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Photos by the author

Every year, hundreds of fuccbois and basics longing for a shameless seasonal kegger descend onto the streets of New York City in the traditional red hats and robes for a widely despised bar crawl known as SantaCon. The event started in San Francisco in the 90s as a piece of anti-corporate culture jamming performance art. It came to NYC in 1998 and has since dissolved into a reason for finance bros to dress like Saint Nick, get hammered, ​brawl, piss and vomit on the sidewalks, and maybe get an ​HJ from a hot elf in a Duane Reade. 

This time around, the event fell on the same day as ​Millions March, a massive protest against police brutality following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and the non-indictments of the officers that killed them. They didn't let that stop them, and being ​preemptively banned from many Bushwick bars didn't slow them down either. In fact, the event hired a lawyer, ​Norman Siegel, to defend Santa's First Amendment right to assemble in costume. The organizers also took some steps to combat the bar crawl's bad reputation—to find out the route this year, SantaCon participants had to buy an app that also sent out tweets and texts to remind shitfaced Father Christmases not to get too jolly.

Remember to keep your spirits contained and your candy cane in your pants, Santa. #TheSantaCode

— santacon (@santacon) December 14, 2013

I woke up early on Saturday, the day of SantaCon—evidently not early enough, since Siegel decided to schedule a press conference in Times Square at 9 AM to defend the party. During the conference, Siegel  ​announced that "the police were shaking hands with SantaCon organizers and everyone was smiling and having a good time. The cops were giving us Tootsie rolls." (Siegel is the former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, by the way; in his career he's both fought for the voting rights of black people in the South and defended the KKK's First Amendment rights.)

On the way to the conference, I met two middle-aged women on the train dressed in full regalia, both of whom introduced themselves as "Santa." In thick Long Island accents, they explained that today's SantaCon was about "spreading Christmas cheer" and letting the police "do whatever they need to do today." We got off the train and one told me, "I have two kids, so this is my Christmas. Better than stuffing batteries into toys on Christmas morning." 

I looked out over the sea of red and understood why the police were so friendly. The overwhelming majority of participants appeared to be young, white, and wealthy enough to blow cash on costumes and booze—there weren't going to be "no justice, no peace!" chants coming from them. I spoke with a few boys at the edge of the mass, who told me that due to the protests and the police "not messing around," this year's crowd was substantially smaller than the previous year's—which, New Yorkers will remember, was a notorious drunken disaster.

After about an hour of media photo ops in front of a massive American flag, the throng dispersed into the surrounding neighborhoods. Organizers herded Santas into a number of Kringle-friendly bars and asked them to stay away from venues that didn't want to serve the festive throng. Soon, every single bar in the Midtown area was packed deep with Santas, as lines of impatient bros and broettes formed outside doors. I attached myself to a group of revelers who were chanting "San-ta! San-ta! San-ta!" as we funneled into the bar. ​ It was 11 in the morning.

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I immediately figured out that being the only one without a Santa costume meant it would be impossible to get the bartender's attention, and after trying unsuccessfully for a few minutes, I gave up and slumped in a corner. One of the bar owners, figuring me for a reporter or just a guy who chose an unfortunate time to get drunk by himself on a Saturday morning, came up to discuss his thoughts on SantaCon. 

"I was reading all the negative press, and they were like, 'It's white privilege.' I think that's such bullshit," he said. "These guys can get arrested too." 

After 20 minutes of loitering, I walked outside, where Santas were screaming and stumbling around the sidewalk. Some had lined up around the block to get into the next bar. Through the window I could see things were dissovling into chaos. Hats flew in the air, fists were pumped, bros were pulled into bro hugs. I asked the doorman how many Santas were inside. "Too many," he answered. I decided that there was no way I was going to stand in a line this long. I desperately needed a drink and to pee so I started looking for a less crowded bar.

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One of the spots listed in the app was a "cabaret club," which turned out to be a strip club on 33rd Street. Maybe because it was only half past noon, there wasn't much of a Santa presence outside. I headed in with a free entrance coupon I'd found on the street and immediately regretted the idea. Strip clubs freak me out, and they don't get any more comfortable when they're filled with horny drunken Santas. A few of the them—who were reclining with open robes, watching a topless woman gyrate on stage—stared me down as I entered. 

I gulped down a whiskey and went to take a piss. As I stood at the urinal, two Santas entered the handicap stall next to me and began to fuck. A rapid train of red, white, and beige flashed through a crack in the stall. The whole thing felt like a fever nightmare. I squeezed past a large group of scantily-dressed Mrs. Clauses taking selfies and raced out the door. It had only been a few hours since the kickoff of SantaCon and somebody was already puking outside of the club. 

I decided to check in on the protests further down south, and hopped on the D train to Washington Square Park. On the platform I asked a guy holding a sign to share his thoughts on SantaCon going on at the same time. "Doesn't bother me," he said. "It's nice to have more bodies for the protest." 

The protest felt like an alternate dimension. I'd stepped out of a disorganized, mostly white, fratboy crowd into a diverse, politically focused group. There was a single protester in a Santa outfit, and I went to interview him, but he spoke limited English and couldn't understand my questions.

As the march moved north, isolated packs of Santas began to appear, rapidly scattering behind the police barricade to watch the advancing crowd. I asked a group of three Santas, standing slack-jawed and drunk on the sidewalk, what they thought of the protests. "I don't know. Cool," one said as the angry mass filed past us.

About an hour later, the protest finally crossed 30th Street, the invisible divide separating the southernmost SantaCon bar from lower Manhattan. A single black Santa joined the crowd, walking with his hands up in solidarity. Photographers swarmed him, excited to get their crossover shot of the day. 

I left to see how the rest of the Santas were faring. As I walked down Sixth Avenue, it was clear that literally everybody was debilitatingly drunk. The street was full of hundreds of Ashleys, Claires, Brads, and Jakes drinking out of flasks hidden in their red hats and chain smoking. Tourists near the Empire State Building snapped photos. A mother and her young daughter fought their way around a group of drunk Santas blocking the sidewalk, and I heard the mom explain to her kid, "They're idiots. Drunken idiots."

Night fell. There wasn't much more to see besides long lines of belligerent smiling Santas, and no hope of getting a drink without joining their red-and-white ranks. On my way to the train home, a small group of SantaCon protesters passed through, chanting "Hey Hey! Ho Ho! SantaCon has got to go!" 

I found myself on a subway about half full of loud, belligerent Saint Nicholases. "I think Hannukah started today!" one yelled. "We need to get off at Delancey and take the 6!" screamed another. Both of them had their facts wrong. By the time I finally got back to Brooklyn, my head was pounding with a sort of monotonous, drunk ho-ho-ho. It had been a real banner day for free speech in Manhattan, between the march and the Santas. I fell asleep imagining a wasted Santa being beaten by the NYPD. I didn't even get drunk.

Follow Jules Suzdaltsev on T​witter.

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Photo via Flickr user ​Mika Järvinen

At around 9:30 AM on December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza walked up to ​Sandy Hook Elementary School with an Izhmash Saiga 12-gauge semiautomatic shotgun, a 10-mm Glock 20, and a 9-mm Sig Sauer P226. Crucially, he also came e​q​uipped with a Bushmaster XM15-E2s and ten 30-round magazines for it.

That's the weapon he was  ​clutching as he blasted through a glass panel at the building's entrance. If the 20-year-old had been wielding anything else, it would have been a whole lot more difficult to murder children, teachers and administrators in a matter of seconds—or at least that's what bereaved folks in Newtown, Connecticut, are​ arguing in court. As the Daily Beast and other outlets ​reported Monday, ten families of Lanza victims are suing the makers of what they call the murderer's "weapon of choice." In a ​civil complaint, they claim the Bushmaster in particular allowed the mentally disturbed 20-year-old to kill 26 people in less than five minutes.

"Defendants know that, as a result of selling AR-15s to the civilian market, individuals unfit to operate these weapons gain access to them," writes attorney Joshua Koskoff. Bushmaster is the country's largest supplier of combat weapons to civilians, according to the complaint.

The 40-page document goes into the history of the rifle: The AR-15 was developed after World War II, when the US Army analyzed casualty reports and determined that shooting lots of bullets fast meant soldiers could kill more people. A company called Armalite built a machine that was "lightweight, air-cooled, gas-operated, and magazine-fed" that was so good "its lethality was not dependent on good aim or ideal combat conditions." When equipped with the equal-opportunity killing machine, five men became as deadly as 11.

Later, in a section called "The Road to Sandy Hook," the attorney chronicles other times the times AR-15s have been used to mow down civilians. "Bushmaster defendants continued marketing the XM15-E2S and similar rifles as combat weapons that would make others 'bow down,'" the suit says, before taking aim at the company's marketing materials.

The attorney also points out use of the phrase "ultimate combat weapons system" and an ad featuring the silhouette of a solider superimposed over an American flag. "The Bushmaster Defendants' militaristic marketing reinforces the image of the AR-15 as a combat weapon used for the purpose of waging war and killing human beings," he writes.

Finally, the suit lists biographical descriptions of victims. Vicki Leigh Soto, who was a 27-year-old first-grade teacher, is described as having had "something of an obsession with pink flamingos." Dylan Hockley, a six-year-old who died at Sandy Hook, apparently "loved the moon, garlic bread, the color purple, cuddling and bouncing on the trampoline."

Besides Bushmaster—which could not immediately be reached for comment—families of the deceased are suing the firearms dealer who sold the fated gun to Nancy Lanza, the shooter's mother. Defendant David LaGuercia couldn't immediately be reached for comment, and is  already serving three years of prob​ation for violating federal firearms laws in an unrelated case.

