"Sesame Street: The Count von Count Counts Pi to 10,000 Places" is a five-and-a-half-hour YouTube video that is exactly what it sounds like. If you were to watch the whole thing, you'd probably go insane.
That's actually probably not the intention behind the clip - the
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Critics of the process argue that it contaminates groundwater and damages the environment and public health. A grassroots resistance movement has emerged to fight the introduction of fracking in the UK, and it appears to be gaining momentum throughout the country.
VICE News travels to Blackpool, Lancashire, to see the fractivists in action. The seaside resort town is at the center of a David and Goliath battle between local residents and the energy company Cuadrilla over fracking in the region, which is believed to have one of the largest shale gas reserves in the Northern Hemisphere.
These are just a few of the many dreams, nightmares, and hallucinations that I've collected from around the globe for my
World Dream Atlas project. I first noticed the power of dreams when I began working as an EMT in New York City. I thought that when I took off my uniform and went home, all the gruesome scenes I had participated in would remain in the bedrooms, streets, and ERs where they happened. But in sleep, those scenes returned again and again. I terrorized my girlfriend, grabbing her neck ten times a night to check her pulse, or trying to use the bed sheets to soak up the pools of blood that I thought we were lying in. In half of my dreams, I was trying to save people. In the other half, I became the patient. In one,
Cultures throughout history have believed that dreams contain hidden meanings. Ancient Egyptians thought that they were messages from the gods. Many pre-Columbian Native American tribes believed that dreams were a way to communicate with the dead. Indian philosophers from nearly three millennia ago wrote about them as manifestations of internal desire. I
Scarlet LaVey, Porn Star
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"I have a lot of sexual dreams with people that I've been sexual with in the past. Maybe I didn't have such a great experience with them, but in the dream they make up for it. Sex in dreams is a lot more emotional than porn sex. I'm kind of catering to what I would want in real life. I can't really feel what's happening physically. I can only feel what's happening inside. I'll wake up crying because of the emotional feeling."
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"I recently had a dream. It was a nightmare. In my dream, I was driving and I accidentally hit a child. I kept going because there were a lot of people around. Eventually, I found out that the child was me."
Venus Lux, Porn Star
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"I don't get along with my father. I remember one dream where he became a blob. I was trying to mold him into a human form again, but he just dried up in my hands."
Sydney Leathers, Famed Anthony Weiner Sexter
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"I don't remember my dreams because I smoke way too much weed, and everybody knows it. I don't think I had any dreams about Anthony Weiner, but I probably told him that I did. I would say whatever I thought he wanted me to say in the moment. I was a pleaser like that."
Charlie Grace, Fetish Model
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"I wake up crying and screaming every night. In my dreams, I'm always being hunted by something. I'm kind of a masochist, so I kind of like it. I'm always confused that they never catch me though. Obviously, I've had raunchy dreams too—mostly rape. With males, I like to be completely dominated. It makes me feel inferior, in a good way. I would either get tied or held down, with my face pushed into a pillow as I'm fucked hard."
Goddess Aiden, Professional Dominatrix
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"All of my possessions were floating down a river. I saw my hairbrush in the water and got really mad because I couldn't brush my hair."
Rachele Richey, Porn Star
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"I had the weirdest dream last night! I was a man, and I married a woman. I got her pregnant. She had the kid, and we abandoned the kid. Then, I turned back into a woman!"
Natalia Starr, Porn Star
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"I moved to New York in 2000, so that was right before 9/11. I had a friend who was working at the [Windows of the World] restaurant and he died. I always have dreams that I was in that restaurant too. I was eating as the plane hit. I wake up when I hear the kaboom."
Jade Clapp, Miss Boston Ink 2014
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"I always have dreams that end up coming true or that warn me of something. I had a dream when I was ten, that I was in the forest—no, it wasn't even a forest. It was more like a sunflower field without sunflowers. There was this little girl there, and I just felt total peace. Now, I have a two-year-old daughter. She looks just like the girl in that dream, and when I'm with her, the feeling is exactly the same."
Onyx Muse, Porn Star
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"Sometimes I have lucid dreams—that's when you know you're sleeping, and you have some control over your dreams. And sometimes, they're wet dreams! That's when it plays in my favor. You definitely get to do things that you're too afraid to try out in real life. If you're in a dream, you're just like, fuck it. No one's going to judge you for it. For example, I like to squirt, and a lot of guys are iffy about it. But, in my dreams, I just squirt like a fountain!"
Sierra Cure, Porn Star
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"I watch a lot of horror movies, so I have a lot of serial killer dreams. I once had a dream that I was really good friends with Leatherface, and I was helping him kill people. If I was alive back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s when all the main serial killers were around, I always thought it would be really cool to study them, hang out with them, and try to get on their level. I don't think I'd have the balls to ever kill somebody. But I am really into animal rights, so if I saw somebody abusing an animal, I'd probably pick up the nearest heavy object and hit them with it."
Briana Lee, Porn Star
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"Sometimes, I have nightmares of falling through the ice and not being able to find a way up to breathe."
Rita Daniels, Porn Star
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"Dreams? I don't remember any, but I could probably make up one. Let's see. I had this dream that seven dwarves were walking through the woods. They captured me and took me to their hideout where they all did a huge dwarf gangbang all over me. It was awesome!"
Amanda Topchik, Exotic Dancer
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"I don't like being on the ground. I'd rather be up in the air. I have these flying dreams that are great. They're a natural high. I never fall in my dreams, but in real life, yes."
Jeselyn, Fetish Model
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"I used to have a recurring dream when I was really, really young. I was with my family, and we were at an aquarium. We walk up, and there's this little red rope and we have to stop there. And, there's this massive, massive tank, and there's a huge octopus in it. Anyway, so I walk up to it. All of a sudden one of the tentacles shoots out and grabs my dad, and takes him, and eats him. I think my stepmom was the octopus taking my dad from me. As I started to like her more, the octopus would grab my dad, take him in, and start throwing one of those colored beach balls back and forth with him."
Follow Roc's latest project collecting dreams from around the globe at World Dream Atlas.
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It's not uncommon for celebrities to auction off their belongings in a time of financial crisis. Fame has a way of giving human beings the magical power of making trivial items valuable,
And Burt Reynolds isn't just selling things that are worth selling. He's apparently selling everything he's ever owned with his name on it, including his fucking old credit cards.
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That's right. You can buy Burton L. Reynolds' totally useless, expired AmEx card. Folks, I should not have to tell you how depressing it is that a man in dire economic straits would try to sell his old credit cards. That's like Ron Jeremy selling his floppy, malfunctioning old man dick while he's still alive. For the record, the current max bid on Burt's card is $250.
So far, no one has bid on the half-length portrait of Burt, which an appraiser estimated is worth between $400 and $600. Will that price skyrocket in the next ten days? Probably not, but if you can buy this thing for $50, wouldn't you? You could one day tell your friends and family that you own a portrait of Burt Reynolds once owned by Burt Reynolds. If that's not worth $50 I don't know what is.
The majority of the auction is made up of tough guy memorabilia—western wear, guns, crew jackets, and statues that would look right at home on Dick Cheney's desk. There's also the trophies—relics of a time when anything Burt-related would have fetched a fortune. There's even his award for being the "Top Box Office Draw of 1977."
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Burt won this prestigious award the same year that Star Wars was released. It's currently going for $250. On the other hand, a Yak Face action figure from Return of the Jedi is currently going for $14,999 on Ebay. I'm sorry, Burt. I'm so, so sorry.
The auction ends on December 11, so there's still a chance that someone will greenlight Smokey and the Bandit 4 in the next ten days.
Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.
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Screenshot via the Oath Keepers website
VICE: Why did the Oath Keepers decide to intervene in Ferguson?
E. Steward Rhodes:
We realized they're going to do the same thing as last time, leave people unprotected. We scrambled as fast as we could—crack of dawn on Monday—to get people together.
You were in touch with locals on the ground?
Did they ever directly ask you to come?
You were confronted by the police. On what grounds did they ask you to leave?
We're going to an emergency injunction probably tomorrow. Meanwhile... we have our retired police officers on the roofs. They're exempt from local regulations about security. [But] you shouldn't have to be a cop to do the right thing by your neighbors.
