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Ashley Judd's Fight Back Against Twitter Abuse Shows 'Grey Area' of Online Threats

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Ashley Judd's Fight Back Against Twitter Abuse Shows 'Grey Area' of Online Threats

Photos of Animal Sacrifices from Nepal's Gadhimai Festival

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Warning: Some of the photos below depict animal sacrifice and may disturb some readers.

Unlike much of the rest of the world, many religious Nepalese still believe in the power of sacrifice. To appease the gods they kill a lot of bulls, goats, and pigs during the biggest festival in Nepal, Dashain, which lasts 15 days, takes place in temples all over the country, and is often attended by tourists. Less famous is the Gadhimai festival, which takes place every five years at the end of the year (the last one was held in late November 2014). The event is like nothing else in the world, and has become extremely controversial. In several days, up to 3 million people sacrifice hundreds of thousands of animals. It's estimated that 250,000 animals were sacrificed in 2009's ceremonies.

The festival takes place 25 kilometers from the city of Birgunj, within a three-kilometer radius of the temple of the goddess Gadhimai. The action begins before dawn, at around 3 AM. During the most recent festival, a long line of people stretched along the dusty road leading from Birgunj. If devotees cover their animal with a piece of red cotton, this means the creature will be sacrificed.

Their first stop is a small river a kilometer away from the temple. People bathe together with animals to ensure cleanliness before the rite. The sun slowly rises on the horizon and sacrifices begin on the banks of the river.

When participants throw up their gorkha knives up in the air, it means the time has come. Before the sacrifice, an animal is given some rice and incense sticks are waved about it, and then an executioner deftly cuts off its head. An hour after the rituals begin, the banks of the river are painted red. After the ceremony, each member of the family that brought the animal stands in a pool of hot blood, thereby obtaining the blessing of the goddess.

Celebrations take place until late evening, when the participants light fires to warm themselves. Many families eat at food tents constructed for the festival, hang around, and rest near the temple. Those who have come from far away organize a small camp where they sleep and cook the recently sacrificed animals.

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See more work by Sergey Stroitelev on Flickr.

There's Been a Huge Surge of HIV Cases in the UK's Hispanic Community

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This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

On the other end of the phone, Pablo is exceptionally polite. He speaks softly and enthusiastically, his English lilting in a Colombian accent. "I'm so lucky," he says, happily. "Life has treated me like a king."

Pablo is one of an estimated 110,000 people living with HIV in the UK. Arriving from his native Colombia in September of 2000, he expected to study English for six months and head off in search of something new. Then he got sick. "My whole life was suddenly in limbo," he recalls. "I felt incredibly lonely."

Nonetheless, his timing was fortunate. By the late 1990s, antiretroviral drug treatment had HIV on the backfoot and survival rates had spiked dramatically. With support from sexual health charity Naz Latina, Pablo was able to adapt to and accept his new condition. His story is one that thousands of Latin Americans living in London can still relate to.

Recent research has found a worryingly high rate of HIV within the diaspora. While 59 South Americans in the UK were diagnosed with the virus in 2005, the figure hit 136 in 2009, a 130 percent rise. Unreleased data from 2014 by Public Health England also shows the rate of new STI diagnoses in Londoners born in Latin America was 2.3 times that of the average in the city. The vast majority of cases were among gay men or "MSM" (a term for men who have sex with other men, regardless of how they identify themselves). A 2013 report for London provides further backing, suggesting that 1 in 8 diagnoses of HIV among MSM in 2011 were in men born in Latin America.

To understand why the HIV rate has peaked in this community—and what needs to happen to combat it—we have to understand two distinct stories: a migrant's journey from South America to the UK, and the failure of the UK's public services to take responsibility for these people.

In part, the recent spike in HIV is a reflection of the Latin American population's growth in London; it's quadrupled since 2001, with estimates from 2008 putting the figure at 113,500, nearly as large as London's Polish presence. However, the emergence of this new community and its needs have been overlooked by both London's councils and health services until remarkably recently.

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Lucila Granada from CLAUK with Chuka Umunna MP. Courtesy of CLAUK.

"Since the economic crisis started in 2008, many Latin Americans have come to London from Spain, Portugal, and Italy to find work," explains Lucila Granada, Advocacy and Campaigns Co-ordinator for the Coalition of Latin Americans in the UK (CLAUK). "These are Latin Americans in the second phase of their migration. Many have secured EU citizenship in a different country, but when job cuts start they are still the most vulnerable."

That same level of vulnerability holds true when it comes to their health. The rise of HIV infection among London's Latin Americans is intrinsically linked to a lack of healthcare access. For a patchwork of reasons, a large number of Latinos in the capital simply aren't using NHS services. A 2011 survey identified that one in five had never been to a GP, and the consensus within CLAUK is that healthcare access is worryingly low.

Within some areas of the Latin American community, combatting HIV means addressing a complicated tangle of taboos and ignorance. But the inertia of the UK's response to newly arrived communities is also a key stumbling block.

"There has been a failure by the authorities to recognize a substantial new community, and to cater to them," argues Carlos Corredor, Project Co-ordinator for sexual health charity Naz Latina. "One of the big problems is the language barrier; most of the information about HIV and AIDS is in English, and many new arrivals don't speak it."

This lack of information, coupled with a poor understanding of NHS support, means a large proportion of the community simply don't engage with the health services. Instead, many first-generation arrivals fall back on the support available within their own networks.

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Lucila Granada with CLAUK volunteers. Photo courtesy of CLAUK

"In many cases, community organizations are the ones who end up taking responsibility for public services work," confirms Lucila. "Groups like CLAUK are catering to an invisible community in the context of an anti-immigration agenda."

For most migrants, staying in touch with the original identity of your homeland is hugely important. The South American diaspora in the UK is no different, and churches and community groups often play a critical role in helping new arrivals adjust while still honoring deep-rooted cultural values and traditions.

As Carlos explains, these networks are vital sources of support. However, the powerful influence of a traditional identity can clash with newfound freedoms. To avoid conflict, a culture of silence and secrecy blooms, especially when it comes to sex. According to CLAUK's research, homophobic attitudes—in tandem with the idea that sexuality is taboo and shouldn't be discussed—stifles open conversation among some groups of new arrivals.

It's a lucid example of how painful and complicated adapting to a new culture can be. On the one hand, gay men from Latin America may find they're able to express themselves with a freedom unrealized back home; on the other, they may have to hide in plain sight from the friends and family they arrived with.

It's a paradox Pablo understands only too well. "In many ways it was really good for me that I was diagnosed in London and not Colombia," he says. "But old stigmas die hard. I had come to live with a friend, and telling my housemates I had HIV was very difficult.

"My family back home still have no idea about it. I know some cases where people have told their families and it's caused problems. People still struggle to accept it."

Dr. Justin Varney, National Lead for Adult Health and Wellbeing at Public Health England, rejects the idea that Britain's healthcare services have been too slow to react to this problem. "It's hugely variable across the country," he argues. "In areas where there's a large population of Latin Americans the local authorities and health services have done a lot of work."

Varney explains that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is responsible for ethnic categorization based on its surveys and analysis. Once a new ethnic grouping is established, Public Health England can develop healthcare guidance. It's then up to councils to recognize new ethnic groups and support them at a local level.

As the ONS categories are based on the national picture the data shows, it's perhaps no surprise the Latino community hasn't been categorized; too many are irregularly documented (19 percent) and off the radar.

However, the question of where responsibility lies cannot be ducked. "Unless the government recognizes there are people who don't have access to these services, things won't get better for them," Lucila argues. "But if you're not in the statistics no one cares; it's no one's responsibility."