Koskoff, whose firm was b​ehind Michael Jackson's mother Katherine's wrongful death suit, also did not return requests for comment. In this case, he's going after Bushmaster for both monetary and punitive damages, as well attorney's fees and injunctive relief. 

Follow Allie Conti on ​Twitter.

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Not residents of Kalachi, but very sleepy people nonetheless. Photo via Flickr user  ​Tinou Bao

Residents of a small village in Kazakhstan are falling asleep at random, sometimes for days at a time, and no one knows why. Since the spring of 2013, the village of Kalachi in the Akmolinsk district (whose name derives from aqmola, a Kazakh term that ominously translates to the white tomb), 150 miles south of the Russian border, has suffered from at least four outbreaks of the disorder. As of the latest wave, from late August to early September, over 60 people, or 10 percent of the town's population of 680 had been affected. Last week, RT released a documentary on the problem titled ​"Sleepy Hallow, Kazakhstan." Locals told the reporters that they fear one day they'll fall asleep and never wake up again.

Classified as an encephalopathy of unclear origin—the highfalutin term for a weird brain disorder we can't figure out—villagers who do not simply keel over while moving or working report feeling weakness, dizziness, and memory and motor control loss. At least two children have reported hallucinations as well: Misha Plyukhin saw flying horses and light bulbs, his mother with eight eyes and a trunk, and snakes and worms in his bed, trying to eat his arms; Rudolf Boyarinos cannot remember his visions, but four people had to calm and subdue him as he screamed "monsters!" The sleep is so deep that some locals fear an old man they assumed was dead could have been buried alive.

As the Kazakhstani government and outside consultants fail on repeated pledges to figure out the cause of the epidemic, many locals are turning to conspiracy theories—like alien viruses and government experimentation. More disturbing than a cover-up, though, is the prospect that we could be dealing with a new disease or contaminant that we don't know how to test for.

The first outbreak of the illness occurred from March to May 2013, when around ten villagers ranging from 14 to 70 years old went to the hospital with similar symptoms. Subsequent outbreaks followed from January to March 2014, in May (when the international press picked up on a story originally published in the Siberian Times on the issue), and from August to September. Usually patients wake up after a few days, sometimes falling back to sleep soon after. It is not yet clear whether those afflicted can fully recover or will continue to fall asleep at inopportune moments in the future.

Similar sleeping sicknesses offer no help in diagnosing the Kazakhstani case.

The best known, trypanosomiasis, can't be blamed because it's caused by a parasitic infection transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly, endemic to Africa. A lesser-known disease, nodding syndrome, which has infected over 3,000 children in South Sudan and Uganda since the 1990s, could have been linked to the Kazakhstani outbreak despite its geographic origin. But cases outside of children are rare, and just this fall scientists released evidence suggesting the disease traces back to another insect-bite-transmitted parasite local to Africa.

Global afflictions, like Kleine-Levin syndrome, only cause sleepiness in distinct populations (here, adolescents), and cannot explain the wider symptoms and demographics in Kazakhstan. Encephalitis lethargica, a plague that infected around a million people from 1915 to 1926, killing almost one-third of patients and locking many others into a catatonic state (the subject of Oliver Sachs' 1973 Awakenings), seemed a likely candidate given its murky causes and sporadic modern infections. But research over the last decade has tied the condition to a reaction to a unique form of streptococcal bacteria, which has not been detected in the Kazakhstani patients—nor do any demonstrate the Parkinsonian symptoms described in post-encephalitic patients.

Local and national medical teams at first suspected some other bacterial infection, like meningitis, might be responsible. However after over 7,000 tests on patients and the town's air, food, water, and general environment, no signs of bacterial, viral, chemical, radiological, or any other contamination have been identified. The greatest lead right now is the local observation that outbreaks tend to accord with shifts from cold to warm weather.

Most reports have attempted to link the illness to the proximity of a Soviet-era uranium mine, closed in the 1990s. In March 2014 and during RT's recent investigations, reporters did detect slightly elevated levels of radon gas in the environment possibly linked to the mine—perhaps the periodic evaporation of gas during thaws. But Krasnogorsk, a town closer to the mines, has reported no cases of sleeping sickness, nor do any of the patients have any connections to the mines. And the symptoms of uranium poisoning—and most other heavy metal and gas contaminations, which tend to destroy people's internal organs, especially the kidneys—haven't been seen in any of the patients.

The only disease whose symptoms match those on display and which has not been conclusively ruled out may be narcolepsy, a neurological affliction leading to sudden and prolonged sleep and occasionally difficulty moving and speaking or hallucinations while awake. Usually present in less than 0.03 percent of the population, there is some indication that the disease, which tends to manifest in adolescence, can be triggered at any point in life by the exposure to toxins, stress, or injuries that alter the brain's production of hypocretin, a neurotransmitter linked to sleep. But the lack of any smoking-gun toxin in Kalachi makes this explanation unlikely.

Without any clear biological or environmental cause, many assume the contained affliction must be the result of a Mass Psychological Illness, also known as mass hysteria. Sharing symptoms with some toxic exposures and triggered by feelings of intense communal stress, these incidents cause physical and behavioral symptoms in one individual that our remarkably suggestive bodies pick up on and mimic. Famous cases include the 1374 and 1518 German and 1840s Madagascaran outbreak of choreomania, or the dancing plague. Famines and natural disasters preceding these incidents caused one individual to snap and, influenced by cultural tropes, start dancing ecstatically, whipping others into a frenzy lasting days and endangering their health. A more recent example around 9/11 in America, the Bin Laden Itch, involved the threat of a biological attack on the nation triggering nationwide, psychosomatic rashes.

These psychological epidemics either play themselves out, with some damage to those involved, or can be cured with a placebo, convincing people that their legitimate affliction has been addressed. In modern times, this involves sugar pills, but historically the ritual of exorcisms has helped to close the psychological rift of victims and restore them to everyday life. However the fact that the residents of Kalachi believe they have a modern medical condition that cannot be pinned down by any doctors almost precludes the possible use of a placebo if this is hysteria.

One troubling case reported in May 2014 by the Siberian Times also confounds the whole idea that this is just a communal reaction to common stresses. Alexey Gom, a resident of another village a ways away, came to visit his mother-in-law and quickly and unexpectedly found himself suffering from the condition. Yet as an outsider he would not suffer from the same stresses of those living in Kalachi. And no stress or cultural trope of sleep-as-illness has been isolated in the village to explain a potential Mass Psychological Illness either.

This leaves the residents of Kalachi, after one-and-a-half years of suffering, at ground zero. They could wait for more tests or see if it all plays out naturally. Or perhaps, since science has failed them, it's time to embrace the fact that this tableau feels like the gritty reboot of a fairytale and seek alternative treatments a la the Brother's Grimm. True love's kiss isn't sanctioned by the medical community, but if nothing else is working and there's no logic to this disease, they might as well move it into clinical trials, or fortify and stock the village for their Rip Van Winkle future.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

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Photo courtesy of NG7 Food Bank

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

On Monday last week, a rep​ort triggered hysteria about what poor people knew already—that food poverty in the UK is increasing. In other words more and more people can't afford to eat. With the welfare state emaciated by austerity, charities and food banks are being forced pick up the pieces—at least two new food banks are opening up every week in the UK. With over a million families relying on food handouts last year, there's little choice in the matter. But is the impulse to help people in fact just letting the government get away with allowing people to spiral into Victorian levels of poverty while ​fewer succumb to Victorian levels of malnutrition than would otherwise?

NG7 Food Bank in Nottingham thinks so, and has announced that it's going to shut down. NG7 says it is sick of the freeloading local council, which has been referring people to them rather than dolling out emergency money. The people behind it feel that they're mitigating the things they were set up to oppose—including punitive welfare reforms and harsh immigration policy—and reckon that the solution to food poverty isn't more food banks. They think there needs to be radical, structural change. From January they will be focusing solely on campaigning work and direct action, rather than giving people food to tide them over.

I spoke to coordinator Rob Graham to find out exactly why NG7 has decided to help the poor by not being a food bank anymore.

VICE: How many people use the NG7 Food Bank?
Rob Graham: We've probably fed over 5,300 people since we opened in July 2012. It varies from session to session—typically we have about 65 places a week, which the agencies that we work with can fill.

Has demand increased since you opened?
Yeah, definitely. We started out trying to feed 30 to 40 people per week, but we soon realized—especially as the welfare reforms kicked in—that there was a greater need.

Why do people use food banks?
​There's been greater need due to interventions by central government; there has been a definite increase in the pain that exists in vulnerable groups.There are people with benefit sanctions and benefit delay. We also felt changes around legal aid—there were more people that we needed to support from the asylum seeker community, who weren't able to then get their cases reopened. We've also seen an increase in what's known as the working poor; those who are on low incomes and zero-hour contracts have also needed support from the food bank.

What other factors have exacerbated food poverty?
​There are more pressures. The cost of living is more now. The cost of food has dramatically increased over the last four to five years. The cost of utilities has increased—there are a lot of people in fuel debt. There are a lot of people who are in financial trouble whether it be with banks, whether it be with loan companies, or payday loan companies. The fact that wages are standing still for those who are working and the cost of living is massively increasing is obviously a problem.

So people are getting poorer and at the same time they can't get help from the council.
​It's difficult for people to actually appeal and get support from local welfare assistance schemes. For example, in Nottingham, the local welfare assistance scheme and the hardship scheme run by the city council excludes people who have [had their benefits] sanctioned. This means that those who are experiencing a very sharp crisis can't get support from an organisation that is meant to be the place of last resort for them.

