Whether they’re for weed or industrial adhesives, all trade shows are part business and part carnival. There are always rows of booths packed with fast-talking salesmen, free stickers, slutty girls, and that one place that sprung for a guy in an animal suit. The difference at the Big Industry Show at this year’s Cannabis Cup in Denver is that the market is completely new, and natural economic forces have yet to separate the successes from the tragedies. Eighteen months after legalization and only four months since recreational sales began, everyone with a little seed money and an idea is rushing to enter the cannabis accessories market, and not all of the ideas are good ones. In a market so new, there is still a fine line between a great product concept and a retarded one. Before long, 80 percent of the companies here will be out of business, but right now we get to see them all swinging for the fences.

A lot of entrepreneurs have come up with novel solutions to typical stoner problems. Idiot-proofing seems to be a market unto itself, addressed with products like Bargain Ballz, a spongy necklace that holds your lighter, and the Doob Tube, a long, thin plastic container to store joints. While these inventors are standing in front of you demonstrating their products, you can totally envision the stoned epiphany that led them to this particular career move.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of entrepreneurs who had no prior interest in cannabis but gravitated toward it for the business opportunity. Michael Freelander, creator of a vaporizer called the Indica, used to design toys for a living and wanted to apply his expertise to something cannabis-centered. He never really smoked weed until he got into the industry with his Zippo-inspired flower vape. Though he may be a noob when it comes to being a weedhead, Freelander actually designed a unique piece of hardware. That’s something most vape-pen brands at the Big Industry Show haven’t managed to do.

After browsing booth after booth of vape pen brands, you start to notice that most of them are exactly the same. Except for the logo, the color, printed-on patterns, and packaging, they are all identical, purchased wholesale from a handful of Chinese manufacturers and brought to the US to be branded and sold. Seeing the explosive popularity of pens and the cannabis concentrates they are typically used for, they are a pretty surefire way to enter the accessories market, and dozens of companies at the convention had them as part of their product lines.

So many new companies are emerging in weed-friendly states like Colorado and California that they are beginning to form conglomerates that offer up a range of products, capitalizing on the varied expertise of their members. I spoke to a collective from Los Angeles led by Nam Tran, founder of The Smoker’s Depot, which distributes its own brand of vape pens, weed containers, rolling papers, a vape bong called the Sublimator, and an ice mold that makes a perfect ice bong called Eyce. He’s about to add an employee’s edible-baked-goods line, Dank Donuts, to the roster as well. Cara, the founder of Dank Donuts, told me, “We’re more likely to succeed as a group of companies working together. We’re all heads and we all understand our products.” Once the dust settles, they’d all like to see real weedheads in the winner’s circle rather than those who jumped in just for the monetary opportunity. 

But sometimes, weed chooses you. Walking through a corner of the convention, I spotted an out-of-place booth advertising industrial hardware by a company called Blazer. Surprisingly enough, Blazer has absolutely nothing to do with cannabis at its core. It’s a company that has been making soldering irons and blowtorches since 1985. In just the last year, one of Blazer’s portable blowtorches became the choice torch for people who dab, and suddenly the company is in the weed-accessories market. “I didn’t even know what dabbing was six months ago,” says Mark Lugo of Blazer. “We sell a number of items, and when you see that something that used to sell maybe 90 units a month is suddenly selling in the thousands of units… Well, I googled it and saw videos of people dabbing using our torches and I knew we had an opportunity.” Despite his YouTube education on the topic, Lugo still had very little understanding of the trend that made his torches huge. He scratches his head while eyeing a dabbing pipe that sits front and center in his booth. “Can you explain how this thing works?” he asks me.

At another booth, a middle-aged man enthusiastically demonstrated a trimmer that his father designed specifically to prune cannabis buds. A second after he walked away to give someone else the spiel, his brother comes over to me and said, “That’s my brother, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I work for this company. He’s just a banker. He had to lie to his boss just to come out here.” Without asking, I got a glimpse into the seed of a sibling rivalry that will one day tear apart the house that weed trimmers built.

After several hours and hundreds of booths at any trade show, you start feeling a little bit gross. Brands and products begin to run together in your mind, and it starts to seem like nothing else will impress you. Going on my fifth hour at the convention, I came across a familiar sight.

This guy embodies the legal cannabis-accessories market that I grew up with. For the duration of my weed upbringing in the 90s and 2000s, I got all my glass, papers, and butane lighters from a brown guy just like this one, with a table full of pipes and a bewildering bargaining ethic. I spoke to this guy in Punjabi for about a minute before he realized how stoned I was and bowed out of the conversation. Not too many people were stopping at his booth. Pipes or no pipes, this dude was from a past age. Maybe that’s why they set him up down the aisle from the guy selling 3D psychedelic tapestries and another guy selling black-light-responsive sweatshirts.

Cannabis accessories are evolving at a rapid pace, but even though the market is in total flux, it’s strangely comforting to see vestiges of the old guard holding their ground at a convention like this one. From here on out, the face of weed business will change, spreading to every age group and every social faction before becoming completely mainstream and finally being named the state flower of Colorado.

Once that happens, the 3D posters and skull bongs will become relics of a past weed era and we’ll fondly remember them while we hit one of these things.

Follow T. Kid on Twitter.

On Chicago's West Side, there is a school for the city's most at-risk youth—the Moses Montefiore Academy. Most of the students at Montefiore have been kicked out of other schools for aggressive behavior and many have been diagnosed with emotional disorders. 