Let's say you don't get an injunction for whatever reason. Would you just depend on the retired police officers, or would you go back in some other capacity?
The government has failed to protect them... and they're now saying you can't protect yourselves unless you can afford to hire private security? So the poor are punished, only the wealthy can afford to hire private security, and if you can't afford it, you're just screwed. That makes no sense.
When I get there, my main goal is going to be to organize the community and encourage them to start their own neighborhood watches. They don't need outside help. They should be able to do it themselves. We're going to offer assistance in training them. I'm bringing a Special Forces veteran. He's a professional trainer.
How does Ferguson fit into national trends that you monitor?
Frankly, in Ferguson, what they're being told is you only have two choices: 1) a hyper-militarized police state to stop violence, including arson, or 2) let it go and burn the town down. Twenty different buildings have burned to the ground. That's a false choice.
For Ferguson in particular if... they don't believe that the police department is legitimate, they should be protecting themselves and secure themselves because the more they secure themselves, the less reason there is for the police to be in their neighborhoods and communities. So they should take care of themselves for both reasons—to be secure, but also to be more free.
So this crackdown on self-protection units, do you think that's just an abstract trajectory, or is it something intentional? Is it guided and malicious?
We don't care about any of that. What we're going to do is make sure that Natalie's Cakes and More and the Chinese restaurant and the dentist and all the other shops that are right there are not burned to the ground. We have direct threats from arsonists saying they're going to burn those buildings to the ground. And it's not just about property. It's also about people's lives. There are apartments in those buildings above the shops where people live. If they were burned to the ground there'd be a lot of dead people, burned to death.
It's so bizarre and strange that in the middle of a state of emergency you have the chief of police going out of his way to instruct the officers to come and force us off the roof to prevent us from preventing arson.
And now we're on the street as protestors. We've been critical of the governor... pointing out the mistakes back in August, all the things they've been doing wrong: gross violations of free speech and assembly, shooting rubber bullets at everybody, pointing their guns at everybody, spraying CS gas at everybody. That was egregious. The right way to do it, we told them, was, 'Hey, you put undercover cops in the crowds and locate the guys actually doing illegal stuff. You don't punish everybody.'
We had an open letter to the Ferguson community just the other day saying much the same thing: affirming their rights to free speech and assembly, but also telling them point blank: 'Look, you have an obligation and duty to... stop the arsonists because all it does is discredit them... and takes attention from the reason why we're protesting in the first place.'
You were invited to Ferguson by some members of the public, but what have your interactions with the rest of the residents and the protestors at large been like since you got there?
I'm a quarter Mexican. I'm not a very good white supremacist. We're guarding a black lady's bakery and a white guy's dentist firm and a Chinese restaurant and a beauty store owned by a Korean lady. It's not about race. To us it's about human rights.
Why do you think some people believe you were there as a racist group that wanted to shoot black protestors?
Is there anything else you want to add?
So we're going to stop that from happening. We're the strong protecting the weak until the weak can protect themselves. But we want them to protect themselves.
Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.
I settled on Morongo Resorts in the high desert town of Cabazon, California, because the name tickled me more than the other option, San Miguel, and fuck if I'm driving more than an hour and a half on a lark. Naturally, Thanksgiving day traffic was atrocious when I left at 1 PM on Thursday and I found myself pulling into the Morongo Casino parking structure at 3:45.
My excuse for making this trip was to symbolically give money back to the indigenous people who my white forefathers stole a continent from. It was a mission in line with
I started at the bar and found the drinks to be refreshingly cheap. The bartender was friendly as well; he told me the casino was commemorating Thanksgiving with a special feast at the buffet. When I pressed a little more to see if there were any shows or promos in honor of Turkey Day, his eyes seemed to say, Do you understand where you are? while his mouth said, "No." I took my drink and sought out guest services to see if I could find any other attempts at a holiday cash grab, or even a shout out to Squanto, but unfortunately, all I could find out from the nice lady at the desk was that many people stayed at the casino over Thanksgiving weekend to participate in the three-day Black Friday bonanza going on at the outlets next door.
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I noticed a sign offering $5 off the buffet if I were to sign up for the Morongo Winner's Circle card. I'm fully aware that these are nefariously designed bits of social engineering meant to have you disassociate what you're spending on games with actual money, but I signed up for one anyway because besides the buffet discount, I apparently also got $50 of free slots credits to play with. After my ID was scanned into some database that would surely be emailing me promotions in a week, I approached an activation machine with my newly-minted card. The $50 of slot play I had been promised turned out to actually a maximum of $50. A digital wheel popped up on the screen, spun itself, and predictably awarded me only $5 of credit. Whatever.
You'd think that a facility run by an ethnic group would be more sensitive to borderline racism in the characters within its games, but the Morongo casino was chock-a-block full of slots that teetered precariously on the tightrope of caricature and racism. Notable examples included a poncho- and sombrero-wearing Mexican man from
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I marched through the dense forest of unsavory slot machines like Merriweather Lewis, but instead of looking for a route to the Pacific I was merely looking for a penny slot. My Sacajawea appeared in the form of a tree trunk–sized security guard. He escorted me to the proper section of the floor while I asked if he was going to be able to do anything with his family later. (They'd already had an early meal, so he was fine.)
I sat down at one penny slot and quickly learned that you can't actually make one cent plays anymore. How foolish of me to think I could stretch this $5 out into 500 spins of the e-wheels. But as luck would have it, I won as frequently as I lost and pushed the free-credits-to-cash-won accounting into the black. After a likely unprecedented 20 minutes of slot play stemming solely from this free credit I cashed out with a healthy $0.34 in winnings.
I was feeling sorta shitty that I came here to give the tribe money and wound up coming out on top. My forbearers would probably be proud, but they were most likely racist shitheads, so fuck them. I re-upped my drink and made my way over to the buffet to get started on the most important part of the Thanksgiving experience: waiting. It was only as I made my way to the end of the buffet line that I took note of just how insanely crowded this place was. I had imagined the place would look like a depressing scene from The Cooler, with only a smattering of sad sacks at the penny slots watching a tumbleweed of Bingo cards roll by. In reality, it was as busy as a Costco on a Sunday afternoon. The line for the buffet was no exception. Its winding chicanes gave any Disneyland line a run for its money and worse still, there seemed to be no forward movement.
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My time in the line was not pleasant. I spent the first bit observing my surroundings and noting all the crying babies around me. I thought Casinos were for adults, but the broods here were treating Thanksgiving this place like it was a long-standing family tradition. The majority of the people in the casino seemed to be non-English speaking people from East Asia, though, and its understandable if they have no emotional ties to some random chilly November Thursday.
Fortunately, all that time twiddling my thumbs gave me an opportunity to chat with and eavesdrop on other families. What wasn't in Mandarin, Korean, or Japanese sounded like your typical family squabbles. If this kid didn't get his shit together right now, they'd be heading home. If you didn't want to have to wait in line, honey, we should've left earlier and you could've put your makeup on in the car. The guy next to me noted that it had been "what, an hour plus?" that we'd been waiting so far. I welcomed the opportunity to start a convo. He and his wife were in from Riverside and didn't have much family out here, so "why not hit the casino?" That sounded familiar—it was like I was home for the holidays.
The buffet exceeded expectations. I embraced my inner gluttonous American and loaded up five plates knowing full well I couldn't eat that much. I came close, though, and even went back for seconds on a few of the dishes I'd merely sampled on the first pass.
My waitress informed me that she and her boyfriend were going to rush over to her mom's after her shift ended in a few hours. I was happy that this place didn't seem to be cruelly shackling its workers to the schedule. I let her get back to work and took a moment to take in the meals going on all around me. This was a pretty introverted Thanksgiving meal, but I decided to just pretend I'd been relegated to the kids table.
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I finished my final drink wandering around the game floor cheering on winners and engaging in small talk with other bystanders. Maybe I was leaning into the role of tipsy relative this year, if not for my own family, then for my adoptive casino one. Finally satisfied that I'd spent enough time and money in the casino to constitute a full Thanksgiving experience, I walked back to my car to begin the long drive home and, more importantly, charge my dead phone.