Increasingly they've been coming to food banks, but food banks should not be picking up that slack. The local authorities and those who run welfare assistance programmes should be finding ways of amending and changing their programmes to actually assess what's happening to people on the ground.

So why exactly did you decide to close?
One of the things we talked about when deciding to close was that it's easier for the local council to send people to food banks than it is to actually use their own resources. We believe that is actively being promoted by senior managers.

We're also very unlike most other food banks, because we believe very strongly in the need for campaigning and to actually support people to a point of resolution of their crisis. People like the idea of just giving out food but don't necessarily want to deal with the source of that. We need to do the hard campaign work.

But if you close, won't people go hungry?
​The number of food banks in our area has increased. When we first opened there were only five or six food banks throughout the whole city, now that landscapes changed and there are actually 13 maybe 14. So we're not leaving anybody high and dry, we're not leaving anybody vulnerable or unable to actually access food.

So you are going to focus on campaigning and direct action instead?
Absolutely. We're just going to use different sets of tools and have a different focus. Our idea was rebuilding our community right from the start, using the food bank as a method to get people communicating, to get dialogues going and to support people around common issues—the bedroom tax, changes in legal aid, welfare reforms, food and fuel poverty—it affects a lot of us who live in that kind of community, so we absolutely want to bring that to the fore. But we can do that without actually being attached to a food bank now.

Should we expect to see other food banks closing for political reasons?
​I wouldn't be anticipating it, we're not aware of many food banks operated under the ethos we set off with and we developed over this period of time.

Do you think there is any role for food banks?
I definitely believe that food banks could be a service, or a point of last resort, but not from the moment it starts becoming co-opted [by the state].

Follow Charlotte England on ​Twitter.

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Illustrations by Dan Evans

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

Cults will always be associated with the big names. Your David Koreshes, your Jim Joneses, your Charlie Mansons—the guys you'll have seen hogging half the Netflix documentary section like they're the only megalomanic sociopaths to ever grace a fortified compound. But there are plenty of other, more humble, groups out there still suckering people in and fleecing them for all they're worth.

Ian Haworth, an ex-cult member, has been running the UK-based  ​Cult Information Centre since 1987. There, he and his team provide information, guidance, and assistance to those who want to leave a cult, those who have already left one, and to concerned friends and families. I caught up with him recently to get an insight into how a modern-day cult operates.

VICE: Hi, Ian. How did you end up joining a cult yourself?
​ Ian Haworth: I was doing some shopping one day [in Toronto] and met a lady who asked if I could help her with a survey. I agreed. She then told me I'd probably be interested in joining a community group she represented, saying "Isn't it time you considered giving something back to the community instead of taking from it all the time like most people do?" The meeting consisted of a talk, followed by a coffee break, followed by a film. When the break was called, people started to come into the room with all kinds of food. I'd paid $1.50 to attend, so I thought I'd get my money's worth.

I then decided to go for a cigarette, when someone rushed over and said, "Oh, we didn't know you smoked. You can smoke out here, but have you ever thought about quitting?" About a month before this my doctor had told me I'd probably die by the time I was 40 if I didn't quit smoking, so she'd hit my area of interest. The course spanned four days and they guaranteed success. At the end of the course I'd given them all the money I had, decided to dedicate my life to them, and handed in my resignation at work.

That was quick. How did you eventually end up leaving?
​I was a completely different person, but of course I didn't know that. Friends knew that, my roommate knew that. People were scared of me, people felt sorry for me, people had a variety of emotions but didn't know what to do. People at work were stunned that I'd handed in my notice because I was doing well. When I was working my final month, the group [PSI Mind Development Institution—now non-existent] were exposed in the media. I hadn't yet been programmed against the media, so I was open to media input. It reactivated my critical mind and I managed to leave. I then went through 11 months of pretty severe withdrawal.

Do you believe intelligent, educated people are more likely to be recruited than people in turmoil or who may be considered unstable?
​ This idea of troubled people is the eternal myth. People want to imagine this is the case because they don't want to consider themselves as "vulnerable." I don't use the word vulnerable very often, but I'd argue that we're all vulnerable to the techniques used by these groups. The late Dr. John G Clark, who I quote a lot, said the safest people are the mentally ill. The easiest people to recruit are ones with alert, questioning minds who want to debate issues with other people. You take a strong-willed, strong-minded person and put them into a cult environment and the techniques used will break a person down very, very quickly. The smarter, the healthier the mind, the quicker and easier you are to control. It's just one of these tragic realities.

What have you found to be the primary motives for setting up and recruiting people into cults?
​ The common denominators would be people and money. Some may just enjoy the power they have over a mass of people; others may well be wanting, from the word go, to acquire financial benefits and amass great wealth; others may have other ambitions of taking over the world. Then there are some who may well actually believe they are God, or whatever. I think those are the ones who are quite often mentally ill, so there's quite a mix of leaders and they may well have slightly different motivations. But, again, the common denominators are people and money.

You estimate that there are currently between 500 to 1,000 cults in the UK. Are they on the rise?
​ Yes. If someone is recruited into a cult, that person—among other things—is going to be going out to recruit other people. Either in a formal way or an informal way, they'll be obeying instructions from the group on how to do that. Or they'll simply do it because they've been radicalized, are on a high, singing their praises and can't wait to recruit. So, as each person recruits others, you'll get an exponential growth of that organization—and the same applies to all the others. Then you get power struggles and splits in some of the groups. You get other groups, from different parts of the world, setting up branches in the UK, so it's a phenomenon that is growing.

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Do you ever infiltrate cult meetings to acquire information?
​No, that would be foolish. We'd never recommend going to any meetings that cults have because the techniques they use work on anybody, including me.

What usually triggers a member into wanting to leave a cult and to seek help from you?
​Because cults use mind control techniques to recruit people, a person's mind is controlled by the group. Therefore the person no longer has control or normal thought processes; they are impaired, and the person can no longer critically evaluate. You become someone else. What is common is that something reactivates the critical mind of the cult member. It could be something you see or hear that you're not supposed to see or hear within the group; it could be something that somebody—when you're out recruiting or soliciting funds—says to you. If you're programmed to understand that people are evil and will be hostile toward you, and then they're kind and gentle in dealing with you, that will upset the apple cart.

During this period, how active are the cults in trying to get members to return?
​It varies. If you consider what it's like to be in a cult, you're programmed to think that this group is the be-all and end-all, and that anyone leaving this group is going to suffer horribly. So you would see it as helpful, as a cult member, to try and contact somebody who is an ex-member and try to pull them back in. So it's not unusual for someone to be pursued.

Are these techniques always psychological, or have you encountered any instances of violence or physical threats?
​I've dealt with people who have come out of cults and who have died. There was a case that was supposed to go before the courts—the government was looking at a particular group and possibly looking at removing its charitable status—and a key witness, who was an ex-member of the group, was found hanging from a lamppost. Some people say it was murder, other people say it was suicide. I don't know. 

One chap I spoke to in Canada had fled from an organization and was really shaken up badly. I normally just speak to people on the phone, but I offered to meet up with him. He was at university and had a lot of work to do because he was just about to start his exams, and I said, "Well, can I have somebody phone you once or twice a week while you're going through your exams, just to make sure you're OK?" He said fine, and that happened. 

After the exams were over he was found with his throat cut from ear to ear and, again, some said it was murder, some said it was suicide. The police said it was suicide. His family suggested it was murder. Perhaps you could say the family would, but his father was a doctor and said there wasn't enough blood at the site where his body was found for it to have been suicide.

If cults are rising in the UK, what can be done to curb this? What preventative measures can be put in place?
​The sooner the government realizes what cults are all about, they will then realize how much more can be done to combat terrorism. Not just the terrorist groups that are operating abroad, but also those that are radicalizing people in this country. If we start to recognize what cults are about and apply it in this area then we can perhaps be a lot more effective in trying to help people who want to come back to this country from Syria, or wherever they've been to, and return to normal and then be great sources of information. 

Ex-members of cults are great sources of information. People who are perhaps captured as extremists can be counseled back to reality as well, so a lot can be done in that area. I think a lot needs to be done in terms of public education on this topic, but it all starts with the government recognizing what's going on. I think there needs to be an educational program in general to help British society become aware of how cults operate, what to watch out for and, therefore, avoid, and how to help current and former members to back to reality.

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This year was great for ​shorts. Whether you were learning about ​the most dangerous sport o​n earth, what it's like ​to be stuck ​in prison, or what it'd feel like to be part of a ​deadly W​estern joke, there was something for everyone. Presented below is a roundup of some of my favorite short movies from 2014. This list includes older films as long as they were released online this year, and it doesn't include any titles that have already been highlighted in my weekly ​I'm Short, Not Stupid column.

Let the short film screening party begin! 

​Don't Hug Me I'm Scared 2

The second installment of the online puppet series Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is all about time, which proves to be a ripe topic for directing duo Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling. The irreverent and sometimes disturbing children's show parody works incredibly well thanks to a great song, fantastic practical effects, and a hilarious and well-distilled message. Check it out if you have any questions about why time exists.

Mo'ne Davis: Throw Like A Girl 

I'm just going to go ahead and put Spike Lee's latest on the list. But I'm not doing it because of him or because it's exquisitely crafted. I'm doing it because  ​Little League pitcher Mo'ne Davis is amazing. This 16-minute doc effectively communicates her story and allows her personality to shine. She's a natural and she just gets more likable the more you know about her.

Jerrycan 

Untrained child actors, an improvisational camera style, no lights, and a stark storyline give Julius Avery's short film Jerrycan a grittiness and a gravity. Close, quick, and fluid shots capture the tension of the characters and sometimes coyly expose the nervousness of the actors. The plot concerns a gang of boys' shifting hierarchy and the resulting peer pressure. The kids must all ask themselves how much they are willing to risk to gain the respect of the others and themselves. It won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2008 and was an honorable mention at Berlin and Sundance, the film is well vetted and ready for your consumption.