Last Chance High takes viewers inside Montefiore's classrooms and into the homes of students who are one mistake away from being locked up or committed to a mental hospital.

In part three, Montreal "Spanky" Almond reveals some of the trauma that may have caused him to lose his voice. Coach Williams reaches out, hoping to make a difference in the boy's life.

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

Cry-Baby #1: Mike Amess

Screencap via the Daily Mail

The incident: Kim Kardashian existed. 

The apropriate response: Apathy. Maybe mild disgust.

The actual response: A man took his story to a newspaper, claiming that he has a phobia of Kim Kardashian that causes him to become physically ill. 

Mike Amess is a 24-year-old gay man in Exeter, England. 

Earlier this week, a story appeared about him in the Daily Mail, under the headline "Man so petrified of the Kardashians that the sight of semi-naked Kim on TV makes him VOMIT with disgust."

In the article, Mike explains his phobia can make him physically ill. "Just hearing the sound of the Kardashians' nasal voices or catching a glimpse of them on screen makes me feel nauseous and shaky," he told the paper. "My hands get clammy, my breathing gets heavier and I start sweating. Sometimes I get teary and want to retch."

Mike, who is possibly joking, went on to explain that his phobia started while he was trying to suppress his homosexuality as a teenager. "Loads of boys at school were going on about how good Kim Kardashian's sex tape was. I thought I'd give it a watch in the hope it would turn me on," he explained.

"I watched it in my bedroom. But the sight of Kim writhing around with her huge bum and the sound of her horrible high-pitched wailing really repulsed me. I really wanted to be aroused by her so I kept watching it but she made me feel more and more upset," he added. 

He claimed that, by the end of the sex tape, he was in tears. 

Mike thinks that this traumatic experience is what has caused his "phobia" of Kim. He says that his phobia has increased as Kim's popularity has, and that his Kardashian fear has grown to include every member of the Kardashian family. "I dislike everything about them, especially their physical appearance... I can't stand their voices either. They're so whiny and shrill," he said.

Obviously, this is an unfortunate phobia to have—or at least pretend to have—as the Kardashians are currently everywhere. "Every website or magazine you read has them plastered all over... Sometimes I miss out on a lot of important news or celebrity gossip because I have to avoid everything which features the Kardashians," Mike said. 

He also claims that his Kardashian-phobia has ruined his ability to have relationships. "A lot of the gay community love the Kardashians so it makes dating tough sometimes," he said. "I've been romantically involved with several people who like them and each one of these relationships have ended badly."

The Daily Mail reports that Mike has never sought medical help for his condition, as he is too embarrassed (though, oddly, not too embarrassed to talk to the world's most read news site about it.) 

Cry-Baby #2: Anil Patel

The incident: Modern fashion dictated that men would start wearing their pants lower.

The appropriate response: Nothing. 

The actual response: A convenience store owner put up a sign, calling people that sag their pants "fags."

Anil Patel owns a convenience store called PCA in LaGrange, Georgia. 

Anil, whose name sounds a lot like "anal," and has presumably been the butt of a fair few gay jokes in his time, is super not into seeing men wearing their pants low. "I'm not here to fuck them, I'm here to serve them. If they wanna come into my business, they'd better have their pants up," he told Atlanta's WSB-TV2.

So, to prove how straight he is and totally not into looking at guy's butts, he put up a sign warning, "No shoes! No shirt! Pants up!!! No service!" 

Apparently, this did not do the trick, and customers continued to come into Anil's store with their pants sagging. This may have been because his sign is worded to make it seem as though you will be refused service if your pants are up. Who knows?

So last week, Anil put up a new, more homophobic, sign which read:

"'ONLY 'FAGS' LIKE TO KEEP THEIR PANTS DOWN!!!! PULL YOUR PANTS UP!!! OR BE PROUD TO BE "FAG"!!!!'"

All sic, obviously. 

WSB-TV2 spoke with Anil about the sign, and he said it's been successful. He told them, “Since that sign went up there, I don’t see no pants down in my store, because they read the sign and they decide what they want to be.”

He also said that he has received so much support from people about the sign, he's ordered bumper stickers printed with the nonsensical hate speech that he intends to sell at the store. 

:(

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

Previously: A school who suspended a teacher for being trans vs. A cop who pulled a gun on a child for building a tree fort

Winner: The cop!!!

For last week's episode of Band for Life, click here.

Kibwabwa Ghati was herding cattle when he was shot to death.

The Tanzanian farmer and his dogs were trying to coax the slow moving animals back to his family compound. The sun had set quickly and the grey hill of chewed up rock that he walked beside had turned red and then black against the night sky. This hill was the perimeter of an operation known as the North Mara Gold Mine. He was almost home.

Suddenly, young men were scrambling down the hill above him. Some were carrying the machete-like blade known in East Africa as a panga, but most had only hammers and buckets—the tools of their illicit trade.

These were the self-described “intruders,” men who risk their lives breaking into the mine to steal waste rock containing small amounts of gold. There are hundreds of intruders each night, sometimes thousands. And that night, like many nights before and since, they were being pursued by police and gunfire.

The local police officers are an integral part of the mine’s security and operate under an agreement with the company that owns the mine. That company is African Barrick Gold, a subsidiary of Canadian mining colossus Barrick Gold.

It’s unknown whether that night, November 6, 2012, Ghati was mistaken for an intruder or just got caught in the crossfire. Either way, he wound up with a bullet through the head—entering his forehead and exiting out the back. He was 23 years old, and left behind a wife and two young children.