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Lambeth Councillor Adedamola Aminu onstage with a CLAUK representative

Meanwhile, there seems to be a major disconnect between local authorities and the NHS. For example, despite large Latin American communities in Lambeth and Southwark being acknowledged by the councils, the health services still aren't carrying out ethnic monitoring of the group in these areas.

"Could more be done? Yes, quite possibly. That's true for a range of emerging communities," admits Dr Varney. "If you fall into the 'other' category in the statistics, that's a catch-all. It becomes hard to get the specific information you need."

The fallout from not being recognized is clearly a lack of engagement to address sexual health risks—a key reason why HIV rates have spiked among this group. Mind you, things are changing for the better—slowly. Four London councils have so far recognized the Latin American community living in their boroughs; Southwark in 2012, Lambeth in 2013 and Hackney and Islington in 2014.

Public Health England and Naz Latina have also been partnering to pilot new workshops in support of those affected by HIV in minority communities. It's part of the broader work Naz carries out against the background of public sector cuts and sweeping changes within the NHS.

According to Pablo, these changes have been felt directly by those living with HIV, many of whom have noticed a dramatic drop-off in the quality of healthcare they're receiving.

From the top-down sluggishness of the authorities, you can follow a twisted path all the way to the human impact of new HIV diagnoses. And between bureaucratic labyrinths of data, the vagaries of political responsibility, and the government's retreat from the public sector, we come back to the crux of countless migrant stories: the battle for a better life in an unfamiliar new world.

I’m Not Glamorizing Depression, I’m Staying Alive: Advice from So Sad Today

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Illustrations by Joel Benjamin

Why would you take advice from someone who doesn't have all her shit together? I don't know, but people email me a lot for advice.

Maybe it's because a person who doesn't have all her shit together seems safer than a perfect person (whoever that is). Maybe it's because a person who is honest about her shortcomings is more likely to give honest advice. Maybe people are just lonely. I'm lonely.

Nobody knows what happens after we die. Nobody knows why we came here. But here is some correspondence about surviving what comes in between.

Questions have been edited for clarity.

*

Dear So Sad Today,

Do you know how one can date girls without ever having to talk with them, look them in the eyes, or stand in the same room for more than ten seconds?

Is it OK to stalk them on social media and crave their attention like a homeless dog?

Is it OK to only fall in love (I mean obsess) with very very pretty and successful girls who don't give a shit about me? I'm not sure I would be able to love someone who also loves me. (I had a girlfriend once and when she started liking me I had to break up with her. It was really weird and pathetic—why would you fall in love with me??) Does that come from low self-esteem and validation-craving?

As a girl, would you date a pile of trash like me? I wear black clothes and I hate life and stuff so I guess I'm a bit cool if that helps. Also I wear women's clothes cause I think the skinny heroinman look is fancier than big muscles and ugly sports clothes.

Thanks,

Person

Dear Person,

I obsess about boys the most when they ignore me. So your inability to talk to girls, look them in the eye, or stand in the same room as them could bring you success.

It's not OK to internet stalk, but of course I do it. But, like, I would not recommend actively stalking. If someone says stop contacting me, stop contacting them immediately. Instead I recommend passively lurking (like a homeless cat rather than a homeless dog). This is not to rule out homeless dog entirely. Homeless dog can have its appeal. I once fell in love with a boy who initiated by liking, faving, rt'ing and commenting on all my shit. We had sex three times.

Ultimately, I think that if it's the right person there are no rules. Like, if it's truly the right person (meaning, you have sex more than three times) then games are irrelevant.

Yes, the inability to love someone who loves you comes from low-self esteem and validation craving (and other stuff too). It's the reason why something called sexual and emotional anorexia exists, and why it is the flipside of the same coin as sex and love addiction. You aren't in love with the person. You are obsessed with the idea of the person. Once the person becomes real to you, the fantasy is dead. But you know this.

Black clothes and hating life are perfect. They are indicative of the omega male persona. I've always been drawn to omega males who hate society, rather than alpha males (dominant, muscle bros), because I want to have a magic pussy/be magic and I feel like if I can make a person who hates everything love me, then I am even more special. And I'm not the only woman like this.

xo,

sst

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Dear So Sad Today,

Is it possible to drown in a bathtub not filled with water but your own emotions? I feel that fear and sadness are the most common emotions in my life, which is unfortunate. The feeling of both together actually makes me feel as though I'm drowning and there's a weight that won't ever be lifted. I've been feeling these two a lot for the past few months.

Thanks,

Bathtub

Dear Bathtub,

My heart says: definitely. I am definitely going to drown in my emotions. Like, I still believe my emotions will kill me every time I feel one.

But of your emotions, I say: no. I promise you they won't kill you. I know this from looking at my past experiences and the fact that my emotions haven't killed me yet. While these past experiences are somehow not enough to convince me that I won't die from my emotions, they convince me that you won't die from yours.

So I think my final assessment is: we can kill ourselves trying to escape our emotions. But our actual emotions can't kill us, even when we feel like they can.

I believe in you.

xo

sst

*

Dear So Sad Today,

Aren't you just glamorizing depression and anxiety?

Sincerely,

A Loser

Dear Loser,

I'm not glamorizing depression and anxiety, I'm staying alive.

Here's how I see it: They're my depression and anxiety. So I get to do what I want with them.

Also, can you imagine if I did manage to glamorize depression and anxiety? That would be amazing. I would love for people with mental illnesses to feel like they have something that everyone wants, rather than feeling ashamed. I would love for us to be the cool kids. If glamorizing depression and anxiety means a few normcore sheep pretend they have it too; or, like, Abercrombie makes a perfume called Neurotransmitter, I think it's worth it. Anxiety for president.

xo

sst

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Dear So Sad Today,

Are granola bars goth? Please help me before I leave for this road trip.

Sadly urs,

Raisins

Dear Raisins,

OK. It depends on the brand and flavor.

Here is a quick rundown:

- Any granola bars that you get at Whole Foods are not goth. They are not even health goth. I hate to say this. I'm really sorry. They are healthcore.

- Shitty junk food 'granola bars' are goth, but they have to be the ones with chocolate, peanut butter and/or caramel in them and you have to eat more than two in one sitting. Otherwise, not goth.

- Health Valley granola bars are not goth.

I hope this is helpful.

xo

sst

*

Dear So Sad Today,

I had two questions I guess. They're not really important but in a way I guess they are to me.

What are your opinions on the planets? Do they differ in opinion to you or are they all the same?

Also, how do I change completely in order to make friends. I'm tired of hearing "be yourself," because that's exactly what's preventing me from making and keeping friends. No one wants to mope around with a chronically depressed 17-year-old existentialist.

I want to die on Neptune tbh. I'd like to be friends with you.

Best,

NASA

Dear NASA,

I think the planets are probably all different. It's funny that you ask, because I've been listening to the sounds of the planets a lot lately on YouTube and they are very diverse. Jupiter is different than Mercury and Mercury is different than Uranus. People in the comments are fighting over whether there is actually sound in space. It seems like there is no sound in space. But these sounds are radio waves that are translated into noises we can hear, so they are an accurate representation and lead me to believe that each planet is doing its own thing.

As for making friends, I recommend animals. When I am feeling at my most estranged from the human race, my pet loves me and I love him. Another thing that has helped me is volunteering at a dog rescue organization. The simplicity of the act feels so good. The people I meet are really nice. It gets me out of myself. Maybe focus less on trying to change you and more on let me do something nice for someone else. I know it sounds like a punishment. Like, fuck, I am already suffering and now I have to go volunteer? But honestly, it's a really nice way to meet people and you start with this common bond of the thing you are working to accomplish so you kind of don't have to worry about your own bullshit. That's what I like best about doing service. Not thinking about my own bullshit!

Good luck to you and let me know what happens.

xo

sst

*

Dear So Sad Today,

Do you have high IQ ?