Eager

Flowers and blades of grass dance a dark and twisted ballet in Eager, a short animated film where mutated horses and wispy ghost women join the plants. Watching these creatures transform, blossom, grow, die, and regenerate in clay is like sliding comfortably through an enlightening acid trip. Its morphing colors and choreographed clay shapes and figures are inexplicably beautiful and set to an excellent score by Aaron M. Olson. Artist and animator Allison Schulnik, perhaps best known for her ​Grizzly Bear music video, has created her most stunning and mature work yet.

Rat Pack Rat

This film is about a  severely disabled man played by Steve Little of Eastbound & Down who wishes Sammy Davis Jr. would play a private set of songs in his bedroom for his birthday. There are strange encounters with candy bars, fart duets with Davis, and a haunting rendition of the song "Candy Man." Rat Pack Rat, directed by Todd Rohal, won the hearts of the Sundance Film Festival's jury earlier this year and won a prize for Unique Vision. This is a strange and weirdly wonderful film.

Deeper Than Yesterday

Winner of prizes at Cannes, Sundance, and a dozen other film festivals, Deeper Than Yesterday is a film packing major pedigree. The short premiered in 2010, but has just now been released online in order to promote director Ariel Kleiman's debut feature, ​P​artisan, which will be premiering at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Filmed in a real decommissioned submarine, Kleiman's short tracks the madness of men who have been sequestered on a sub for years. The camera captures both the claustrophobia on board and the crew's slow descent into their baser instincts. It's a powerful tale of moral corruption and it's told marvelously by a filmmaker to watch.

The Missing Scarf 

The Missing Scarf is no simple animated skit. It explores our fear of the unknown, failure, rejection, and death. With narration by George Takei, the short is funny, engaging, and surprisingly profound. Eoin Duffy's film transcends the short package to become one of those iconic big and wonderful things that comes in a small package.

Catherine 

Dean Fleischer-Camp's short film Catherine might be the most unusual film on this list—its sheer mundanity makes our very existence seems like a joke. Jenny Slate (Obvious Child) stars as the titular character in what can only be described as the most deliriously boring film this year.

Junkyard 

I saw Junkyard back in 2012 at a festival and have been waiting for it to come online ever since. The director Hisko Hulsing's arresting animated style and bold storytelling imbues this short about friendship gone astray with an undeniable power. With minimal dialogue and little exposition, Hulsing manages to elevate the more banal actions with vibrant, revealing animation to create something almost more real than a simple live-action narrative.

My Favorite Picture of You

My Favorite Picture of You is a nostalgic trip into a couple's past—memories fade, others become more vivid, and time keeps pressing on. With hundreds of images—still and moving—directors TJ Martin and Dan Lindsay beautifully compose a visual narrative around a short interview between Martin's aging parents. Life is wearing them down, but it hardly keeps them down. Love, experience, and joy emanate from the pictures and rapport shared on screen between the Martin family. It's a true short film gem from this Academy-Award winning filmmaking duo.

Jeffrey Bow​ers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as a film curator. He's the Senior Curator for Vimeo'sOn D​emand platform. He has also programmed at Tribeca Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and the Hamptons International Film Festival.

​This year, a Tibetan Mastiff puppy reportedly sold for almost $2 million in China, making it the priciest dog ever purchased. 

Originally domesticated as sheepherding guard dogs in the Tibetan Plateau, these large, puffy­-haired, and extremely uncooperative canines are prized by wealthy Chinese for their alleged ferociousness (one zoo even tried to pass a Tibetan Mastiff off as a lion, ​according to some reports). Over the past decade, Tibetan Mastiffs have become a status symbol for a growing class of new­ moneyed entrepreneurs. VICE China went to the the 2014 Yidu Tibetan Mastiff Fair in Tianjin to learn more.

[body_image width='966' height='639' path='images/content-images/2014/12/16/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/12/16/' filename='joel-golby-oaps-keep-screwing-on-cruises-and-its-giving-them-all-herpes-158-body-image-1418744756.jpg' id='11752']The QE2, just chilling while a bunch of people fuck on it. Photo via ​Nick Herber

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

You think being old is all, Oh damn, guess I'm really racist now, or, Uh oh, just snapped my thighbone like a breadstick, but guess what, it isn't: Being old is a ​first-class ticket to Fuck City.

Believe it. The UK's Health Protection Agency (HPA) has recently issued warnings to any over-50s who are planning to go on a cruise because they keep getting genital warts. Yeah! And you thought cruises were just making tanned boys with lithe hands massage oil into your veiny old legs and spending $500 on a nice shawl at a market in Barbados. They aren't: it's toothless blowjobs and Werther's-flavored cunnilingus. Welcome to Fuck City. Population: your grandma.

"Remember alcohol can lower you inhibitions, potentially putting you at risk of sexually transmitted infections," the ​Public Health England travel guide says in what—no joke—is called the "silver sailors" fact sheet. "If there is a chance you might have casual sex, be prepared: take in-date, good quality condoms with you."

None of this "I took this condom to the battle of the Somme and it stopped a bullet from hitting me in the heart" shit, Grandad! We're talking in-date, son! Name brand!

If you're thinking, like, Wait, my grandma doesn't have sex. She's old and dry as a bone. Plus, she puts biscuits on my saucer without washing her hands first—well you're wrong; think again. According to the HPA, the rate of common STIs like HPV, herpes and gonorrhea are all on the rise in the over-65s age group and, even though the rate is pretty low and stable, they're still getting quite a lot of syphilis, too. Grandma's getting it, and she's getting it raw.

HPA data also shows why OAPs are at risk of developing STIs—first, men over the age of 65 are twice as likely to have herpes than women of the same age; and secondly, more people in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s are having sex with new partners in the last ten years than ever before. People are living longer, buying dick pills for cheaper, and they are figuring out how to use those large-font dating sites. Olde-tyme sex is rife.

Cruises aren't the only place OAPs are having sex—that's just their version of those Ibiza boat parties where people do competitive oral on each other for shots. They're also doing it in care homes, where, in the US at least, ​free screenings for STIs has been on the rise. In 2011–2012, 2.2 million free tests and counseling sessions have been doled out to the 47.6 million eligible Medicare beneficiaries in the US. 

But STIs are a danger, especially as, like, old people are already pretty weak sometimes. If a sharp fall on some ice is enough to put them out of action for a six months, imagine what gonorrhea is doing to their dicks. With the 45-to-64 and 65-and-over age groups seeing the second highest and highest rise in syphilis over the last ten years of available data, the HPA has gone so far as to launch a retro, "Hey, remember flares? Well try remembering a condom, too"–style STI awareness campaign.

It's not like OAPs are the only ones who need a bit of sex ed: In the UK, ​young people desperately need same-sex education and awareness; in Africa, there is a new campaign to promote condom usage after the boom in popularity of "​dry s​ex"; and seeing as it's the future and sex is changing, we could all do with a recap as to the ​va​rious robots and sex apparatus we can put on our collective junk to get off. Basically: If you haven't read a pamphlet or two in the last ten years, maybe give it a try.

Anyway, if you're struggling to buy anything for your grandma this Christmas, pro-tip: Boxes of condoms are really easy to wrap.

Follow Joel Golby on ​Twitter

Sébastien Béguerie in a field of hemp, in Provence, France

This article first appeared on VICE France

Since the Single Convention of Narcotic​ Drugs in 1961, cultivating, selling, and transporting cannabis has been strictly forbidden in France, as it is in most of the world. The catch is that hemp is still legal here—and in many other countries—as long as the crops don't contain THC, which makes smoking it no fun at all.

But there's more to pot than just THC—the plant also contains dozens of other cannabinoids which various studies have found to possess therapeutic properties. There are already some medicines on the market that contain these chemical compounds—Marinol, Bedrocan, and Sativex, for instance. After THC, the cannabinoid that can be found in the hemp in the largest quantities is CBD, which has potential as a pain reliever and as an anti-anxiety medication.

This December, Antonin Cohen and his associates Sébastien Béguerie and Valentin Squirelo plan to launch France's first CBD e-cigaret​te, Kanavape—and it will be completely legal, since it won't mess around with THC. I went to their lab in Paris's 18th Arrondissement to have a chat with Antonin.
​

Antonin Cohen

VICE : First of all, can you please explain what CBD is exactly ?
​Antonin Cohen: CBD is one of the 80 cannabinoids contained in the cannabis plant—the most famous of them being THC. The difference is that THC has a psychotic and euphoric effect which can lead to paranoia, whereas CBD doesn't have any euphoric effect and it's anti-psychotic. For a recreational use, people tend to look for varieties full of THC.

What is the point of using cannabis, if not euphoria?
​CBD has many applications. It's a molecule that has almost no secondary effect and which can be found in hemp. There is a huge difference between hemp and what we call marijuana, though both plants are varieties of cannabis. 

Hemp is grown in France for its fibers and its seeds legally, and now it's also cultivated for CBD. There is less than 0.2 percent of THC in the hemp so you can't use it recreationally. However, it does contain 4 to 5 percent CBD. This is why as a variety it's extremely interesting: It can be grown legally.

How did your CBD e-cigarette come about?
​Nearly six years ago, I founded an association for the promotion of medical cannabis—L'Union Francopho​ne pour les Cannabinoïdes en Médecine. We realized that there wasn't any information concerning the use of the medical cannabis in French, while in English there were a lot of scientific studies and clinical trials that demonstrated the therapeutic use of cannabis. So my business partner Sébastien and I founded this association to inform French doctors, journalists, patients, and politicians on the therapeutic use of cannabis.

