be able to influence the color cast and textures. And some of the photographs turn out very biological, and some of the arc burns look like bugs. 

At what point do you add chemicals to the film?
Just before introducing the electricity. Most of the photos are blue or magenta, but the bleach really brings out the yellow and oranges. I think the blue is definitely coming from daylight or fluorescents. 

In addition to being a musician, you're a glitch artist. Would you describe this high voltage image making as a form or manifestation of glitch? And if it's not glitch, at least your common approach is to force technology to do things that it wasn't meant to do. In a way, it's hacking. 
Glitch is really a complex thing. There are all of these overlapping ideas and traditions. Some of them are coming from completely different places, but they all have a common thread. If you take Structuralist film and the kind of assault on the media as a material investigation, that sort of informs this dirty new media aesthetic, where you're injecting "noise" into the system.

When it comes to the digital artifacts that come out of the system, as Daniel Temkin pointed out in the interview you did with him, if the algorithm hiccuped or whatever, if there was stray cosmic radiation, then maybe something else was going on. But, for the most part these algorithms are just doing their job. They're doing that one thing they're meant to do. If it looks weird to us it's because we hadn't fully understood what we created. It's kind of like taking this understanding that things as they've been created, they have a purpose, but that purpose isn't all that it is possible. It's not the whole story. It's not that there is a hidden potential, it is that there are other things that can be done with these materials that leave us with, as Daniel says, a "wilderness in the machine."

These systems are incredibly complex. And even though we assembled them with a particular detail in mind, at a certain point that idea was pairing off these other possibilities to this one thing, but these possibilities are still latent in the system. It's the common thread that ties glitch to all of these other practices, where material investigations wind up sort of questioning the way a media or particular symbols operate within a culture or society. I think that's where it gets into the art realm. 

It's a good metaphor: you take a system and condense it down to one thing that is more easily understood, palatable, and marketable when it has all of these other potentialities. That's how the human mind functions in order to reduce the noise and focus on particular tasks. 
Right, these digital systems are taking that to its logical extreme. There is this whole group of artists who work predominantly with what today is being called technology, with code. There is this School for Poetic Computation founded by Zach Lieberman, Taeyoon Choi, Amit Pitaru, and Casey Golland, and they're all involved in questioning how we can make code more poetry and less programming. They also question where the more interesting cultural aspects are rooted in the tools people are using, and how they can be brought out with those tools to reveal this hidden poetics. 

What is the goal with the Kickstarter campaign?
Originally, it was just to raise money to do archival scans of the ones I already have, then make enlargements, print and then show them. I was recently talking to Kelani Nichole and Jereme Mongeon at Transfer Gallery, and they were really excited, and thought I was really on to something with these prints and enlarging them. We set up a date for the show, and it's going to be some time in 2015, probably April.

I was planning on raising enough money to produce those prints in edition. If I got extra money, then I would continue working in this way. Now I have five times more money than I even asked for, and I'm incredibly excited because I'm going to be able to do this and loads more prints. In fact, I have to in order to fulfill the Kickstarter rewards. 

This story came from Motherboard, our tech website. Read more at Motherboard.tv. Photo courtesy of Shuttershock

Dr. Sue Sisley does not smoke weed. As a researcher and professor at the University of Arizona, Sisley additionally works as a psychiatrist and physician for veterans grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder. During her time at the lab, Sisley has exhausted the options available to her by way of legal treatments for PTSD. Along the way, she's discovered that the only medicine that seems to help dampen her patients' demons is marijuana. Ever since, Sisley has tried her damnedest to procure some research-grade cannabis. 

But she's failed and that's not surprising.

Here's the rub: When is it easier to get, say, LSD than weed? When you’re a scientist. Indeed, it’s easier to get LSD, MDMA, and any other Schedule 1 drug from the US government for scientific research than it is to get marijuana. Why? To obtain LSD and MDMA, for example, you only have to go through the Food and Drug Administration, an Institutional Review Board, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

On the other hand, to get cannabis that is federally approved for research, you have to make it over those same three regulatory hurdles but also get approval from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). And NIDA, historically, doesn't like sharing. They've got the monopoly on medical weed.

