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Photos courtesy of Peggy Gallagher

Somewhere in your parents' basement, there's a plastic Rubbermaid bin filled with worthless plush toys that once promised riches. The Beanie Baby frenzy of the 90s spread from suburban Chicago across the United States, creating a mass speculative bubble, with sales reaching $1 billion at their peak. Ty Warner, creator of the Beanie Baby, was an "obsessive" perfectionist, slaving over the minute details of each toy even after they had gone to market. This neurotic striving for the perfect design turned Ty into an accidental marketing genius: by replacing old designs with updated, slightly tweaked toys, Ty created a market of speculation that ultimately crushed the collectibles industry.

Zac Bissonnette, a writer previously known for his books Debt-Free U and How to Be Richer, Smarter, and Better-Looking Than Your Parents, spoke with VICE about his latest book, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute. Inspired by a sad Rubbermaid container full of pristine and worthless Beanie Babies, Bissonnette began a deep investigation into the bizarre story of Ty Warner's empire.

VICE spoke with Bissonnette about American greed, consumer stupidity, and Ty Warner's extensive plastic surgery.

VICE: How did you end up writing a book about Beanie Babies?
Zac Bissonette: It was 2010 or 2011, and I was at an auction in Massachusetts. I went to auctions a lot—I was furnishing my condo—and in the back of the room at one sale were these huge Rubbermaid containers full of Beanie Babies, which I remember from the 90s. The interesting thing about them was not the Beanie Babies themselves but the manifest conviction of whoever had assembled this collection and thought that it would one day be of great value. They were all preserved with these plastic protectors over the heart tags, and there were all these spreadsheets about what each animal was worth, color-coded stuff. Very type A. And all this energy was poured into the cataloging of a collection of Beanie Babies, which were worthless. I think the whole thing sold for $100.

But for a few years in the late 1990s a huge swath of America thought that these animals were the ticket to long-term riches. The stats are really interesting. At one point, Beanie Babies were worth 10% of eBay sales. The guy who invented them, Ty Warner, was worth around $2 billion. And all that money was from Beanie Babies.

What happened? What caused these people to think Beanie Babies were so valuable?
Ty had been a very successful toy salesman. In 1994, he released the first Beanie Babies. And at first, nothing happened. Retailers thought they looked cheap. They worried that they were too inexpensive and would cannibalize sales. So at first it was very, very hard for [Beanie Babies] to get it going at all. But Ty Warner was just really convinced that this was the product that was gonna put him on the map. The guy who did his distribution in Canada remembers Ty summoning him into his office in Westmont, Illinois. Ty reaches into his desk and pulls out the prototype for Legs the Frog, and says, "From now on, every dime we have goes into this."

When I first heard that, I thought it was fake, like a line from a movie. But other people said the same thing. His girlfriend at the time recalled him showing Legs the Frog to her daughters and throwing it in the air, saying, "Can you believe how fun this is?" He'd bring prototypes to their family dinners and ask the daughters to name them. His girlfriend would say, "We're just trying to eat dinner," and Ty would say, "We can eat after the toys have names." So nothing really happened with them at first, but Ty was just... very perfectionistic. He'd spend several hours over every animal. He used to brush the hair on each toy before it shipped. And that obsession didn't change after a piece was released. He would take an animal after it had been released, and he'd change the design on it because he decided it didn't look right. Peanut the Elephant, in 1995, was this royal blue color. They shipped a few thousand, not that many. Then Ty decide that instead of this royal blue color it should be a baby blue color. So Ty started to change stuff, and no one really cared.

Then, all of a sudden, Beanie Babies started to develop a following among kids from suburban Chicago. The mothers started collecting them; a lot of this was tied into this soccer mom culture of the 1990s, much of which was centered around consumerism. The Beanie Babies were sort of the apotheosis of this. These women started to get really into it, started trying to assemble complete sets of Beanie Babies. As they went from store to store, calling around, they started to realize there are all these weird variations. Like they would find that he had changed the design on Teddy the Bear. So they started to pay higher prices for the variations. And the word of these higher prices got out. An economist once said that "there is nothing so dangerous to one's sense of self as to see a good friend get rich." And so it was that these stories of a relatively small group of people paying increasingly higher prices for the rarest Beanie Babies turned this into a phenomenon with no major marketing and no major stores.

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Photo via Flickr user Jason Adams

This wasn't Ty's original idea?
Everyone has always thought that it was. Forbes did a story in 1999 on his "mystique marketing." But when I brought this up with people who worked with Ty at the time, they would laugh. This wasn't a strategy, this was madness. This was an obsessive compulsive guy. His girlfriend at the time described it as "this never-ending striving for a perfect that doesn't exist."

Are there still Beanie Babies out in the world?
Yeah, the Beanie Boos! Ty is still the biggest plush toy brand in the world. You don't realize it until you start to look for it, and then you see Ty everywhere. They're sold in Duane Reade.

While researching The Great Beanie Baby Bubble, did you have the chance to meet Ty Warner?
I met him once at a toy fair. It was very, very strange. He showed up to look at his booth, this very strange-looking man. He's had a lot of plastic surgery. 70 years old with this very blonde hair. Very spiffy dresser. I walked over to him and I think he was kind of surprised. He doesn't really talk to people. He lives in this $150 million mansion in Montecito and no one really talks to him.

But I told him that I thought he had an incredible story, one of the great entrepreneurial stories—how from $5 plush toys he became one of the richest men in the history of the American toy industry, still one of the richest people in America, certainly in the top 300—and that I hoped he'd tell his story to me. He said, "Well, the Beanie Baby thing was a lot of good and a lot of bad. If I told you the story, I'd probably just tell you the good and it wouldn't be balanced." And I said, "Well, thank you, Mr. Warner. I could talk to other people too, to be balanced." And he said, "I just think it's better if you talk to other people." So that's what I did, and he didn't restrict my access. I spoke with his estranged sister, his ex-girlfriend, many of his former workers...

It sounds like this story is teetering on tragedy. Were there people whose lives were ruined by Beanie Babies?
I mean, certainly, people lost a lot of money on Beanie Babies. Ty sales were, at one time, more than $1 billion a year. Virtually all of that demand was speculative. It's not unreasonable to say that at least 70% of Beanie Babies sold were bought because people thought they'd go up in value.

Did they ever go up?
Yes, that's what drove it. It's a lot like the real estate bubble or the internet bubble. In 1998, if you had been one of the original collectors—because I know these collectors, I talked to them a ton—they all had collections that they bought for basically nothing and were worth at one point half a million dollars if they sold them. One collector sold hers to adopt her first child, another built a house. Some of them lost money on internet stocks.

The story of The Great Beanie Baby Bubble, the reason I called [the book] Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, is partially an allusion to the Charles Kindelberger's book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, the first book on speculative bubbles. But really the story to me is about how wrong people can be about what has value, and sort of the process by which that happens. And coming to terms with the fact that you were wrong about it. The Beanie Baby craze ended really badly for everyone. This was a high point in people's lives, but the Beanie Babies ended up worthless and Ty Warner ended up miserable and alone.

Is there anything now that mimics the Beanie Baby pattern of delusion?
The fallout from Beanie Babies was so spectacular that people in the collectibles industry believe that this ruined the industry. It hasn't recovered. Once bitten, twice shy: the fallout of the Beanie Baby craze really did teach people that consumer goods probably aren't going to go up in value. If it's in a store and everyone thinks it's going to make you rich, it probably won't. But certainly the real estate bubble isn't terribly different. People were fueled by these stories of how much their neighbors were making, and that jealousy and greed led them to irrational financial decisions.

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Was jealousy and greed motivating the Beanie Baby craze?
Absolutely. [Former editor of Mary Beth's Beanie World magazine] Mary Beth Sobelewski sort of sighed at one point and told me, "The thing I remember so much about Beanie Babies in the beginning was how they just made people feel so happy, and so warm and fuzzy. Then it just became greed. And it got really dark."

Is there any silver lining to the story?
Well, these things do have long term benefits. For instance, you have an unprecedented number of very well-made, mint-condition plush animals that aren't worth anything. Every week in local papers there will be a story about someone donating a thousand Beanie Babies to a local children's hospital or a police office. And the kids who get these toys while they're going through traumatic situations, like cancer, they have no knowledge of the fact that, at one point, people put so much faith in the abilities of these lifeless things.

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble comes out March 3rd, 2015 from Portfolio Penguin.

Follow Jennifer Schaffer on Twitter.

Every fashion week, Becca McCharen's futuristic fashion brand Chromat enlists badass DJs to create a soundtrack for its runway show. Previous seasons have featured artists like Juliana Huxtable, Ana Lola Roman, and Lauren Flax. For Chromat's latest fall/winter 2015 "Mindfiles" collection, they had HD get on the ones and twos.

The haunting, high energy mix includes tracks from artists like Fatima before Al Qadari and (McCharen's personal favorite) Bjork. The sound of robot voices and gears turning creates an industrial vibe that perfectly sets off the collection's theme of techno-immortality. HD ends the mix with K Rizz's "Imagine If," a song that invites listeners to envision a better future where technology gives us the opportunity for a simpler, longer, and more connected life.

Follow HD on Twitter and Soundcloud, and buy gear from Chromat.

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Photos courtesy of the author

There's a bookstore in Brooklyn called All Eyes on Egipt. From a distance, the place looks like a Fisher-Price version of Cleopatra's palace. Housed in a narrow brownstone on Bushwick Avenue, charcoal paint and gold accents coat the exterior.

Inside, there are just a few shelves of merchandise. The first, a modestly-appointed book collection of conspiracy theory superstars (David Icke, Alex Jones, Milton William Cooper) is propped against a wall. The rest, in the center of the room, carry an array of self-printed booklets.

I wander in one afternoon, curious after passing a group of people dressed in lavish, Egyptian-style tunics filtering out the front door. I pick up one of the booklets, and leaf through a long, science fiction-inspired stream of consciousness. On page 15, I read a paragraph that traces Caucasian genealogy to "Flugelrods," beings that now live in a cavern beneath the Arctic. On page 84, I learn that Caucasian women once mated with jackals, "ancestor of today's dogs," and on Page 87, that the "pale man" still has a vestige proving this union: a tail.

Keeping a watchful eye over the store are two paintings of a man with dark skin and shallow eyes. Sensing, perhaps, how deeply weirded-out I am, a heavyset cashier emerges from behind a card table. She tells me she is "Nuwaubian," a member of the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, and the row of booklets I'm thumbing through hold the scriptures of her people. I point to one of the paintings.

"That's Dr. Malachi York," she says. "He wrote every last one of these."

If you've lived in Brooklyn for more than a few decades, you may remember the Nuwaubians. Originally called the Ansaaru Allah Community, and operating under the guise of a fringe, all-black Muslim separatist group in the 70s and 80s, the group changed its name to the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors in the early 90s, and shifted focus to extraterrestrial origin stories that place African Americans at the top of the universal totem pole.