Have you ever had any trouble with the law?
We chose to focus on the medical aspect and we do not promote the recreational use of cannabis. We don't break the law so we don't have any problems with it. For three years now, we have been organizing one of the biggest conventions on cannabis at the University of Medicine in Strasbourg so we have developed a network of doctors and experts from all around the world working on the use of cannabinoids in medicine—that gives us a certain legitimacy. 
​

The Kanavape

How is your company organized?
​My associate Sébastien is an agronomist engineer specializing in medical cannabis. He's worked for the biggest European companies active in that domain, especially in the Netherlands. Some medicine containing cannabinoids sold by those companies are marketed in numerous countries, including Europe. He is also a very good friend of mine.

We started with the association then we created a first company three years ago— Alpha ​Cat. We sold a test for products containing cannabis or cannabinoids—a kind of chemical "mobile test" in a kit—which allowed the identification of the amount of cannabinoids in each product. It can detect up to eight cannabinoids.

So the Kanavape works with a vaporizer that helps single out the CBD. Is that a kind of e-cigarette?
​​We started with the assessment that people exhibited high-risk behavior after consuming cannabis mixed with tobacco and via a classic combustion. So we looked at e-cigarettes in an attempt to reduce the risk and give medical cannabis consumers a better experience.

When will you launch this product in France and how?
​We are at the final stage of production; we've tested the product and checked everything from a legal standpoint. We forecast launching in mid-December. The product will be available in numerous countries worldwide, including France. But we are not here to create a new addiction. We market this product in France for those who are ill—we use a harmless molecule and we can't be accused of marketing a product for a recreational use. You wouldn't be able to get "stoned" with it. We are legally assisted by a law office that gives us advice on the best way to market our products, but we are dealing with a situation for which there isn't really a legal framework.

How do you see the future of your company?
​Our company specializes in the development of innovative and scientific products in the hemp industry. So, we work on new products, new types of cartridges with different cannabinoids. Our ambition is to be able to launch new versions continuously. We hope to generate financial success with the launch of this product, which then will allow us to offer several more cartridges as well as other products to the market.

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Photo via the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia on ​Flickr

Americans who secretly want the country to be run by a small group of extremely powerful families—like Game of Thrones but with less incest and brutal executions—can rejoice: Jeb Bush, ​brother ​of George, son of a different George, and the former governor of Florida, is officially thinking about running for president.

Just before 10 AM today, Bush poste​d a holiday greeting on his Facebook page. He announced that over Thanksgiving, he spent time with family discussing the future of the country, as one does. "As a result of these conversations and thoughtful consideration of the kind of strong leadership I think America needs," he wrote, "I have decided to actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States."

This wasn't exactly shocking: Rumors about a Bush 2016 campaign dat​e as far back as 2012, and this April CBS News rep​orted that the Republican said he was "digesting" the idea of throwing his hat in the ring. But that was at a closed-door fundraiser in New York; this is the first time he's spoken directly to the public about a bid, and now he's laying out a concrete plan for his next steps.

"In January, I also plan to establish a Leadership PAC that will help me facilitate conversations with citizens across America to discuss the most critical challenges facing our exceptional nation," Bush wrote on Facebook. "The PAC's purpose will be to support leaders, ideas and policies that will expand opportunity and prosperity for all Americans.

Though Bush hasn't committed to running yet, the idea of his campaign has already made waves in the political world, with one former M​itt Romney staffer saying that if Bush runs, the failed Republican 2012 nominee will stay out of the race, as the two men are both relative moderates.

Bush is the only Republican governor in Florida to ever serve two full terms, and he left office with an appro​val rating of higher than 60 percent. Th​e Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, remembers him as a "prolific tax cutter" who "let spending rise quickly toward the end of his tenure," which makes his record similar to his brother's.

The Democrats, naturally, are not fans. "I don't know what the difference is between 'thinking about' running and 'actively exploring' running, but I suspect it has a lot to do with keeping his name in the news," Democratic National Committee Communications Director Mo Elleithee said in a statement. "However you see it, there's no parsing this simple fact: Jeb Bush has fully embraced the failed economic agenda that benefits only a select few at the expense of the middle class. That's not going to change no matter how many ways he says he may run."

The Democrats have their own dynastic candidate in frontrunner Hilary Clinton (who has yet to officially announce her candidacy, but come on), though she will be challen​ged by Ji​m Webb and possibly—in a progressive fantasy world at least—Elizabeth W​arren and ​Bernie Sanders. Other GOP candidates will presumably include Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, neurosurgeon​ ​Ben Carson, and a bunch of white guys.

Follow Allie Conti on Tw​itter.​

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President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement. Photo via ​World Economic Forum/Wikimedia Commons.

​Tony Clement is feeling pretty good.

The President of the Treasury Board is the Harper Government's go-to guy for tightening federal spending, defending the woefully broken Access to Information (ATI) system, and manning the floodgates of government data.

Clement spoke to VICE this week about his plans to revamp Canada's creaking system of transparency. And he seems to think things are going pretty well.

This, despite the Canadian ATI regime's failing grade in its last independent audit—​it got an F​—and the fact that its overseer says she's only got $3​7,000 left in the bank to fix up the program.

Under the ATI program, Canadians can request just about any information from government departments. VICE has used it to prove that the government has a pr​oblem with tapping Canadians' phones and not telling anyone, police forbid you​r cell phone company from telling you that you're being spied on, and the f​ederal government is freaked out about giving trans people rights.

On one hand, the numbers from the system have gotten better in the last few years—the government is releasing more r​ecords, more quickly, than it ever has.

On the other, anyone who's ever used the system can tell you that it's a blazing dumpster-fire of black-bar redactions, delays, and squirrely tricks to avoid handing over documents.

For example, I'm currently dealing with the Privy Council Office—which is essentially the nerve centre for the public service—who are refusing to release the information I've requested on a CD, citing "national security"reasons. Instead they're trying to charge me nearly $100 to print off the paper. Because apparently it's 1994.

And it's not just me. One requester was told that that a request would take three years to​ complete. One time, a department red​acted David Cameron's name. Another time, the government redacted ​its own name.

Regardless, Clement says the system is getting better and that his new Open Government A​ction Plan is proactively releasing information, so people don't need filing requests to get the information.

Critics have said, essentially, that the pla​n sucks, pointing out that all that supposedly useful information posted online is really just geographic data that was available anyway—of the 213,000-plus datasets posted online, 96 percent are GeoData.

Oh, and VICE also used the ATI system to prove that Tony Clement's bureaucrats are spying on y​our Twitter account. Predictably, he says they're not r​eally doing that.

The MP from Muskoka admitted to VICE that, yes, maybe bureaucrats are spying on you. And he would hope it stops. But he's just one man.

We put those criticisms to the minister. And given that he's also a m​usic nerd, we also asked him about his favourite albums of 2014.

VICE: You're the minister in charge of transparency. What's the plan?
​Tony Clement: I think the good news is that technology is our friend, and we are using it more effectively every year to open up the government. I've done a lot of speaking around the country on this issue—I get very dramatic at times—and one of the things I say is that, since the dawn of time, since individuals created collective organizations, governments have collected and hoarded information. But we live in an era, for the first time in history, where governments are pushing information out to individuals, to researchers, to NGOs, to citizens, to entrepreneurs, and I want Canada to be at the forefront of this.

The brand-new URL that we have, open.​canada.ca, has been improved as a result of feedback from the researcher community. More than 200,000 datasets are now available online and they continue to be curated and added to. It's created a new standard in our government where the default position is that the datasets will be published, not hoarded. Departments and agencies will have to prove to me why they shouldn't. So the default position is open. This year also saw the successful completion of the first hac​kathon in the history of the federal government. We were hoping for about 100 coders to participate —we actually got over 900. So all of that is good news. There's always more to do, I grant you that, but I think we're making solid steps.

The criticism of the open data initiative is that it's information that isn't tremendously pertinent to journalists or NGOs, and the info that people are looking for is still stuck being the ATI system. Is there more to do?
​My vision is that, as we continue to pour out more data sets online, this will start to have an impact on the need for ATI requests because we'll have more of the information available online. So that's where I see this going long-term. The fact of the matter is that datasets are very useful for citizens. I'll give you a few examples of stuff that are part of our everyday lives now. You wouldn't even think of them of being 'open data' but they are. Every Canadian has a weather app on their device. So guess where the information comes from? It's from Environment Canada data. Most people have a map app on their mobile device—well the transit information, the road information, comes from municipal open data. So this is stuff that makes people's lives easier.

Everybody's facing the same time crunch. If we can give people more time by making their day more efficient, if they're able to plan their day better, it'll certainly help everybody. These are the kind of things that we're going to continue to push our there. We're going to be opening the open data exchange, as well, which is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs commercialize data. I think the trend line is very favourable.

What about the ATIP system? How do you fix a system that everyone, except those in government, agrees is broken?
​Well let me just go over the stats, because they are relevant. We've released a record number of requests, released a record amount of materials, and turnaround times have generally improved. The last statistical analysis saw yearly requests processed jump to 54,000. That's a 27 percent increase over the previous year. And we released six million pages of records this year, an increase of nearly two million, so that means more access. And I think I'm quite willing to take credit for that. Our government is willing to take credit for that. Since 2006, we have expanded coverage of the system to cover over 200 institutions including crown corporations. So my point of view is that we have released more completed ATI requests than the Trudeau, Turner, Mulroney, Campbell, Chretien and Martin governments combined. That's a record I think we can be proud of.