I tried to get in touch with NIDA. They essentially just referred me to their website, which cites the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (UN, 1961) as the reason they maintain sole production of research-grade flower. As the UN protocol states: “the medical use of narcotic drugs continues to be indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering.” NIDA's site adds: “To date, 18 applications to obtain marijuana for medical research have been submitted by potential researchers not funded by National Institutes of Health; of those, 15 received approval.”

Two of those applications were from MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Sisley has teamed up with MAPS, who wants to develop a prescription medicine version of the plant form of marijuana. With MAPS and Sisley working together, they’ve been able to get through every hoop of the process of getting their study on marijuana and PTSD done, except for getting the marijuana from the NIDA.

“The only reason that this extra review process exists is to prevent research that could make marijuana into a federally approved prescription medicine,” Brad Burge of MAPS tells me.

Unravel NIDA's legal red tape in Motherboard's doc, High Country.

“There are many researchers obtaining NIDA marijuana for research into isolated and synthetic cannabinoids as well as non-smoking delivery systems,” Burge adds. However, they’re looking into how it can be ingested naturally, as something you smoke:

We would like to know more about the relative safety and effectiveness of smoking versus vaporization, whether different strains of marijuana with varying ratios of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) have different effects on PTSD symptoms, and whether whole plant marijuana can safely and effectively reduce PTSD symptoms in US veterans with chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD.

PTSD, of course, is characterized by extreme anxiety, often the result of a physical or psychological injury. When confronted with a potentially deadly situation, we feel fear, and the fight or flight response kicks in. PTSD arises when that response is damaged, and the patient feels stressed or frightened even when he or she is no longer in danger.

The condition disproportionately affects soldiers who have fought in war zones. They develop the conditions from being in an array of dangerous situations, and they return home emotionally crippled. US Veteran’s Affairs claims that today, almost 300,000 veterans have been diagnosed with PTSD, although the number is likely much higher due to lack of diagnosis.

According to Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, the respected Israeli neuroscientist who discovered THC, marijuana could help stimulate “memory extinction.” You’re going through slow memory extinction right now, no matter what, but marijuana helps speed up the process in certain ways, Mechoulam says. He argues memory extinction could separate memories from external stimuli, like loud noises or bright lights triggering a frightful memory. Weed could help cure PTSD, as we've reported. But you’ll also need to seriously consider counseling.

MAPS and Sisley want to do their own research, but they’re waiting for their second application with the NIDA to get a response. MAPS has been trying to do extensive marijuana studies for 14 years, and the PTSD-related study was rejected in 2011, but they are waiting to hear back about a revised submission they sent in October 2013.

The problem with referencing the Single Convention, according to Burge, is that it’s a voluntary agreement that is only enforced when it’s convenient for the US to reference it. He claims that the reason the United States needs to back out of it, and let other people here grow research marijuana, is that the convention claims you should have one supplier if they can meet demand, and they’re not meeting demand. MAPS wants to set up their own grow for research, but NIDA won’t allow it.

In a 2001 joint study, MAPS and NORML were able to show that vaporized marijuana was better in terms of carbon monoxide than smoked marijuana, which is helpful in promoting harm reduction.

“We used NIDA marijuana from one of the medical marijuana patients receiving NIDA marijuana on a compassionate basis who sent her marijuana to a DEA-licensed lab conducting our medical marijuana potency study that tested higher potency marijuana from medical marijuana dispensaries," MAPS founder and president told me. "The DEA-licensed testing lab sent the NIDA pot and some leftover higher potency marijuana from medical marijuana dispensaries to the different lab that conducted the vaporizer study.”

Until NIDA gives them some weed to study, they won’t be able to provide any federally recognized research in hopes of understanding the medicinal values of it and the effects of each smoking method on treating PTSD. Scientists and doctors, especially outside the United States, have shown that there are promising results for marijuana’s treatment of PTSD. Sisley and MAPS want to prove to the government that this can change people’s lives and prevent a veteran’s suicide every 65 minutes. If anything, it's part and parcel of unlocking what weed might mean for the future of sustainable healthcare.