As I left the desert and found myself in the more familiar urban territory I realized that with all the driving, waiting, crowdedness, overeating, drinking, and general dissatisfaction, this Thanksgiving was exactly the same as every other I'd experienced in my life. No matter where you go or who you spend it with, some aspects of Thanksgiving will be constant, and some of those will always suck. At least this year I wouldn't have to do any dishes or indulge some relatives with conversations about Ferguson.
Follow
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Image by Cei Willis
According to court papers, after Pennsylvania's Anthony Elonis's wife and two children left him in 2010, he began posting violent threats about her on Facebook. Elonis was no angel before that: After sexually harassing two of his female co-workers, he went on to post a Facebook photo of himself holding a knife to a female coworker's throat (taken at a Halloween event) with the caption "I wish." He was fired the next day.
After being fired, Elonis posted threats aimed at his former employer:
"Ya'll think it's too dark and foggy to secure your facility from a man as mad as me. You see, even without a paycheck I'm still the main attraction. Whoever thought the Halloween haunt could be so fucking scary?"
But it was the threats aimed at his wife that really hit home.
If I only knew then what I know now, I would have smothered your ass with a pillow, dumped your body in the back seat, dropped you off in Toad Creek, and made it look like a rape and murder.
Tara Elonis later testified at trial that she was "very afraid for myself and my childrens' lives." She also testified that her ex-husband never listened to, or wrote, rap music—to clear up the puzzling lyrical way in which his crazy Facebook posts were written.
After making several more threats against his ex, Elonis went on a Facebook rampage of sorts, posting threats against everyone from police to FBI agents and saying he would carry out a school shooting at a nearby kindergarten.
The FBI had been regularly monitoring Elonis's online activity by this time, and he was arrested in December 2010 and indicted by a grand jury on five counts of threatening interstate communications: to his former employer, his ex-wife, the police and sheriff's departments, a kindergarten class, and, finally, a female FBI agent who questioned him at home.
Elonis refused to back down, challenging his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court on the basis of "free speech."
Now free speech advocates are piling on to the case, worried that a SCOTUS decision on the intent behind Elonis's threats could bleed into cases affecting everyone from journalists to protestors.
The case would determine whether the US cyberstalking law Section 875(c) could be expanded to require proof of "subjective intent" to threaten. As the law currently stands, a person can face federal charges, up to five years in prison, and a $250,000 fine for threatening to injure someone over the internet, via telephone, or any other kind of interstate or international communication.
The Supreme Court decision in Elonis will be vital for determining how online harassment and threats are prosecuted going forward, specifically impacting cases like Gamergate, where the majority of the threats against female gamers were made in third-party message boards and on Twitter.
In other words, the question at the center of the Elonis case is this: If a threat is made against your life, and it wasn't emailed directly but was seen by everyone on a social media site like Facebook—did the threat really take place? Of course it did; welcome to the 21st century, where every part of our lives is lived through our social networks.
"Abusers and stalkers perpetrate their crimes where we live our lives: which is with one hand on our phone and the other on a tablet. If we didn't spend so much of our time on social media, abusers wouldn't make threats there," said Cindy Southworth, founder of the Safety Net Technology Project at the
Some writers have positioned the Elonis case as being about "rap lyrics and free speech," ignoring the abusive context in which Elonis's threats were made; his wife had already received a protective order that, by law, must depend on previous incidents of abuse, and Elonis was fired from his job for sexually harassing female coworkers.
Once you've killed the family pet, that threat on Facebook has so much more meaning.
"This is about the context in which the threats were made," said Southworth, whose organization wrote en extensive amicus brief explaining the techie aspects of modern-day domestic violence.
"When we talk to victims, I don't know a single survivor of domestic violence or stalking who has only experienced one single tactic. They will threaten online and slash the tires," said Southworth. "What makes those online threats so scary is that they typically have physical violence happening at the same time. Once you've killed the family pet, that threat on Facebook has so much more meaning."
If Elonis is a sadly typical case of online domestic harassment, then why did associations representing every newspaper in the country weigh in with an amicus brief citing concerns about free speech?
"Anytime the Supreme Court is asked to decide something, it's not just going to decide the one case before it, it's going to set a new rule for all speech," Gregg Leslie, Legal Defense Director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told VICE. "The court reaches beyond this particular statute and could say something about what type of speech is not protected by the First Amendment.
"If you're going to criminalize speech, you're going to have to make sure the person intended what he said," Leslie added.
If the law is moving toward making domestic violence (and abuse and rape) survivors somehow "prove" that their attackers intended to harm them, it could be even more difficult than it already is to not only get victims to come forward, but to prosecute perpetrators when they do.
Attorney Jennifer Long of Aequitas, a group that works with prosecutors in cases of gender-based violence and trafficking, told VICE that perpetrators of all kinds of crimes, from terrorism to domestic violence, use threats to silence witnesses and victims: "the bulk of intimidation is verbal."
"Oftentimes perpetrators are smart enough to do it through a third party or in a way that won't tie into a case but will still prevent a victim from doing something," Long said.
The
transcript of today's Supreme Court oral arguments is a l
Hopefully the court won't remain so hung up on definitions of intent and threat speech, nor get too distracted by the completely unrelated issue of rap lyrics, that it forgets what is really at stake: the safety of women who are increasingly attacked online by intimate partners as well as masses of trolls.
"A lot of online abuse is motivated by reasons other than the impact on the victim—online mobs do it for the lulz or one-upmanship and may not even know the subject of the abuse, as we saw in Gamergate and when celebrity nudes were hacked and distributed," Carrie Goldberg, attorney with the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, told VICE. "What's essential is that the court prioritize the language and impact of the words—and not the speaker's intent."
Follow Mary Emily O'Hara on Twitter.
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One of the women who defied the driving ban during the October 26 2013 protest
VICE reached out to al-Hathlul for comment last night, but by this time she had been detained. So w
VICE: Hi Adam. is it common for women to be found driving and then stopped, or is it rare to find a woman trying to break the law? Is that sort of rebellious behavior becoming more common?
Adam Coogle:
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Loujain al-Hathlul. Image via Twitter
When was the driving rule introduced?
The Shura Council were recommending that Saudi women could drive under certain conditions—what happened with that?
Broadly speaking, do you think Saudis agree with the ban?
Does Twitter activity by the likes of
Naturally this feeds into bigger issues of equality in Saudi Arabia. What other challenges do women face?
This must go against the Arab Charter on Human Rights, though?
Has there been any change or good news at all for Saudi women recently?
So, while change might be happening at glacial speed, women like al-Hathlul are making progress. Even if it is only in first gear.
Follow Helen Nianias on Twitter.
More like this from VICE:
Meet the Women Bringing Down the Mob
I Had an Arranged Marriage – But I'm Still a Feminist
How Countries Across the World Are Tampering with Women's Wombs
At Berlin's Female Fight Club, women put men in their places—squished underneath a naked lady's assmeat. Club founder Anna Konda is a "natural-born dom" who used to beat up boys in the schoolyard while growing up in former East Germany. Now she can be found sitting on men's faces and squeezing their heads until they are on the verge of popping between her Amazonian thighs.
She established the club three years ago as an outlet for all women—from Stepford wives to doped-up muscle junkies—to go head-to-head in wrestling matches. Either in the buff or in a dominatrix getup, women can tussle with the stereotype that being strong and dominant isn't sexy or feminine. And men are more than welcome to jump in the ring too, as long as they're prepared to obey.
Even though Anna's known for her incredible strength, she doesn't consider herself a bodybuilder. Instead, she loves her womanly curves, boobs, and ass, which she has put on display in countless internet videos. Her videos, which have been watched by thousands of people, have made her a cult figure in Berlin. These videos often feature her crushing watermelons or sheep skulls between her thighs, emasculating men, or instructing women on how to dominate. However, Anna's not without her critics. She's had social media accounts and videos deleted from Facebook and YouTube for being too "pornographic" even though they featured no nudity—just a powerful woman in control of her own body.
I caught up with Anna to discuss her life as a skull-crushing dom and why she believes women should always be on top.