I was diagnosed when I was really young and never thought too much about it but I saw a therapist last week (mainly for depression and anxiety) and for him it's obvious it's related.

After reading everything I could find on the topic, it seems like it comes very often with hyper emotivity and anxiety disorders and very low self-esteem (=me), so I started looking back at my childhood and what led me to depression from this point of view and it kind of makes sense.

I actually feel really relieved, because it means it's not my fault and maybe it was meant to happen. Therefore I don't have to try to feel good and I can just take pleasure in being sad and weird and misunderstood and forever lay down in my bed and expect people to save me because I don't see why I'd do it myself.

Yours,

Bed

Dear Bed,

I have a really high verbal IQ. But I think another part of my IQ is normcore or maybe even low? There is a weird gap. Like one part of me came out of the womb too smart and one part was like huh?

There has always been a correlation between genius and madness, or at least that's what I believed in my drug-taking days. When I was on drugs I felt super creative. Unfortunately, the next day I would look at what I had made and be like what the fuck is this shit? So I would have to take more drugs to make it seem good to me. That's not to say some people don't make good art on drugs. Some people make great art on drugs. I think it depends on the person (and the drugs).

I'm glad you feel relieved. No one should ever be pressured to be a person or get out of bed. That being said, in my times of need (every day) I've had to be the one to rescue myself. Or at least, I've had to rescue myself enough to get the right help. It sucks, because I want nothing more than to be rescued, particularly by someone hot. But it hasn't happened yet.

xo

sst

*

Dear So Sad Today,

I read the pieces you wrote for VICE (I hate VICE though), and I felt really... I identified with it. I always use the internet as a method to escape when I'm in public, especially by listening to music with my headphones—because I feel super nervous about people irl, like I'm not enough for them, even the people who I appreciate and love.

Does it get better someday? Or at least will I come to terms with my goth-ness?

Thanks,

VICE-hater

Dear VICE-hater,

I can only speak from my own experience and say it's not necessarily that it gets better, but I've maybe learned how to better ride the waves? Like, you go through enough hard times with mental health and it's like: OK, I don't know how I'm going to get through this one, but I've always pulled through before so I probably will this time too. Like it gets better, then worse, then better...

Also, it def sucks being a teen and having so little control of your own life. As an adult you have more control over your time and choices (unless you get sucked into a job and marriage and kids) so that is wayyy better.

I'm scared a lot of the time. But I can still make myself and other people laugh.

Wishing you luck on your journey.

xo

sst

*

Dear So Sad Today,

Why are you so sad?

Best,

Emojiface

Dear Emojiface,

Look around.

xo,

sst

If you're struggling or just need someone to talk to, the Samaritans offer 24-hour support.

So Sad Today is a never-ending existential crisis played out in 140 characters or less. Its anonymous author has struggled with consciousness since long before the creation of the Twitter feed in 2012, and has finally decided the time has come to project her anxieties on a larger screen, in the form of a biweekly column on this website.

The 11 Most Spectacular Eclipse Photos from London

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

We hope you had your glasses on. This morning, the moon danced a wild dance across the face of the sun, in a total eclipse covering at its peak 97 percent of the solar surface. That doesn't sound very "total" to me but in the eclipse game I guess you take what you can get. Turn around, bright eyes.

In London, people were practically vibrating with excitement. One couple I saw on the way into work this morning were standing out in the street, staring at the sky, drinking a bottle of champagne. Had they been up all night? Did they think things might go a bit Melancholia and that the sun would crash into the Earth, wiping out all human life? Who knows. Not us.

What we do know is that it was possibly the best solar eclipse to happen in the last 15 years. Here are the pictures – brace yourselves.

Whoa. What a morning. What a spectacle. What an eclipse!

See you for the next one in 2090. Till then, I guess we'll have to somehow reacclimatize to the London sky looking like an ashtray that has been left out overnight in the rain.

Will 'BitchCoin' Offer Artists a New Way to Make a Living?

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In New York, everything turns into something else sooner or later. A once shiny mid-century bank vault, the type you can imagine filled with pools of gold, has now been gutted and turned into a bar called Trinity Place. It's a bar for Wall Streeters and investment wolves. But on a recent Sunday night in February, the belly of the bar was taken over by finance-minded artists for the public unveiling of BitchCoin.

BitchCoin is, and isn't, difficult to explain. The basics: Artist Sarah Meyohas, an MFA student at Yale, has partnered with Where, a curatorial project run by art historian Lucy Hunter and artist R. Lyon to create BitchCoin. (In case you've never been there, Where is a gallery located in the part of Brooklyn where city officials never seem to bother cleaning trash of the streets, and where, during gusty wintery months, it's not uncommon to be smacked in the face with a kamikaze plastic bag carried along by the wind.) Its value is determined by Meyohas's artwork: One BitchCoin costs $100 and is equal to 25 square inches of any photograph she makes.

That's the simplest explanation I can come up with—that BitchCoin is an artwork-backed currency, but that doesn't mean that everyone gets it. (To be fair, ask most people what Bitcoin is and most won't give you a decent answer.)

To be honest, the first time I heard about BitchCoin, I assumed it was a conceptual joke. The title sounds like a parody. Alas, the internet had defined it years ago. BitchCoins are real:

Screen Shot 2015-03-01 at 1.25.08 PM.jpg

Anyway, a bar party is not necessary to understand the basics of the currency, but it does make the currency seem more real.

And nothing is more real than showmanship. When I arrived at Trinity Place, Sarah Meyohas glittered in a floor-length mermaid dress, looking ready for her Las Vegas debut. "I finally have an excuse to wear this," she said. She, Lucy Hunter, and R. Lyon were sitting at a long drab fold-out table selling BitchCoins, then marking the sales on paper.

A different type of spectacle could be seen above the heads of the bartenders, on a screen that showed a livestream of the BitchCoin mining operation inside the Where gallery: an aluminum-lined corridor splattered with bloody-looking paint, a single computer set on the floor. Grotesque merged with glam, Las Vegas meets Carrie.

[body_image width='1000' height='564' path='images/content-images/2015/03/19/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/19/' filename='bitchcoins-body-image-1426793650.jpg' id='37988']

Elsewhere inside Trinity Place, the coatrack was bloated with puffers, set next to the one functional bathroom in the bar. At times, it was the most popular spot in the entire bar—and the chattiest, too. Faces were full of cheer and confusion.

"There's a flaw in the BitchCoin system," one finance-type guy told me. He seemed to have stopped in randomly, unaware of the party. He wasn't the only one didn't get it. "It's not a new currency; it's old-fashioned investment."

[body_image width='1000' height='689' path='images/content-images/2015/03/19/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/19/' filename='bitchcoins-body-image-1426793755.jpg' id='37989']

He was right. If BitchCoin were simply a new form of currency—as most journalists covering this story have claimed so far—then we should be able to expect to exchange the coins for another product. We can, but only selectively. A $100 BitchCoin purchase today means that you're only able to redeem it for an artwork by Meyohas. And if you're hoping to make a buck off of it, you're technically dealing in the futures market, which is exactly the type of old-fashioned investment the finance guy was talking about. You're investing in the future of Meyohas as an artist—in her labor, not necessarily her artwork—through patronage.

That's the serious part of BitchCoin, which, of course, goes beyond any clickbait-y gimmick. Meyohas, Hunter, and Lyon have initiated a new of patronage, focused on supporting an artist's career instead of selling the artist's products (paintings, photographs, whatever).

When it's hard to go a day covering art news without there being another story about "RECORD BREAKING SALES! HEDGE FUNDERS BUYING ART THAT COSTS MORE THAN TEN YACHTS," BitchCoin is a big deal. Patronage, whatever name it goes by, offers some type of alternative to the current art-world situation that, let's be clear, only benefits the very top of the collector class.