“The police then dragged his body into the mine and took photos, saying that he was an intruder,”said Ghati’s mother, Wankrugati Malembela. “But that was not true. My son never participated in the raids.”

Even if it was true, death is an awfully high price to pay for a few dollars worth of gold.

In the past three years, 69 people have been killed by police at the North Mara Gold Mine, according to Wilson Mangure, a local ward councillor who has been tracking the incidents.

In that same period, hundreds more have been severely injured. And the violence continues. In the first month of 2014 alone, four more people were killed, he said.

North Mara is located in the the northwest of Tanzania, about 20 km south of the Kenyan border and close to Serengeti National Park.

The controversial mine opened in 2002 and has been in conflict with villagers ever since. Much of this conflict stems from the forcing out of artisanal miners in the area.

Many of these small-scale miners had been working the area for generations, but did not have a legal claim to the land—either because they were ignorant of the law or because they didn’t have the money to pay the licensing fees.

A Canadian company, Placer Dome, took one look at all the mining in the district and decided to get in on the action, applying for a licence to the entire area. The few miners with proper claims were bought out by the foreign interloper. The majority, who were mining without a licence, were simply kicked out.

Many of those men, who were now without a source of income, continued prospecting, now illegally.

In 2006, Place Dome was purchased and assimilated into Barrick Gold.

It’s difficult to visit the villages around the mine without bumping into someone who’s been directly affected by the violence. I shared a taxi from Tarime with a young man whose brother, Ryoba Maseke, had been killed in 2012. His next-door neighbour, Makima Maruwa, had been shot in the leg, an injury that prevented him from working. Everyone knows someone who has been killed. Many roll up pant legs and sleeves to show poorly healed bullet wounds.

Joshua Masyaga once made his living as an intruder, but gave it up in 2012 after watching three of his closest friends get gunned down by police.

It had grown too dangerous for a small-time operator like him, he said. The intruders had gone professional.

According to Masyaga, organized groups of intruders now have contacts among the mine workers and police. For a fee, certain mine workers tell the intruders exactly when and where to go to get the best waste rock.

Police are paid to look the other way, shooting and arresting everyone else so that they appear to be doing their jobs, said Masyaga.

African Barrick Gold is currently being sued in the UK by British law firm Leigh Day on behalf of the families of six people who were killed, and one man who was left a paraplegic.

Barrick turned around and tried to start a parallel case in the Tanzania courts, an act that a British High Court justice described as the “Tanzanian torpedo,” because of its seeming attempt to undermine the case in Britain.

As a result of documents that were released in court, it recently came to light that at least 14women had been sexually assaulted by police and security guards at the mine.

Barrick investigated the cases itself, and released its findings to Tarime police, according to the company’s press release. Barrick gave the women cash settlements and other forms of compensation, such as offers of employment with the company.

However, it’s still unclear whether any of the perpetrators will face justice.

While these court cases proceed and some victims and their families are compensated, there are many more who receive nothing at all.

Take Ghati, the farmer who was killed while herding his cattle. His family complained to police, but were told that Ghati was a violent criminal who got what he deserved. They then went to Barrick and began to follow the company’s grievance process, but became discouraged when the process dragged on for months. They finally gave up.

Gary Chapman, the General Manager of the North Mara Gold Mine, maintained that the conflict is between police and the thieves. The company has built a concrete wall around the site, and entered into a partnership with non-profit organization Search for Common Ground, to work with both sides to bring an end to the violence.

In spite of all the problems, Barrick has a very positive relationship with the community, said Chapman.

Indeed, several municipal government officials expressed appreciation for the money that the company has poured into the community.

Barrick spent $1.5 million USD building a new high school in Nyamwaga village, which was opened in January. The company built other schools as well, and is helping repair a local hospital. It has repaired many village roads (although not the heavily trafficked main road in and out of the mine) and has many projects to provide safe drinking water to the communities.

However, the area’s member of parliament Nyambari Nyangwine, isn’t satisfied.

"Right now there are a few examples of community service, there’s the school, clinic and water projects. But it isn’t enough,” he said.

"The situation is bad because they’re making a lot of money taking minerals from the land while the people of Tarime remain poor.”

I set out with my Polaroid camera to photograph and interview disappearing Hollywood, the version that matters most to me—the directors, actors, special effects artists, producers, even composers who’ve had great influence but have since fallen under the radar. This is a record and a reminder of the true soul of the movies.

Heather Langenkamp

Actor, Produce, Business Woman

Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Nightmare on Elm Street’s Nancy Thompson is undoubtedly one of the most beloved final girls in horror history.  Played by Heather Langenkamp, Nancy was more than just your girl next door. She proved to be a very resourceful heroine and a damsel who could fight back and kick Freddy’s ass.

While the Elm Street franchise expanded, the Nancy character faded into the background while Freddy Krueger became a huge icon. Heather Langenkamp asks, “Why does the heroine fade into obscurity while the villain becomes the celebrated hero?” Driven to explore why this phenomenon occurred, in 2010 she picked up her video camera and travelled to a series of horror conventions seeking the answer from the fans.  From this she produced the homegrown but in depth documentary I am Nancy.

Oddly enough I met Heather Langenkamp at a Star Trek convention. Along with her husband, David Anderson, she runs AFX Studio, an Academy Award-winning special effects makeup company that recently did the creature effects for Star Trek Into Darkness. When I approached her autograph table, she showed me several stills from her cameo that I could have her autograph. I whispered, “I am Nancy Fan.” She smiled and pulled out a still from the original Nightmare on Elm Street.