VICE: When did you realize you were a "natural-born dom"?
Anna Konda: In my marriage. My husband took me to a gym where I trained the same way as him—none of that nonsense "lady training" that some women do. From the beginning, I could lift heavier weights than men. Of course people started saying things to my husband, like, "At home, your wife must wear the pants..." We also began wrestling each other, but I'd always end up on top. So it became less and less fun for him.
You used to beat up boys in school?
I grew up in the former German Democratic Republic where competitive sports were very important. Like many girls, I was a gymnast, which involved weight training at an early age. By 12 or 13, we were so much more muscular than the boys. Naturally, we took advantage of this. Boys who didn't get out of our way were pressed face down into the sand. I loved tantalizing them by squeezing their heads between my legs against the ground. When I started doing this to men as an adult, I realized that so many men have a fetish for this and I'm giving them exactly what they've always wished for, even as little boys.
What's been your kinkiest request to date?
There are men out there who ask for the "squeeze of death" from me. They offer me large sums of money too, like $10,000 as an advance payment. Naturally, I never accept because I'm not a psychopath and have no desire to sit in the electric chair in the US ("squeeze of death" request come mostly from Americans).
How do you differentiate yourself from S&M porn?
People always connect the word "dominatrix" to pornography, but an S&M porn star or prostitute only does what someone else wants. The only thing that matters to them is that they get paid. A truly dominant woman on the other hand only does what she wants.
So, you're a fan of domination in the ring, but not in the bedroom?
Well, sometimes the bed is the ring. [
Laughs] For me, the ring becomes the bed when I sit on my victims' faces and they lie helplessly under my thick thighs and big buttocks. I love to cum on their faces. This turns me on extremely. Even talking about it right now makes me want to do it again. It's an amazing feeling of power.
Do people often ask you for erotic services?
Yeah. But when a man asks me to do something erotic to him, I tell him that if he drops his pants in front of me, I will slam him up against the wall so hard that he'll need a jackhammer to get himself off again.
Can your wrestling matches get violent?
I'm not sadistic. I don't enjoy the pain of others. I enjoy my own power and having control. I guess sometimes this can amount to the same thing for my prey. No matter how tough the fight is or if I have the opponent on the ground, I never hit them like crazy. I never want blood on my mat.
You had some trouble with YouTube and Facebook for deleting and blocking your content, right?
I find it ridiculous because it's easy to distinguish my club from porn. YouTube deleted videos that just featured my name in them or fully clothed training videos just because I was in them. I hate censorship and arbitrariness. If I compare YouTube with the communist GDR government from my childhood, I can hardly decide which is worse when it comes to censorship!
Your body is so magnificent. Were you always a bigger woman?
As a young woman, I got so skinny that I only weighed half of what I weigh today because of the pressure to conform to the stereotypical stick-thin image. I had a wasp waist but I still had a nice round ass. I looked amazing. However, it's not possible to keep that slim figure forever—not even with dieting. My bigger body now has many benefits. If millions of people love my videos and photos, it's because they love the woman they see in them. Frankly, that turns me on.
Have you ever gotten any negative reactions about your body?
Out of the thousands of fans I have, there are always a handful of people who tell me how fat, ugly, and disgusting I am. But where else should I get my workout motivation from, if not from these comments? People want to see crazy things from me and these comments put me in the mood to make someone suffer. My domination acts are never purely for show. I unleash anger and aggression onto my victim and if he or she moans underneath me, it makes me feel so good and strong.
You often wear dominatrix-style leather corsets, latex, and high-heels. You must be aware that you're serving countless fetishes?
Anyone can project whatever fetishes they like onto me. Even if it's just liking that I wear leather boots. I don't find my feet very sexy, but some people go crazy for them. When watching a video where my feet are visible, they get so excited because that's their fetish. For me, they're just my feet.
What services do you offer women who are perhaps "under the thumb" of a man?
There are some women who have suffered from domestic violence and have come along to the club with their attacker. I show the perpetrator how it feels to be dominated by someone.
What relationship advice would you offer women?
Men will adore you if you bulk up and test your limits in terms of power. You can then present your man with a whole new spectrum of services. If he is impressed and intrigued, then he is the right guy for you. If he rejects you, then he is the wrong guy. In a healthy relationship, both partners must see each other at eye level.
What's your ultimate goal with all of this?
I want to motivate women to follow my example—to do weight training and to be proud of their female form. Everything I do is erotic. So I also want to turn people on. However, it's not about sexual acts, but the overall context. A woman who builds up her strength and is proud of her body often shocks people because they think a woman with a few too many pounds should hate her body. The fact that so many men are turned on by me shows that this is bullshit.
For more information on Berlin's Female Fight Club, visit Anna Konda's website or Berlin Female Fight Club.
Follow Emily on Twitter.
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My grandfather died in the spring of 2014. It didn't come as a surprise to anyone. During the last two years he didn't respond a lot; he wasn't present. I don't know if he thought about dying, whether he was expecting it or afraid of it. I don't think so. He was 87 years old.
My sister and I helped
When I was a kid, I had my reservations about him. He seemed very strict so I kept a certain distance. He wasn't mean or anything—he just didn't want us to fool around and wreak havoc like children often do. Now I understand that that was just his way of trying to raise and teach us how to be proper humans.
Most people in Finland—where I am from—don't know that you can dress the deceased. And if they did they probably wouldn't do it. Death is still a taboo over here. You are not supposed to talk about it, let alone photograph it. I don't know why this is. Maybe we don't want to be reminded of our mortality.
Preparing my grandfather for his coffin was a beautiful experience. Time seemed to come to a halt. All my memories of him felt stronger, more concrete. I had photographed him on many occasions and he always had this amazing presence. This was our last shoot together—although, in some sense, he was no longer there. Merely a shell was left. I spent a few minutes taking photographs, then I closed the coffin. That was that. The last time I saw my grandfather.
Looking the pictures now, takes me back to the moment of seeing him in the coffin. In the pictures he seems to be at ease. And there still is that sense of presence. In some way I feel a lot closer to him now than I ever did before.
These photos are from the series To Bury a Father by Kimmo Metsäranta
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A sign in Amsterdam warning people about the "Coke Killer." All photos courtesy of Floor van Bakkum
This article originally appeared on VICE UK
This winter, a killer has been preying on tourists in the Dutch capital. A man—who police describe as 35 to 40 years old—has been cycling around Amsterdam doling out death. So far, he's killed three young British men and poisoned another 14 unsuspecting people. The bizarre thing about him, however, is that detectives believe he has no idea of the trail of destruction he's leaving in his wake.
With New Year's Eve fast approaching, along with thousands of Brits in search of dizzy nights full of orange wigs, drugs, and Oranjeboom, investigators are scouring the city's streets for the man locals are calling the "Coke Killer." The elusive figure is selling tourists cocaine that, it turns out, is actually deadly white heroin.
Last week, two young men from Plymouth took a trip to Amsterdam to celebrate their 21st birthdays. On Tuesday, both Brits—20-year-old Shaun Brotherston and 21-year-old Bradley Price— were found dead in their hotel room next to a bag of powder, later found to be white heroin.
Yesterday, I spoke to Shaun's friend of 15 years, Steve Courage. He told me Shaun was not an experienced drug user—that he thought he might "smoke a bit of marijuana in Amsterdam, but never anything harder."
Forensic tests have led the police to believe that the same dealer who sold Shaun and Bradley that bag of white powder has poisoned at least 14 people in Amsterdam over the last two months, most of them British tourists. One man, 22-year-old Joel McDevitt from Burnley, died in October after being found semi-conscious with his friend next to a canal. His friend was resuscitated and survived.
As you'll know from watching Pulp Fiction or Queer as Folk, when snorted in cocaine-sized lines, white heroin can be highly lethal—especially if consumed alongside alcohol.
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"White heroin looks like cocaine, is sold as cocaine, and people think they are snorting cocaine. The result is respiratory failure," said Amsterdam police spokesman Rob van der Veen. "It's a big problem, and we are trying to solve it. A lot of undercover police officers are on the streets to find out who is responsible."