The Nuwaubian system of beliefs is too convoluted to sum up in a sentence, but the basic premise is that while some races share a common ancestor with modern apes, dark-skinned humans were born of an ancient, superior alien species. Also central to Nuwaubianism is an obsession with Ancient Egypt, which the group believes was an all-black race. Years of archeological debate have never settled on a definitive answer for the race of Ancient Egyptians, though the Egyptians' own portrayal of themselves—on tombs and other artifacts—was of a mixed race.

Still, like some Christians co-opted the image of a white Jesus, the Nuwaubians have claimed Ancient Egypt as their own. Today, they wear a menagerie of Egyptian-style robes and accessories, and when it suits them, speak "Nubic," a pseudo-Egyptian language created by their leader, Dwight "Dr. Malachi" York.

York cut his teeth in the business of spiritual deceit in the 1970s. (And it was a business: Bill Osinki, a journalist who covered the Nuwaubians for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reported in 2002 that prospective followers were forced to disclose their bank account information before gaining entry.) At the time, Bushwick Avenue was gutted by arson, theft, and gun crime. By 1980, the neighborhood—then comprised almost entirely of black and Puerto Rican families—had a median household income below $7,000, according to census data.

Like much of the country, racial divisiveness plagued New York in the 60s and 70s. A gifted manipulator, York understood the pain the city's African American community was facing, and capitalized on it. In lectures, he reworked religious texts to favor ideas of black supremacy, and claimed every prophet—from Jesus to Buddha and Muhammad—were all "dark skinned, wooly haired" people.

Like Fard Muhammad captivated poor blacks in 1920s Detroit, York's message was well-received. Robert Rohan, a former Nuwaubian and native of New York, told me this was York's main triumph: convincing his followers they weren't the crime-plagued people the media cast them as. They were Gods.

"There was a sense of pride," Rohan said. "York was teaching an Afrocentric approach to creation, opposed to what I was used to seeing; white Jesus, white apostles, white Moses. When you see a leader in your community portraying spiritual figures as black, it speaks to you."

At one point, York owned 20 apartment buildings in Bushwick, where he housed around 500 people, according to information from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The leader exercised total control over his followers, dictating where members lived, who they could date, and when they could have sex. Followers were expected to spend their days peddling York's literature, and were beaten if they failed to meet their daily quotas, an SPLC report reads.

Rohan, who joined the Nuwaubians as a teenager, told me that every male in the community was also expected to perform "security" duties, which mostly involved standing on Bushwick Avenue with a large stick to intimidate passersby, he said. Physical abuse inside the community was frequent, he added, and the quickest way to a beating was to doubt the leader.

"It would be slander to say something negative about Malachi York. He was the divine teacher no matter what he did, and the repercussions could be severe," Rohan said. "If you saw something that didn't make sense, and were vocal about it, you would be talked about, beaten, and sometimes thrown out of the community."

As he got older, Rohan began to sense that "certain things weren't right." York encouraged teenage recruits to drop out of school, Rohan said, and expected his followers to attend frequent Q&A sessions, though his own presence was waning. Still, he remained devoted to the leader for 15 years, Rohan said, because York promised the Nuwaubians a better life.

"I was made to feel like I was working toward building unity as an African American," Rohan said. "That made me want to stay."

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Photo via Flickr user Mitch Jones

In 1993, York uprooted the entire community, and moved the Nuwaubians to to "Tama-Re," an Egyptian temple compound in Putnam County, Georgia ( aerial photos of the area, taken before its demolition in 2005, show towering, cartoonish Pyramid and Sphinx monuments). After the relocation, the Nuwaubians declared themselves a sovereign nation, and beefed up intimidation efforts — trading in the large sticks used to guard Bushwick Avenue for machine guns, according to reports.

The impetus for relocating more than 800 miles from the Nuwaubian headquarters is a mystery that has spanned decades, but it's been suggested that mounting pressure from authorities, instigated by possible arson that allowed the group to scoop up the properties that housed its members, may have led to the move.

In her book, The Nuwaubian Nation: Black Spirituality and State Control, Canadian journalist Susan J. Palmer writes that, at the time of the Georgia move, police were also investigating the murder of Horace Green, a Bushwick resident who made waves about the group's "takeover" of the neighborhood, and who was shot and killed near Bushwick Avenue in 1979. Green's murder was never solved.

The Nuwaubian's story gets even more bizarre. For nearly a decade, the group operated in relative harmony with Putnam County authorities. That changed in the late 90s when, according to Palmer's book, the Sheriff's office began to receive anonymous calls and letters claiming York was molesting children. In 2002, the FBI raided the 500 acre compound and arrested York and his "main wife" Kathy Johnson on suspicion of child abuse. At a hearing, witnesses testified that dozens of children, some as young as six, were forced to perform sex acts with both York (56) and Johnson (33). Johnson was given a two-year sentence, and York—indicted by a grand jury on 74 counts of child molestation and one count of rape, according to SPL Center—was sentenced to 135 years in a maximum-security prison. Another federal case charged York with racketeering and transporting children across state lines for sex.

After York's arrest, experts predicted his empire would quickly crumble. In reality, hundreds remain devoted to York today, convinced his imprisonment—as York has dutifully cried—is a consequence of white patriarchy run amok. Likewise, a handful of bookstores, all bearing the All Eyes on Egipt name, have popped up across the globe, with locations in Indianapolis, Williamston, North Carolina; Monticello, Georgia; Washington, D.C., Chicago; Detroit; London; Toronto; and elsewhere. The group even has a cyber presence, with an "official online bookstore" and an array of Malachi York fan sites.

I asked Rick Alan Ross, a cult expert who founded the Cult Education Institute, how York continues to influence his followers. For starters, Ross said, there is evidence that York (now 66 or 69—he has a false birth certificate) communicates with the Nuwaubians through letters and monitored prison visits. Likewise, he said, many Nuwaubians have spent their entire lives worshiping York and are convinced he is a martyr for their cause.

"York fed on racial feelings of the time, and for that matter, he still [does]," Ross said. "Black pride, black identity, 'we are chosen.' It's a very appealing message."

Rohan agrees. "A lot of the members, they're not bad people, they're just confused," he said. "Malachi York always taught that he was a sacrificial lamb. To them, he sacrificed himself for the congregation."

It's worth mentioning that while the original All Eyes on Egipt still stands, Bushwick Avenue is almost unrecognizable from York's heyday. Crime rates have plummeted, but a different battle has emerged: one of rising rents and big-time investors. It's a neighborhood where homes sell for over $1 million and warehouses for over $30 million. And it's a neighborhood that is pricing out long-time residents at a head-spinning rate.

This isn't news. Brooklyn's gentrification is one of the most talked-about phenomenons in the country. But for the Nuwaubians, who have for decades been duped into believing that white people are inherently evil, it's a sign of the end times. Other contentious issues like stop-and-frisk, racial profiling, and an out-of-touch police force—though not Brooklyn-specific—only deepen this narrative.

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Photo via Flickr user Rusty Tanton

In some of the All Eyes On Egipt outposts, members participate in weekly Q&A sessions about the man they call "Baba," "Dad," "Pops," "Master Explainer," and "Savior," and discuss how his teachings can be applied to current events. In Brooklyn, those meetings are held in a giant shed attached to the bookstore. In Georgia, they are videotaped and posted on YouTube. Like much of Nuwaubian literature, the talks broadcast extraordinary theories about the origins of man, the nature of reality and the apocalypse — in which the Nuwaubians' alien creators will come "pick up their children" and "wipe out" every Caucasian on the planet.

It's a message that, like Nuwaubianism's first incarnation, appeals to the racially disenfranchised. After all these years, it still has an audience.

The second time I visit All Eyes on Egipt, I come with questions. When I tell the cashier at All Eyes on Egipt that I'm a journalist, she raises her hand to wave me away. As I turn to leave, another woman—dressed in a black, too-big t-shirt with the words "God in the Flesh" in gold lettering—walks through the door.

I point to a book I purchased on my first visit, The Melanin-ite Children, which describes, among other things, how people with blonde hair and blue eyes descended from "Flugelrods": beings that now live in a cavern beneath the Antarctic. I ask if we can discuss the concepts in the book. The cashier chuckles, "That's a good one."

But before I can ask my first question, I am interrupted. Media is "one of the biggest forms of the devil," the woman tells me. "People of color get short changed so much." She mentions Reyhaneh Jabbari, the 26-year-old Iranian woman who was hanged in October for killing her alleged rapist.

"That's your sister!" the woman says. "You say you're a journalist, why aren't you writing about that?"

She leads me to the sidewalk outside, and we speak briefly about the state of the world. Reality, she says, is not what they teach you in school. And conventional religion? It only muddles reality. I agree, and attempt to draw parallels to Buddhism. But Buddhists, I explain, are taught to question everything. Even the Buddha himself. I ask if York allows his followers to question him. She ends the conversation, refusing to shake my hand.

Follow Kristen Bahler on Twitter.

[body_image width='1024' height='683' path='images/content-images/2015/02/25/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/25/' filename='the-80s-mexican-sci-fi-show-that-spawned-hollywoods-best-filmmakers-body-image-1424892366.jpg' id='30908']Emmanuel Lubezki. Photo via Flickr user disneyabc

The 2015 Academy Awards marked the second year in a row that Mexican filmmakers have taken home the Oscar for Best Director and Best Cinematography. On Sunday, Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu took home this year's Best Director and Best Original Screenplay awards. Last year Alfonso Cuarón won Best Director for his work on Gravity. To top it all off, the director of photography on both Birdman and Gravity, Emmanuel Lubezki, scored two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Cinematography.

Iñárritu, Cuarón, and Lubezki, along with fellow Oscar nominees Guillermo Del Toro (Pacific Rim), Guillermo Navarro (Pan's Labyrinth), and Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain) are all part of a generation of Mexican-born auteurs who have managed to make their mark on Hollywood. The origins of these goddamn gifted Mexican filmmakers can be traced back to 1988, with the premiere of La Hora Marcada (The Marked Hour), a Mexican television anthology series devoted to tackling experimental horror, science fiction, and urban legends from Latin America. Think of it as the Mexican answer to The Twilight Zone and a predecessor to Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker's episodic sci-fi sensation. La Hora Marcada had only one recurring character: a "woman in black" with a large hat and veil who wouldn't seem out of place on today's American Horror Story.

Cuarón started as an assistant director on the TV show, and Del Toro worked in special effects and makeup. The two young filmmakers bonded quickly over their creative differences after Cuarón directed his first episode for the series based on a Stephen King short story.

According to Cuarón, Del Toro called him up after watching his episode and bluntly criticized his adaptation. "If the story is so good, then why is your episode so bad?" Del Toro asked. If egos had played a role, the quip might have soured the two men's working relationship. Instead, Cuarón and Del Toro began a creative partnership that has lasted almost 30 years.

"I'll tell him if it's [garbage]," Del Toro told the Los Angeles Times. "That's what friends do."