VICE News correspondent Tim Pool is on the ground in the Okmeydani neighborhood of Istanbul, Turkey, where protesters are clashing with police after the funeral of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan. Berkin was out buying bread last June when a tear-gas canister struck his skull during a brutal police crackdown against demonstrations in Istanbul. He died on March 11, 2014, after spending 269 days in a coma. As news of his death spread, the city’s streets filled with mourners and protesters shouting anti-government slogans in a massive outpouring of grief and rage against police brutality and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian government.

Watch more about the protests at VICE News.

Berkin Elvan, a 15-year-old Turkish boy, died on March 11 after spending 269 days in a coma. Berkin was buying bread in his neighborhood last June when a tear-gas canister struck his skull during a brutal police crackdown against demonstrations in Istanbul. As news of the boy’s death spread, the city’s streets filled with mourners and protesters shouting anti-government slogans in a massive outpouring of grief and rage against police brutality and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian government. The demonstrations were the largest and angriest protests seen in Turkey since last summer and led to violent clashes with police.

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Kyle Hunt's White Man's March, “an international day for independent pro-White activism,” according to its official website, is supposed to be going down today in cities across the country. Hunt, a resident of Massachusetts who is active in the “white pride movement,” says that White people are “discriminated against, mocked, displaced, and violently attacked, all of which amount to White genocide.”

I sort of sympathize with this perceived “White man's burden.” Who wants to be blamed for all of the world's problems? No one does, and yet white pride groups almost always blame all of their problems on minorities. Read through a random pro-White website, and chances are, you'll be told that Black people, Muslims, Latinos, Jews, and all immigrants are the reason why White people are unemployed, burgled, murdered, raped, and incapable of finding a decent parking spot at the mall. 

I asked to speak to Kyle over the phone, but he refused after discovering that I write a weekly column on racial issues. He was gracious enough to respond to my questions over email anyway. He sent back answers (most of which came with handy-dandy links to White-pride websites as “evidence”), with my questions highlighted in what Kyle described as “Commie red.” For the sake of my readers' eyeballs, I have changed them all back to black. Hope he doesn't mind them being black.

VICE: What kind of events are you expecting to take place as a part of the White Man March? You mention “lightning mobs,” which I'm not terribly familiar with.
Kyle Hunt: People will be distributing literature, displaying signs, and getting our message out in any way possible. “Lightning marches” are simply non-violent flash mobs, keeping the location from the public so as to avoid confrontations with violent “anti-racists” and “anti-fascists” (a.k.a. anti-Whites), who deny White people the right to peaceful assembly and free speech.

How are you going about organizing?
This is a viral idea that has spread across the world. People are organizing on their own, but I have facilitated when possible.

The event is explicitly called the White Man March. Do you anticipate women participating?
Yes, of course. Here is a definition of “Man”: (n): a human being of either sex; a person.

What areas do you see having the most pro-White support? Is it primarily rural areas or cities?
We have support everywhere. Many White people are getting fed up with “White privilege” conferences, “the knockout game” and other anti-White violence, affirmative action and other discriminatory policies against White people, massive illegal immigration, and the anti-White media. It is very frightening that Jamie Foxx can go on Saturday Night Live and say, “I get to kill ALL the White people in the movie. How great is that?” (with laughter and applause) and NOFX can sing a song titled “Kill All the White Man.”

In most large American and European cities, White people were displaced in the 20th century and now represent a minority, which makes it unsafe to openly hold pro-White views. This is why our support seems to come mainly from the heartlands.

Are you attempting any other large-scale social action after this?
I want to see White people advocating for their interests en masse at least once a month.

Are you involved in local, state, or national politics in the United States?
I very well may be president of the United States in 2020, but for right now I am supporting some pro-White candidates from the American Freedom Party.

Your distrust of diversity and race-mixing is well-documented on your site, but you also say you are not a Klansman or Neo-Nazi. How do you make the distinction?
Are you kidding me? If you're not a self-hating White, then you must be a Neo-Nazi Klansman? Is any Black American who stands up for his race automatically a Black Panther or a member of the Nation of Islam?

Is there a way for the ethnic minority community to reach out to people such as yourself? As someone who is simply proud of your race, I'd assume you'd welcome some overtures of friendship.
I welcome support from all people. This is an honorable struggle for civil rights, which White men currently do not have. “Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of White men and do not apply to them,” wrote Mary Frances Berry, former chairwoman of the US Commission on Civil Rights.