The threat of the Coke Killer has prompted police to set up illuminated English-language warning signs that read: "Extremely dangerous cocaine is sold to tourists." They've also been issuing leaflets in the main squares and at Amsterdam's Centraal railway station, appealing for people to ignore street dealers because of the deaths.
There are clues as to who the killer may be. The police suspect the culprit is one dealer acting alone, otherwise—they say—there would be more poisonings. After interviewing the surviving victims, police have also come to the conclusion that, despite the high value of white heroin (which is harder to come by in Europe than brown heroin), the killer is selling the drug at the same price as cocaine, i.e. almost three times less than you'd usually pay for it.
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Like any trader, it's unlikely a drug dealer would knowingly sell an expensive product under the guise of a cheaper one—unless they have no idea what they're selling or are actually out to kill people.
Either the Coke Killer is, as the police suspect, just an idiot, or, more ominously, a "death dealer," deliberately trying to murder people by conning them into an overdose. Dr. Adam Winstock, a UK addiction specialist and founder of the Global Drug Survey, says that because of the high price of white heroin, it's unlikely a dealer in Amsterdam's "sophisticated" drug market would have got their batches mixed up.
"Given the fact that most dealers are unlikely to be stupid enough not to have checked what they are selling, we are left with the uncomfortable possibility that someone is willfully knocking out white heroin as cocaine, and it's leading people to die," he told the BBC.
Floor van Bakkum of the Jellinek Clinic, an addiction treatment center in Amsterdam, says huge publicity over the poisonings means the death dealer theory remains an option.
"It's a real puzzle. It is a totally atypical case for us," she told me. "Selling white heroin for the price of cheap cocaine is obviously not good economics. We can only speculate about what he's really doing or thinking. But there have been very public warnings about this for a month now—you'd expect that if he didn't know he was selling heroin, he should have heard by now. I have no real answers about this."
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If there really is a "death dealer" stalking the streets of Amsterdam, intentionally poisoning British tourists, he would be one of the first of his kind in history. There are plenty of stories about drug sellers spiking a batch to murder its intended recipient, but little evidence to prove these are anything but urban myths.
I spoke to Professor Ross Coomber, author of Pusher Myths: Re-situating the Drug Dealer, a book that consigned a load of hoary old tales about "evil drug peddlers" to the dustbin when it was published in 2006.
"I am unaware of a real-life example of purposive death dealing," says Coomber, who's been researching the drug trade since the 1990s. "In the UK, the police tend to be the source of sensationalist assumptions around drug market activities, so it's refreshing to see that what the Dutch police are saying here—that the dealer doesn't know what he is selling—makes sense."
Coomber is a believer in the "coke chancer" theory.
"Not all drug dealers operate on a rational, economic level," he told me. "Some who end up selling drugs are opportunists who don't know what they're doing. I could see a scenario where someone unfamiliar with the drug trade obtains the heroin, by either stealing or finding it, presumes it's cocaine, and tentatively sells some of it on at clubs, cafes, or bars—hence the fact tourists are the victims—and continues to do so, unaware of what is going on."
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Coomber thinks the notion that tourists are being targeted by a homicidal sociopath—one whose weapon of choice happens to be white heroin disguised as cocaine—or a career dealer who's decided to deliver "hot shots" with the intention of killing an individual or a group of individuals, is fanciful.
"If a 'death dealer' wanted to kill purposively, this is an inefficient scatter gun approach," he said. "If he wanted to use drugs, he would be more likely to simply add something toxic to actual cocaine, the stuff people wanted, rather than try to trick them with a completely different substance, which a 'taste' would reveal straight away. Also, why not use a gun, which is more efficient, reliable, predictable, and—perhaps more importantly—sends a clearer symbolic message?"
Deaths of tourists who take white heroin sold as cocaine have occurred in countries such as Cambodia, where the purer form of heroin is cheaper than cocaine. In 2009, two British tourists in their thirties—businessman Mark Ganley and sports journalist David Hunt— died in their hotel room after snorting white heroin through a bank note. In 2012, another journalist, 27-year-old Kristy Cadman-Jones, died on her honeymoon in Phnom Penh after snorting white heroin she thought was cocaine.
In all those cases, it seems far more likely that the culprits were coke chancers as opposed to death dealers. And the same can be said for Amsterdam—that the Coke Killer is simply a first-time drug seller with little or no criminal connections who's somehow come across a valuable stash of heroin that he believes is cocaine.
The only hope now is that this man gains a sense of the fear that has gripped the city where he sleeps.
"Shaun was fun-loving, athletic, and a good lad," Steve Courage told me. "I hope the person selling the drugs that put [Shaun and Bradley] in such a mess realizes what he's doing and understands the pain he's causing. People dealing drugs should at least know what they're selling.
"It won't bring Shaun or Bradley back, but at least this tragedy is an eye-opener for people who are buying drugs from people they don't know, in cities they don't know."
Follow Max Daly on Twitter.
To take part in Adam Winstock's Global Drug Survey, which strongly supports harm reduction and is aiming to gather information from drug users around the world, visit globaldrugsurvey.com.
"Help me! Help me!"
It was 3:30 AM in the Nachvak Fjord, a gorgeously desolate chunk of grassy wilderness in the Canadian subarctic, and the sound ricocheted through the silence like a gunshot. The fjord is about 530 miles from the Arctic Circle, and not much warmer. Getting there requires multiple bouncy prop-plane flights or a ten-hour boat ride over choppy waters filled with icebergs, like ice cubes tumbling in a giant glass of ice water. The nearest bank or bar or convenience store is nearly 200 miles away, but who needs one when visitors to the fjord can drink directly out of its Brita-clean streams? In addition to Arctic char, a visitor here sees minke whales splashing in the sea, soaring ptarmigan, and seal skulls dotting the beach—leftover lunch scraps from the 2,000 or so polar bears that call this place home.
Rich Gross, the Sierra Club tour guide who had helped organize the trip, jolted awake at the shrieks. He grabbed a flare gun stashed inside the boot near his head. He tore open his sleeping bag and leaped out of his tent.
Marta Chase, the group's other guide, lay in a tent near Gross's. She was terrified. As Gross climbed outside, she peered through a little window and saw a polar bear, just a few feet away, standing over the tent beside hers. It was down on all fours, eye level with Chase, huge and white except for the black of its eyes and nose. It turned and stared right at her.
"Rich!" she screamed.
Her husband, a spritely man named Kicab Castañeda-Mendez, scrambled out of their tent while Chase searched for her flare gun. When Castañeda-Mendez emerged, Gross was standing in the grass, in his long underwear, aiming the gun at the bear as it started to run away. It was a moving target, now 75 feet down the beach, heading toward the shore of the fjord.
[body_image width='150' height='200' path='images/content-images/2014/12/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/01/' filename='polar-bear-man-part-1-015-body-image-1417471741.png' id='8099']This excerpt is from the e-book "Meltdown: Terror at the Top of the World," written by Sabrina Shankman for InsideClimate News. Click here to read the full story.
By now it was 3:31, maybe 3:32 AM. The night around them wasn't pitch-black—like it might be in a horror movie—but it was still dark, that dusky twilight that makes the air feel as thick as smoke when it descends in far-northern climates. It was dark, in other words, but not so dark that Gross and Chase couldn't see that the fleeing polar bear had something in its mouth as it ran off into the night—it was one of their travel companions. Matthew Dyer. He was no longer screaming, "Help me."
Participants would have to be fit and experienced hikers, the ad warned. They would also have to accept an element of risk, including lack of access to emergency medical care. But the payoff would be big.
"If you dream of experiencing a place that is both pristine and magical, a land of spirits and polar bears rarely seen by humans, this is the trip you have been waiting for," the ad said.
Two seasoned Sierra Club guides, Rich Gross and Marta Chase, would be leading the adventure, called "Spirits and Polar Bears: Trek to Torngat Mountains National Park." Gross, 61, worked for a low-income-housing nonprofit in San Francisco, but since 1990 he had spent a week or two each year guiding Sierra Club trips in remote parts of the world. Chase, 60, was a medical-diagnostics consultant who'd been leading hikes since she was in high school. She and Gross had guided 14 excursions together.