La Hora Marcada was canceled in 1990, but not before Cuarón got the chance to write and direct six episodes. Some of Cuarón's most memorable Hora Marcada storylines involved an amusement park haunted by the ghosts of children and a young man who switches bodies with a serial killer. As for Del Toro, he ended up writing five episodes and directing six. His episodes tended to go more for a mind fuck rather than a straight-up horror story. One episode of La Hora Marcada shared Del Toro's take on a Soylent Green-inspired restaurant serving human meat, a time machine used for colonization, zombies meeting up at a fast food restaurant, and an alien invasion. Another of Del Toro's episodes tells the story of a seemingly friendly ogre who rescues a young girl from her abusive father only to bring her down to the sewer to eat her alive. The episode in particular has many parallels with Del Toro's Academy Award-nominated film Pan's Labyrith, about a girl who discovers nightmarish creatures while confronting the real-life horrors following the Spanish Civil War. Lubezki was responsible for the cinematography in the ogre episode and seven more Hora Marcada episodes, most of which were written and directed by Cuarón or Del Toro.

Although short-lived, La Hora Marcada gave young Mexican directors and filmmakers an outlet for exploring the horror genre on television in a country that is largely dominated by the nonstop production of telenovelas. For the most part, Mexican telenovelas have always had a predictable storyline template: the poor virginal ingénue, the wealthy, wicked family, the happily ever after. By sharp contrast, La Hora Marcada was a departure in form and subject matter, providing Cuarón, Del Toro, and Lubezki more creative freedom to experiment with storytelling and practice different filmmaking techniques.

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Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

"There was no variety of films and few options for talent. The industry was dominated by telenovelas and cheaply made films about escort bars," Mexican film critic Arturo Aguilar told NBC News. "But [these filmmakers] began making new, interesting films about issues such as HIV, experimental horror films, or dramas with different storytelling techniques."

After the series ended, there wasn't an immediate equivalent on Mexican television, so these filmmakers opted for making movies instead. Unbeknownst to them at the time, this would mark the beginning of the Mexican indie film renaissance of the 1990s. Cuarón went on to direct Solo con Tu Pareja, a quirky romantic dark comedy about AIDS and suicide that became an instant hit in Mexico. Del Toro then released his vampire horror movie, Cronos, which grabbed the attention of Harvey Weinstein and led to Del Toro's gig directing the giant-bugs-in-the-sewer thriller Mimic for Miramax. After completing the cinematography for Cuarón's Solo con Tu Pareja, Lubezki signed on to be the cinematographer for Como Agua Para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate), the critically acclaimed drama that helped to put Mexico on the global film map.

It was around this time that Lubezki introduced Cuarón and Del Toro to Iñárritu, who was working as a prominent rock radio DJ and had composed the score to four Mexican feature films. It wasn't until Iñárritu released Amores Perros, a gritty film that premiered to a standing ovation at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival and received an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, that he cemented his place as a Mexican auteur to watch.

"It opened the flood gates." Del Toro told the LA Times about Amores Perros.

Iñárritu went on to direct 21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful and of course, Birdman, his Oscar-winning film about a delusional and frantic actor going through a career menopause. Today, Iñárritu, Cuarón, and Del Toro are known as the "Three Amigos" in Hollywood, the most prominent ambassadors of the Mexican point of view in contemporary film.

[body_image width='800' height='531' path='images/content-images/2015/02/25/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/25/' filename='the-80s-mexican-sci-fi-show-that-spawned-hollywoods-best-filmmakers-body-image-1424892426.jpg' id='30909']Alejandro González Iñárritu on set. Photo via Focus Features, Wikimedia Commons

But it's cinematographer Lubezki who continues to be the connecting creative force between them. He introduced them, after all. Over the years Lubezki has depicting gritty real-life horrors like psychological tension, isolation, suicide, and the supernatural, mixed in with a distinctly Latin American affinity for magical realism. In his 1990 Hora Marcada episode, a man yearning for decides to commit suicide only to be convinced otherwise by his dead brother's angel, who has a dull day-to-day existence even in the after-life. Similarly, in Birdman, when Michael Keaton's character tries to regain his former glory, his superhero alter-ego pays him a visit. But instead of bringing him back down to Earth, the superhero taunts Keaton to jump off a building and fly. The theme resurfaces to more uplifting results in Gravity. After Sandra Bullock's character gives up all hope of finding her way back down to Earth and begins contemplating suicide, George Clooney's character appears, literally out of nowhere, to give her one last reason to live.

Lubezki worked with Cuarón on another Hora Marcada episode exploring how visits from the afterlife (whether spiritual or imaginary) have a role in assisting or preventing suicide. A man's tragic death separates him from his beloved, so he comes back as a ghost and possesses the body of another guy to try and convince his girlfriend to commit suicide so they could all be together in the after-life. Bizarre adolescent love triangles are a popular theme in Lubezki and Cuarón's work. Think of the steamy threesome in Y Tu Mama Tambien. To a certain degree, the theme even appears in the third Harry Potter film. Cuarón managed to create an eerie, morally ambiguous atmosphere in an otherwise family-friendly flick, making Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban the most critically acclaimed film in the franchise.

"Cuarón brought to the Potter franchise a quality curiously missing from the two previous films: magic," wrote movie critic Christopher Orr in The Atlantic.

It's magic that Cuarón learned alongside Lubezki and Del Toro while working on La Hora Marcada.

Follow Oscar Raymundo on Twitter.

[body_image width='798' height='546' path='images/content-images/2015/02/27/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/27/' filename='germany-plans-to-republish-mein-kampf-227-body-image-1425075904.jpg' id='31669']Photo via WikiMedia Commons

Earlier this week, Germany's Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) announced details of its plan to publish the first local German edition of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf since World War II. Scheduled for release in January 2016, the IfZ sees its project as a scholarly work, picking apart and pointing out the flaws within the ideological basis of Nazism. It will add over 1,250 pages of academic critique (and 4,000 annotations) to Hitler's original 748-page text, which first appeared in 1925 in the aftermath of the then-prisoner's failed 1923 Munich Beer Putsch uprising.

The government of the Free State of Bavaria, which holds the book's copyright, has blocked publication of the notorious tome in Germany for the past 70 years, but they never actually instated a law banning it. The German Supreme Court ruled in the 1980s that the possession and sale of the millions of copies printed before the war was perfectly legal (although Bavaria still gets to restrict access to copies in public reference collections). Instead, they have restricted new editions locally and tried to block copies internationally and online using their ownership of the book's copyright, which was seized along with many other Hitler assets in 1945. But as of December 31, 2015, the state's copyright will expire.

Still, the expiration doesn't mean that new editions will sail into the public sphere unopposed. State officials and citizens alike have for years been examining ways to either create a new legislative ban or to block the book's publication under national anti-Nazi and anti-defamation laws upon the expiration of the old de faction injunction. Even bodies that once supported controlled, scholastic editions like the IfZ's have now jumped on the opposition bandwagon, which makes it likely that sometime in the next couple of years we're going to see a legal or legislative spat over whether or when Mein Kampf can be banned outright in Germany.

The IfZ edition may be at the center of this rancor, as the first known proposed printing of the text and already the subject of some prior political intrigue. The edition was first proposed in 2009 as a collaboration between the IfZ and the government of Bavaria. It was intended as a means of pre-empting neo-Nazi editions of the book and widely disseminating a copy of the text that could be used as a Nazi-critical teaching tool to guide readers exposed to existing or new editions of the text. As of 2012, the government of Bavaria had allocated €500,000 (then $650,000) for the edition's production and promised to help publish the demystifying work.

But after a meeting with Holocaust survivors and representatives from Israel in 2013, the state decided against the project. They did, however, allow the IfZ to keep the allocated grant money. Then officials turned around and vowed to file legal complaints against anyone publishing Mein Kampf in Germany after their copyright expires. The IfZ decided to use the grant and their core budget to self-publish the text regardless.

As the copyright's lapse grew closer, politicians started thinking about a legislative ban.

"[The publication of a new German edition of Mein Kampf] has to be prevented with every legal means available," Social Democratic Party parliamentarian Burkhard Lischka told DW in 2012. "I think that sorry book has a permanent place in history's dustbin."

In the early summer of 2014, justice ministers from every German state convened a conference to discuss whether or not to issue a total ban on the book. Most conceded that digital and foreign copies made any ban futile. But they still resolved to continue seeking some kind of post-copyright restriction on Mein Kampf, especially on unannotated replications of the original.

Some believe there'll be grounds to ban the text—which contains loads of discriminatory and paranoid anti-Semitic statements—under Paragraph 130 of the German Legal Code, which restricts the publication of any works deemed defamatory or dangerous by the nation's courts.

"The original text has a clearly discriminative character with regard to the relevant laws," Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Hermann told DW in 2014.

It's also possible that laws banning Nazi symbols or statements (like the heil salute, holocaust denials, or swastika) in Germany could come into play, given that many, including IfZ project head Christian Hartmann, see Mein Kampf as an archetypal Nazi emblem. But these laws are finicky. For instance, filmmakers are allowed to use swastikas in their work if they're meant to advance art, but the symbols are banned in video games.

Tim Hoesmann, a German lawyer, explained to DW that the IfZ's critical edition may slide past these laws as a work of valuable historical research, heavier on critique than on the original text.

"Versions of Hitler's Mein Kampf that include commentary will surely be judged differently than a printed version with no commentary," he said.

For their part, Bavarian officials have indicated that they won't press a legal claim against the IfZ's edition because they do indeed see it as a valid work of historical research. But this isn't to say that some other state body or civilian group won't put the book up for legal review, or that the courts won't make allowances for the IfZ version, then ban reprints of the original text.

It seems likely that some level of qualified ban will come in place under existing or new laws, given how primed and fearful Germany is of resurgent interest in Hitler and anti-Semitism now.

The nation's been a bit spooked by how well uncritical copies of Mein Kampf are selling online and around the world, as well as the recent use of Nazi imagery in Germany's anti-Islamic, nationalist Pegida movement and the clear rise of anti-Semitism in the nation over the past couple of years. This has created a charged situation that politicians and justices will be eager to keep as uncontaminated by Mein Kampf as possible.

One way or another, the IfZ edition will likely make it onto shelves, given the sheltering effect of its predominately critical, academic content. It's just unclear if they'll have to make it through a court case first. And whether or not they do, any non-academic edition will likely face further scrutiny, if not a new, non-copyright-contingent ban. In short, a Mein Kampf-based shitstorm is brewing in about a year's time—it's just a matter of when and how exactly it will touch off.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

[body_image width='2000' height='2000' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425225532.jpg' id='31766'] Patrick May

Leonard Nimoy was the coolest guy ever. In the wake of his passing, a lot of the more obscure things that he did have been brought up. Sure, he anchored Star Trek and was easily the best actor on the original show. He also directed the best Star Trek movie and appeared on bothThe Simpsons and Futurama. He released some notable records and wrote an autobiography called I Am Not Spock which he followed up with I Am Spock.

Did you know that he recorded an album of him reading Ray Bradbury short stories? Did you know that he did a photo series of overweight nude women to try to push the idea of "fat acceptance"? Leonard Nimoy did a lot of really cool things outside of Star Trek but he always had a good sense of humor. He never seemed to resent Star Trek for being the most prominent thing in his career.

I asked illustrators to draw pictures memorializing the late actor. Here are fifteen. It would have been good if at least one of these drawings didn't Nimoy as Spock, but it's fun to draw him as Spock and I think he would have been fine with it.