What does your ideal world look like, both socially and economically?
Socially, I would like to live in a world where each and every race (and ethnicity) is able to take pride in itself, honor its ancestors, continue its existence, and be free from oppression. I would like to see freedom of association restored, so that White people can choose to live in White communities and White countries, which should not be seen as “supremacy” since we would not be “oppressing” anyone else. In general, I would like to stop the ongoing policies of White genocide, which say that there can be no all-White countries anywhere, and there can be no all-White areas within the confines of those formerly all-White countries.

Economically, I would like to see everyone freed from the evils of usury, fractional reserve banking, predatory capitalism, and totalitarian communism.

Are you advocating for racially homogenous countries? If so, would you support White people leaving countries like South Africa in exchange for Black people leaving a country like Norway?
I am not advocating for the United States to be 100 percent White, as other races have legitimate and historical claims to this country, but I do think we should protect our borders and not allow amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, as this undercuts the labor of poor Whites, poor Blacks, and all other unemployed (or underemployed) Americans.

That being said, I do think Europe should be a homeland for the indigenous White European people. Concerning South Africa and Sweden, these are not my decisions to make, but since you brought it up, I would like to point out a few important points. There is an ongoing genocide of White people taking place in South Africa, with over 70,000 White South Africans murdered since the end of Apartheid. Thanks to “diversity,” one in four Swedish women are now expected to be raped within their lifetimes, almost entirely at the hands of non-White immigrants. Actually, South Africa and Sweden are now the number one and two countries in the world for rape.

A sociologist for the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention pointed out that crime statistics in Sweden are hard to compare to those in other countries, because when someone reports a crime in Sweden, each instance of the crime is considered separate, whereas they are grouped into one reported case elsewhere. So, these might be over-reported stats; plus, Sweden is seeing a rise in racial and sectarian violence. How would you respond to the issues with the stats you cite, and how do you feel about White-pride groups using violence in this way, even if their claims of being provoked are true?
[Here is a] video on Swedish rapes.

You claim that 70,000 white people were killed since Apartheid. In South Africa in 2010, the murder rate reached 18,000 a year, despite the murder rate in the country having decreased by 44 percent since 1995. Seventy thousand total murders since 1995 would be 5 percent of the total murder rate if South Africa averaged 20,000 murders a year in that period. Is it possible that South Africa is just a poor, violent nation where everyone is suffering? The country is a mess, but it sounds like you're saying Black people are specifically the problem.
Sorry, but I am very busy. Since 1994, more than 70,000 (and counting) White South Africans have been murdered, of which more than 4,000 were commercial farmers. Exact figures are very hard to come by as the South African police fail to report most of the murders that take place. These numbers are thus conservatively estimated. Here's Nelson Mandela singing about killing Whites.

Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.

This story came from Motherboard, our tech website. Read more at Motherboard.tv. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Back in the 6th century, Chinese military general Sun Tzu laid the foundations for information warfare, a broad, holistic aspect of conflict that would later grow to include propaganda and cyberwarfare. “Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections,” wrote Sun Tzu. “It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment—that which they cannot anticipate.”

Fifteen centuries later, security expert Keir Giles made reference to this Sun Tzu quote in his recent ArsTechnica op-ed about Russia's information warfare tactics in Ukraine and Crimea. Keir hoped the editorial would help people understand what Russia has been up to on the cyber front, centering on the argument that even though Russia hasn't yet staged “high-profile, public” cyberattacks in Ukraine, the region is in the midst of an information war as much as a military occupation.

“If it's the Russian view we are talking about, then it would be fairer to say that cyberwarfare is just one technical facilitator of information warfare,” Keir told me. “It is the information itself that is important, and cyber capabilities are just the technical ability to manipulate it. Information warfare is a vastly more holistic concept than cyberwarfare.”

Keir noted that the Russians are, among other things, planting false information. “On March 1 Russian media reported that Dmitry Yarosh, the leader of Ukraine's Right Sector group and a particular target for Russian criticism, had made an appeal through social media to Islamist insurgent leader Doku Umarov,” wrote Keir. “Yarosh wanted Umarov to support Ukraine by attacking Russia. Yarosh claims this is not the case and that the appeal was planted after his account was hacked.”