Consider:

  • Artprice, a publicly firm that gathers auction data, just announced in its 2014 annual report that $15.2 billion in artwork sold at auction in 2014. Artists don't see this money; the auction houses and collectors do.
  • The 2013 European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) report, prepared by economist Clare McAndrew, asserts that collectors are not buying more works of art; they're just spending more money on them.

They're still buying the Picassos, Richters, and pre-vetted works making the rounds at auction. Yale MFAs not so much, as young artists aren't totally safe investments. If that artist's career doesn't take off, in ten years you're stuck with a painting that won't be worth more than the $1,000 you spent on it in the first place.

[body_image width='1000' height='668' path='images/content-images/2015/03/19/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/19/' filename='bitchcoins-body-image-1426793851.jpg' id='37990']A selfie in the Bitchcoin mine at Where gallery, by Sarah Meyohas

Art hasn't always been this way. At one time, visual artists were a part of everyone's daily life, just one of many classes of artisans. In the Medieval era, artists belonged to city guilds—somewhat like labor unions—and members of a township would hire them for work. In 17th-century Antwerp, art collecting was a middle-class activity; even farmers owned on average ten to 15 paintings. Throughout Europe, the wealthiest still dominated the production of art, but unlike today, their interest was not limited to the production of paintings. Often, a royal or papal patron would pay an artist a stipend and living expenses; they were given a salary for being an artist, and it had nothing to do with how many objects they could produce in any given year.

Will BitchCoin work, as a model of patronage? It doesn't really matter. At this point in art where the dominant discussion tends to focus on art as a game for the rich, we're willing to try anything else.

If you're willing to bet on BitchCoin, as of this writing, there are only 20 left.

See more work by Sarah Meyohas on her website.

Follow Corinna Kirsch on Twitter.

The Body of a Black Man Was Found Hanging from a Tree in Mississippi

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[body_image width='1198' height='777' path='images/content-images/2015/03/20/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/20/' filename='a-black-man-was-found-hanging-from-a-tree-in-mississippi-319-body-image-1426815715.jpg' id='38084']

Missing Person Photo via Claiborne County Sheriff's Department

The feds are investigating the death of an African-American man who was found hanging from a tree about half a mile from his last known residence in Mississippi on Thursday.

[tweet text="Breaking: The body of an African American man is found hanging from a tree in Claiborne County. The FBI and MBI are on the scene." byline="— Melissa Faith Payne (@MelissaFPayne)" user_id="MelissaFPayne" tweet_id="578637899823849472" tweet_visual_time="March 19, 2015"]

Local news outlets are reporting that the deceased, whom the local chapter of the NAACP has identified as 54-year-old Otis Byrd, was hung with bedsheets. Claiborne County Sheriff Marvin Lucas has reportedly indicated he suspects the body found hanging in the woods was, in fact, Byrd, who went missing on March 2. It's not clear yet if the death was a murder or a suicide, but the body was badly decomposed, suggesting he had been dead for some time.

[tweet text="Officials say black male found hanging from a tree in Claiborne County was hung using bed sheets. Family believes victim is Otis Byrd." byline="— Melissa Faith Payne (@MelissaFPayne)" user_id="MelissaFPayne" tweet_id="578688629951840256" tweet_visual_time="March 19, 2015"]

A CBS affiliate heard from law enforcement that the FBI was just making a "preliminary inquiry" into civil rights issues in the death of an unnamed African-American man, and wouldn't confirm it was Byrd, who was last seen by a friend who dropped him off at Vicksburg's Riverwalk Casino.

Some members of the press gathered near Byrd's home Thursday afternoon, and one tweeted that the body was still there.

[tweet text="Sheriff Lucas: Byrd's body has not yet been moved. A hearse remains on standby in front of this home. #msnewsnow pic.twitter.com/nXpxYMW2zf" byline="— C.J. LeMaster (@CJLeMaster)" user_id="CJLeMaster" tweet_id="578668747768090627" tweet_visual_time="March 19, 2015"]

Local authorities say they're looking into the death, while the FBI, Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, and US Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi have launched probes of their own.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

VICE Shorts: I'm Short, Not Stupid Presents: 'Mr. Happy'

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This video contains graphic depictions of suicide that may not be appropriate for everyone.

Almost everyone has found themselves depressed at a point or two. Maybe in the midst of the depression you thought about doing something drastic—something life-changing—something that might make you happy. That could be nice, but it's scary to actually take the leap and do it. Well, what if there was a service that took care of all the hard stuff for you?

That's the premise of director Colin Tilley's new short film, Mr. Happy. The film follows Victor, a depressed young man played by Chancelor Bennett—better known as Chance the Rapper—who is looking for a way out of everything. Victor wants to escape his menial job at the local Supply Guyz, escape the small talk with his drug-addled coworker, escape his ex who's getting fucked in some rich guy's pool. Even though killing himself sounds like the best solution, Victor just can't bring himself to do it.

With no one to turn to, Victor heads to the internet, where he finds the answer to his problem in the peculiarly low-budget website, MrHappy.com. After a series of simple questions akin to Futurama's classic Suicide Booth, the kill date is confirmed for two days later: February 14, Valentine's Day. It would seem to be a hallmark ending for Victor, but a chance interaction at work the next day with a pretty artist starts to brighten his world and make him question that no-refunds, no-cancellation contract he just took out on himself.

Director Colin Tilley asks some serious questions in this short film, questions even he's not able to answer. Life, love, happiness, sadness, and death are all connected, and the question Mr. Happy asks is "Is it worth it?"

Following the film, check out a short interview with Tilley below.

VICE: Are you trying to tell the audience something about yourself with the Mr. Happy suicide hotline?
Colin Tilley: No, not at all. I'm actually a really happy guy. But, I was honestly really excited to dive deep into this suicidal character through film. I read about him, I've known people like him, but I've never experienced these type of emotions before in my life. Capturing this feeling, I definitely had to dive into a darker space than I'm used to living in.

The film brings up a number of controversial topics from euthanasia to society's inability to deal with mental instability and today's discontentment of youth. Do you feel a system like MrHappy.com is a positive thing to have in the world?
I feel like MrHappy.com is a really serious subject. I'm pretty sure there are similar things that exist out there on the deep web. I have never witnessed it myself, but I've definitely read stories that sounded pretty similar. I think that if you want to end your life there should be a way to do it, but not in such a romantic way. This website in general is something very controversial—it's a weird look into what the future could hold for us.

How did you connect with Chance the Rapper? What was the impetus for him to star in the film?
I met Chance on a video that I was directing for Justin Bieber. We were shooting Chance's part and we got to hang out all day and got into some really cool conversations. Chance is like one of the most down-to-earth people I've ever met and right away I was like, This dude is really special. We talked about film and he was telling me how he wanted to get more involved in it. Crazily enough, he had a lot of the same taste in weird movies as I do. A couple days later I get pitched this idea for Mr. Happy. After getting together with my friends who wrote it—Steve Mcclean and David Singer-Vine—I sent it to Chance, he loved it. After trying to find a consecutive five days in his whirlwind of a schedule we figured it out and shot the movie.

The paintings in the film are killer. Can you talk a little bit about the meaning behind them and what you wanted their visual style to achieve? Also, who's the artist?
Dude! The paintings are so good. Around the same time we were creating the script, my good friend Kevin Spring started up painting again, and he was creating these really cool dark portraits of different people. I actually let him read the script and he was like, "Fuck dude I want to paint Chance how I see him in the film." So before we even shot the film. he painted the cover art. I guess it just all worked super seamlessly. Luckily I'm surrounded by so much talent in all areas of art. Now I have that painting hanging in the living room in my house. Thanks Kev!