[body_image width='1000' height='717' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425224873.jpg' id='31750'] Penelope Gazin

[body_image width='1000' height='1023' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425224914.jpg' id='31751'] Sabrina Elliott

[body_image width='1000' height='1000' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425224944.jpg' id='31752'] Chris George

[body_image width='1000' height='1400' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425224974.jpeg' id='31753']Tina Lugo

[body_image width='1000' height='1000' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425224998.jpg' id='31754']Andrew Neal

[body_image width='1000' height='1000' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425225038.jpg' id='31755'] Rob Corradetti

[body_image width='1000' height='1139' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425225079.jpg' id='31756'] Nick Gazin

[body_image width='602' height='649' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425225160.png' id='31757'] Ben Jones

[body_image width='1000' height='1000' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425225199.jpg' id='31758'] Kelsey Niziolek

[body_image width='1000' height='1000' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425225250.jpg' id='31760'] Jordan Specher

[body_image width='1000' height='1131' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425225280.jpg' id='31761'] Ryan Humphrey

[body_image width='1000' height='994' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425225310.jpg' id='31762'] Anna Wanda Gogusey

[body_image width='1000' height='1247' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425225363.jpg' id='31763'] Dustin Mertz

[body_image width='1000' height='1000' path='images/content-images/2015/03/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/01/' filename='illustrators-pay-tribute-to-leonard-nimroy-body-image-1425225386.jpg' id='31764'] Robin Eisenberg

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Photo courtesy of Leanne Wijnsma

Leanne Wijnsma is digging. A trained designer living in Amsterdam, Wijnsma has been digging tunnels with her bare hands for two years, in the city center and all around Europe. After a day of digging, Wijnsma refills her tunnels with dirt and goes home. Her ongoing project, Escape, stems from the familiar desire to get away from our computer screens and the human instinct to go into the earth. This year, Wijnsma will invite others to go tunneling with her in Amsterdam, as a form of modern therapy. VICE spoke with Wijnsma to learn more about her artistic practice, her decision to move to the woods (and then move back), and her affinity for digging holes in the ground.

VICE: Have you always been an artist?
Leanne Wijnsma: I'm a graphic designer. I was doing a lot of editorial jobs but something was really missing in my practice. I really like responding to other people's problems, and the world was a bit too big to not come up with my own content. The work I make now is really autonomous, so you could see me as an artist but it still feels like I am a designer, designing a structure in a way. For me, it's quite clear: a story that I'm telling, an expression or experience that I'm trying to translate into a visual performance.

When did you begin this project?
The project that [Escape] came out of was called Refresh. In 2011 or 2012, I moved from Amsterdam to a cabin in the woods, because I was totally fed up with the city. There are so many expectations and art openings every evening. I couldn't walk on the street not seeing my friends; I wasn't anonymous anymore. I needed some focus, so I moved far away alone, to find focus in my work. There, I started digitizing my garden. I found a lot of focus in the woods, and I wanted to share this focus somehow. Because I still had internet down there, I thought I'd start some sort of blog where I'd post the garden, scanned. So I made a whole grid out of the garden and scanned it. You can compare it [to Escape] quite well because the scanning is also about action. When you think about it, it's stupid, it's so much work, you're sitting there on your knees. But I had to find something. Of course, what you realize is that I had to move back to the city. As an artist it's also quite boring and inspirationless to be so far away. I really missed the impulses and the chaos.

How much time did you spend in the woods?
Only six months. After six months, I moved into Amsterdam and out of that came Escape. It's a temporary escape. Moving to the cabin is quite poetical, but the tunnels only take a day and instead of going to the woods to find nature I just find nature straight underneath my feet in the city by digging. There's no nature in the city.

During my time in Amsterdam, I remember there being lots of beautiful parks.
Parks? Maybe, but in the Netherlands there are hardly any—or let's say not any—nature. Everything is planned. If there's a tiny bit of nature it's because we said, "Oh, hey, we should have some nature here." So it's all design.

[body_image width='638' height='358' path='images/content-images/2015/02/25/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/25/' filename='an-amsterdam-artist-is-digging-tunnels-in-the-ground-to-escape-the-modern-world-body-image-1424890817.jpg' id='30895']

A 3D scan of one of Wijnsma's tunnels. Scan courtesy of Plan 3D Berlin

How did you get the idea to dig these tunnels?
It wasn't really an idea. It was more of an instinct, a mood. I was researching a lot and writing about liquid times in a liquid society. I held a lot of interviews with friends and people around the world, people who somehow couldn't connect to their own location or people that were really experiencing FOMO, fear of missing out. I was really into that kind of content, that kind of stress, that feeling that you always want more and you cannot have it really. People between 20 and 35 always expect more, because we were raised with so much freedom. I was able to choose myself what I wanted to do; I was able to choose my own studies. I could choose to live in Amsterdam or New York or Japan or whatever, so it's really about these kinds of choices that we have to make ourselves and that sounds really great and it is great but it's quite a responsibility.

I really tried to make work about that feeling, with visuals and film, but I got really stuck. I was just laying in bed thinking, I just want to escape this and do something with my hands. I'm just in front of the computer all the time, searching for more info, Skyping with people for more info. I just want to dive into the ground. I just want to be an animal, really autonomous like an animal. Sure, we are free, but we are free behind our computers. I just wanted to dig. So it is really simple; it wasn't really an idea, it was an instinct.

When did you start?
I started digging in 2013. I did some tunnels and recorded them, and then last summer it started to get running a bit, so I dug tunnels in Berlin and Brussels. Some festivals and exhibitions invited me to dig but that was really difficult because of safety restrictions. That's why I just really do it for myself. I never ask for permission.

Have you ever gotten in trouble, then?
No, luckily not. In Brussels once, a police officer came to me and asked "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm escaping and trying to find freedom." He was more worried about the hole, and as long as I promised that I would close the tunnel after I finished it, he was happy. He said, "I'll come back again today and see if everything is all right." At the end of the day, I was just done, so I was filling up the tunnel.

How do you decide where to make the tunnels and how big to make them?
I start by making one hole. Then I inspect the soil, and it really depends on how dry it is, how stony it is, how safe it is. If it's really, really hard, the tunnel can be shorter. If the soil is firm, I can go for it and make it longer. I get really excited about it. Now they're all about the same length, between 2-4 meters.

[body_image width='638' height='358' path='images/content-images/2015/02/25/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/25/' filename='an-amsterdam-artist-is-digging-tunnels-in-the-ground-to-escape-the-modern-world-body-image-1424890780.jpg' id='30894']

A tunnel in Berlin. Photo courtesy of Leanne Wijnsma

You're doing a tunneling workshop in April. Why did you decide to invite others to dig with you?
I just launched it because I hear from so many people who talk about the same kind of problems, these issues of trying to find something stable. So I just made it a therapy or a workshop. I'm really curious what kind of people will end up doing this, also children, because it's already in their nature to get dirty and dig.

You mentioned the "fluid city." What is that?
The fluid city is the opposite of something really fixed. Fluid just means that it's not stable, that it can dissolve, that it can run away, that you can't really grasp it. There are so many opportunities and possibilities that everything is unclear.

So tunneling is the opposite.
Yes, it's such an almost stupid goal. It's so simple. You go into it and the only thing you want is the only thing you need: to reach the other side.

I think we all have the same goal in life, which is to become good at what you do. To work hard. I think a lot of our jobs nowadays are funnelled in front of the computer. It's important to also go out and basically do sports. Digging a tunnel is way more animalistic and basic; it's really important to listen to your intuition and take a break. As soon as you do, it's way easier to focus again. After a day of digging, I'm really dying to open my laptop again and start working. It's easy to forget about what our instincts really mean because if you're only online or in the city, it's so easy to end up in a structure. Every now and then it's good to think: Do I want this? What things are really important to me? I would not move to the woods again. But really, a good dig once a month will do a lot.

[vimeo src='//player.vimeo.com/video/110585626' width='100%' height='360']

Do you have plans for the future of Escape?
I'm planning a lot of new tunnels for the upcoming year. I'll also go back to Berlin to work with 3D scanners. Some guys there scanned one of my tunnels, so that the tunnel became a 3D image that you can see online. You can crawl through the tunnel from behind the screen, so I'm researching that a bit to see if there's some meaning there. Can you really just stay online and dig online? I'm trying to print the 3D structures, so that the tunnels become an object again, printed objects that you can crawl through. That way it becomes more of a user product.

My aim is that other people will be able to experience this, that this behavior can be communicated within an experience. I'm also researching caves and making plans for digging a bigger structure underground, where connections are lost. For example, if you're in the subway, you cannot call. There's no email; you're underground. So the connections are lost. In the past we had bunkers underneath our houses to hide from danger. I think it would be really great if we had some kind of cave underneath our house as a luxury place to hide, where you could escape the impulses. Where nothing could enter.

Follow Jennifer Schaffer on Twitter. For more on Wijnsma's practice, see her Escape and Refresh websites.

I first covered the Conservative Political Action Conference was in 2012, back in the early days of the last Republican presidential primary, when Rick Santorum still seemed like a semi-credible option, and Ron Paul was leading his guerilla takeover of backwater local GOP executive boards. Heady with intra-party rivalries, and still deep in the throes of the Tea Party fever dream, the annual conservative hoedown was at peak l, propping up the darkest elements of the right-wing fringe.

Herman Cain was there, decrying the "gutter politics" that had exposed his habit of harassing women who weren't his wife in a keynote speech. There was a panel on "The Failure of Multiculturism: How the Pursuit of Diversity Is Weakening the American Identity," featuring two prominent white nationalists, and another on "Islamic Law in America," about the creeping scourge of sharia in US courts. The whole thing reached a frenzied peak when a wild-eyed Andrew Breitbart marched outside to go "toe-to-toe" with Occupy Wall Street protesters camped outside the venue, and had to be pulled away by security.

Three years later, a pack of CPAC attendees once again went toe-to-toe with protestors, but this time, the protesters were white nationalists, members of the neo-Confederate League of the South up to picket the conservative gathering. As the event wound down on Saturday, young activists, sporting their proudly CPAC lanyards and Stand With Rand pins, came out to confront the demonstrations, starting a chanting duel that quickly devolved into heated arguments on the sidewalk outside the convention center.

"You actually think the US should separate into different states?" one kid asked a bearded protester carrying a sign that read "Obama Hates White People...And So Does The GOP." "It's just...I mean...," the kid struggled to find the words. "It's disgusting," his companion volunteered. Across the street another blazered CPACer shook his head dejectedly. "I'm sorry about this," he told a nearby photographer. "I'm from 'Nova. We don't do that there."

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A member of the League of the South demonstrates outside CPAC Saturday. Photo by Kalley Erickson

Obviously, this is a reasonable reaction to any Neo-Confederate disruption, but it also hints at a tonal shift that could be detected throughout the three-day event. Once reliably cuckoo, CPAC was disarmingly relaxed—even reasonable—this year, notably lacking in the kind of internecine flame-throwing, and racist dog-whistles that have characterized the conference in the past. Two years after the Republican National Committee warned the party that it would have to be a lot nicer if it ever wanted to win another election, grassroots conservatives seem to have gotten the message.