VICE: What was your life like before you became an actor?

Heather: I was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I lived there until the end of junior high. My father worked for the Carter administration so we moved to Washington DC where I ended up going to a very fancy all-girls high school full of very famous politicians and ambassadors’ children. It took some getting used to because I felt outside of that world. The school had a really great acting program, and I poured all of my teenage angst into it. By senior year I knew that I wanted to be an actor, but I didn't dare admit it or tell my parents because I had already spent years laying the groundwork to go to Stanford University for Russian Studies. 

How did decide to risk it and go for showbiz?

The summer before senior year, I went back to Tulsa where they happened to be making The Outsiders. It was the world's greatest coincidence. Of course my girlfriends and I were huge fans of Matt Dillion so we followed him all over town and were trying to find out where the cast were hanging out — you know just being completely crazy teenagers. Through hanging around, my friend found out they needed a couple hundred extras and got to be in the film.   Which then led me to getting one line in Francis Ford Coppola's next S.E. Hinton film, Rumble Fish. By the end of that summer, I had my SAG card.  I thought, "What do I do? What do I do?"  I wound up going to Stanford but came to LA on the weekends. I met an agent, and one of the first auditions I went on was for the lead in a low budget movie, and I got it! That helped cement the idea that I should take a year off from school and live in Los Angeles to see what might happen. Within that year I got Nightmare on Elm Street.

Did you have any reservations of the horror stigma when you accepted the role of Nancy in Nightmare on Elm Street?

At the time, I weighed it and thought, "No one is ever going to see this movie." But I also liked how complicated she was.  I honestly didn't think it could hurt me. In some ways I was wrong. It is a hard stigma to break. Even when I was working in television they always treated me like they saved me from some horrible fate of being a “Scream Queen” — they looked down upon the Horror genre.“Thank god we picked you up off the gutters of Hollywood!” So here I was in my mid-twenties thinking,"How am I ever going to do anything else?" 

What is it about Horror that traps actors in the genre?

I have read tons of final girl theory but part of it has to do with how strong the imagery is which makes it difficult for people to divorce themselves from it. It could also relate to the fact that they see someone get broken down.  Mutilated even! They simply can't break free of that image. I tried desperately to get other kinds of work. It just never happened. 

Does that upset you ?

As time has passed I dealt with the fact that I was not going to be an ingenue. To hell with the ingenue!  It became clear that this is the role that I am going to be known for. At first I was embarrassed and a little grim because I never understood why I couldn't get beyond being Nancy. Eventually I realized that I am really proud of it. You can't regret the things you have done, and I have to have a sense of humor about the reality of what I was thrust into. I didn't do anything wrong. I just innocently said yes to a five-week part in a movie in the summer of 1984.

Being a scream queen is nothing to be ashamed of.

It's difficult when you come from Washington DC. To put it in perspective, one of my best friends from school is one of President Obama's National Security advisors. People who have really important jobs. My skew is very warped. I was brought up to think that I should be an ambassador or a senator. It took a long time for me to realize that being a scream queen is equal to that.  

Is that why you produced the documentary, I am Nancy ? 

Once I came to terms with it, I decided to commit to it. To own it. The bad way to talk about it would be, "If life gives you lemons make lemonade." It's not like that at all.  I wanted to do something that was going to give me a whole new attitude.  The documentary came about when I was working with my sister-in-law on Cabin in the Woods. It was a very difficult film to make, and the two of us were always together. One day while we were working, I phoned Wes Craven because I saw in the paper that he was going to be doing a personal appearance at an anniversary screening of Nightmare on Elm Street and that I too would like to attend.  His secretary wouldn’t let me through to him and said I could leave him a message. As I was spelling out my last name, my sister in law's mouth dropped. When I hung up I put my head down about to cry and  she was like, "You call that bitch back and tell her to turn around and get the spelling off that Nightmare on Elm Street poster hanging in the office!"  She looked at me and said, "You are Nancy."  That day we decided to make a documentary about my investigation into what the character represents to me as well as what she means to the fans.

Why do you think the fans connect so strongly with Nancy ?

She was the girl next door but she also had an intense, alcoholic mother. So her right of passage was taking control of her nightmares and to assume the role of the parent — which is visualized by that gray streak in her hair that she wakes up with.  She was a very modern character. Through the fans I learned Nancy represents someone who can face their fears.

Have you ever personally had to seek the powers of Nancy ?

A few years ago we discovered my son had a brain tumor. My worst nightmare. Oddly enough it was just a few months after I finished making the documentary. All the insight I gathered from the fans became extremely useful to me. Face Your Fears, Face Your Fears, became my mantra. 

Working in makeup effects, how do you feel about CGI ?

CGI works for well for some things. It excels in an action film.  One example of where it doesn't work well is in nightmares because seeing your worst fears in hyper-reality is way too much for people to bear and not actually what they are like. Dreams are full of wonky bits of imagination. The imagination is a little imperfect. That's why practical effects make such a connection with the viewer. Makeup effects will hopefully always remain an important asset to the film industry.

Have you ever dreamed about Freddy Kruger ?

When I worked on Nightmare 3, I had reoccurring nightmares about saving Patricia Arquette from a sinking ship. What a metaphor! In the dream, the ship was rocking back and forth, slowly filling with water. A really obvious dream. It was hilarious!  Meanwhile, the set conditions were really bad. Most of the scenes were shot in an abandoned hospital, and there was bird shit everywhere, and the cast quarters were in rooms where they once did tests on monkeys. It was dirty and haunted. Plus there wasn’t very much food on set. Therefore all the kids working on the movie were weakened and freaked out. Especially Patricia. I was protecting her in the movie and in real life.