What are you working on now?
I'm already working on the next couple short film ideas, and putting the finishing touches on a couple of feature scripts that me and some friends have been working on over the last couple years.

Colin Tilley is an award-winning music video director who has written and directed music videos for artists including Chris Brown, Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Nicki Minaj, 50 Cent, Lil Wayne, Diddy, Usher, Melanie Fiona, Keri Hilson, Wiz Khalifa, and UK rappers Chipmunk and Dappy, among others. Colin Tilley has won several awards including video of the year at the 2011 BET Awards for Chris Brown's "Look at Me Now" video and Best Male video at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards for Justin Bieber's "You Smile." He was nominated for three videos at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards including best male video, best hip-hop video, and best collaboration video.

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


Films for Outsiders: An Interview with Gregg Araki

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Gregg Araki's films are the kind of guilty pleasures you don't actually have to feel guilty about. They tend to offer everything you'd want from a teen film—good-looking actors, shallow dialogue, angsty post-punk soundtracks—but without all the heterosexuality and clichéd endings. Instead, the director opts for nihilistic, disenfranchised characters (so much more relatable) and a resolutely queer approach. His most famous film, for example, is Mysterious Skin: the story of a small-town rent boy who first fell in love with a man who abused him at the age of eight.

Araki first made his name as a filmmaker in the 90s, emerging as part of the new queer cinema movement when his third feature, The Living End—the story of two HIV-positive fugitives—debuted at Sundance, in '92. He was banded together with Todd Haynes, Tom Kalin, and Rose Troche—filmmakers who shared his dedication to putting a more accurate portrayal of gay characters on cinema screens.

"It was very small, like a high school class," he remembers. Araki's in his 50s now, but he talks like a Valley Girl and doesn't look a day over 35. "Rick Linklater is another filmmaker—we have a very similar method of working, doing our own thing." He compares himself to Gus Van Sant, too—another art-house auteur for doomed Gen X. "We're similar in that we all have our own voice."

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Thomas Dekker, Gregg Araki and Roxane Mesquida promoting Kaboom. Image via Wiki Commons.

Since the 90s, Gregg's films have grown less pointedly political, though, and his latest, White Bird in a Blizzard, marks a further break from what was usually, in the early days, an indignant approach to narrative filmmaking and a consistently trashy, low-budget aesthetic. It's also a murder mystery. Shailene Woodley plays suburban 17-year-old Kat Conners, who's like a slightly less self-involved version of Angela Chase from My So-Called Life. One afternoon, Kat's mother—over-acted by Eva Green—disappears without a trace. We follow Kat as she tries to unravel it all.

The script's based on a novel by Laura Kasischke, says Araki. He describes the book as "poetic," "lyrical," and "cinematic," but also made a load of changes to it. "I changed the ending," he says, "the whole third act of the movie." He also moved the location and the period slightly. "The book, I think, is set in '85 or '86. I moved it a couple of years later, to 1988, as well as moving the location from Ohio to California, so it would be a little closer to my own experience."

Growing up in what he describes as "an exciting time as far as punk-rock music and post-punk were concerned," Araki says he felt compelled to make Kat and her friends part of the same kind of alternative music culture that he experienced in high school—a little earlier, he says, around the time the Sex Pistols broke America.

"In the book Kat meets Phil and they begin their puppy love affair dancing to Journey, or something terrible like that, but in the movie I relocated it from a high school dance to a goth club and had Siouxsie and the Banshees playing. That's the look and the world that I was in—it allowed me to relate so much more to the characters."

[body_image width='676' height='425' path='images/content-images/2015/03/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/13/' filename='gregg-araki-body-image-1426271029.png' id='36025']Still from 'White Bird in a Blizzard'

When conversation moves onto the topic of genre, Araki is quick to defend his work as genre-less. The phrase "coming-of-age film" doesn't go down well.

"The two movies to me that are coming-of-age movies are probably Mysterious Skin and this movie," he says, "and they're both based on books—stories that I did not write. I wouldn't call Doom Generation, or Kaboom, or even Smiley Face a 'coming of age' movie. One of the things I'm really happy with about my work is that it's kind of all over the place. My movies are very different from each other. There are certain filmmakers, who I will not name, who just make the same fucking movie over and over again."

The cohesive thread, he can agree, is stories about outsiders. This is what's earned him a legion of cult fans—gay, straight, or queer. I ask him whether the impetus to make queer films came naturally, since he is gay himself, or whether he consciously thought it important to put gay characters in front of the camera. "It was very important to me personally. I always feel very gratified when people say, 'Oh, your films always meant so much to me,' or, 'They helped me when I was coming out.'

"The Queer New Wave wasn't truly a new wave in the sense of the French New Wave," he continues. "Those filmmakers sat in a room and came up with this idea that they were going to create a certain type of cinema. For us, for all of us—and I know almost all of those [queer] filmmakers because we all met at, like, Sundance, and Berlin—it was never truly a 'movement' in that sense. It was just a bunch of us who were all approximately the same age and very passionate about independent cinema."

A defining characteristic of Araki's film has been creating a true snapshot of time and place. "Because of the AIDs crisis and what was going on politically, it was very much like a war zone. Young people don't understand what that was like, but it was similar to the kind of world in The Normal Heart, that HBO thing that was just on—a very dark time, a very angry time and a time when people were agitated. It was impossible not to be agitated because, as a young person in your twenties or thirties, you were just surrounded by constant death. Your time was very limited because of the simple fact that you were gay. It was a very intense period to live through and I think the films really reflect that."

[body_image width='729' height='485' path='images/content-images/2015/03/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/13/' filename='gregg-araki-body-image-1426270523.png' id='36015']Rose McGowan in 'Doom Generation'

Like the work of Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes, Araki's films have now moved on from purely LGBT subject matter: "We were also just doing our own thing as filmmakers back then, which is why we've all made other kinds of movies now." White Bird, however, still has a big gay moment (can't tell you what it is) and more than a semblance of the gay sensibility in terms of how incredibly camp Eva Green's performance is.

"Eva, I've loved Eva Green forever," Araki gushes. "I've loved her since The Dreamers." He is the most animated he's been our entire interview. "She's so unique, there's really nobody like her, I was just so thrilled to work with her. Another thing about Eva is that she—I mean, I love her as a person, she is just a great person, a great artist—but on set she is like Greta Garbo, she has this sort of magical aura about her."

[body_image width='1200' height='763' path='images/content-images/2015/03/13/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/13/' filename='gregg-araki-body-image-1426269020.jpg' id='36000']
Eva Green in 'White Bird in a Blizzard'

I suggest that her look in the film is quite Jackie O and her performance is quite Joan Crawford (i.e. so gay). Araki loves this. "Well, Eva and I had a lot of discussions about the Eve character in the sense that I really wanted that her not to be a one-dimensional, stepmother-type villain. I really saw Eve as a tragic figure. Tough women—Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie O, Joan Crawford—all of those icons of that period, we decided these were the character's role models, the people she would have grown up watching as the feminine ideal, women with the perfect hair and outfits and make-up. It's almost like Eva's character is a woman playing a character," he says. "Like she's sort of been told, 'This is who you are.'"

At the end of the film it turns out that Eva's part—Kat's mother—isn't quite who we thought she was, and there arrives a spectacular twist, which resuscitates the film from average to enjoyable. White Bird lacks the insurgency of his AIDS-related films like The Living End ("Why don't we go to Washington and blow Bush's brains out!") and Totally Fucked Up ("It was government-sponsored genocide!") but we can be glad the climate in which those films were made has changed, that Araki doesn't have so much to be angry about today.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/7D1W_aH72-g' width='640' height='360']

As our interview draws to a close, I ask him why he feels compelled to makes films. He compares his work to that of Scottish band The Cocteau Twins, whose music he has often featured on his soundtracks. "In America in particular, they were never super-popular—I know Robin because he's done the music now for White Bird and Kaboom and Mysterious Skin—and they were probably considered a commercial failure. But their music meant so much to so many people. It was something that was beyond music—it was really, really important to the people that got it.