Under new leadership, the American Conservative Union, which hosts CPAC, made a concerted effort to tone down the spectacle in 2015, and project a sleeker, more inclusive vibe. There were no sinister Kirk Cameron documentaries, no biting immigration tirades from Ann Coulter. Mike Huckabee, the leading evangelical prospect for 2016, didn't attend this year's conference. Rick Santorum, another Christian conservative favorite, talked mostly about foreign policy, rather than social issues—though most of the audience wandered out during his speech anyway.

Amazingly, even Sarah Palin veered away from her usual script, giving a thoughtful speech about the challenges facing veterans when they return home. " America hands over her sons and her daughters in service with the promise that they're going to be taken care of," she said. "Well we, their mothers and their fathers and their husbands and their wives, we're here to collect on the promises made. We can't wait for D.C. to fix their bureaucratic blunders. This bureaucracy is killing our vets." Then, to everyone's surprise, she proposed a series of very reasonable ways Congress could address the issue. Last year, she read her own version of Dr. Seuss.

Of course, CPAC wasn't totally devoid of the fringe. On Friday, for example, hidden-camera activist James O'Keefe hired someone to walk around his party dressed as Osama bin Laden. And in what was probably the highlight of the weekend, Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson went on an extended riff about STDs, or what he likes to call "the revenge of the hippies."

"I don't want you to come down with a debilitating disease. I don't want you to die early. You're disease-free and she's disease-free, you marry, you keep your sex right there," Robertson informed an afternoon audience. "I'm trying to help you, for crying out loud. America, if I didn't care about you, why would I bring this up?"

For the most part, though, the conference was lucid, even normal. Everywhere you looked, Republicans were talking about policy ideas and proposals that could appeal beyond the ultra-conservative grassroots activists in attendance. CPAC organizers, long resentful of the overwhelming presence of young, libertarian-minded activists at the annual confab, seemed to embrace them this year, hosting talks on issues like asset forfeiture, criminal justice reform, and digital currency.

In a marijuana legalization debate on the main stage Thursday, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who ran for president on the Libertarian ticket in 2012, gave an impassioned attack on prohibition, at one point faking a heart attack to prove some point. "Having a debate about marijuana legalization is like having a debate about whether the sun is going to come up tomorrow. The sun is going to come up. Marijuana is going to be legalized," Johnson declared, to raucous cheers. ""Conservatives ought to embrace the fact that these are people making their own decision, he added.

Democrats laughed off the idea that CPAC was broadening its appeal beyond the fringe. "If CPAC is trying to be more inclusive, they sure have a weird way of showing it," Democratic National Committee spokesman Rob Flaherty told VICE. "Its attendees loudly supported Civil Rights Act skeptic Rand Paul, gave an award to proud homophobe Phil Robertson, and once again attempted to exclude the Log Cabin Republicans. If this is what inclusivity looks like, the Republican Party should be embarrassed...and worried."

After years of demanding strict ideological purity from Republican candidates, grassroots activists at CPAC seemed to have tamed their cannibalistic impulses somewhat, making efforts to expand the movement. Even former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who took a beating from other speakers, as well as a noisy contingent of booers, managed to engage skeptics in a lively Q&A Friday. And while all of the likely 2016 candidates who spoke affirmed their opposition to same-sex marriage, gay Republicans were publicly welcomed to the conference after years of being snubbed by conference organizers.

As The Nation's Michelle Goldberg suggests, the sudden turn toward even-keeled professionalism could be problematic for Democrats, who have based their entire election strategy on the notion that Republicans are crazy extremists who hate women, gays, and poor people. That argument is less effective if conservative candidates can sound reasonable, and avoid issues that alienate those voters.

"A preoccupation with social issues destroyed us in 2012," said Gregory Angelo, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, the conservative gay rights group that was initially excluded from CPAC but eventually invited to speak on a panel. "We left out these issues in 2014," he added, "and we won everywhere. Republicans need to remember what happened in 2014, and keep that momentum going."

At this point, it's not clear how far will go in helping to rebrand the GOP. But as Republicans seek to expand the party, it's a sign that conservatives might be willing to sacrifice some of their crazier elements in order to appeal to a broader swath of voters. "I don't think the Republican Party is as in line with those louder voices as some might think— I think the trend is going well," said Armand Cortellesso, a 30-year-old activist from Polk County, Florida. "Nobody is going to listen to your economic policy if you start off by saying that everyone isn't equal in the first place."

Follow Grace on Twitter

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Photo via Flickr user Kevin Dooley

My friend Robin Scott, a nerdy trans woman, recently told me about a night out. As she sat down to dinner with nine other trans women, an older British woman at the next table asked, "Hello, do you mind if I take a picture of you? You're just so unusual."

"We said, 'No, we wouldn't be comfortable with that,'" Robin recalled. "And for the rest of the night we were like, that's some offensive bullshit. None of us wanted that. That's traumatic to some folks. But you go to a [comics] convention in costume and you get exactly that script, but that's considered polite there. [Cosplay] gives you a little bit of freedom to experiment and do what you want."

The intersection between cosplay and gender identity has long fascinated me. As a cis woman, I have cosplayed as a male character and have intentions to cosplay as another very soon. I was interested to learn more about the trans experience of cosplay. With gender experimentation so common, could cosplay itself be just a little bit queer?

Ellen Kirkpatrick, a PhD student at Kingston University in London, is doing her dissertation on identity, cosplay, and superheroes, and in her MPhil, she specifically focused upon trans identities.

"I was actually looking at the same sort of issues," said Kirkpatrick, "How cosplayers played with the model of identity; how, in the superhero genre, there's this passing backward and forward between superhero and alter ego and superhero again. The same ideas come up in trans identities, superhero identities, and cosplay identities: visuality of the body, changing identities, and people's practices—they change names, locations, they change the way they look, the way they talk, the way their body moves."

Cosplay may act as an environment in which trans people can interrogate the boundaries of gender, or experiment with a new name and a new look that differs from their current presentation. To my mind, cosplay seemed like a potential opportunity for an individual to test the waters before they come out.

LGBT author and activist J. Skyler isn't so sure.

Skyler is a transgender woman of color and about as nerdy as they come. She writes the column "LGBT Visibility" for Comicosity and has recently published two articles on ComicsAlliance about transphobia and gender non-conformity in comics. Skyler revealed that, while she hoped to cosplay as Storm one day, she didn't know a single trans woman, either in person or online, who had cosplayed before.

"I've only known two other trans woman personally—as in those I've actually met face-to-face. To my knowledge, neither of them were into comic books or any other medium connected to cosplay. Of those I interact with online, plenty are heavily invested in comics and other fandoms but I've never seen any of them discuss cosplay specifically.

"A lot of people like to assume cosplay is a friendly all-inclusive environment but those of us who are a part of one or more marginalized groups know better. Women of all backgrounds endure all sorts of harassment and both men and women of color often get ridiculed for cosplaying characters outside of their race. I've witnessed children with disabilities in cosplay being mocked by adult men. I can only imagine the kind of hostility trans women would face for daring to cosplay," Skyler told VICE.

This isn't an uncommon experience when it comes to cosplay. While more and more cons are beginning to create policies that protect cosplayers from harassment, that's only the first step in what's really a cultural problem. As a black cosplayer, I go to cons ready for a fight and typically expect that I will get less positive feedback for my cosplay any time that I choose a character outside of my race. Even though I'm comfortable enough to risk that kind of experience, there are many other black fans who aren't.

Skyler pointed out that it has taken an enormous effort to get cons to consider the safety and concerns of cis women. She's skeptical that transgender issues are ever considered in developing con policy and generally feels that the nerd community is far, far behind compared to the mainstream. She cited the awful comments section on her articles as examples.

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Photo via Flickr user David Levinson

"Usually, the only way to avoid criticism," said Skyler, "is if your costuming is on the level of Yaya Han and most people just aren't that invested. For most, cosplay is a temporary escapism to indulge in sporadically—and even then it takes a degree of time, planning and cost. It's not an easily accessible activity for all, least of all trans women."

While the existence of the Cosplaying While Trans Tumblr suggests there are in fact trans people in the cosplaying community, it was difficult to find a trans person who had cosplayed since coming out. Then there was Robin.

Robin Scott is a white New York City artist by day and a nerd by night. I met her a few years ago through a mutual friend and was invited to her Saturday morning screenings of Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series. Though she hasn't cosplayed since coming out, she has every intention of doing so in the near future.

"I'm going to FlameCon—New York's first LGBT con—in June," said Robin. "I backed the Kickstarter and reserved an Artist's Table, so theoretically I'm going to be presenting my tarot cards and giving free readings. But I'm definitely planning to do a Yeoman Rand costume for [the con]."

For those of you who aren't up on your Star Trek, Yeoman Janice Rand is one of the primary characters from Star Trek: The Original Series. For Robin, Star Trek and cosplay played a key role in her coming out and transitioning process.

"Cosplay was an initial route, in a way, toward figuring out what I wanted to do with my gender. There was a party last February where I wore a skant. Do you know what a skant is?" I didn't.

She explained, "On Star Trek: The Next Generation, they did this thing that I thought was really cool. They said, 'Well, we're going to have these women wearing these short little skirt uniforms, but if we're in the glorious 24th century, totally non-sexist future, then we're going to have the men sometimes wear them too.' So, [before transitioning], I thought, OK, cool, I can wear sort of a skirt thing and still be a guy while it still being sort of a genderqueer space. And that was kind of like a first step for me."

Robin also shared that, for a month or two, she even identified her gender as skant before moving on to identifying as female. She still has the skant and appreciates it, but said that she wouldn't wear it now "because it's kind of masculine, right?" Robin described, in the past, cosplaying as Tony Stark and initially planning to dress as Captain Kirk, but ultimately balking when she found that there was something about it that bothered her.

"In retrospect, it made me kind of feel dysphoric. It helped me figure it out enough to say that it wasn't what I wanted."

I asked her about feeling safe as a trans woman when cosplaying. She agreed that, while her own small nerd community is great, she doesn't know any trans women who would feel comfortable enough to be out and in costume. In her support group, there is one other nerdy trans woman who used to cosplay as the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who and even did a fan video while in costume. But, according to Robin, this woman said that she could not imagine doing that cosplay now.

"I mean, I'm kind of weird. I don't care," said Robin. "I have nothing to lose ultimately. My life is not endangered by being out, which is a privilege. But the same cannot be said for most other trans women. The fact that I have the privilege, that I can be out, that I can talk to people about being out, that I can be proud and honest—that and just being at a convention are the most activist things I can do. If I go to anything other than FlameCon, just cosplaying as a woman, that's kind of big."

When I show up to cosplay Superboy with my natural, curly, black hair—that's a political act. When Robin rolls up to FlameCon in her Star Trek cosplay, in my mind, that's a political act too.