You can say that number of pages that are being disclosed is going up, but so are complaints. How do you defend the fact that, despite some positive numbers, there also appear to be some very serious structural problems?
​When we looked at the number of requests completed within 30 days, the percentage has increased 55 percent to 65 percent, so that shows that Canadians' right to access is healthy right now. We have increased spending on the system—it's gone up about $10 million from 2008 to 2013. That's a 20 percent increase. So we are putting the resources in there. We think the system is being managed, by virtue of the structure of the legislation, and it's being managed well. As we pour more of this online. I think the system will only improve.

I understand that there's a push to create a new structure for the ATIP system, one that's more cloud-based and that would facilitate online requests. Can you run through that?
​It's in the early phases, but we figure more online requests are occurring, and when you have an online platform, the format can be more user friendly for the applicant. So all that is happening. I've been pushing for the past year to get the vendor community involved about how a cloud-based information system could work. There are going to be clear rules: it has to respect privacy and it of course has to respect national security, so those are some of the challenges of any cloud based system, as we discovered in 2014. So that's an ongoing discussion. So I look forward to some of those conclusions being made in 2015.

Records have come out that show that bureaucrats have been tracking Canadians' Facebook and Twitter feeds, especially those that are critical of the government. You said that doesn't happen. Do you think it's appropriate for bureaucrats to be spying on Canadians that are critical of the government?
​I would say this to every public servant: everybody has to play by the directives in places to protect Canadians privacy. They have to play by the rules. So to the extent that there are any issues with that, I think that managers have to make sure that they make sure that their public servants are adhering to the directives that are in place.

Would you consider looking into that more thoroughly? Evidently this is something that has happened repeatedly and consistently.
​Fair point. It's up to each department each manager and each deputy minister to be part of the solution in that respect. I can't police the entire government system on that. We do rely on each deputy minister to do his or her job. And these issues of privacy are not going to go away—we have to have the proper balance of privacy. So I think this is a fair discussion to have and we will continue to have that. And I would say that people's expectations have changed, too. Where before this wouldn't be an issue, or a media event, now it is. And that's the reality of the situation. Governments, in order to be legitimate and credible, have to strike that balance.

Alright, top five albums of 2014.
​Jack White —Lazaretto
​Foo Fighters —Sonic Highways
​St Vincent —self-titled
​Royal Blood —self-titled
​Black Keys —Turn Blue

Thanks for your time
​All the best to you and your family.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Justin on ​Twitter.

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​ I don't really know what I expected going into my conversation with Erin Gee, a new media artist and composer whose work, ​"Swarming Emotional Pianos," premiered in Montreal this weekend. Robots are a hot topic right now, but my discomfort with them—which is probably the same discomfort that most people have with them, obviously based on sci-fi but nevertheless not totally shakeable—means I generally avoid the conversation about a future that looks increasingly artificial. I'm also not that interested; I've always had the vague and "problematic" sense that robots are "for boys," not only because they're usually advertised as such but also because they're cold and emotionless, which has been my experience with boys thus far. I feel a certain amount of guilt about this—both for being on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of feminism—but not enough to actually, you know, do anything to educate myself.

That is, until I heard about Erin's robots, which seem decidedly less robotic according to my misunderstanding of the word. Her work, which incorporates video, performance, audio, opera, and, yes, the robots, uses the human to examine the digital, and vice versa. Gee's newest piece is a group of mobile robots featuring light and instrumental components. These robots form a moving orchestra of light and sound, but their conductors are not traditional; rather, they're driven by emotions. Working with the Australian neurophysiologist  ​Vaughan Macefield, Gee hooked some method actors up to biofeedback sensors that measure physiological responses to emotion (heart rate, breathing, sweating, blood pressure, and skin sensitivity/neural activity), mapped the data to correspond to particular lights and sounds, and, in essence, made it so the robots reflect a live emotional, human performance.

Despite all of this information, plus lots of cool  ​videos of Erin singing along with ​a choir of herself in a series of MacBook monitors, I still had no real idea what was going on. Ultimately, I wanted to know: Are robots people, or are people robots?

VICE: There seem to be three fundamental elements in your work: robotics, sound/music, and "humanity," which we could say is the emotional/non-analytical stuff that drives us and/or gets in our way. To me—and to many—there's an implied struggle between humans and robots, ongoing until they take over the world. But how did you come to incorporate music?
​Erin Gee: I have always been a very musical person, but I never felt drawn to making straightforward songs. Since I started going this route a few years ago—with musical sculptures—I came to appreciate new media practice as something that could become sonic, multiple, echoing and uncanny, rather than the visual, mirror-like aspect that is heavily theorized through such writers as Rosalind Kraus. If we can have an ocular-centric narcissism, I would like to experiment with how new media can be ​echoist and sonic.

OK, first: can you explain what "new media" is?
​ I think new media practice might just be digital art practice. I think it's a bit expanded; maybe I want to say "digital art practice." I have never been too precious about words that describe new practices like this. What I mostly mean, I think, is just that if you are working in technology as an artist [you're engaged in new media practice]—using technological languages, tools, and objects in your work. New media allows for something beyond the digital, but honestly this is something I try not to think very hard about.

So you see something inherently wrong with new media being "ocular-centric"—tending toward the visual—then? It seems like our culture/lives are oriented toward the visual generally. I mean, I just used the word "see" for "think."
​ I don't see anything wrong with an ocular-centric position, except that it imposes the eye's mode of relations in a normative way. Take, for example, the modes of reflection: A mirror is a visual reflection based on an object, which reflects back to the subject in relation to the position of the subject. It is a controlled, subject-centered experience based on the position of a subject in relation to an object. And Kraus says that narcissism allows the viewer to ignore media altogether and only see themselves, or their psychological projection of themselves, as opposed to the apparatus. This is a way of seeing the world; it's very popular.

No kidding. Can you explain "echoist" now?
​ I think echoist new media presents a problematic third body, an annoying environmental echo that can't be fully controlled because the echoes belong to, and emphasize, the psycho-spatial environment. Narcissus finds his reflection comforting, seductive—but repetition isn't all he wanted. If it was, what was wrong with Echo—why did he find her repetitions of his voice irritating?

I think there's something about consciousness there. A mirror is obviously an object, whereas Echo was a nymph, an in-between object/subject. So I think that having in-between objects play at actually being human is uncanny valley territory that reaches back into our most fundamental mythologies. I don't want to say one mode or another is more valid—just that narcissistic relations are obviously more comfortable and useful for capitalist technological production. Artists use both.

Do you see the robots as a means to the end of creating "emotional pianos"?
​ I guess from looking at robots not as opposing, physical, non-souled mirrors to our humanity, I like to consider the robots in this project through sonic metaphors: maybe they are amplifiers to our humanity, our emotions as expressed through physical actions in our bodies. Maybe they are pesky, uncanny echoes in our environment. But there is a part of the human in every robot made; there is certainly a part of me. Furthermore, this project is a lot more about humans behaving mechanistically than the other way around: by asking method actors to control and perform their emotional states in order to create physical changes in their bodies [by raising their blood pressure, heart rate, etc.], they are really using their emotions as a means to manipulate their bodies in very physical ways, like a cello player would manipulate strings on their instrument.

That is totally fascinating—especially if you consider the robots to be acting as "sonic metaphors." What about the movement aspect, though,? The "swarming"—where does that fit in? Why have the pianos move?
​ The movement research is still in progress. Ideally I wanted the robots to move because this makes them more echo-like, environmental. A moving target cannot be easily seen as a mirror, but something other. I want to push that otherness, but of course at a certain point the artwork becomes its own thing, beyond my intent.

I listened to a video in which you explain that your ultimate goal with the project is to "help people better understand and express their emotions." You mention how data-mapped emotions could be particularly beneficial to autism patients, which I can definitely understand, but I'm wondering about the broader implications of drawing emotions out of people.
​ Hmm. On further reflection I'm not sure if that is such a great ultimate goal, but generically I think it is a fine one for an artist to have.

It's just that to have a robot show you—or demonstrate, to use a less visual word—what you're feeling seems like a strange perversion of our current fears of a robot takeover. My initial reaction to this idea is something like, "Should people have to learn emotional intelligence themselves? Is this making things too easy?" Obviously—and you mention this—autism patients are something different than my ex-boyfriend who hasn't cried in ten years, but do you get what I'm saying here?
Some people will see this as utopic, others terrifying—I think if technological work is too comfortable, it becomes a technocratic pat on the back for a smug audience that wants to feel good about a comfortable, naturalized future where everything is the same except that it is Plexiglas and backlit and more convenient. I am not sure that I succeed in making this work creepy enough, actually. I hope to make it creepier in the future. But also more playful. Joy in the de-naturalization of the human body is something I like trying to put into my creepiest technological works. I feel like the best people working in new media are like psychological graffiti artists, creeping around scrawling "HUMANITY IS AN OLD MAN" on institutional walls.

Gee as chorus girls in Sydney

Do you see your work as mapping data that could later potentially answer whether there's an inherent structure in our emotions—like an algorithm? And how do you imagine a reality in which we can answer that question? It seems alternately amazing and horrifying, to be able to anticipate feelings like that.
​ If there is a structure to our emotions, I am curious to see if a language can emerge, but this will only expand a poetic vocabulary. This poetic vocabulary can be very useful to certain people and maybe allow them to "speak." At the moment I am working on developing other musical instruments for organized emotional events. I think that what counts as a voice changes what we define as a human with agency, and I am interested in giving agency to people who do not have voices like our own. So yes: if I can collaborate with scientists and medical professionals on projects that would benefit these populations it would be fantastic. I think that to most people the ideas behind this research can be terrifying, but it might be the same as that terror of having a prosthetic limb replace your natural one. If you aren't in need of this technology, it is unnatural and probably unnecessary. But it can also vastly improve some qualities of life.