"That's what I've always aspired to with my films: they're not for everybody and some are polarizing—I definitely have my fans and my detractors—but the people that do get my movies really get them. For me as an artist that's, like, the most I could ever ask for."

Follow Amelia on Twitter.

VICE Gaming: eSports - Part Five - Part 5

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Today, there are more people in the world who play the online multiplayer battle game League of Legends than there are people who live in France. We wanted to see how humanity got to this point, so VICE host Matt Shea flew to South Korea, a country where competitive gaming—also known as eSports—can either make you rich and famous or land you in rehab.

In the final part of eSports, we join 40,000 screaming fans at the League of Legends world final—the highest-attended eSports match in history. As we watch the future stars of the competitive gaming world ascend to glory, we're left wondering how physical sports will ever catch up.

Follow Rhys, Matt, and Grant on Twitter.

The Eclipse May Have Been Crappy but What It Told Us About Our Future Is Great

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[body_image width='678' height='439' path='images/content-images/2015/03/20/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/20/' filename='the-eclipse-may-have-been-crap-but-what-it-told-us-about-our-future-is-great-body-image-1426859966.png' id='38266']What a good eclipse looks like. Wiki Commons.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"Under a clear morning sky on the March 20, 2015, some 35,000 MW of solar energy, which is the equivalent of nearly 80 medium size conventional generation units, will gradually fade from Europe's electrical system before being gradually re-injected: all in the space of two hours while Europeans and their offices begin a normal working week day."

That poetic announcement this week, from the catchily named "European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity," showed how far we've come since Britain's last eclipse in 1999, when the main threat to electricity supplies was the Millennium Bug, back when experts didn't have to warn people about taking "eclipse selfies."

Today, a solar eclipse had a slight chance of fucking up the UK's power grid—and that's a really great thing, because it means that we're slowly starting to wean ourselves off oil.

Not that everyone's ready to break the addiction. Andrew Neil made a comment that raised a few eyebrows on Monday about peak oil. "Saudi Arabia could produce oil at current levels without new discoveries for 63 years. So much for peak oil theory."

[tweet text="Saudi Arabia could produce oil at current levels without new discoveries for 63 years. So much for peak oil theory." byline="— Andrew Neil (@afneil)" user_id="afneil" tweet_id="577440462056882176" tweet_visual_time="March 16, 2015"]

Actually the "myth" of peak oil is a regular theme of his, like some part of his brain can't deal with the stuff that fueled the Baby Boomer generation running out. Everything's fine, you see. No seriously man, everything is fucking fine.

Firstly, Neil's confused about his terms. Peak oil isn't when the oil runs out, it's the time when supply, well, peaks. There's still oil in the ground but it gets harder and harder to reach, slowing down production and driving up the cost, which in turn makes people buy less of it. Drilling might carry on for years after the peak, but the amount we get and actually use will follow a long, steady decline.

Second, unless you believe that oceans of oil literally appear magically out of rocks, there is a finite amount of it and peak oil will come sooner or later. (Inevitably, a load of people do believe exactly that, the so-called "abiotic oil theory," but they're idiots so let's move on.) Whether it comes in six years or 60 years doesn't really matter to the theory, though at 63 years old it probably does matter to Andrew Neil.

So the only question is when peak oil will hit. And the answer is... we're basically already there. It's been masked because there's been a huge shale oil boom in the US in the last few years. As the Financial Times pointed out last month, if you leave out American shale oil, the global supply actually fell over the last ten years.

Now you may say, "so what?" Shale oil is still oil and overall supply went up, right? Well yes and no. The problem is, shale oil is incredibly expensive to get at, and US producers have to constantly build new rigs and infrastructure to get at the deposits. That only makes sense when oil prices are high, so you'll still make a profit even with all that expense—and prices go up when the supply from elsewhere falls. The whole shale oil boom is basically industrial denial—it only makes sense as a desperate race to keep oil supplies afloat.

Peak oil is happening now or soon, according to pretty much every expert on the planet. There's no plausible scenario that has it later than about 2030.

Measuring the exact point that it happens isn't easy for a whole bunch of reasons—we don't have perfect information about what's in the ground for a start, and a lot of the people involved in production have a vested interest in keeping things positive. It may be in ten years, it may be this year, it may have already happened. It'll probably be clearer in hindsight, but at this point it doesn't matter that much.

[body_image width='769' height='438' path='images/content-images/2015/03/20/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/20/' filename='the-eclipse-may-have-been-crap-but-what-it-told-us-about-our-future-is-great-body-image-1426860669.png' id='38270']Pumpjacks on an oil field. Wiki Commons.

Of course for baby boomers brought up on cars and fumes, that's a terrifying prospect. For people of a certain age, cars and petrol were associated with freedom, and having a social life. In 2015, that just isn't true any more. If anything cars are a total pain in the ass—dangerous, labor intensive, hard to park, incredibly expensive, and frustrating to drive on our crowded streets. Trains and taxis are more comfortable, and you can dick about on your iPhone instead of creeping along behind some guy's rear bumper. In 1965, cars were your gateway to the world. In 2015 it's the iPhone, and you can't stare at a screen and drive at the same time.

In fact it's amazing how quaint the era of petrol cars seems. The whir of Teslas has drowned out the roar of the V8, and in the next several years self-driving cars from Apple and Google could be trundling along our motorways. The truth is, we've fallen out of love with driving. Never mind peak oil, peak car has already happened in the UK—in fact the amount we drive started to drop about 10-15 years ago.

If cars no longer mean freedom, the same is even more true for petrol. The quest for oil to put in our cars has caused conflict, propped up oppressive regimes, and polluted vast swathes of our own environment. The hundreds of billions being spent on oil and gas exploration look like the desperate scrabbling of a drug addict hunting down the back of a sofa.

The solar eclipse wasn't that impressive here in Maidenhead, a desolate town of pound shops and cheap-suited Tories and shit clubs opened by Gareth Gates, where concrete buildings merge seamlessly into grey oppressive skies and the only sun you'll see was left on the seat of a bus. But still, looking up and imagining the impact a solar eclipse was having on our new, clean energy supply felt pretty good.

Follow Martin on Twitter.

Ladies and Their Lizards

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Antipodium dress, earrings from the Antique Jewellery Company; Victoria Beckham dress from Harvey Nichols

PHOTOGRAPHY: CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD
STYLING: KYLIE GRIFFITHS
ART DIRECTION: CHARLOTTE AND KYLIE

Set design and props: Marisha Green
Make-up: Lucy Wearing using MAC cosmetics
Hair: Sami Knight
Nails: Jessica Thompson using Essie
Stylist's assistant: Thomas Ramshaw and Sian
Models: Tenna and Roxy at Premier

Special thanks to Lee's Reptiles and Luton Reptile Rescue

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Moschino Cheap and Chic coat from Harvey Nichols, Antipodium dress, earrings from the Antique Jewellery Company

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Nordic Poetry top, scarf and trousers, ring from The Antique Jewellery Company

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Nordic Poetry top, scarf, and pants, JM Elton Antique Jewellery broach; shirt from Rokit, Nordic Poetry pants, ring from the Antique Jewellery Company

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Rug lizard's own

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Dress from Rokit, JM Elton Antique Jewellery necklace

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Topshop top (worn as a dress), River Island skirt; River Island skirt, bracelet from the Antique Jewellery Company

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William Wilde dress, Topshop coat, Goodley shoes

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Motel top, Moschino pants from Harvey Nichols, Swarovski bracelet from Harvey Nichols

Vanuatu Has Been Devastated by a Cyclone and Canada's Response Has Been Tepid

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Vanuatu, post-Cyclone Pam. Photo via Red Cross/Hanna Butler

Pretty much no one has heard of Vanuatu. If you have, it's because of cargo cults—aka the ritualized worship of airplanes, American flags, and Prince Philip. Vanuatu's John Frum cargo cult was the theme of the 2013 Burning Man festival. And Vanuatu was the location of season nine of Survivor, subtitle: Islands of Fire. Only stoners and surfers know Vanuatu.