When I asked him about the other ways Russia is using false information, Keir said to just look at any Russian news bulletin, and pointed to a US State Department fact sheet titled President Putin's Fiction: 10 False Claims About Ukraine. Computer and network security researcher Marcus Ranum, who has written and spoken extensively on information and cyberwarfare, calls Russia's tactics something else: “battlefield intelligence plus net-centric warfare.” A mouthful, to be sure, but instrumental in making sense of Russia's cyber-based intentions in Ukraine.

“‘Net-centric warfare’ is a catchall for ‘cleverly using computers in a battlefield environment,’ i.e., getting drone video down to troops in the field, using cell phone detectors to locate IEDs, etc.,” said Marcus. “It's really ‘IT applied to the military’ in a general sense. The issue is that it's often conflated with ‘cyberwar’ or ‘information operations’ for budgetary reasons.”

Marcus calls net-centric warfare the “cloud computing of military IT”—it can be whatever people want it to be. The only necessary ingredients are computers, data, and above all, a budget. But Marcus doesn't consider it a great innovation. “In reality, this stuff is all just battlefield intelligence,” said Marcus. “It's just a faster point along the progression from messenger to carrier pigeon to telegraph to observation balloon to satellite.”

Subtle, net-centric information warfare instead of an all-out cyberattack (like Stuxnet) might actually be Russia's tactical approach in Ukraine. If Russia launched a full-scale, public cyberattack against Ukraine, it would be politically messy and might trigger military retaliation. Marcus believes that this is something Putin wants to avoid. “It's the issue of retaliation that makes the ‘big frame’ cyberwar less likely and closer to impossible,” he noted. “In order to do this stuff, you need the political top-cover to survive the fallout that would inevitably result.”

For the moment, Putin's Russia seems content just gathering intelligence in low-intensity cyberattacks. “Putin is (rightly) trying to avoid having the situation go military,” said Marcus. “He learned a lesson in Georgia: When you have zero-length supply lines and overwhelming power, there is no need to act quickly or precipitously.”

Marcus also pointed to a cyberwar dynamic that doesn't seem to get a lot of play, at least not in the media. While the military might want the power grid taken down (Stuxnet-style), cyber spies will counter that this will put their intelligence-gathering efforts at risk. Applying this to the Russia vs. Ukraine standoff, one quickly realizes that Putin can only go so far with Russian cyberwarfare. It's far better to operate in the shadows—a principle that applies both to traditional spycraft and cyberattacks. Big and bold isn't necessarily efficient or effective.

Keir believes that Russia's “brute force” DDoS attacks against Estonia and Georgia are no longer necessary. Current cyber tools allow states to do other things, such as deploy the intelligence-gathering virus Snake, which, according to Keir, is popping up in Ukraine and elsewhere. Publicly bold cyberattacks would, as Keir suggests, also risk “alienating or inconveniencing the Russian-friendly populations in Eastern Ukraine.”

Marcus, on the other hand, comes to quite another conclusion about the recent history of Russia's cyberwarfare tactics. “The cyberattacks against Estonia really accomplished nothing,” Marcus said. “They were annoying and made the Estonian government look a bit less competent for a short while. But so what?” (As Keir noted in the op-ed, the first attack “definitively linked” to the Russian-Ukraine conflict came on March 1, a day after Russian ground forces occupied Crimea.) 

While Keir might be correct when he suggests Putin learned that subtle cyberattacks could be more effective than DDoS attacks in an information warfare campaign, Marcus understands that cyberattacks only get states so far. “Sure, there may be hacking taking place, but who cares,” added Marcus. “When you've got loads of guys with guns running around, military ships blockading missile boats in their ports, etc, the computer-based activity is going to have to have some amazingly powerful leverage (almost inconceivably powerful) to be able to affect the end situation in the slightest little bit.”