Could you imagine research like this becoming dangerous?
​ So many technologies that we consider scary are going to get developed and sold to us in the next ten years whether we like it or not, and even though I may never have the resources of Yamaha or Google, I think that having a diversity of voices working in these fields will benefit the research immensely. You may be comforted by the knowledge that the ability to completely and accurately read the human body's physiological signals is still a long ways off—it turns out that most humans are special snowflakes in the way that their bodies process emotions. In fact, something as subtle as the "direction" of the emotion—whether you are angry at another person or at yourself—can change your body's response to it.

Rather than profess that I have discovered what happiness "sounds like" (I cannot), I am much more interested in working with the bodies of others, in instrumentalizing their bodies through emotion to see what the musical potential of the body and its rhythms might be. Of course, my musical algorithms bastardize the signals somewhat, but this struggle between honoring the language of the other and translating this language into something meaningful and unique in my art and music—this is something I'm always working through.

You're also explicitly engaged with feminist issues. Do you see feminism fitting into this work in particular?
​ As I said before, I think it is important for a diversity of people to be working in knowledge production and developing knowledge about our physical world, and that this is a feminist act. I also think that my work is often about trying to give space to otherness—whether through collaboration, through algorithmic processes, or moving through notions of performance, there is a political aspect to how I am trying to be a composer that makes a lot of room for otherness to speak. In this way I'm also inspired by other female composers who work in developing alternate musical languages, such as Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, even Marina Abramovich's early performance work was described through her as rhythm. The ordering of disparate elements into communication is a political act—in the original "Cyborg Manifesto," Donna Haraway emphasizes a constant struggle for language, to see language as technology, to build new languages. This is how my musical work is most feminist. I have always found myself trying to argue a space for artistic creation that is feminist through its materiality, and furthermore through the emphasis on the body as a source of knowledge.

Wait, what do you mean by "materiality"? I understand the emphasis on the body as a source of knowledge being feminist, but I thought materiality would refer to the physical stuff you're using to make the work—is that wrong? Do you consider the body and its responses to emotions your artistic materials?
​ I guess the materiality of my work—and I'm drawing these dangerous analogies here, but I can remember a historical moment when men wondered if women have souls. The objectification of women in modern society is well-documented and known. Women today are used as political tools among those in power; their personhood becomes drawn up in their rights to their bodies, the right to deny sex as well as their ability to bear and raise children. There are layers of interrelation that all humans have, where we are objectified, reduced to our utility, treated as objects rather than subjects, reacting to and acting through a subject or group of people more powerful than we are. I think in this way I want to make work that tries to bridge the gap, to create music that has the subject trying to learn the language of the object, to assume that in fact the thing we assumed to be an object in fact has a voice, and it is important to listen. To have a voice is to have agency and power.

When I speak of a feminist "materiality," I can personally relate to the feeling that I am regarded as an object that sometimes speaks, because I live this as a woman. I understand that there are many other people that positions like this can speak to, so these elements remain abstract, but discovering or seeking out voices in electronic objects or processes is something that gives me joy. I also acknowledge that this position is part fantastical, part cynical as fuck. Maybe fantastical cynicism is something we should add to creepiness as a useful tool.

Do you put stock in the idea that feelings are somehow inherently female and, on the flip side, logic/reason inherently male? Would you say logic governs the technological aspects of your work? There seems to be a tension between programming—inherently ordered and logical—and the spontaneity you use.
​ I'm not sure that I see the programming aspect of my work as distinctly logical and ordered as opposed to the ways our bodies process emotions. When you are alone in the woods and hear a twig snap, your body automatically widens your eyes, increases cortisol production; your breathing becomes deeper, and depending on how your fight or flight reaction is, your blood will be pumping heavily, readying you to flee; or freezing up, preparing you to play dead. This too is ordered and logical, for your body's survival.

I guess what I'm wondering about the emotion/logic dichotomy has more to do with all of us being "special snowflakes" in our emotional responses. Like, I struggle to reconcile that individuality of response with the logic of survival instincts. Yes, there are certain emotions and emotional reactions we've evolved to have, but on topics not so obviously evolutionary as, say, fear or sexual arousal, emotions/responses are not so logical, right? Someone might react to smoking weed with paranoia, someone else with sleepy contentment. Or you might flip out when your roommate leaves his milk on the counter, but your other roommates are like, "Dude, who cares?"
​ Well, the special snowflakes of emotion thing is being investigated currently; emotions beyond survival instincts present challenges to research that I'm sure scientists probably won't figure out for a while now. This is because emotions were first conceived of in this way by James-Lange theory in the 1880s—Darwin, yo!—when they were first imagining that perhaps it isn't because we feel scared that our eyes widen and our breath becomes sharper, but rather, the other way around! This was drawn up at a time when evolution was a hot topic. Through the centuries the conversations continued, but adequate tools for measuring physiological markers of emotion weren't really in existence until the 1970s. So we're not even 50 years into examining the ideas of 200 years ago. Things as subtle as regret, jealousy, and mild irritation (though I think I can tell when the actors are annoyed with me) are difficult, because at a certain point we humans are probably not the sum of all our parts. There might be something more.

"Swarming Emotional Pianos" was produced by the Canadian chamber music collective Innovations en Concert. For more information ​visit their website.

Follow Lauren Olyer on ​Twitter.

When I was asked to write about what our society learned about racism in 2014, my initial response was to say "nothing." We've been repeating the same mistakes of systemic prejudice, bias, and senseless violence since long before I was a twinkle in my white dad's eyeball. It's hard to look at the images coming out of Ferguson, Missouri, and not assume that some grotesque apocalyptic nightmare has been belched out from underneath our feet. The only thing I feel like I've learned is to stay the fuck inside my house with the doors locked and a firearm at the ready.

The problem with staying inside is that people are still getting shot outside (also, you eventually have to go to the store for  ​more snacks). It'd be great to just hit the "eject" button on life and read Archie comics all day, but even ​Archie's got some shit to deal with. If the Riverdale Gang can't even catch a break, we're doomed as a culture. 

2014 made us all want to give up, but we've got to overcome, at least until the end of Obama's second term. He's got two more years to find his inner  ​Dolemite and dropkick the world into a neverending state of inoffensive, mushy bliss. In the meantime, let's try to make sense of the last 12 months of bummers.

Cops and Black People Don't Get Along

Cops: can't live with 'em and can't live without 'em. The police are like the dad that puts money in your trust fund, but keeps slashing your tires at random to make sure you can't get to your job at Hot Topic on time. 

It'd be great if your cop dad would chill the hell out for one second and let you carry on with your life. He can't, though. He has to keep slashing your metaphorical tires to remind you who's boss around these parts.  ​He's the boss, and he has no patience for your antiquated concepts of "justice" or all that smarmy bullshit about how "the punishment must fit the crime." He's going to persist in pushing you around, because he knows when you threaten "revolution," you don't mean it. 

You need your cop dad. Your cop dad keeps the lights on and the bad guys away from your doorstep.  Do you really want anarchy? Do you really want to live in a world without law and order (the  ​show or the concept)? Do you want an angry mob ​burning down your favorite pizza restaurant? Where will you get your dinner? The store? Heaven forbid! Monday Night Football is on and there's no time to waste.

Cop dad has you by the balls, and there's nothing you can do about it but go cry to your mom (the Democratic Party) who will tell you how mean dad is and promise that she'll make him wear body cameras so you can watch him slash your metaphorical tires over and over and over and over again, the pervert.

The nation was still reeling from the death of  ​Trayvon Martin when 2013 ended. Eight months into 2014, we were presented with the tragedy of ​Michael Brown in Ferguson. A month before that, ​Eric Garner was killed by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo. Neither of these high-profile 2014 cases resulted in an indictment, but did lead to plenty of riots, tears, and societal strife. There's no number of body cameras in the world that will prevent some cops from going too far. This is our new normal. People like Wolfeboro, New Hampshire police commissioner Robert Copeland, who ​refused to apologize for calling President Obama a "nigger," get to make decisions that affect people's lives. Copeland was forced to resign, but his story should inspire us to demand more from our law enforcement officials. We can't afford not to.

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There Are Way Too Many Racist Public School Teachers

The children are our future, a blank slate for projecting our hopes for a better tomorrow. School is suppose to educate the young about how to navigate the system we inherited and hopefully improve on it. Unfortunately, a lot of our teachers spend their time showing their students how fucked up that system really is. From making jokes at the expense of the president to openly  ​using racial slurs in front of kids, you have to wonder if maybe our public school system requires a rethink. Gil Voigt, a teacher in Cincinnati, was ​fired for telling his students that "we don't need another black president." Voigt claimed he was misquoted, but was fired regardless. Whatever the exact phrasing was, he probably shouldn't be running his mouth about personal political theories in front of grade school kids. 

It's Fun to Be Racist (in Private)

You know that phrase, "If a tree screams 'nigger' in the woods, but no one is around to hear it, is it really racist?"​Justin Bieber and ​Donald Sterling put it to the test this year by saying racist things in private, but having it all end up in public anyway. Multiple videos of Bieber using racial slurs were leaked by TMZ. In the most notorious, unforgivable video, Bieber sang his hit song "​One Less Lonely Nigger." One thing I learned is that Justin Bieber sounds like shit when they don't auto-tune the racial slurs out of his music. It's crazy what you can do with computers these days. 

The leaked audio of Donald Sterling losing his shit over his mistress bringing black men to LA Clippers games cost Sterling his basketball team, but Bieber still ​has plenty of black friends. I guess Sterling doesn't get a pass because he can't ​moonwalk.