That is, until Saturday, when it was hit by what's being called "the most powerful cyclone to hit the South Pacific since records began." The words "total devastation" keep getting thrown around.

"It's becoming increasingly clear that we are now dealing with worse than the worst case scenario in Vanuatu," Oxfam Executive Director Helen Szoke said in a statement on Sunday. "We hold grave fears for the people on these outer and remote islands."

"Vanuatu islanders forced to drink seawater," said the BBC. And there are reports that nine of the 43 Canadians potentially affected by the cyclone have yet to be reached.

A group of Canadian doctors are recommending that the government fire up our Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) to help Vanuatu out.

"A DART deployment is a low-risk, low-cost... and do-able expression of Canada's commitment to our Pacific neighbours," they write. As of yet, DART has not been deployed.

Canada's failure to help Vanuatu should be, they write, "a controversy that would mire the government's reputation not only for the next election, but in the history books."

It seems like a strong statement. The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFAIT) initially pledged $20,000 to Red Cross to assist in Vanuatu relief, and on Wednesday this was increased to $160,000. While far behind the approximately $2.36 million of disaster relief from New Zealand, it is more than half the amount contributed by the International Cricket Council.

Hey, it's not like this cyclone is our fault. Right?

Let's start at the top. Vanuatu is a country in the South Pacific. It is west of Fiji, north of New Zealand, and home to about 270,000 people across about 83 islands. It is uniquely a former colony of both England and France, and the Ni-Vanuatu people often speak both French and English, along with their indigenous language and something called Bislama.

Mi save toktok Bislama frum we olgeta famili blong mi hemi ben stap long Vanuatu long taem mi ben stap wan pikinini. (Which translates to, "I speak Bislama, because my family lived there when I was a kid.") The usefulness of speaking Bislama is generally limited to first dates, where it ranks alongside the fact that I waited in line for 42 hours to see Star Wars: Episode 1. So now we know why I care about Vanuatu, but the question remains: should you?

Vanuatu is a rural country, one of the world's poorest. Most of the people live without power or running water, but that doesn't mean that the people are always starving. The Ni-Vanuatu are primarily subsistence farmers. They live in small villages and survive on the food that they grow in their gardens, and the little that they sell at local outdoor markets. Someone who has a lot of mangoes sells them for some yams, and then shares the hot gossip about a couple in the next village who've been sneaking out onto the coral reefs.

But Vanuatu isn't some modern Eden, where food just falls off the trees. I remember how scandalized the people there were when they saw me spit out my seeds after eating an orange. Even as they're walking along the road, the Ni-Vanuatu collect the seeds of the fruit in their hands so that they can plant them. So they can make more food, because that's how it's fucking supposed to work.

Flash forward to this past weekend. "Vanuatu's Tanna island residents are running out of food after Cyclone Pam," says the Sydney Morning Herald.

While immediate casualty rates have been lower than expected, aid agencies are becoming increasingly concerned with the long-term survival of people accustomed to big storms, but never as big as this.

Doctors from Canada have been going to Vanuatu since 1991. Through the Victoria-Vanuatu Physicans Project, they volunteered at the island's only hospital, a mostly open-air, cinder-block building with limited power supply. Patients were often accompanied by entire, concerned families, who remained there, sleeping, cooking and eating alongside them, until their release. In January of this year, the ViVa doctors were officially and happily made redundant, as local Ni-Vanuatu doctors took over the care of Lenakel Hospital and the island's 30,000 residents.

On Sunday, CNN reported from Lenakel Hospital and the images were hard to take. Cyclone Pam hit the island dead on. It destroyed the hospital, along with all the incubators, X-ray machines, and medical supplies painstakingly gathered over 25 years of humanitarian work. There is now a crowdfunding campaign to rebuild Lenakel Hospital.

Dr. Jeffrey Unger just returned to Canada from Tanna. In an open letter to MP Kellie Leitch, he describes the complete loss of the national food supply, and compromised water sources on the island. "Epidemic infectious diseases are imminent," he said. "Without immediate action, this will mean many, many preventable deaths."

While tragic on its own, the situation in Vanuatu has a significant link to climate change in general and Canada in particular. Speaking from a UN conference on disaster and risk in Japan, the president of Vanuatu directly attributed this storm to climate change. "We see the level of sea rise... The cyclone seasons, the warm, the rain, all this is affected," he told the Guardian. "This year we have more than in any year."

Canada consistently ranks among the top greenhouse gas-emitting countries in the world. Thanks to those blossoming oil development projects, we use more energy per-capita than almost any other country. When it comes to climate change policy, we're number one—as in, the worst. "Canada still shows no intention of moving forward with climate policy and therefore remains the worst performer of all industrialized countries," reads the 2013 annual report from Climate Action Network Europe.

Professor Kerry Emanuel is an atmospheric scientist and meteorologist at MIT. In a careful analysis of Cyclone Pam, he points to the growing consensus that a warming planet means more high-intensity storms, more often.

"Basic theory and a variety of numerical simulations support this," he writes, "as well as the projection that tropical cyclones should produce substantially more rain, owing to the increased moisture content of the tropical atmosphere."

According to Emanuel, author of Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes, "while Pam and Haiyan, as well as other recent tropical cyclone disasters, cannot be uniquely pinned on global warming, they have no doubt been influenced by natural and anthropogenic climate change."

The South Pacific is often referred to as the "canary in the coalmine" when it comes to climate change. The islands of Vanuatu are low-lying, many only a few feet above sea level, so those inches of rising sea levels mean a lot. "When a 100-year event becomes a 50-year event, it may take a few destructive hits before we adapt to the new reality," says Prof. Emanuel.

Adapting to this "new reality" in the North means you have to buy a pair of long-johns that are 100 percent wool instead of the cute pink cotton ones. In the Global South, it means you're starving. It means the garden your family has cultivated for 1,000 years through storms and summers has been turned to mud.

It might seem like we're all barreling headlong towards catastrophe, with nothing but accelerationists and health goths to welcome us in their clammy embrace. But the reality is that a lot of people are being chucked ahead of us. The canary doesn't just fly down into the coal mine to see what's up. It's carried down there in a cage, by someone who figures they'll have enough time to get out once it's dead.

Vanuatu is no Nauru—it hasn't been strip-mined or over-forested, and they haven't destroyed their fisheries. They live sustainably, like they always have, but right now they're paying for our garbage habits. As the president of the similarly tiny island country of Seychelles put it, "Today it is the South Pacific, tomorrow it could be us."

What is Vanuatu to us? Even if climate change has caused this super storm, it's not like me and my bike caused climate change. We shouldn't help Vanuatu because this cyclone is necessarily, individually our fault. We should help Vanuatu because they need it, and we can.

So far our government has yet to step up to the plate. Inquiries regarding DART were redirected to a statement about the Red Cross donation. Defence analyst Stewart Webb sees this as a missed opportunity. "DART has the specialization to assist in these conditions," he said. "They're just awaiting orders."

For his part, Dr. Unger is disappointed. "The UK, I heard today, is sending a special forestry team, to Tanna specifically, that helps to clear up the aftermath of this kind of debris," he said. "The Canadian government has issued a travel advisory."

Wan samting ia i makem haet blong mi i hevi tumas. (Translation: That makes me sad.)