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I contacted Janet Bruesselbach, who is currently working on a project called Daughters of Mercury. It's a Kickstarter-funded endeavor in which she does full-length oil paintings of trans women. I hoped that Janet might have encountered a cosplaying woman of color through her project and she put me in contact with Veronica Sanderson-Smith. She's a trans woman studying programming at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Though she hasn't cosplayed at a mainstream convention since coming out, Veronica has still done a lot of cosplay among family and friends.

"Before coming out," she said, "I would stick to black characters since they were underrepresented at cons—Luke Cage, Blade, Falcon, John Stewart. Since coming out, I have been a bit more creative with my ideas and less [concerned about] what people think, so I do black versions of popular female heroes. It ruffles the feathers of the hardcore comic nerd crowd, but I don't care."

Though she says cosplay did not play a role in her coming out process, it was certainly involved in her finding her true gender identity.

Considering the lengths I had to go to find trans cosplayers—and considering how much support marginalized groups can get from networking—I wondered what a trans cosplay community might look like. As J. Skyler mentioned, issues of safety still loom for trans people at conventions.

"I can't say that I feel safe now," Veronica agreed. "I'm perceived more as a sex object than a person. I see what goes on and it needs to stop. No one should be harassed when they are just trying to have fun."

Veronica was enthusiastic about the idea of a trans cosplay network of sorts and said that she would love to be a part of it. Robin, however, is less eager to make too much of it. She's interested in the idea of having meet-ups at different conventions, but thinks that most trans people just want to be cosplayers rather than being called out as trans cosplayers.

"If I wanted anything at a convention as Yeoman Rand," Robin said, "It'd be, 'Damn, look at that hot Yeoman Rand.' Not, 'damn, that trans woman is playing Yeoman Rand and she almost looks female.' That's kind of scarring. I don't want anyone to clock me. Not if I can help it."

Just like there is no single way to cosplay, there is no single way to be trans. Veronica is happy to smash the limits of gender and race in cosplay, while Robin remains focused on celebrating her womanhood through her cosplay. Still, the two agree: before anything, cosplay has to be fun.

Veronica told me, "I'm there to have a good time and I pretty much don't care what people have to say about my cosplay."

"Getting to be female is a celebration for me," said Robin. "Having to be male is a punishment. I wouldn't do it. If I'm going to cosplay, I'm going to cosplay something that makes me feel good."

Follow J. A. Micheline on Twitter.

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Photos via Flickr user r_sykes

I love cats. I live with two: Mama Cat and Major Tom Cat. I've also spent years on antidepressants and over-prescribed benzodiazepines (Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan, etc. for all you non-pillheads), but after successfully weaning myself off those addictive fuckers I now rely on natural substances for relaxation. A history of pharmaceuticals plus the ownership of multiple felines does indeed equal one crazy cat lady.

A few weeks ago I had a beautiful nymph with a nose ring standing in my kitchen. As I poured food for Mama and Tom, she told me about her professional cat-sitting days in college. Often she had to crumble antidepressants and Xanax into the kitties' food. It was important that the cats didn't miss a dose or else they would withdraw. Turns out, there are cats out there who have experienced the same pill dependency as me.

As watched Mama and Tom lick each other's butts, I decided to learn more about kitty pharmaceuticals. I spoke with Dr. Patrick Mahaney, a holistic veterinarian specializing in acupuncture/pain management, to learn more about depressed cats and how he would treat them.

VICE: Can cats really get depressed like humans do?

Dr. Patrick Mahaney: Sure. A common experience that can make animals depressed is when they lose one of their partners. Another animal in the house dies, and they'll get depressed. Sometimes it leads to real health problems; I don't recommend just throwing triglycerides or antidepressants at everything. [Doctors] can try to do behavior modification with animals that are depressed, where we spend time socializing them. If it's a cat, you can still get them out and about by putting a leash on them and walking around.

You mentioned the death of an animal partner. My mom's cat Gomez just died, and now his sister, Matilda, is all alone. What else could be triggers for depression?
A kid goes away to college or someone gets divorced, or even when there's relationship problems or financial problems. Your pets can sense your behavior.

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What are the downsides of medicating your pet with an antidepressant?
There's a high level of side effects associated with these medications. There could be a sedative or lethargic effect, or they won't have as much energy as a result of the medication so they may not eat as well as they should. Or there could even be vomiting or diarrhea as a result. That's why it's very important that we have a baseline of what's going on in the body as a result of medication.

Are there specific antidepressants for cats or do they take the same brand names as humans?
There are actually. There are veterinary-specific medications that help animals. There is a drug that is called Clomipramine and there's a veterinary medicine of it called Clomicalm, and that's for things like separation anxiety. But there are other pets that for separation anxiety that will take a drug just like people take which is Fluoxetine, also known as Prozac.

How long do cats usually stay on this stuff?
They could actually be on it for life. It depends on the situation that causes the anxiety and how it can be resolved. If they're constantly under stress in the home environment, and we're not addressing that, they might need to be on medication for life. I [treat] a dog that has separation anxiety and has to take a version of Prozac. We also use acupuncture and Chinese herbs.

What is some depressed body language to watch for?
Your cat could be sleeping more. Instead of coming and greeting you, your cat might start hiding in a secluded spot, perhaps in a closet or under a bed. They might not walk around as much; they could spend a lot of time lying down. We could see appetite changes where they start to refuse their food. Especially with cats, if they start losing weight, there could be an underlying problem like kidney stones or cancer or liver failure.

Could a cat develop a pill addiction like humans could?

Well, they're probably not going to be able to open the bottle as easily. Probably not, but that's why they always want to use our medicine responsibly. Collaborate with your vet to make sure your pet is showing a response. Pets can't dose themselves like people would.

Follow Sophie Saint Thomas on Twitter.

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Photo by Flickr user David Kinney

In the Hidden Language, Nat Towsen interviews an insider of a particular subculture in order to examine the terms and phrases created by that subculture to serve its own needs. This is language innate to an insider and incomprehensible, if not invisible, to an outsider.

Bruce Pandolfini speaks with the familiar tone of an uncle telling stories. The language of chess is second nature to him, so he takes care to separate chess terminology from everyday speech. When we met, he had just come from a tournament; we talked over lunch before he had to head off to give a private lesson.

A Brooklyn native, Pandolfini rose to the rank of Master in competitive chess before leaving the tournament circuit to give lessons full time in 1972, "during [Bobby] Fischer's rise to the top." He claims to have given more lessons than anyone else, though fully admits he's never done the research to back that assertion ("maybe someone in Russia has me beat," he allows). He published his first chess book, Let's Play Chess, in 1980 and soon signed a nine-book contract with Simon & Schuster, making his name synonymous with chess books.

Explaining his game's terminology can be confusing, Pandolfini told me, because it often has different meaning to players than it does to the average person. He carefully explained those differences and highlighted some of the more interesting words and phrases from the world of chess.

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Photo by Brian Killigrew

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Brackets denote paraphrasing. Everything else is in Pandolfini's words.

Pawn: n. The smallest and least valuable unit in chess. On occasion, however, once it reaches the last row, it is converted to something else, [usually] a queen. Thus the lowliest unit can be raised to the highest.

Promotion: n. When you advance a pawn to the last row, you have to change it into something. Usually, you change it into a queen.

Underpromotion: n. If you change a pawn into anything less valuable than a queen, sometimes a knight, [for strategic purposes].

Stalemate: n.
1. In real life: You're balancing against the opposition; neither side can make progress.
2. In chess: The game is over [and drawn, because one player cannot move].

Checkmate: n. The end of a chess game.

Zugzwang: n. A situation where neither player wants to move. Whoever moves makes a concession that the other side can exploit. Usage: Most players don't use "zugzwang" to mean that neither player wants to move; they usually use it to mean that just one player doesn't want to move.

Squeeze: n. (technical) zugzwang. Usage: Exclusively refers to a situation involving both players.

A Pawn's Lust To Expand: n. A pawn advances up the board and becomes more powerful until it promotes. Etymology: Coined by the chess master.

Kibbitzer: n. Someone who interferes with games by making comments... always has an opinion on something, usually wrong—or messes up the game in some way. He has nothing to lose.

Patzer: n. A very weak player. Someone who always falls for traps. Usually plays very quickly and automatically.

Fish: n. Another weak player. e.g. "He's a fish, I can beat him easily."

Scholar's Mate: n. A four-move check mate. Usage: I always jokingly say I think very few scholars use it these days.

Play For The Center: v. Trying to guard, control, occupy, and influence the squares in the center of the board. Eventually one hopes to station pieces there, without having to move them away because from the center pieces have greater mobility, they can do more.

Ahead On Time:
1. adj. Having more pieces in action than the opponent does.
2. adj. Being able to control the flow of play because one has the initiative.
3. adj. [Being able to] achieve something before someone else does, such as a pawn race [a situation where two pawns are competing to be promoted.]

Tempo: n. A unit of time.

Fried Liver Attack: n. An attack when white sacrifices a knight in the Two Knights Defense. Etymology: It's so named because it was played by an Italian master in the 1600s while eating fried liver.

THE TAKEAWAY

Some chess terms ( checkmate, stalemate, and pawn, most commonly) have made their way into everyday speech already. Zugzwang is a perfect word for describing a situation in which taking action will actually worsen your situation (plus it's a lot of fun to say out loud). Kibbitzers, who give bad and unwanted advice, certainly exist outside of the chess world, as do patzers, who fall into common traps without thinking.

An underpromotion could refer to someone taking a job or position at a lower pay grade that provides more opportunities or a better living condition. We should all try to play for the center: focus on controlling the things that matter so that everything else falls into place. A pawn's lust to expand can easily describe the drive of an unknown person with little power who nonetheless drives forward to succeed in their field. And we can use ahead in time to refer not to the clock, but being ahead in opportunities.

FURTHER READING

Bruce Pandolfini has published more than 30 books on chess, including the expansive Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess. Readers can submit their own chess questions to be answered in his column on Chess.com. He is also available for private lessons.

Follow Nat Towsen on Twitter.

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The player's perspective in 2013's 'Call of Duty: Ghosts'

L2 to aim. R2 to fire. Square to reload. If you've been into video games at all over the past decade, those commands will have become hard-wired. Shooting is to today's games what jumping was in the 1980s. It's the default input, the thing we expect, what games are more or less "about."

You might think Call of Duty is responsible—every year since 2007, the series has leaked shooting mechanics into the mainstream like lead into the Romans' water. But this fashion extends beyond a single franchise. Pulp like CoD and its lesser cousins aside, the ostensible high-art mainstream—from The Last of Us to BioShock Infinite—is mired in shooting. There's plucky resistance from the independent scene, and even a few mid-tier games that undermine, at least by omission, gaming's propinquity to shooting. But still, the controllers for our consoles have buttons referred to as "triggers." Shooting remains everywhere, and in everything.

Still, the problem I have is not that shooting exists in, or even pervades video games. It's that despite years of claiming by marketers, designers, and reviewers that shooting in games is "realistic," it's still a blithe action, performed over and over without any sense of mechanical or emotional complication. I feel the same way about firing a gun in a game as I do about sitting here, pressing the keys on my laptop—it's just an input I give to a machine in order to make it work. And I think that's partly the reason people are either dismissive, or growing bored, of shooting games.