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Racist Symbols Are Making a Comeback

After a brief resurgence in the 1970s thanks to a ​drugged-up Sid Vicious, it seemed like we'd finally banished the swastika to the cultural dustbin. The swastika is like the James Bond of racist images—no matter how irrelevant it seems at the time, it always finds a way to reinvent itself eventually. In 2014,The Raëlians—a sci-fi religious cult that's also obsessed with trying to ​get women to take their tops off—started a movement to rehabilitate the symbol of man's greatest crime against itself. Their website, ​proswastika.org, reminds us that swastikas were historically a symbol of peace in Hindu and Buddhist tradition. Sorry, but I think the Nazis kinda fucked that one up permanently. This came after Kanye West used the ​Confederate flag on merchandise for his tour in 2013. Some things just need to be left in the past—like ​live TV musicals and Hulk Hogan.

We're Not Ready for Commercials with Multicultural Families

I come from a biracial environment, so it was heartening to see this Cheerios ad featuring a family that more closely resembled my own. It wasn't nearly as appealing to the very ​vocal YouTube commenters who were aghast that a black guy and a white woman could have a baby together. They were also probably shocked that the dad was depicted as a person and not a series of postcards from prison. Let's take a second to mourn a world where some people think racist stripper mom Janelle Ambrosia is a better role model than the couple in this commercial.

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Photo via Flickr User  ​Keith Allison

"Redskins" Is Definitely Not a Cool Name for a Football Team

Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder spent most of 2014 ignoring the pleas of Native American activists, liberal talking heads,  ​The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and even some run-of-the-mill sports commentators whose typical style of bloviation doesn't extend beyond Tom Brady's completion percentage. The NFL has weathered more than its fair share of ugly controversies (​Ray Rice, ​Adrian Peterson, the ​concussion issue) but this one sticks out because it's the easiest to fix. 

The name is offensive, so change it. Claiming that it's about "​honor and respect" is disingenuous because the very people who are supposed to feel pride over this asinine name are the ones most upset. Just because we've tolerated this name for so long is no excuse to let it continue to be used in the context of the most popular professional sport in America. We accept and ignore so much in this country just because "that's the way it is." The form of apathy I felt at the start of writing this piece is one of the very reasons we're stuck watching our cities burn.

Follow Dave Schilling on ​Twitter.​

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James Deen. Photo via ​Doc Johnson/Wikimedia Commons.​

​James Deen is going out to the desert to fuck, but first, he has to make his way to the bank.

If you have a "Jews love money" joke in mind, now would be the time to make it.

The crown prince of porn is totally okay with jokes about his Semitism. You would be too if your nice, Jewish, boy-next-door looks had made you arguably the biggest (heh) male porn star of all time.

By now, his bio is well known. Born in Los Angeles County to successful engineer parents, he grew up in an upper-middle-class household in Pasadena. Rather than following in his parents' white-collar footsteps, he says he made the decision to go into porn while still in kindergarten. His slight build, smile and tendency to somehow communicate an innate sweetness while balls-deep in a colleague's asshole gained him legions of female fans, rocketing him to porn star fame, and eventually, real fame. But before the blowjobs, the profiles in GQ, and the​ degradation of costarring in a mainstream "film" (if you can even call it that) with Lindsay Lohan, James Deen was just Bryan Matthew Sevilla, a boy who went to synagogue on the high holidays like all the other Yids.

"I don't know if I'm the only [Jewish porn star]," he says in a voice that recalls every overly excited Jew-boy I ever went to summer camp with. "But I'm definitely the loudest one about my Jewish heritage."

He's part of a long and proud tradition of porn stars who are not just Jewish, but whose Judaism can be considered a defining trait. Ron Jeremy may be notorious for his homeliness (despite the fact that as a young man, he was one mean, lean hunk of a dude), but the Hedgehog is fugly in a very stereotypical old-Jewish-man way, all excess body hair and prominent nose on a physique that's definitely had more than its share of kuegel and knishes. 

Seymore Butts (a.k.a. Adam Glasser) transcended his fame as the pioneer of vaginal fisting porn to gain mainstream recognition in the early 2000s Showtime series Family Business, which featured both his impressive Jewfro and tight-knit Jewish family helping him run his porn empire. The appeal was entirely that this could be the family next to you at any Reform synagogue service.

So what's with all the chosen people doing the no-pants horah in front of the cameras, already?

It's here that an important distinction needs to be made. There's Jewish and then there's Jew-ish, and the difference between the two is massive. Jewish is religious in nature, a belief system and way of life based on faith and participation in rituals. A rabbi is Jewish. My parents are Jewish. Joseph Lieberman is Jewish. Jew-ish is a collection of personality and physical traits that border on the stereotypical. Seth Rogen is Jew-ish. Larry David is Jew-ish. So are Gene Simmons, Lizzy Caplan and, of course, James Deen.

Take this tweet: "Got a boner while in the ​bank. #Jewproblems #bankboner." The self-deprecating humour is a hallmark of being Jew-ish, but even more telling is that it was sent on September 26th, AKA the second day of Rosh Hashanah, one of the three holiest days in the Jewish year. It's a day when, for the Jewish, tweeting and banks are verboten (boners are still permitted).

Deen puts it more succinctly: "More than anything, I identify with Judaism as a culture."

Of course, that culture influences the religious aspects of Judaism. Among the porn stars I spoke to, there's a weird consensus that there's a lower moral barrier to entering porn for Jews. We've got our neuroticism, but we don't have the Catholic guilt or Protestant moralizing. Deen talks at length about a liberalism inherent to Jewish thought regarding sexuality, and he's not wrong. In the Jewish religion, fucking is a mitzvah. Yes, there are a lot of rules that come into play—rules that involve words like mikvah and iggeret hakodesh. But those rules are in place to reinforce the idea that sex should be frequent, fun, and clean (albeit between a husband and wife).

And yet...

And yet I grew up in a typical Montreal Jewish household and I was terrified of putting my dick anywhere near a vagina until I was way past puberty.

We celebrate the beauty of sex, and that's great. But not without a ton of caveats and paperwork, sometimes literally. Pretty much anything goes within the confines of marriage, but outside of that, it's all sin. Fucking someone you don't love? That's a sin. Doing it for money? Oh yeah, that's a sin. Doing all that on camera so other people can sploosh more easily? Obviously that one is a pretty big sin. As far as rebellion against rules goes, becoming a porn star is a pretty emphatic statement.

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Angel Cassidy and Seymore Butts. Photo via ​lukeisback.com/Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, in a religious context, that shouldn't really bother the Jew-ish Deen. While Deen is the face of kosher dick, he grew up mostly secular. That wasn't the case for either Howie Gordon or Joanna Angel, two porn stars separated by decades in terms of active involvement in porn, but both of whom grew up in Orthodox Jewish households.

Gordon was a superstar of his time, catching the tail-end of the Golden Age of porn in the 1980s. He starred under the nom de porn Richard Pacheco in films with titles like Sex Wars (he played Mark Starkiller) and Sensual Encounters of Every Kind. But before that, he was just a kid growing up in a religious household with his parents and brother in Pittsburgh.

Talking on the phone from his home in Berkeley, Gordon embodies the gift of gab stereotype befitting the Rabbi he was at one point destined to become. What was supposed to be a 20-minute interview quickly became an 80-minute schmooze, filled with wildly digressive (but insanely entertaining) stories. Several times, he flipped through a copy of his memoir Hindsight: True Love and Mischief in the Golden Age of Porn to read favourite anecdotes verbatim. For instance, there was the time his life changed because a wild hippie woman introduced him to the wonders of ass fucking, which kicked off a string of events that ended up with him winning multiple Adult Video News Awards and got him a place in the X-Rated Critics' Organization's Hall of Fame.

Gordon lost his taste for Judaism after the death of an uncle, when a Rabbi eulogized him as a soldier during the middle of anti-Vietnam fervour. He still identifies with Jewish culture, but going into porn was just a small part of a total life overhaul he undertook in his 20s.

When asked why he thinks so many of his colleagues were fellow Jews, he reads a quote of his from a 1984 Screw magazine article titled "Jew Never Had It So Good."

"'It's Pacheco's theory that being Jewish allows for more possibilities, so that fucking on screen for a living can be tolerated,'" he reads. "'There are so many striations of Judaism', he points out, 'That you can be anything you want to be and nobody is going to throw you out of the fold.'"

"There's no pope," he elaborates to me. "If the orthodox sect that you're in, the rabbi goes 'You're a gunaf, you're scum, you're filth, get out of here,' you turn around and you go to the next one."

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Joanna Angel at the AVN floor show. Photo via Flickr user Ryan Lackey.

Joanna Angel (nee Mostov) has a slightly different theory. She was raised with a traditional upbringing—kept kosher, kept Shabbat, did some time in Jewish day schools and summer camps. After switching to public school, she gradually kept fewer and fewer Jewish customs, and eventually fell into the punk scene at around age 15. To this day, she fasts on Yom Kippur and refuses to eat bread on Passover and heads home to NYC to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. She's also become the darling of the alt -orn scene, running her own website: Burning Angel. She's a testament to the fact that whether it's the shmattah business or threesomes, there is a cultural drive to be the best.

"I think with Jews, failure is not an option," she explains. "Of course that's part of who I am. I've basically done all the wrong things and managed to make a name for myself. I haven't done anything you're supposed to do to be a famous porn star... There's definitely been times I felt the world was telling me to give up, but that's not what Jews do. We don't give up."

For Jews, failure is not an option. The only thing is that for some of us, failure is not making rent, and for some of us, failure is not busting a nut.

Follow Adam on ​Twitter.