In other words, as with traditional intelligence-gathering and information warfare, conflicts aren't going to be resolved on computer networks via full-scale hacks. Even if it becomes a full-scale shooting war, the Russia-Ukraine resolution will ultimately be diplomatic. Of course, hacked intelligence and cyber-based false information will factor into diplomacy, but it won't be the whole story. In that respect, not much has changed since Sun Tzu's time. Information warfare, and its branch of cyberattacks, is but one aspect of a conflict or war. Sun Tzu knew it, and Putin knows it. It's one tool in a much bigger foreign affairs arsenal. 

The 2006 Saint Patrick's Day Parade in Boston. If this guy were holding a sign that said "I am gay," he wouldn't be allowed in the parade. Photo via Flickr user john and carolina

The last time gay and lesbian Irish American groups were allowed to march in the South Boston Saint Patrick’s Day Parade it was 1993 and “Informer” by Snow was the number one song in the country.

The following year, the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, which organizes the event, canceled the parade because they didn’t want to comply with a Massachusetts court ruling that ordered the inclusion of gays and lesbians in the green spectacle. But in 1995, the Supreme Court ruled that the the private sponsors had the right to choose who participated in the parade.

Gays and lesbians have been fighting ever since to find a way into the event, the largest annual parade in Boston. They’ve pressured politicians and sponsors but so far, their efforts have had little impact.

For a brief moment it appeared that this year’s parade would be different: A deal brokered by Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh and South Boston Congressman Stephen Lynch would have allowed a group of gays and lesbians to march in the parade under the banner of LGBT Veterans for Equality. But that agreement fell apart when the parade organizers and the Veterans for Equality couldn’t agree on the number of veterans the group had and whether they could march openly. The parade's stance is that it's fine with gay people marching—they just can’t identify themselves as gay, which obviously defeats the purpose of them being in the parade at all.

Supporters of the parade organizers have argued that gays should be happy with being allowed to march at all—why is the St. Patrick’s Day Parade such a big deal anyway? There are plenty of other parades in the Commonwealth that pick and choose their participants, including a variety of gay pride parades, or so the argument goes.

But LGBT activists are upset that the St. Patrick’s Day Parade—which has been around since 1901 and is one of the city’s most cherished traditions—is so open about discriminating against people based on sexual orientation.

“There’s no other civic or cultural institution of any kind in the state of Massachusetts that I am aware of that went all the way to the Supreme Court to enforce its right to exclude openly LGBT people, and that’s what makes this parade so important,” said Mass Equality Executive Director Kara Coredini.

Kara told me gay people need to be allowed to march openly because being forced to stay in the closet is a major problem in the gay community. She understands that the importance of having gay people parade under banners identifying them as LGBT may be difficult for some people—especially, perhaps, the conservative Irish Americans who run the parade—to understand, which creates a challenge for gay rights activists.

“This parade is really a symbol of that challenge,” said Kara.

An alternative St. Patrick’s parade that would welcome LGBT people, like the one recently held in New York, is not an acceptable compromise for Mass Equality—the activists want to be a part of the parade rather than forced to start their own event in protest.

The controversy has resulted in a lot of bad publicity for the parade and its organizers—most Massachusetts politicians are skipping the event, and Sam Adams, Boston’s most famous beer company, just pulled out of sponsoring the parade. Last week, in the midst of the public argument, the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council issued a statement that read, in part, “We are approached by all types of groups. Some of which try to destroy the integrity of not only this parade, but our faith, this town, and our Country. And to those we say, ‘No!, stay home, Not in my town.’ Rest assured, we will continue to exclude anyone that tries to compromise the public’s enjoyment of this parade.”

Rhetoric like that indicates clearly that the parade organizers are out of step with much of the rest of traditionally liberal Massachusetts when it comes to LGBT issues. Kara admitted that it was unusual that gays and lesbians were still fighting over the parade ten years after Massachusetts became the first state in the union to legalize same-sex marriage.

Hope Wat Bucci, an eight-year active duty veteran of the Army and resident of Boston's North Shore, said that marching openly in the parade means so much not just to her but to other LGBT veterans. She likened the exclusion of openly gay veterans from the parade to her time in the military during the Don't Ask Don't Tell era.

"When someone says that they won't welcome LGBT veterans in 2014, that's a problem, and, because of this parade, it has become public knowledge," said Hope.

The parade is just as important for veterans in Boston as it is Irish-Americans because it commemorates the early Revolutionary War victory over the British in Boston known as Evacuation Day.