There's no weight, gravity, or consequence to shooting in games, no effort on the behalf of game-makers to appropriate what it takes, both physically and mentally, to fire a gun at a person. All you get are three lousy buttons. After that, you can inflict violence—or at least, fire your weapon—with no fuss or cognition. If we're talking morality, or even good writing, gaming's simplified version of shooting does nothing to represent the complexity or horror of real-world violence. If we're talking what's fun to play, doing the same thing over and over, without having to think about it, soon grow old. I think games would improve, both in terms of narrative and raw enjoyment, if they obeyed how guns work in reality.

2012's Receiver for PC and Mac is a first-person shooter where, instead of tapping a single button to reload your pistol, you must use a sequence of key presses. First you press a button to unholster your gun, then you need to remove the magazine, refill it with loose cartridges and press another button to reinsert it. Once the gun's loaded, you have to manually pull back the slide to chamber a round and then remove the safety catch—it's only after completing this 30-seconds-or-so process than you can think about aiming and firing. David Rosen, Receiver's creator at Wolfire Games, thinks mechanics like these lend shooting games more gravitas.

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Receiver's gameplay mechanics trailer

"I think most video games, including a lot of my own work, have a very unsophisticated approach to violence," he told me. "Simulated violence has always been a big component of play—you can look at your pet dog or cat and see that. But video games tap into the drive without attempting to analyze the subject.

"My first thought with Receiver was that, surprisingly, nobody had ever made an FPS game that was actually about guns. So, I went and read a lot of the user manuals from various manufacturers, and watched videos uploaded by gun owners showing how they cleaned, operated, and fired different weapons.

"[ Receiver] is very awkward at first, because the player is trying to figure out two things at once: what actions are required to make their gun work, and what keys correspond to which actions. But I think that feeling is a big draw for the game. Attaching realistic complexity makes each encounter more dramatic, since you're never certain if you configured the weapon correctly to fire."

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'Wolfenstein: The New Order' proved to be one of 2014's most celebrated shooters—but its gunplay was just as simple as lesser-rated titles

This is how shooting mechanics, if changed, could mean something more to gaming. You take a gun in real life, and—like in Receiver—you first have to learn its workings. You have to lift it, aim it, be careful with it. You're implicitly aware that rather than a magical, simplistically operated wand, a gun is a fallible object, one that could easily backfire or be turned against you by another person. Guns never feel safe or simplistic. I've been shooting shotguns since I was a child, and still feel faintly nervous whenever I go to the range. It's just the noise, the weight, the power—the things that, owing to their insistent "fun" and "accessibility," games have never attempted to recreate.

And that's a shame, and it's short sighted, because these are things that could make shootouts in games interesting again. I want to play a gunfight where, rather than ploughing down enemies with a gun operated using three buttons I'm having to aim, fire, and reload carefully. Like reality, I want every shot to resonate. I want every pull of the trigger to feel significant. I'm contradicting myself, because the last article I wrote here implored video games to move away from copying films, but I want the experiential equivalent of the shootout from Heat—loud, slow, dangerous and, above all, frightening. That's what shooting should be in video games—scary. It shouldn't be something you want to do. And it definitely shouldn't be what the game is designed around, as if getting into a gunfight is both an achievement and a reward.

Shooting in games should be horrible. It ought to be difficult, and something you want to stay away from. And I think that if you make shooting painful on a mechanical level, like Receiver, you make it emotionally painful as well – you make it something players fear, dread or at least think about beyond, "this is awesome".

Follow Ed Smith on Twitter.

Dir: Jules Jordan
Rating: 10
Jules.Jordan.com

Back in September I was wrongfully imprisoned for four months. I'm still pretty shaken up by it, and I don't feel like myself anymore. Since being released, I've been having difficulty sleeping at night. Conversations with people are hazy and surreal. I struggle to reclaim my place in society and can't help thinking that all those weeks listening to heartrending wails, eating awful food, and performing menial labor have permanently damaged my psyche. It's like Morgan Freeman said: "Hope can drive a man insane."

The saddest part? My wife is to blame for locking me away. She conspired with a very persuasive doctor and set me up. I'm working toward forgiving her, but it's been difficult. We've since begun therapy and are trying to work through it. She's confessed that, subconsciously, she knew when she met me in 2001 that she would eventually send me up the river. I think the problem dates back to 1975 when she was born with two feet, but I'll let the therapist make that call.

I'm no detective, but the simple facts of the matter are that from age two to 13 my wife took recreational tap, jazz, ballet, and hip-hop classes (a rather atypical backstory for such villainy). But from age 13 to 31 she taught dance (we all know the type of seediness that permeates certain dance circles), and for the past seven years she's been a personal trainer (gyms are notorious criminal hotbeds). We're talking about nearly 40 years of shifty movement on her feet, and it eventually broke her.

Without her ever mentioning it, she has battled a demon for the past decade called Morton's neuroma. It finally rendered her incapable of walking the line of right and wrong last August.

Enter the plotting podiatrist.

Speaking directly to my wife's wonderful cleavage, the good doctor told us it was imperative for her to have surgery. The inflamed nerve on her right foot had to be removed immediately. That was the last bit of truth he ever uttered. He turned to look me dead in the eye and said, "It's a simple procedure. She'll be back on her feet in three weeks."

"Three weeks?" I asked.

"Three weeks," he reiterated.

I believed him. He wore a white coat; people believe men in white coats. But he also had a stethoscope around his neck, which should've tipped me off that something was afoot. Why would a podiatrist need a stethoscope?

After performing the surgery he gave my wife his cell phone number and told her to call anytime, day or night, if there were problems. What kind of problems could arise from "a simple procedure," I wondered.

Lots of problems, it turned out. Everything that could go wrong did: infections, internal sutures not dissolving, stitches tearing, etc. "Three weeks" became six weeks, and six ultimately 16, with various casts and boots on her feet, plus the weekly visits to his office so he could look down her low-cut blouse.

All the while I was imprisoned in my house, playing the role of Mr. Mom. I was forced to bathe the children, get them ready for school, cook, clean, and take them to gymnastics and swim class. I did laundry! I don't know how to do laundry! I PAY FOR FLUFF AND FOLD! I was even a PTA mom at their class Christmas parties!

I don't know what it's like in Attica or Mexican prisons, but if it's anything like what I endured—scheduling times to go skate between getting one kid on the bus and dropping the other off at preschool—then I truly feel sorry for the millions of men and women incarcerated in America and around the world. After this four-month bid at home taking care of my wife and kids, I fully understand what Nas meant when he said, "Incarcerated your mind dies." It kinda makes me want to murder...

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or @Nieratko on Twitter. Photo by Bryce Kanights. See more of his work at BryceKanights.com or @orignalbk.

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Photographer Kate Golding has a knack for the serene. Shooting in some of the most hectic and overwhelming places on earth, she always manages to draw out a moment of calm. This month she released her first photo book Within You Without You. The photos inside are a meditative exploration of India, including the ashram the Beatles escaped to in the late 60s while seeking a break from their own hysteria.

VICE: How did your book come about?
Kate Golding: So I went to India in 2013 and shot all the work when I was there. I always intended to do something with it, but I wasn't sure what. I pretty much just wanted to see something through to completion so it's not just on my hard drive, it's actually out there in the world.

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It really feels like photo books are flourishing at the moment.
Absolutely. I think there's that DIY aspect with things like print on demand and HP Indigo printers—which is what I printed the book on. Now you can get away without doing offset, but still get reasonably good print quality. It's just easier than trying to fit into the curatorial view of what galleries want. You can make a work that can have quite far reach as well, and not just be in Melbourne.

Tell me about the title.
It's is a small nod to the Beatles' track, some of the shots were taken inside the Ashram that they visited in '68. Including the Dome image.

The main reason I visited, was to try and strengthen my yoga practice and meditation and all that sort of thing, just trying to learn. I'd seen the Steve McCurry kind of photos, with all the people and bright colors, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I didn't want to photograph India that way.

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There's a strong theme of solitude throughout the series, is that something you intended to do or something that happened subconsciously?
I do tend to seek out areas that are a bit quieter I guess, that's what I tend to look for when I'm shooting. A big Hasselblad isn't an easy camera to travel with either, so the times I did go out to shoot, I was very much trying to be calm and still as well, very conscious of the way I was shooting.

Would you say your photography is an extension of your meditation or something separate?
The book is treated as a meditation in a way, it was definitely something I was trying to achieve in the way I sequenced things. You'll notice a few times images repeat but are slightly different than the time before. Like how thoughts take on different flavors as they come around in again during mediation.

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I find all that stuff really interesting, like how each time you pull a memory out of your bank, it changes what the actual memory is.
Absolutely, and it can be skewed by someone else's telling of it. For instance, I don't know if this happens with you, but I'll be telling a story with my parents about something in my childhood and they'll be like, "That's not what happened at all". And you think wow, I've built my whole identity around that and it didn't even exist.

Within You Without You is available through Kate's website.

Words by Ben Thomson. Follow him on Instagram.

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Photo via Flickr user Thomas Altfather Good

It's that time of year again, when street corners across the country are invaded by people in togas and tiaras, twirling arrows in the direction of the nearest Liberty Tax Services office.

"This job is amazing," says a marketing manager identified as Becky in a promotional video for the company's clone army of Statue of Liberties, which it dispatches each tax season to lure customers into its offices. "It gives you the opportunity to network, build relationships, extend your natural attributes that you already have, and it doesn't even feel like you are really working."

Sounds fun, right? But having passed numerous shivering Lady Liberties on the streets of New York City recently, I had my doubts. I know several people who, as teenagers, got their first job standing on a corner dressed as a slice of pizza or passing out fliers for a furniture store for minimum wage. But, in today's economy, workers taking such positions frequently have salt and pepper on their chins rather than acne.

"My hands are freezing, but it's not too bad," said Maynard, wearing ski gloves, a sweater, two jackets, and a Statue of Liberty outfit. We spoke earlier this month on Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn. Although he was glad to have the job, he wasn't as excited about it as anyone in Liberty Tax's promo film was. "I just wave and pass out their fliers. That's all the job requires."

Maynard, who is 49 years old, previously worked as a janitor at JFK Airport for 17 years but was laid off recently when his employer went under. He's not certain what he'll do when tax season ends on April 15, but he's "got things lined up," he said, including a potential security job. Until then, he'll be standing on Livingston dressed as one of America's most endearing symbols of freedom and prosperity.

There's a Miss Liberty Tax by the name of Brittney Wojtaszek who travels around the country acting as the company's public face at trade shows and franchise conventions. She is young and has a masters degree in marketing. But she's an exception: Most of the Statues of Liberty I've encountered are older men living hand to mouth. They said they were content, happy to have any form of work, but their biggest complaint was that it is boring as hell.

In Flatbush, Brooklyn, I met a Statue of Liberty named Dula, also 49, who tries to make things interesting by rapping: "Slim, trim, brown-skinned. I'm the man you probably want to meet. I'm giving away money so you all can eat."

The most fun part of being a Statue of Liberty, Dula told me, is when he drops fake $50 dollar bills on the sidewalk, which always sparks a frenzy in the working-class West Indian neighborhood. "We fold them and throw them down and people go crazy," he said. "When they pick them up and look closer, they see it's an advertisement. We tell them they should do their taxes with us and if they bring a friend they get $50 off."