It was Gross's idea to go into the Torngats, one of Canada's newest national parks, located in northeastern Labrador. He'd never seen a polar bear in the wild and was drawn to the spiritual appeal of the place. Torngat Mountains National Park was named after Torngarsuk, an ancient Inuit spirit that takes the likeness of a polar bear and controls the lives of sea animals. In photos Gross pored over, the terrain itself had a mystical appearance, with sharply peaked mountains and fjords cutting into the park from the coast of the Labrador Sea. Only a few hundred people venture there each year, and Gross wanted to be part of that exclusive group.
Chase wanted to see the park too. But she worried about hiking in polar bear country.
A large male bear can weigh as much as 1,700 pounds and stand ten feet tall. While they have evolved to eat seals, polar bears, unlike most species, will actively hunt humans in certain circumstances—especially if they're not able to access their typical prey. When the sea ice melts in summer, the bears come on land, and if there's a time and place to see a bear, it's midsummer in the Torngats.
Worldwide, the polar bear population is in trouble. The two best-studied bear populations, in Canada's western Hudson Bay and Alaska's southern Beaufort Sea, are both in decline, and experts predict it's just a matter of time before other bear populations start to plummet. Why is this happening? The sea ice where bears hunt seals is diminishing as a result of rising temperatures and man-made climate change, so the bears' hunting season is shrinking. In turn, bears are reproducing less and must migrate farther and farther to find food, even into cities, like the Canadian town of Arviat, more than 1,000 miles from the Torngat Mountains. Arviat recently hired an armed "bear monitor" to ward off the animals.
An increase of bears on the land is in turn leading to a rise in human and polar bear interactions—back in the 1960s and 1970s there were eight or nine attacks reported per decade, according to wildlife biologist James Wilder. Based on recent trends, that number is expected to reach 35 this decade. While no individual incident can be attributed to climate change, the rise in interactions is precisely what biologists have expected to see as the bears lose their habitat. The result is a paradoxical situation in which fewer polar bears may mean more attacks on humans.
Gross had learned some of this by the time he received an email from Matt Dyer, on November 17, 2012. Dyer was prepared to pay $6,000 for this trip into the unknown, and he wanted to sign up. But Gross wasn't sure Dyer was ready for such an extreme adventure.
"This trip requires backpacking experience and I don't see any on your forms," Gross said in an email after reading Dyer's application. "This is a particularly tough trip since it is all off trail and packs will be quite heavy (50+ pounds). The area is remote and evacuation is only by helicopter."
Dyer told Gross he was in good shape and had been hiking and camping in New England for years, including some trekking with the Appalachian Mountain Club.
"I'm not a city person (I grew up on an island about 8 miles from the mainland) so being away from the [7-Eleven] is not going to bother me," Dyer wrote. "I totally understand that you don't want to wind up a thousand miles from nowhere with a problem, but I think I can do this."
Dyer agreed to follow a strict training plan, and Gross agreed to take him.
When Dyer arrived, Larry Rodman walked into the hotel lobby at the same time, fresh off the airport shuttle bus after a quick flight from New York City. Rodman, 65, was a corporate lawyer in Manhattan, and the walls of his office were adorned with photos he'd taken on previous wildlife trips, though he'd never seen a polar bear. He'd signed up the same day he read the "Spirits and Polar Bears" ad on the Sierra Club's website.
The big-city law partner and the legal-aid attorney with the scraggly gray ponytail hit if off immediately—they both loved opera and fencing and had an easy sense of humor. Dyer was relieved. He'd been less concerned about the arduous journey than about the people he'd be trapped with in the wilderness.
Gross and Chase had flown in the day before to buy supplies and make last-minute arrangements. When they saw Dyer he looked as ready for this trip as anyone.
He had a ropy frame, tattoos, and seemed to have a permanent grin on his face.
Later that night, Gross and Chase gathered the crew to go over final details. Another group member, a doctor from Arizona named Rick Isenberg, arrived in Montreal after midnight, and the next morning the crew boarded a plane and headed north.
The other way in is through a privately run outfit called Barnoin River Camp, about 900 miles north of Montreal. When Chase emailed Base Camp officials and got no reply, she reached out to Vicki Storey, an adventure-travel agent who'd been booking trips to the Torngats for years. Storey put Chase in contact with Alain Lagacé, the owner of Barnoin River Camp, who had been leading fishing expeditions and wildlife tours into the Torngats for decades.
"The thought of polar bears is still a concern to me," Chase wrote in one of her emails to Lagacé before the trip. "I have experience with black and brown bears but not with polar."
Lagacé said they'd need flares, pepper spray, and portable electric fences to protect them while they slept.
"Regarding the safety against polar bears, we have it all," Lagacé wrote. "The 12 gauge magnesium [flare] gun are working extremely well, plus we have the pepper spray, and the pepper spray greanade ( sic) and electric fence. These have worked very well in the past but there are always precautions to be taken. Never cook food in your tent, don't leave trash around your camp site, avoid camping along the shore of a coastal lake, etc."
Previously, Chase and Gross had read that Parks Canada recommends that visitors to the Torngats hire a licensed Inuit bear guard who is allowed to carry a gun into the park and is trained in polar bear safety. But Chase and Gross say that when they confirmed their hiking route and let the government know they'd be traveling through Lagacé's camp, which does not employ bear guards for hire, nobody at the agency mentioned hiring a bear guard. The only requirements for visiting were that they register with the park and watch a DVD on polar bear safety, which a Parks Canada employee said would be sent to Lagacé's camp.
Instead of an armed bear guard, Gross picked up two electric fences from the Sierra Club—one to encircle their campsite, the other to protect the area where they would cook and store their food. The instructions weren't included, so with the help of a close friend who is an electrician, Gross practiced setting them up outside his house in San Francisco.
Each fence stood about two and a half feet high and consisted of three parallel wires suspended from four-foot posts. Although the wires looked flimsy, they carried five to seven kilovolts of charge—not enough to seriously injure a bear, but enough to send it running.
Before their trip, Gross emailed a picture of the fence set up in his front yard to Castañeda-Mendez.
"What's the polar bear supposed to do?" Castañeda-Mendez wrote back. "Die of laughter?"
Marilyn Frankel, a 66-year-old exercise physiologist from Oregon and the group's seventh and final member, saw the flashes from a shed where she was sorting food, pulling out the half that would be airdropped to them midway through the hike. OK, she thought after seeing the burst of flame, those are going to work.
At around 5 or 6 PM the group headed to one of the camp's main buildings for dinner. Chase and Gross had planned to show the group the DVD on bear safety. But they say Lagacé told them that the DVD hadn't arrived (in an interview, a Parks Canada representative claimed the DVD had been mailed to the camp). If they had watched it, they would have learned that the number of human and polar bear interactions is increasing, that the most common place to encounter bears is the coast, and that it's important to know the limitations of bear deterrents and not be lulled into a sense of false security by them.
In lieu of the video, Lagacé agreed to talk to the group about safety in polar bear country, sharing what he had learned in decades of bringing people into the Torngats. (When I interviewed Lagacé about the video, he said he had shown it to the group, and then he declined to answer any more questions.)
According to the hikers, Lagacé told them to be aware and prepared at all times. Polar bears aren't like the grizzlies they had come in contact with before, he warned—they're hunters. The bears travel along water, so the hikers should be sure to camp away from the edge of the fjord. Provided they slept inside the perimeter of the electric fence, he allegedly told the group, they should be just fine.
In the early afternoon of July 21, 2013, the group traveled east on a floatplane toward the blue waters of the Labrador Sea and Torngat Mountains National Park. Dyer watched breathlessly as their plane skimmed over mountain peaks and then dipped into a desolate but spectacular valley—treeless, with steep peaks cutting down to the water's edge, leaving a spit of land and beach. The green vegetation covering the mountains and hills was new to the area. Years ago, the hills were all rock, but a shifting climate has brought with it new growth.
The plane landed flawlessly on Nachvak Fjord, backing into the shore so they could exit without getting their feet wet. Castañeda-Mendez held on to the plane's pontoon while the rest of the group unloaded their gear. The pilot quickly said his goodbyes and the roar of the engines receded into the distance, leaving the hikers alone with just the sound of water lapping quietly onto the shore.