"The time has come. My hope is that someday down the line we will all be able to march together," said Hope. She finds her exclusion from the parade hard to comprehened given the major strides the gay rights movement has made in recent years. When openly gay soldiers can serve in the military, why can't they march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade?

“It’s definitely ironic that we’re still having this conversation,” Kara said, “but I think it goes to show that, what we know is true at a broader level, there’s more work to do.”

Garrett Quinn is a Boston-based reporter for MassLive.com. Follow him on Twitter or email him at gquinn@masslive.com.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Lagged On User

Earlier this week, a news report in Louisiana broke a hard-hitting story to its viewers: A lingerie store in Gonzales, Louisiana called Kiss My Lingerie takes Electronic Benefits Transfer as payment. EBT is a card that lets a holder transfer benefits directly to a retailer. The benefits generally come from the food stamp and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs, a.k.a. welfare. 

According to the news report, a lady who works near Kiss My Lingerie saw business booming at the adult store. She nosed around and saw the EBT insignia on the doorway. The EBT logo scandalized her, so she called Channel 9 News, whose reporter later interviewed her. She couldn't stop harping on the fact that edible underwear is not, in her mind, an appropriate use of taxpayer money. When the segment aired, the newscaster looked into the camera and imperiously told viewers, “While some don't think the benefits should be used on lingerie, our Tyana Williams is told there's not a thing illegal about it.”

This is a fringe example. When I asked Kaaryn Gustafson, law professor at University of Connecticut and author of Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty, she seemed like she thought I was trolling her. She pointed out that you can't use your food stamp benefits for something like this. “SNAP benefits cannot be used for lingerie. The checkout scanners prevent the cards from making the payment,” she told me in an email.

During the 2012 election, conservatives used an old Reagan-era rhetorical device about Welfare Queens. The welfare queen from the Reagan days, Linda Taylor, was a compulsive liar and possibly even a murderer, and she was held up as an example of the welfare fraud that was supposedly rampant back then. Authors, including Kaaryn, have written extensively on why that whole thing was bullshit.

According to today's conservative news, welfare abuse seems to be “any use of public programs to do anything a conservative TV viewer doesn't like,” as exemplified by Eric Bolling's repeated reports to his viewers about people buying delicious seafood with their benefits, as seen here on The Daily Show:

The Daily Show editing crew cut together a great reel of ridiculous conservative anchors harping on food stamp users buying luxury shit. Jon Stewart provided decent commentary until he detoured into a lame joke about being old. (Hey, Jon. Ira Glass is four years older than you, and he doesn't constantly lean on a tired shtick about his aching back. Get the fuck over it.)

But there's still a problem with this point-of-view: the tacit concession that any of this abuse is abuse at all. Buying lobsters is a legitimate use of welfare and so is buying fetish gear.

Plenty of people with families need lingerie for work. (I'm referring to strippers and fetish models. Prostitution is a good way to feed your kids, but it's illegal, so I won't count it.)

The nature of someone's employment is none of your business anyway. Conservatives can disapprove, but no one ever said you get to approve of everything that happens with your tax money. That part is tough titty for you. I feel Bolling's pain in a way, but on the other hand, I'm sure he's glad my tax money gets spent murdering Yemenis at their weddings with drone attacks. Meanwhile, I can comfort myself with the knowledge that a little bit of Bolling's tax money buys plus-sized negligees for trans-women. Democracy's a bitch sometimes.

Secondly, what kind of monkish existence do you expect people to live on if they're on welfare? The stated objectives of the program are as follows:

–Provide assistance to needy families so that children can be cared for in their own homes

–Reduce the dependency of needy parents by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage

–Prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies

–Encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families

Now we all may have issues with different parts of that list, but nowhere does it say, “We also insist that our poor live on Oliver Twist-style gruel, make clothes out of trash bags, and get by on the absolute bare minimum of everything.”

Poor people live in the same universe as us. They unwind with drinks, fuck, and like a decent meal sometimes. Sure they shouldn't splurge on private jets or bottle service, but we don't get to mandate that they never enjoy their lives.