You can contribute to the Vanuatu Relief through Oxfam or Canadian Red Cross, or donate directly to the rebuilding of Tanna's Lenakel Hospital.

Follow Mayana C. Slobodian on Twitter.

Watch Two Sneak Peeks from Tonight's HBO Episode

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Our third season of VICE is currently airing Fridays on HBO, and we've got some sneak peeks of tonight's episode to get you excited. So far this season, we've investigated climate change, police militarization, and more. This week, we take a look at the havoc overfishing is wreaking on our oceans, and also meet up with some American right-wing militias who say they're protecting and defending the Constitution. Check out these exclusive clips and then see the full episode later tonight.

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Watch VICE Fridays at on HBO at 11 PM, 10 PM Central.

This Woman Is Trying to Save French Gingers from Extinction

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All photos courtesy of 'Ginger Parties'

This article was originally published by VICE France.

Like most other minorities around the world, gingers tend to get a lot of shit. Here in France they make up only 5 percent of the population, but that doesn't mean that French gingers are ready to go gently into that good night. Leading the effort to replenish the carrot-top dating pool are two natural redheads named Alice and Gerald, who started Lyon's "Ginger Parties."

The aim of the event is to get as many French redheads as possible drunk together in the hope that some of them will end up fucking each other, ensuring the survival of their "species." I got in touch with Alice for a chat.

VICE: Hey, Alice. How did you come up with the idea for your Ginger Party?
Alice: My friend Gerald and I got drunk one evening over the Christmas holidays and we talked about us both being ginger. He already works as an event planner, so we thought it would be fun to set up an evening for gingers. Mission accomplished—I'd never seen so many gingers in the same room before.

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Alice and her friend Gerald. Photo by Eric Baule.

You're from England, where I believe there are more redheads than in France. Was it shocking when you moved to France and didn't see as many people with the same hair as yours around?
A little, yeah. As a redhead, I have a good "ginger radar" and I felt a little lost here. But things are better now that we have our parties.

And you organize one event per month, right?
That's right. The next one is on Monday, April 6. Right now we hold them at the Johnny Walsh bar, in St. Georges, Lyon. I usually work behind the bar together with the bar owner. He's cool and he's made certain price reductions just for redheads. We also primarily serve cocktails that contain whiskey and ginger ale, and pints of red beer to stay in the theme.

Have you suffered any discrimination as a ginger?
Yes, I had a little trouble with that as a kid. I even had to change schools because of some assholes who would bully me in the playground. I once went back to my old school after that, and I slapped that group's leader who used to harass me. I felt much better afterward. But I think children are just inherently cruel.

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I've heard that a bunch of ginger-hating bullies started gathering in front of your bar, wearing red wigs just to make fun of your events. Do you let them in?
We do not discriminate against non-gingers—we don't want to stoop to their level. A friend of mine played music at one of our events wearing a wig a while back, and others followed his example the next month. Another friend of ours dyed his beard red to come to our party, and now he is thinking of keeping it that way.

Good for him. According to a controversial study published last year in The Independent, gingers are facing extinction. Are your parties also aiming to bring people together in a place full of alcohol to promote copulation and the reproduction of the "species"?

I also have heard that we are endangered. They say we have 60 years left on this planet because of global warming—at least that is what this study claims. I guess I did have that in the back of my head when I came up with the idea.

We're actually thinking of asking for a permit to become a redhead swinger club—we might call it "The Sweaty Ginger," or something like that [laughs]. I mean, if these parties increase our chances to get laid, then that's great.


The MUNCHIES Guide to Sweden: New Nordic Cuisine

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The MUNCHIES Guide to Sweden: New Nordic Cuisine

The Untimely Death and Glorious Rebirth of Faith No More

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The Untimely Death and Glorious Rebirth of Faith No More

A Judge Decided the Eric Garner Grand Jury Proceedings Should Stay Secret

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In early January, lawyers from the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Aid Society, the Public Advocate's Office and even the New York Post stood in front of a Staten Island judge with a simple, if legally complicated, request:

They wanted to see the secret grand jury proceedings in the Eric Garner case.

The petitioners wanted to know how and why the court decided to not even indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the videotaped chokehold that killed Garner in July, especially after the release of the grand jury proceedings in the Michael Brown case. As one protester, Ruben Mendez, told me, "I see no reason why it shouldn't be released—Ferguson was a much more dangerous situation, and they released them there."

But on Thursday afternoon, State Supreme Court Justice William E. Garnett ruled that whatever happened in that grand jury room stay secret.

In a 12-page opinion, Justice Garnett denied the request to release the documents in the Garner case, effectively siding with Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, whose office had argued that their release would lead to an "inevitable result of harassment or retaliation."

Responding to each party individually, Justice Garnett cited the lack of a "compelling or particularized need" to see the proceedings released. In this case, he deemed the motive an interest—not a need—even if the petitioners were arguing that the whole damn process was screwed.

"What would they use the minutes for?" he wrote. "The only answer which the court heard was the possibility of effecting legislative change. That proffered need is purely speculative, and does not satisfy the requirements of the law."

Garnett argued that headlines do not translate into legal standing; just because the Garner case was such a big controversy does not mean the proceedings merit publication. Essentially, he's making the case that if the documents were released, it'd be a slippery slope for the sacred institution of secret grand jury proceedings in America.

"If every newsworthy case were deemed compelling and, thus justified disclosure, the veil of grand jury secrecy would be lifted and every citizen's right to have fellow citizens, sitting on a grand jury, check the power of the police and the prosecutor without pressure from outside influence—real or perceived—would be imperiled," Garnett said in the opinion.

On Thursday, Staten Island DA Donovan's office predictably called the decision "well-reasoned." And you can't blame him: The release of the grand jury proceedings might have been lethal to Donovan's congressional campaign, even if his borough is more sympathetic to police than the rest of New York City.

Almost immediately after Justice Garnett's decision, the NYCLU announced the natural next step: appeal. However, New York's grand jury secrecy laws are some of the nation's most stringent, making this an uphill battle with no tangible endgame.

"We are disappointed that the court has chosen to perpetuate secrecy rather than promote transparency," NYCLU Legal Director Arthur Eisenberg said in a statement. "In doing so, the court has reinforced the distrust many New Yorkers already feel toward the performance of the criminal justice system in this case."

In the meantime, the Department of Justice is still conducting an investigation into whether or not Officer Pantaleo violated Eric Garner's civil rights. In early March, a similar inquiry essentially led to the vindication of Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown, even if a related DOJ report could end up dismantling the Ferguson Police Department. But with a federal monitor and inspector general already in place to oversee the NYPD, it's unlikely that the investigation will result in anything nearly as impactful as the Ferguson report, let alone an indictment.

Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network, which has been heavily involved in the Garner case, is holding out some hope. "We will not be discouraged as we continue to fight for the family of Eric Garner as they await the decision in the federal investigation of his death," the group said in a statement. "We will continue to push for legislation and policies that protect the rights of all citizens."

The one thing that does look certain is the fate of a $75 million wrongful death civil lawsuit that the Garner family has filed against the city, with the help of famed civil rights attorney Jonathan Moore. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has said that his office is seeking to settle the lawsuit soon, which, given the city's recent track record, likely means a generous payout.

This sequence of events, unfortunately, is the reality of criminal justice when it comes to police in New York City, and much of America. The serious stuff—like releasing grand jury proceedings for everyone to see—fails, making way for a price tag on an individual death rather than measures to prevent those deaths from happening again.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

Atlantic Canada’s Answer to the Kebab is a Condensed Milk-Filled Beast

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Atlantic Canada’s Answer to the Kebab is a Condensed Milk-Filled Beast

10 Things I Love About Clubbing in Toronto

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10 Things I Love About Clubbing in Toronto
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