But every once in a while, I'll dream of a claw in my face or having a giant tongue wrapped around my head. 

Welcome to another edition of This Week in Racism. I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of one to RACIST, with “one” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.

–Last Sunday's anti-Semetic shooting rampage in Kansas that saw three people lose their lives at the hands of Frazier Glenn Cross not only ruined my ability to love Kelsey Grammer for about five minutes, it also reminded the world that there are some people out there who just plain don't like Jews. Cross has a long history of racist behavior, and ran the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1980s, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I assumed that the Klan would come out in support of one of their alumni graduating from mere kook all the way up to official homicidal maniac status. The exact opposite happened. Frank Ancona—referred to as the "imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the KKK" by USA Today—condemned Cross's actions. Ancona called the shooting spree "an act of hate" and said, "We've had a few members who have become bad apples, and the whole organization is overall cast in the same light." USA Today reported that the Klan does background checks on all prospective members and that they see themselves as a "white Christian group" rather than a terrorist hate organization. 

While the KKK is publicly condemning hate, an elected official in the town of Marionville, Missouri, is feeling a bit more sympathetic. Marionville's mayor, Dan Clevenger, is quoted telling KSPR-TV that he "kind of agreed with [Cross] on some things but, I don't like to express that too much." Clevenger went on to say that Cross "was always nice and friendly and respectful of elder people, you know, he respected his elders greatly. As long as they were the same color as him." An important distinction to make, Dan. Thanks.

Clevenger has a history of making anti-Semetic statements, but with the media bearing down on the Kansas City area, a backlash was inevitable. Jessica Wilson, a Marionville Alderwoman, resigned to escape the intense opinions on both sides of what should be a fairly cut and dry issue. Of course, in a town where the last mayoral election was decided on a vote of 180 to 149, voices carry.

What kind of a world is it where the KKK sounds reasonable, and an elected mayor is publicly sympathizing with a violent lunatic and be comfortable coming off as totally RACIST?

James Meredith statue at the University of Mississippi. Photo via Wikipedia Creative Commons.

–In this super exciting fun-time world of kooky racist shit, a fraternity on the campus of the University of Mississippi thinks it's totally chill to put a noose around the neck of a statue of the school's first black student. Sigma Phi Epsilon's chapter at the college has been closed after members of the fraternity were accused of defiling a statue of James Meredith. Three members of Sigma Phi Epsilon expelled for their part in the incident. I want to believe that the KKK could soften their rhetoric and fade into the background of American society, but as long as incidents like these continue, it's difficult to believe people like "imperial wizard" Fran Ancona. The Klan trying to seem reasonable could be a great way for them to draw attention away from the cultural influence they have on the communities like this one.  RACIST

This baby might really hate Korean people. Photo via Wikipedia Creative Commons.

–I'd like to think that people learn to be shitty to each other after years of watching political debate shows and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but what if you're a racist as soon as you pop out of the womb? A report from the University of Washington claims that babies can be racist. Babies, the second cutest thing in the world after a small cat lying on its back, could be predisposed to growing up to be the next Frazier Glenn Cross.

The study set up an experiment where 15-month old toddlers observed an adult either evenly or unevenly share a collection of four toys with other adults. The babies chose to play with the experimenter who evenly shared their toys 70 percent of the time, but there's a major caveat. Time magazine said:

"When the two adults who were receiving the evenly or unevenly divided toys were of different races and the race of the one who got more toys matched the babies’ own, the 70 percent preference for the fair distributor dropped and the share of babies wanting to play with the unfair one rose. The implication: unfairness is bad, unless someone from your clan is getting the extra goodies."

Do babies actually have a racial preference? I suppose asking them is out of the question, but perhaps it's time to consider actively teaching tolerance a bit more in our schools. Maybe people like Frazier Glenn Cross and other KKK members don't learn to hate, but rather are just never taught not to. 5

The Most Racist Tweets of the Week:

dont give me none of that if youre white u cant say nigger kill yourself nigger

— nicole (@_homogay) April 18, 2014

I'm about to call TWC again. If I get another bushy eyebrow having middle eastern bomber or a wetback I'm hanging up.

— BRAKAKA SWEG BITCH (@oXtacys) April 18, 2014

shut up u fucking dune coon

— creampie cutie (@toothybj) April 17, 2014

active member of KKK > active member of buzzfeed community

— stephanie browne (@stephaniebrowne) April 18, 2014

Take your prayer rug, roll it back up & shove it up your ass you worthless sandnigger!

— Dr. WhitePower (@THERACISTDOCTOR) April 16, 2014

Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.

Coachella was easily the best and worst thing I’ve experienced this year. The heat sucked, the people sucked, the bands sucked, and the food sucked (except for the Kogi truck—THANK GOD). But somehow I still managed to have a good time.

Getting the run-down on the festival from die-hard music fans was cool. They taught me what Disclosure is and that, in order to get a good spot for Skrillex, I had to wait against a barricade through ten hours of deafening bass. I also saw a lot of shitty things like massive, poster-size cut-outs of artists' heads in the crowd, and a bunch of stupid hashtags, but overall it was an OK time.

Now, onto weekend two...

There's a town in Northern California, about 25 minutes outside of Sacramento called Yolo. Last weekend, while driving to Reno, I took a detour to visit. 

Yolo is located in Yolo County. According to the 2010 US Census, it has a population of 452.