The poor are also free moral agents. They get to decide their own budgets. Maybe a mother's tips go toward feeding her kids, and some of her welfare money goes to paying bills. “Many poor people live in neighborhoods that don't have banks,” Kaaryn told me. "A lot of poor people, many of whom don't have cars, have difficulty both buying groceries and cashing the benefits they receive through their EBT cards."

We can't police the use of these cards, and we shouldn't get to. The poor aren't children, nor are they parolees. They're people who get by on less money than most of us. If sometimes they want to look sexy, let them. Even when you involve lingerie, sex is cheaper than a night at the movies. And besides, it's none of your fucking business. 

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Last week, I covered the gay side of Mardi Gras for VICE. I landed in New Orleans, and after a quick change into a tuxedo, I made my way to a place called the Sigur Center to attend the Armeinius Ball. Armeinius is a “Krewe.” These organizations are sort of like frats: You’re voted in, there's lots of drama, and you watch each others’ asses.

At the ball, I was taken to a backstage area which was populated by old men sticking feathers and lights onto extravagant six feet tall costumes. The room smelled like fried chicken and hot glue. Finished costumes lined the hallways, floating on wooden pedestals like the shed exoskeletons of some fabulous species. A large population of the Krewe has been performing for over 65 years, and the oldest queen in the room was in her 80s. The tradition began back in the day, when it was a crime to be gay except on Mardi Gras. Seeing 74-year-old Albert Carey done up like a punk princess in a black corset and fishnets was a sight to behold. I spoke to Albert about the history of the Ball and why it was held here in Chalmet, a community far outside of the city center. 

“I joined the second year of the club. In the beginning we were very small, no one had any money, and the gays were not out. I joined in 1970. Back then no one would rent to us; only African-American labor halls would rent to gay men. None of the hotels and none of the vendors would rent to us, but eventually we came here to The Sigur Center. The first ball in this building was in 1971, and everyone wondered how people in the area would react. Turns out they loved it. They saw that we weren’t going to present a sex show. (That was the fear of course.) We’ve been here ever since.”

I spoke to the King of the Ball, Joel Haas, too. He told me that being king for the season entailed attending the other balls, being a representative of your Krewe, and doing good deeds in the community. He would later well up in tears during his crowning, goblet raised to the audience, six feet tall reflective sunbeams protruding from his Spartan-like gold and silver armor. My heart melted a little until the guy next to me leaned over and said, “That’s just from all the drugs. Don’t fall for it, honey.”

Next up was the Fat Monday Luncheon. According to its organizer, Charles Turbevill, it is the longest running “gay event” in the country. The luncheon was populated by jolly older gay gentlemen in playful tuxedos. Their ages ranged from about 40 to 90 years old. One such older gentleman, closer to 90 than 40, told me, “Hey, you've got a pretty mouth!” After a few drinks, the crowd shuffled into the dining hall and began decorating the chandeliers with beads and boas, as is tradition. I was sat between Tony Leggio, event planner to the stars, and Fred Powell, a gay minister at the First Presbyterian Church.

That evening I attended the Orpheuscapade, a huge event headlined by Quentin Tarantino, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and Cheap Trick. I spotted some catwalks overhead and decided I would try to get a better angle of the event. I strolled casually past layers of security, pulled on enough doorknobs, and eventually found my way up. I was wearing a tux and a red feather face mask, hiding in the rafters and training my sites on members of a crowd. I felt like a sniper out of a Tom Clancy novel.

From there I went to the “fruit loop,” as the block of gay bars is officially known, and the night took a turn for the drunker. My memory gets very hazy after the point when I was handed what's known as a Hurricane, a drink which contains six different grain alcohols and some sugary syrup. Even so, something happened in the bathroom of a bar called Lafitte's that is permanently burned into my memory. As I peed into a communal trough, I noticed a bit of movement below me. I switched on my phone for light and saw a man snuggled up underneath the trough, grinning as he awaited his golden ticket to bliss. I figured I might as well give the man what he wanted. Having already urinated on a stranger, I figured it was time to call it a night.

Zak Krevitt is currently a senior at School of Visual Arts in New York. He photographs boys, girls and plants.

Matthew Leifheit is photo editor of VICE. He is also editor-in-chief of MATTE magazine.

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