The Lady Liberties I spoke with all earn minimum wage or a little more. Dula takes in $8.75 an hour. "I was on public assistance," he said, "but it ain't nothing. They only give you $215 a month. It's a Willie Lynch trap."

Dula has five kids to support, which means he spends as much time as he can out on the street so he can support them. He even worked during the blizzard that hit New York City last month. By working hard as a Lady Liberty, and whatever job he can find when tax season ends, he hopes to advance on to bigger and better things—an expectation that Liberty Tax Service appears to reinforce.

In its promotional video, Michael, a Liberty Tax franchise owner, claims the statues have moved up company ranks to "be tax preparers... managers... [and] multi-unit franchise owners." I wanted to ask Michael, or anyone from Liberty Tax, how often the employees it dresses as emblems of the American dream climb its corporate ladder, but no one from the company responded to the multiple emails and phone messages I left.

To Dula's 26-year-old colleague, Adrian, who has two kids to support, the job seems like just another snare. "They don't want you to make too much money, just enough to get you coming back the next day," he said.

Some sociologists would categorize the legions of Lady Liberties on America's street corners as examples of a new social class, the precariat. Unlike the traditional proletariat, the precariat lack steady employment and frequently work as contractors or in temporary positions, living precariously without job security or benefits.

"The American precariat seems... hunkered down, insecure, risk averse, relying on friends, and family but without faith in American possibilities," wrote New York Times' David Brooks last year, lamenting: "This fatalism is historically uncharacteristic of America."

Brooks endorses a proposal from the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Strain to provide the long-term unemployed with travel vouchers. "If we could induce more people to Go West! (or South, East, or North) in search of opportunity, maybe the old future-oriented mind-set would return," he wrote.

However, Ruth Milkman, a sociologist at CUNY's Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, argues the struggles facing the precariat will persist no matter where the huddled masses travel.

"There might be jobs in North Dakota right now, but those jobs are going to be gone by the time the first 10,000 people arrive." said Milkman. "This is a national problem, a structural problem."

The rise of the precariat goes back to the decline of organized labor, beginning with de-industrialization in the 1970s, along with a legacy of workplace deregulation, and a lack of enforcement that has persisted since the Reagan-era in the 80s, according to Milkman.

Increasingly, since the Great Recession began, the precariat is a class that "cuts across the education spectrum," she added. It includes workers like Dula and Maynard, who lack college educations, as well as younger, often debt-strapped Americans who might have bachelors or graduate degrees and are working at Starbucks or as adjunct professors. She believes social movements taking on systemic economic inequality like Occupy Wall Street or the campaign for a $15 minimum wage could improve life for precariat.

In the meantime, Dula and his comrades are serving as stuntmen for the American dream, doing what it takes to get by on the streets while the real Statue of Liberty poses for photographs with tourists.

Follow Peter on Twitter.

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A jinn exorcism ritual in progress. Photos by Andrew Perry

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

While I was at college, I'd wake up each morning to find my doormat covered in flyers. They were mostly promoting dirt-cheap jello shots, or dirt-cheap wings, or Eksman's Drum 'n Bass Birthday Bash (Ladies Free B4 10 PM)—all the usual suspects. But every now and then, among the pamphlets promoting activities bad for my general wellbeing, there would be the odd leaflet for "Islamic jinn removal services."

Jinn are supernatural beings mentioned regularly in the Quran, entities made of a smokeless "scorching fire" that are said to be capable of inhabiting human hosts. They supposedly have free will, meaning—like humans—they can decide if they want to be neutral, or good, or evil, pesky bastards, floating around, constantly on fire, whispering in ears, and leading benevolent souls to ruin.

Jinn removal, as you may have guessed, involves forcefully expelling one of these specters (known as a "jinni" in the singular) from the human body—which seemed like pretty heavy shit to be going on in the middle of British suburbia.

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A depiction of Imam Ali conquering a load of jinn. Image via.

At the time I saw these flyers as little more than an interesting cultural oddity: demon-ousting services offered alongside promotional literature for my local Labour councillor. But thinking back to them a few years later, I realized there must have actually been a fairly steady stream of exorcisms to justify the effort involved in repeatedly posting leaflets.

The more I thought about it, the more my interest was piqued. I wanted to know whether or not these rituals went on across the UK, or if I just happened to be lucky enough to live near an exorcist, so I asked the internet. Turns out jinn removals are practiced up and down the country, from metropolitan areas with large Muslim populations to little towns with an overwhelming Christian majority, like Bicester in Oxfordshire.

Naturally, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to attend a genuine exorcism, so I got in touch with a couple of jinn removers to ask if I could sit in on a session.

The majority of exorcists were reluctant to have somebody observe their work, which is presumably because they thought I was going to take the piss, or write some kind of damning exposé, decrying their services as the work of conmen exploiting religious mythology. But that wasn't my intention; if a subject truly believes they're having the evil removed from their body, and will then benefit from that conclusion, who am I to criticize their choice to pay for this spiritual placebo? I just wanted to see what modern-day exorcisms are actually like.

Luckily, Glasgow-based exorcist Arif Malik agreed to allow me to watch him—although, first, he wanted me to undergo a test to see if I was possessed by a jinn myself. I was almost certain I wasn't, but figured it couldn't do any harm, so agreed.

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Jinn exorcist Arif Malik

The test involved listening to a half-hour recording of Arif chanting prayers and seeing if I experienced any visions. I nodded off halfway through the recording, possibly due to the melodic nature of the chanting, or maybe because I've got absolutely no attention span and physically can't sit through the same thing for half an hour without my body just giving up and deciding to fall asleep.

I had some pretty weird dreams, but none of them meant that I was possessed by a jinni, according to Arif. This was disappointing, because I'd have like to have experienced an exorcism firsthand. Still, it broke the ice and led to me being invited to watch Arif in action.

The problem was that Arif's clients tend to want their exorcisms to be private affairs—understandable, considering you're probably not looking your best while a fire demon's being wrenched out of your shivering body. They also pay £250 [$385] a pop for the privilege, so naturally Arif didn't want to do anything that might scare them off.

"Why don't you bring a friend with you?" he asked. "I can do a test for jinn on him. If he's got one then I can remove it."

This sounded good, but I live fucking miles from Glasgow, and persuading someone to travel three hours on the train to be the subject of an exorcism was going to prove difficult. "Sure thing," I told him.

I soon discovered that I was right: No one I asked was up for it. Even the most dedicated atheists I know didn't want to have any evil spirits removed from their bodies for a laugh. So I stuck an ad on Gumtree saying I needed a participant for an "alternative healing session." I figured I could clue the volunteer up on the true nature of what was required of him after he replied.

Most respondents ran a mile the minute I mentioned the word "exorcism," but eventually I found a young college dropout named Emille who was game, so I booked a train to Glasgow and started mentally preparing myself for an afternoon of guttural screaming and lots of projectile vomit.

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I assumed the exorcism would take place somewhere near Pollockshields, the heart of Glasgow's Muslim community. Instead, when I arrived, I found the address I'd been given was that of a beauty salon in the district of Whiteinch. I didn't really fancy asking one of the nail technicians whether they also performed exorcisms, just in case I'd got the wrong place, so gave Arif a call to double check.

"Yes, this is the place," he told me. "Come in and make yourselves comfortable. I'll be with you shortly."

We were ushered into the back by Arif's wife, who kindly supplied us with some tea and biscuits. The jinn removal room looked a bit like a cross between a dental surgery and your average basement home office. The walls were bare, apart from a small, blue ornament hanging on the wall in one corner, and there was a hazardous biological waste container in the corner. I later learned that this was because Arif also runs a hijama clinic there, hijama being a form of Arabic healing that involves making incisions in people's skin and drawing "bad blood" out via vacuums created by small cups.

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Emille preparing for his jinn test.

Arif poked his head around the corner five minutes later and introduced himself to us. He seemed an easygoing, affable kind of guy. He asked me if I'd had a good journey, and then the discussion moved onto the jinn removal trade.

"Do you get much work from non-Muslims?" I asked him, partly in reference to Emille, and partly referring to the fact that I couldn't see how his business could remain afloat in such an overwhelmingly white area if he didn't. "I work with Muslims and non-Muslims alike," he told me. "More and more people are getting into alternative healing."

He was quick to differentiate himself from other spiritual healers who specialize in jinn removal, pointing out that while others will converse with jinn prior to removing them, he refuses to negotiate.

"My job is to get them out of there, not to have a chat with them," he told me.

After discussing the ins and outs of jinn removal for what seemed like an appropriate amount of time, Arif prepared us for the task ahead. "I'm going to carry out a short test to see if you've got any spirits that we need to get rid of," he told Emille. "It's a simple process involving prayer."

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Emille lay down on a surgical bed in the corner of the room and Arif draped a white sheet, black prayer mat, and some beads over him. Headphones playing Islamic prayers were placed in Emille's ears, and Arif chanted verses from a prayer book. At first, Emille lay there with a serene look on his face, absorbing the double-dose of prayer, but then, about five minutes into the test, his eyes started twitching and flickering as if he was experiencing REM.

The spooky twitching carried on for about 15 minutes, at times becoming more intense, and at others subsiding slightly. After a while, Emille settled down and started to relax again. The chanting went on for around another 20 minutes, at which point Arif gently roused him and asked if he was OK.

Emille seemed dazed, but otherwise alright.

"Do you need the toilet or anything before I ask you what you saw?" Arif asked him. Emille replied that he wouldn't mind going for a piss, and while he was away Arif told us that the REM meant that there was a high chance of a jinni being present.

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When Emille returned, Arif asked him if he had seen various different things while he'd been in the trance. One of them was an eye, which Emille replied that he had seen.

"Well, the good news is that you haven't got any jinn," Arif told him.

My heart sunk as I heard this. As glad I was for Emille, I'd spent that three-hour train journey hoping to see some kind of exorcism in action.

"You did have the evil eye, though."

I wasn't entirely sure what the evil eye was, but it still meant that I hadn't had a totally wasted journey, which was good.

"In all cultures and religions, the evil eye exists in some form," Arif explained. "It's when somebody casts a spiritual glance upon you that can make it harder for you to attract the things that you want to attract."

"So is the evil eye gone now, then?" asked Emille.

"Yeah, it's been got rid of it," Arif told him.

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Emille looked relieved, and I was as well. I hadn't been able to witness an exorcism, but I had seen a curse being removed, which is better than nothing, I suppose.

So what did I take away from the experience? Firstly: Even for a non-believer like myself, sitting in on a test for jinn is actually quite a strange and unnerving experience. I'm sure, in retrospect, that it was just a combination of the chanting and eye twitching that had me asking myself questions for a minute—but in the moment, it was a surprisingly visceral experience.

Secondly: although faith healers are often portrayed as being eager to brand people as unwell so that they can charge them for cures, the reality is that it's actually pretty fucking difficult to get diagnosed with a jinn. Even when all the signs are there, it might just be a bad case of the evil eye.