It is home to the Yolo Community Center—a center for the Yolo community to gather. According to a sign in the window, it's also available to rent for Yolo weddings and other Yolo events. 

There is a Yolo County Library. Which is home to First 5 Yolo, a daycare service for Yolo under-5s. A Yolo County Library fax service is also available, for sending faxes from Yolo. 

There were signs asking for you to vote for Janene Beronio. She's attempting to become a judge for the Superior Court of Yolo. A title Lil Jon has probably given himself at some point. 

Liquor is also available in Yolo. From a store that has a sign which reads "Liquor Yolo." I spoke to the owner, and he said that, though he sometimes has people coming in to ask for it, he has no plans to make any kind of Yolo merchandise. He also admitted that he wasn't totally sure what Yolo meant, but, knew "there was a song about it or something."

Someone lost their dog, which is incredibly sad. But it was last seen in Yolo, which probably takes the edge off it a little.

You get the idea.

Lots of things said Yolo on them. 

It stopped being funny after maybe like, the third time. 

*Sigh*

Overall, I would say that the town of Yolo, California, is a great place to visit or live if you think the word Yolo is funny. End.

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter

I discovered Hannah Kunkle's strange series of religious-themed graphic collages of Kim Kardashian on Instagram. They perplexed and excited me, so I asked her to create a slew of exclusive new ones in time for this season's cluttered religious celebrations. This month, Jews stuff their faces at Passover dinners, Christians stuff their faces at Easter brunches, and Bahá'ís do... I don't know, but they have, like, two holidays in April according to the University of Washington. Anyway, I'm not so into religion, but a faith based on the cutie with the booty is something I could definitely get behind. Here is what Hannah had to say about these awesome graphic lamentations on the power of celebrity, the cult of personality, and the fervor of fandom:

“Kim Kardashian is God. She’s crazy bodacious and has the nose job of an angel. I don’t know if she’s omniscient, but no one can deny she’s not omnipresent. Kim floats above us all, even the deniers and the haters. We have accepted her into our lives via television screens, memes, and Instagram feeds. If Jay Z is the father and Yeezus is the son, then she is the ever-present holy ghost of pop culture.”

Hannah Kunkle is a graphic designer, artist, and Pratt grad living in Brooklyn.

Hey everyone, welcome to our new column about GIFs.

We are doing this begrudgingly, after finally coming to terms with the fact that most people barely have the attention span to tie their shoes, let alone read more than five sentences of text.

And shit, you people won't even watch more than three minutes of video anymore. So we've done all the work for you, and now you can catch up on all the stuff we have deemed you worthy of knowing about while having plenty of time for video games and being a horrible person without the time to care about anyone but yourselves.

Just kidding! The real reason we're doing this is that when your terrible, morally void children (who, btw, will legally mandate all zippers and shoelaces be replaced with Velcro) finally murder the Earth and spin us into the reality of an apocalyptic wasteland, we can be sure our offspring will be in charge, reading lots of long books that explain increasingly complex subject and theories and drinking zero-calorie margaritas while their kids slave away in government-mandated labor camps where they will perform fun tasks like maintaining the oxygen generators and fending off cannibal mutants. The future is going to be great.

And how do we know we are right? Because, according to our analytics tools, at least 35 percent of you saw “GIFs” in the headline, saw more than three lines of text, and scrolled down to the moving images already. So... on with the GIFs.

GIFs by Daniel Stuckey

In April 2012 some guy who looks like a “TOTALLY RADICAL” 21-year-old BRO was in San Antonio and then all of a sudden he was spotted by a police dude acting fuckkkkking wasted, making “the motions of putting his penis back in his pants” after he squirted urine all over the Alamo. Sick, bruh. Except it’s not so sick when you’re sentenced to 18 months in state prison, as he was this week. Have fun with your new expanded butthole, BRAH! PS: We wonder whether broheim knows that Ozzy Osbourne peed on the Alamo Cenotaph in 1982 while wearing a dress. Probably not because he is a moron, obviously.

Speaking of dicks, this rapper guy severed his before jumping off a building. No one knows why yet, but maybe it’s because he lives in Los Angeles?

This week we released our new Weediquette episode about the full-on legalization of cannabis in Uruguay, where you can expect lots of pot you smoke to come from moving forward until the rest of the world gets its shit together. As you may have seen in the trailer, it features a chief session with yogi-bearded and roasted-almond brown stud muffin Krishna Andavolu and the MOTHERFUCKING PRESIDENT OF URUGUAY!!!!

While by this point we’re absolutely certain this one has been made many, many times over by myriad different trolls and otherwise Lulz-chasing characters, one infallible law of the universe is that there will always be enough room in this world for GIFs of terrible things happening to people who are doing the most vain thing the world has ever known.

On Wednesday a five-story passenger ship about 12 miles off the coast of Jindo, South Korea sank, and 270-plus of its passengers are still “missing.” Reportedly, the captain was not at the helm of the ship when it was discovered to be going under and someone instructed panicked passengers to “stay put.” A terrible reminder that you should NOT always do as you’re told. Especially these days.

Iraq has finally shut down the Abu Ghraib prison, where some of the most baseless and despicable war crimes ever leaked to the media took place. Remember, America, you commit war crimes too. At least own it.

This piece of human garbage—a supposed veterinarian, mind you—wanted to get fucked by a dolphin so badly he interrupted an entire orgy of them on his stupid show. We wish the dolphins echolocated him to the bottom of the sea.

First there was a DJ school for babies. Now there's a nightclub for kids. Next up: permanent hunger, genocide, and zombies.