A cold rain started to fall, but a rainbow stretched across the expansive sky. Dyer took it as a good omen.
Chase and Gross left the group on the shore while they scouted for a campsite. Lagacé had warned them not to camp on the beach and to find a high place to sleep because polar bears are known to come right up the fjord where they landed.
But when Chase and Gross reached an area that met Lagacé's recommendation—an elevated spot about a quarter mile away—they discovered it didn't have easy access to drinking water. Farther down, closer to where they had been dropped off, they found a spot that looked ideal: flat enough for comfortable sleeping and cooking, with easy access to fresh water. It was a bit closer to the shore, but still at least 150 yards away from the mouth of the fjord. People had obviously camped there before, because they'd left behind stakes and piles of rocks. But little did they know, according to Judy Rowell, the superintendent of the park, the campsite was smack in the middle of a "polar bear highway."
A mother and her cub were walking along the shore in the early-morning light. The mother bear's snout was raised in the air, sniffing out her neighbors.
Chase joined her husband outside the tent. Dyer and the others grabbed their cameras. Here they were, in shouting distance of some of the world's most violent predators, yet the scene was overwhelmingly peaceful. Dyer felt on the verge of joyful tears as he watched the bears walk along the shore, the cub close on its mother's heels.
It was only later, as they looked over their photos and zoomed in on the bears, that they got a sense of the animals' physical state. A concave hole fell between the mother bear's sharply pointed shoulder blades. Experts who examined the photos confirmed that the mother appeared underweight, and a native guide would tell the group that he had seen what he believed was the same mother just weeks earlier—but she had had two cubs with her, leading him to believe that one had died.
Mother bears and their cubs have the most tenuous future when it comes to climate change, according to biologist Charles Robbins. Studies have found a direct link between earlier sea-ice breakup and fewer cubs surviving. When biologist Elizabeth Peacock studied polar bears in the Davis Strait, which includes the Torngat Mountains, she found that while the population numbers were strong, litters were smaller than anywhere else in the world, and fewer cubs were surviving into adulthood. She also found that the bears' general health was in decline-a sign that a fall in population may be coming soon.
Essentially, Peacock found that there's an abundance of polar bears in the region, but not enough of their natural habitat—sea ice—to support them. In a year when the ice breaks up early and refreezes late, that could add up to lots of hungry bears.
But on this morning, luckily, changes in the ice did not translate into the mother and her cub being interested in the hikers. The bears just sniffed the air, laced with the scent of humans, and eventually sauntered away. Dyer and the crew marveled at how close they felt to nature, how lucky they were to have this National Geographic moment not even a full day into their trip.
They headed east to explore the area around the fjord. The weather felt unpredictable, with heavy clouds settling in and wind and rain beginning to whip through their campsite.
The Torngat Mountains are technically subarctic, but they lie along the 58th parallel, putting them above the tree line and within the Arctic eco-region. The group hiked through scrub willows and grassy hills and along the ledges above the campsite. The rain turned to a cool mist and gradually cleared, revealing blue skies and spectacular views of the Labrador Sea.
As they walked, Castañeda-Mendez took the lead, relishing moments alone and allowing some distance to grow between himself and the group. Occasionally Gross would call out, "Slow down," "Wait up." Gross, Rodman, and Isenberg made up the middle of the pack, while Dyer, Chase, and Frankel brought up the rear. They bantered pleasantly and playfully while they walked through a landscape that relatively few humans had ever seen and that by its very nature-the extreme cold, the remoteness-was inhospitable to human life.
At about 3:30 PM, after they'd turned back toward camp, they reached a wide stream near their campsite. They sat on some rocks and removed their boots. The water was shallow, clear, and cold. For feet that had been banging around in hiking boots all day, the cool of the stream offered quick relief. Castañeda-Mendez was already halfway across the water when Dyer looked up and saw a creature lumbering toward them.
"Polar bear!" Dyer shouted.
"Get back here! Get back here!" Chase yelled at her husband. "We have a bear!"
The animal was about 150 yards away and closing in. Castañeda-Mendez high-stepped back through the water, and the group clustered together, following the protocol that Lagacé had rehearsed with them before they left Barnoin River Camp: Stand together. Make yourself seem big. Make loud noises, especially metal on metal, like the banging of poles.
The bear was larger and had a fuller coat than the female bear they had previously seen. Slowly it walked toward them, nose in the air, and tongue sticking out, apparently trying to assess the two-legged creatures it had stumbled upon.
Despite the group's banging and shouting, the bear approached. Castañeda-Mendez fired away with his camera. Gross pulled out one of the flare guns.
"I'm gonna shoot," he told Chase when the bear was within 50 yards.
"I think that's a good idea," she said.
As the flare fired, the animal kept coming toward them. But when it landed in front of the bear, causing a second burst, the animal turned and took off in a dead run.
The group burst into cheers, clapping, banging their poles, and celebrating their victory.
"It was like getting a touchdown at a football game," Dyer said later.
But the bear hadn't gone far. It settled itself on a ledge about 300 yards away and lay there quietly, watching the group make the short trek back to their camp.
By the time they reached the safety of their electric fence at about 4 PM, the rain was coming down heavily. Most of the group settled into their tents to rest until dinnertime, but Dyer was uneasy. He couldn't relax while the bear was perched on the nearby ledge.
"I mean, my goodness, there was a very large carnivore watching us," Dyer said.
As the rain poured down, Dyer stationed himself outside of his tent, leaning on his poles, staring down the bear as it watched them. Castañeda-Mendez said Dyer looked like one of the guards at the British palace. He stood staring at the bear for more than an hour, drenched under the dreary gray sky as the afternoon waned.
Eventually, the bear and the rain wore him down. Dyer asked Gross and Isenberg if they were watching the bear from within their tents, and they said they were. So Dyer retired to his shelter, escaping into Leaves of Grass, the only book he had brought with him.
After reading for a while, Dyer walked through the drizzle to the tent next to his, where Chase and Castañeda-Mendez were relaxing. It was just a few steps away, but on the walk he saw that the bear was still there. Dyer had just read a poem that felt so right he had to share it. He read to them Walt Whitman's "Me Imperturbe": "standing at ease in Nature, Master of all, or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things..."
At about 6 PM the campers started making their way across the rocky strip that separated them from their cook area to prepare dinner. Up on the ledge, the bear now appeared to be lounging. Using the zoom lenses on their cameras, they watched it roll on its back and then lie on its belly, resting its head on its crossed arms. To Frankel, it looked like a big dog. To others, it looked like a menace.
At sundown, the bear was still there, and Dyer couldn't shake his sense of uneasiness.
"Why don't we post a watch?" he asked Gross after dinner. They could take two-hour shifts overnight until the bear was gone.
But Gross wasn't worried. "That's what the fence is for," he told Dyer. After all, Gross had done his research and spoken with the experts, who had reassured him that they would be fine. To be extra safe, he checked the fence again that night, making sure the wires were taut and the battery was switched on.
Dyer acquiesced, thinking back on their orientation at Barnoin River Camp where he remembered Lagacé telling them: "If the polar bear touches that, you won't have to worry."
To find out how Matt survived and learn more about the science behind climate change and polar bears, download the e-book, Meltdown, at InsideClimateNews.org.
VICE: First, the obvious question: Why?
There is just nothing funny you can actually give to someone as a gift. So we just said: "What about tissues with faces printed on them?" Everybody laughed and an hour later we sent emails to each other suggesting names: Jizzies, Jizzrags, Spankrags! Later we got drunk and were like, "Hey, we could
Was it difficult deciding which paper to use?
Did you have to do a lot of research for Spankrags?
It's slightly weird to be sitting in a room with three guys and drinking whiskey and talking about masturbation.
But women are really close to our hearts and we already thought about a treat for them. Our latest idea is penis-shaped tampons.
Jonathan:
I think I would buy Spankrags if they had my face printed on them.