In other news, an airplane flew into a woman’s vagina, defying the laws of physics and undermining basic science. Guess God is real after all. HAPPY WEEKEND!

Follow Rocco Castoro and Daniel Stuckey on Twitter. 

On March 9, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once one of Russia's richest and most influential men and later its most famous prisoner, came to Kiev's Independence Square—the site of the protests that unseated Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych—and spoke. As is often the case for Khodorkovsky, his topic was the oppression of the Russian people by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I was told and shown what the authorities did here. They did it with the consent of the Russian authorities,” Khodorkovsky said of the violence the Ukrainian police inflicted on the demonstrators. “I have seen shields made of plywood that were used here against submachine gun rounds. I felt like crying.”

And as he spoke the crowd chanted, “Russia, rise up!”

Khodorkovsky's speech helps explain why Putin is so worried about the idea of elections in Ukraine, which are scheduled to be held on May 25. The Euromaidan protesters successfully toppled the pro-Russia Yanukovych’s police state—they faced down snipers, snatch squads, and baton charges and won. But, as so often in Ukrainian history, the games played by the country's feckless politicians and Ukraine's big neighbor Russia have since pushed the revolutionaries' goals off the agenda.

It's difficult to predict what Russia’s intentions toward its neighbor will be in the coming months. Presumably a free Kiev, an ancient Slavic city that Putin has called the “mother of all Russian cities,” threatens the ruler of a fairly unfree Moscow. As a result, the Russian strongman has likely been stirring up the situation in eastern Ukraine, which has a large population of ethnic Russians, for months now.

Across eastern Ukraine, pro-Russian protesters—who are reportedly working with Russian special-forces—have taken over government buildings and are demanding to vote on a Crimea-style referendum that would allow the region to join Russia. Support for the idea is especially strong in Donetsk, an industrial city where many still long for the Soviet Union. Kiev has responded by dispatching troops to quell the uprising.

Putin has justified his interventionist stance toward Ukraine by saying he needs to protect the Russians there, but the vast majority of Ukrainians—including most of those in the east—don’t think Russian speakers need protection, and, understandably, are against the idea of Russia sending soldiers into Ukraine.

Still, it seems that the interim government can’t stop such protests from splitting the country's periphery from its center, perhaps because it lacks support in Ukraine's borderlands. The government, which is hardly popular in the capital, has especially few backers in the east, where locals are apathetic at best about the prospect of a new Ukraine. Yanukovych's regime was largely comprised of politicians from the east, but now control has passed back to leaders from the central and the western parts of the country, who are viewed by ethnic Russians as another people.

This regional divide, plus the continued political turbulence (which, as the above video shows, is on the brink of turning into an armed conflict), obviously makes the election a more dicey prospect—and ongoing unrest could give Putin the pretext he needs to send in his tanks, even if that unrest is in part provoked by Moscow’s machinations.

Analysts say it's difficult to imagine how the presidential election will proceed in parts of the east where possibly Moscow-backed protesters have been fighting the police and the military.

“Russia is not going to retreat from the areas it controls in the east,” Andrew Wilson of the European Council of Foreign Relations told me. “It has [also] been working inside Ukraine to keep candidates out of the race who could attract big support in the east.”

Despite the violence, there’s no sign the election will be pushed back, and candidates have been campaigning, including some from pro-Russia parties.

In late March, several hundred members of Yanukovych's Party of the Regions gathered to expel the disgraced leader from their party. They elected Yanukovych confidant Mikhail Dobkin—regarded by critics as a blowhard and an empty suit—as the party's presidential candidate. Some saw this process as fundamentally corrupt.

“They admitted the party was run like a company, where members were like shareholders, who put in their money and then received dividends,” an anonymous source who was present at the meeting said. “Deputies were like a board of directors, who paid themselves big bonuses.”

Dobkin's election created a fissure in the party, and his leading rival, Sergei Tigipko, quit to make an independent run for president. But the former Yanukovych loyalists are struggling to attract support in the polls, associated as the old regime is with all the blood on Kiev's streets.

Yet polls show that Yanukovych's former flunkies have greater support than the far right parties who have positioned themselves as the guardians of the Maidan Revolution. Svoboda, a nationalist group led by presidential candidate Oleh Tyahnybok, took credit for falling statues of Lenin across central and western Ukraine during the revolution, but that riled all the communists in the east, who would rather live in the old Soviet Union than in either Russia or Ukraine. Both Svoboda and Pravy Sektor, a paramilitary nationalist group that has become a political movement, have angered liberals and moderate Ukrainians, who view both parties as inflammatory and believe the nationalists' demands for a more aggressive strategy toward Russia could invite invasion.

More out of resignation than conviction, voters are largely supporting Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko. Poroshenko, a chocolate baron, is leading the polls because he was an early supporter of the Maidan movement. Tymoshenko—a former prime minister who was called the “gas princess” for her dubious energy deals, cultivated a relationship with Putin, and was sent to prison for corruption in 2011—trails Poroshenko by a significant margin, though she’s tried to reinvent herself as a champion of the common people since her release from custody in February. Vitali Klitschko, the boxer-turned-opposition-politician, has withdrawn from the race, intending to become mayor of Kiev, so voters’ options are somewhat limited.

Whoever wins Ukraine's presidential election, however, the most important thing is that they are held—and without any guns going off.

Charles McPhedran is a correspondent based in Berlin. Follow him on Twitter.

Glass by Salt. All photos by Davis James

The glass pipe game has been experiencing a renaissance that has made its top artists more money than ever. At the Galleria Glass Exhibition, an event at World Cannabis Week in Denver, major glass artists showcased their insane-looking pipes, unloading them to stores and collectors from all over the country. In only the last few years, prices have shot up from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars, and the craft has gotten better. Several factors have converged to form this vortex of cash and glass. The kids who used to buy their glass at festival lots have become grown-ups with enough disposable income to drop more on glass, and the tools of the trade have improved, allowing pieces to become more intricate. The atmosphere of the entire country has eased to weed, and at its core, the glass renaissance has been another phenomenon of the legalization movement. 

Glass by Robert Mickelsen

“The root of all the money is the cannabis revolution going on in this country right now,” said Robert Mickelsen, a 63-year-old traditional glass artist who recently turned to the pipe field. Although Mickelsen has acted as a mentor to many heavy-hitters in the pipe community, he was initially against calling pipes an artform. In the glass documentary Degenerate Art, he disparaged his disciples for applying their skills to pipes, but he came around after Salt and Kevin Ivey, two glass blowers from Austin, prodded him. “He had been telling us to quit pushing in bowls, saying that we would never be taken seriously for making pipes,” said Salt, one of the curators of the Galleria Glass Exhibition. “And then there was this evolution—the pipes became more and more artistic, and minds began to change, and the existing arts-and-craft market took a shit after the 90s.” No one was buying glass sculptures anymore, and Mickelsen was struggling. Traditional glass artists were looking for new avenues to sell their work, so many started making pipes even though they didn’t smoke or have any particular interest in cannabis. Salt and Ivey coaxed Mickelsen into making a smokable piece, and Salt proved that it was a lucrative field by buying Mickelsen’s first pipe in cash for $1,500. “It’s probably worth more than five grand now, but I’m never selling it,” Salt said. “That’s Mickelsen’s first pipe.” 

Glass by Bandhu Dunham

Bandhu Dunham, another glass artist from the old school, embraced pipe-making more quickly. Standing next to his showcases at the Galleria Glass Exhibition, he told me, “In the last couple of years, [pipe-making] has become so significant, artistically and culturally, that I wanted to get involved.” In light of traditional glass sculpture's declining popularity, Dunham sees pipes as an avenue to save the artform. “People in the conventional glass market are concerned that the collectors are dying off,” he said. “Younger buyers are not necessarily replacing the people who would buy sculptural things. The dilemma is How do we get young people involved in collecting? The answer is right here.” 

Glass by Snic

The easing national perception of pot has helped legitimize glass pipes as collectible art, but there has been a specific force within the pot community that has been the driving force behind high-end glass: dabbing. The majority of pipes being sold for thousands of dollars are dabbing pipes used to vaporize cannabis extracts like BHO. Snic, an artist well known for his metal-infused glass works, told me, “The concentrate market is a higher-end market than what we’ve seen before, so it’s pushing up the prices as well as the craft.” Concentrates are still an expensive niche in the cannabis market, and the connoisseurs can justify spending large amounts of cash on beautiful vaping devices. Regular flower pipes don’t sell for as much, and even the old school guys who don’t dab are mostly making dabbing pipes. (Bandhu smokes occasionally and rarely dabs, but Mickelsen hasn't smoked weed for years.) “I’ve dabbled in everything—cocaine, acid, whatever,” Mickelsen said, “but weed was the one thing I couldn’t keep myself away from, so I had to stop.”

Despite his personal preference, weed has given Mickelsen’s art new life, alongside his former students, who have been dedicated to the craft of pipe-making since long before it was a lucrative field. Where glass sculpture has failed, pipes have picked up the slack. Mickelsen is ecstatic about the result.

“I am having the time of my life. I'm having a ball. I’m making money,” he said. “I'm a better glass blower than I was only two years before because I'm mixing with these kids who are so fabulously talented. I learn new stuff every day. I'm reborn in this industry, and I couldn't be happier.” 

Follow T. Kid on Twitter. 

Hanes underwear, Aish scarf, Doc Martens sandals, Lucy Folk necklace, New York Costumes bunny head

Since Easter is on 4/20 this year, here's a trippy reimagining of Jesus' special day!

GIFs by Mike and Claire

Ammerman Schlösberg dress, Andrea Doria bra and panties, Vintage shoes, New York Costumes bonnet

Wildfox sweater, vintage overalls

Ammerman Schlösberg dress, Andrea Doria bra and panties, Vintage shoes, New York Costumes bonnet and cane

Wildfox sweater, vintage overalls, socks, and shoes, Clyde hat; Ammerman Schlösberg dress, Andrea Doria bra and panties, Vintage shoes, New York Costumes bonnet and cane; Hanes underwear, Aish scarf, Doc Martens sandals, Lucy Folk necklace, New York Costumes bunny head; Hanes underwear, A-Morir sunglasses, Wanderluster necklace, Arielle de Pinto bracelet, Angel Wings from Oriental Trading Co.

Special thanks to New York Costumes

Extra special thanks to Valley Shepherd Creamery for loaning us a three-day-old baby sheep

Photo Editor: Matthew Leifheit

Creative Director: Annette Lamothe-Ramos

Stylist: Miyako Bellizzi

Makeup and Hair: Silvia Cincotta

Models: India Menuez, Jack Waters, Kelvin Goncalves, Peter Cramer

Mike and Claire are interdisciplinary artists based in NYC. They are currently juniors at School of Visual Arts, and you can look forward to seeing lots more of their work on this website in the coming months.