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Day and night, neon lit the space. The boards over the windows remained even as neighbors exposed the inside of their businesses to sunlight, no longer worried about the looters who roamed briefly following Brown's death in early August. From that chaotic week, when the entire country learned about the small St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, the owners of the nondescript tavern in neighboring Dellwood preferred their dark, dank, boarded-up cave. The plywood offered protection, even as it made the bar stand out among other storefronts in a small strip mall off Chambers Road.
In any case, the Dellwood Lounge remained unscathed through all the unrest.
There isn't much news to be found online about the Dellwood Lounge. For months, media outlets around the world ran stories that—in one way or another—reported about the people and businesses of Ferguson preparing for the worst. Somehow, despite all that reporting, the bar was never really explored besides a picture or two. Maybe no one knocked on the door.
But behind the boards, the bar kept on keeping on—maybe not thriving, but hanging in there. Even as chaos reigned in August, with cops and protesters facing off just down the street for the better part of a week, the Dellwood Lounge kept pouring beers. For thirsty reporters, it couldn't have been better: a bar (and one you could smoke in!) that served booze till 2 AM within walking distance of the broken boulevard the entire world was watching. But other than a few local journalists, I never saw many members of the press inside.
Photographer Bill Kotsatos and I did, though. The place became our refuge from the tear gas and craziness enveloping Ferguson. Cigarette smoke never tasted so good. In August, we got to know the owner—Jim—well enough to be liked, or at least tolerated. He recognized us when we returned two weeks ago, offering the same drunken, slightly uncomfortable banter we'd come to expect.
"If you have teeth and a job, and want to hear old men talk about n**gers, then this is the bar for you," reads the lone Yelp review for the Dellwood Lounge.
In August, I worried when I invited a friend of mine—a black photojournalist from the area—to join us after the action had died down one night. He walked in with a styrofoam of takeout from the chicken joint across the street and took his time ordering a beer.
"Do you guys have Heineken?" he asked, looking behind the bar toward taps that read Bud, Miller, and not much else.
"No," the bartender said, offering no suggestions.
I could feel the awkward tension. My friend either didn't notice or—more likely—didn't care.
Despite the bar's innate tension, Bill and I settled back into our routine when we returned in anticipation of the grand jury announcement. The Dellwood was close, it was open, and it was cheap. And we had what it took to get inside: We're white, never caused trouble, and always paid our tab. It was a convenient and relatively harmless match.
At least until late last Monday night.
[body_image width='640' height='473' path='images/content-images/2014/12/02/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/02/' filename='fleeing-an-armed-ferguson-bar-after-darren-wilson-wasnt-indicted-1202-body-image-1417537097.jpg' id='8417']
Jim was standing outside wearing camouflage pants and combat boots when we pulled in just before midnight. On his right hip, a black handgun. He shined a flashlight in our direction—just fucking with us—then smiled.
"You open?" I joked.
"We sure are. You guys go right on in."
Inside was Jim's wife behind the bar, and four men in front of it. CNN was cranked on a large flatscreen. Two men in their 50s or 60s were drunk, but ready. They had been waiting for this night.
Bill and I barely had a beer and a shot down when we heard a rapid volley of gunfire. Jim retreated inside the door, peeking outside through a circular hole. We walked toward the door with one of the regulars. The four of us went outside and saw nothing but young men in bandanas and masks. No cops. No National Guard. Just us and them.
The regular had something in his hand, I noticed, as he walked away from the door and toward a group of possible looters.
"Don't fucking do that," Jim said.
He did.
They ran past Bill and I, leaving us standing there wondering why until we heard the explosion, followed immediately by screams. The man had thrown something—a large firework, perhaps—toward the crowd. Bill and I hustled to the bar and closed out. Then, more gunfire.
"Jesus, it's getting crazy out there," the bartender said.
Over my shoulder, I heard a familiar clicking and turned to see a man wearing a Vietnam Veteran hat loading an assault rifle. More gunfire outside. The space between outside and inside seemed to be diminishing. It was time for a choice to be made. As more gunfire crackled and the veteran clicked a clip into his rifle, we decided it was better to be outside if the boards came crashing down.
We ran toward the bullets, and left the Dellwood Lounge behind.
Follow Justin Glawe on Twitter.
The nonprofit organization Soulsaver is basically Austria's cool version of
One of my personal favorites is called Rock im Sarg ("Rock in the Coffin") and it tells the life stories of rockstars who died young due to their excessive lifestyle, like Elvis and Sid Vicious. "Many of them were gifted—they were young, beautiful, rich, and famous, but also addicted..." begins the
Soulsaver bills itself as a platform that promotes the Christian faith, bringing young people closer to Jesus Christ. It doesn't just deal with social issues like addiction, but also with current issues. Apparently, Robin Williams battled with depression and killed himself because "he was only half of a believer," while Apple CEO Tim Cook is probably confused and "under the influence of the homosexual agenda."
Soulsaver basically covers the same topics as VICE—drugs, sexuality, politics—only every story comes with a fairly fundamentalist Christian moral: Drugs are bad, gays are abnormal, and technology is evil. When you see Soulsaver members wandering around distributing these pamphlets your first reaction is to smirk to yourself, or maybe admire them a bit for believing so much in something and trying to get young people to get off of drugs and onto Jesus. But when you realize that they're trying to convince you that gays are evil and deserve to die, their silly little booklets seem a lot less funny.
Follow Verena Bogner on Twitter.
Abuse of prescription painkillers, heroin, and other opioids has spiked over the past decade in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 100 Americans die every day from drug overdoses, which now kill more people in the US each year than gunshot wounds or car accidents. The stigma that surrounds drug users has made finding a solution difficult.
New England has been hit especially hard by fatal overdoses. In Massachusetts, deaths caused by heroin and other opioids have increased by more than 90 percent since 2002. In response, the state started a pilot program in 2007 aimed at decreasing the number of fatal overdoses. The centerpiece of the program is a drug called Naloxone, known by its brand name Narcan. It's a nasal spray that can instantly stop an opioid overdose.
White Mystery will be in Miami this Friday for Audio Junkie's Art Basel Distraction, then their December tour will continue through Florida, hit Puerto Rico, and land in Chicago for New Year's Eve. Check out their tour dates here.
Carter emerges from a dwindling field of potential replacements for Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who resigned last week amid growing tensions with Obama's national security team over an array of issues, including the administration's Syria policy and delays in transferring detainees from Guantánamo Bay. Although Carter was always in the running, he rose to the top of the short list after other potential nominees—including Michele Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense,
So at this point, it looks like Carter will be the president's choice, which means the 60-year-old theoretical physicist will likely play a large role in shaping how the world remembers the Obama administration.
But who is this guy? Besides being a winner by default, he's basically a genius—a former Harvard professor who is an expert in nuclear policy, and who graduated from Yale University, summa cum laude, with degrees in physics and medieval history. (He also got his PhD in theoretical physics from Oxford.) He has also been training for the SecDef position for about two decades. Although Carter has no uniformed military service—typically a prerequisite for the job—he has marinated in the Pentagon bureaucracy for much of his career, first as an assistant defense secretary during the Clinton administration—he was responsible for disarming Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan as nuclear nations, among other things—and then as Deputy Defense Secretary under Obama.
According to The New Republic, Carter has "has advised nearly every major strategy group, research council, and governmental panel on issues of international security." From 2011 to 2013, he was the Pentagon's primary weapons purchaser, before resigning after being passed over for Hagel for the top job. Today, he co-directs the Preventive Defense Project at Harvard, which focuses on emerging international security threats.
What seems to missing from Carter's resume, though, is anything involving the Middle East. This is particularly interesting given that one of the main reasons Hagel resigned was that Obama didn't believe he was the right person to lead the US strategy against ISIS. While it's not fair to say that Hagel fucked up, he was selected to oversee the drawdown of US troops in Afghanistan, and subsequently implement Obama's plan to shrink the US military and reduce defense spending to its lowest levels in decades. "They chose Hagel for a job that just turned out to be very different than what was expected with the rise of ISIS," a former Obama national security aide told NBC News.
But it's not clear what Carter will bring to the table that Hagel could not, aside from a closer relationship to Obama's inner circle, including National Security Advisor Susan Rice. And his relative lack of experience in the Middle East means that the White House's strategy for fighting ISIS will likely remain in the Oval Office.
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