"Big data" and "sex trafficking." That it took so long for someone to combine these buzz terms into one money-making venture is just one of several mysteries surrounding Rescue Forensics, a new startup.

The "big" in the Memphis-based company? Rescue Forensics claims it "archives massive quantities of data from classified advertisement sites specializing in commercial sex ads." It gathers a lot of text, and even more nude and semi-nude photos. Then it turns all that over to the cops.

Rescue Forensics has said it's "making it harder for bad guys to hide on the internet." And while it's hard to quantify that claim, the company certainly achieved some success in attracting investors: Paul Graham's influential Y Combinator incubator selected Rescue Forensics for funding, after which TechCrunch dubbed the service the "software eats sex trafficking." With Rescue Forensics, users can "#tracethetraffickers," as one of its own Facebook memes puts it.

From what I could learn, though, what Rescue Forensics appears to be selling is just one more tool to help cops track people engaged in sex work through their online activities.

Rescue Forensics purports to have brought on more than 100 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). (A spokesperson for one segment of DHS—Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE—said that as far as they could tell, they aren't using the software, while the FBI refused to comment on investigations.)

Rescue Forensics' web copy encourages cops to "stop sending subpoenas." Law enforcement, they're saying, shouldn't bother using the legal process when they can get sex workers' histories of online ads using Rescue Forensics—for a price.

Finding out exactly how Rescue Forensics uses sex workers' data wasn't easy. Co-founder Ryan Dalton wouldn't let me demo the software, so I couldn't verify any of the claims made about what they do. "I don't want to be portrayed as somebody who's hiding the ball," Dalton told me.

So, with his caveats, here's what I could gather: Rescue Forensics is a database with a set of search and flagging tools, possibly custom-built, for law enforcement. It's a more easily searchable mirror of ads for sexual services placed on websites like Backpage.com—though Dalton wouldn't confirm that Backpage.com was one of the websites they collected data from, or give me the names of any other sites that end up in their database.

What this means is that there's a good chance that if you've placed an ad online in the last two years for escorting, massage, BDSM, stripping, private modeling, nude housekeeping, selling your underwear, or any other permutation of the various sexual services people can put on offer, Rescue Forensics has a copy. And because Rescue Forensics has a copy, so do their users in law enforcement.

The tools the company says they provide to police sound pretty powerful: Apparently, through image matching, they can connect photos from deleted classified ads they've archived with existing social media profiles. The only search tool Dalton would tell me about in real detail was something they've built to clean up some of the data, like phone numbers, which advertisers are usually prohibited from typing out in an ad (and so might have obscured with extra characters or spaces). Rescue Forensics' users in law enforcement can more easily search for text that advertisers took steps to conceal.

The rationale for collecting all of these ads, Dalton says, is that sometimes, behind them are people who are "exploited." They can be identified because some ads, he said, "contain suspicious behavior." According to him, those could be "an ad that says someone is 18 years old" or "a photo that shows a person whose body is underdeveloped," "photos with braces," or "babyfat in their face," or "text written in a third person." Rescue Forensics, he added, "gives law enforcement tools to find trafficking victims," in some part based on what's contained in these ads.

That's the whole premise behind the business: Rescue Forensics, a for-profit company, has an innovative solution that publicly-funded law enforcement agencies should buy. But as Kate D'Adamo, national policy advocate for the Sex Workers' Project, told me, "Private individuals and companies like Rescue Forensics policing the internet is not how anti-trafficking work happens."

The Sex Workers' Project assists people who have been engaged in the sex trade, whether through choice, circumstance, or coercion, and routinely represents people who have been trafficked. In the eyes of advocates who work to support actual trafficking victims who may need emergency legal help, housing, or medical care, Rescue Forensics is a product built to solve a poorly defined, if not entirely nonexistent, problem: the lifespan of an online ad. "The assumption that advertising websites do not maintain information," D'Adamo explained, "or that this kind of advertisement is not accessible to law enforcement is not only absurd, it is a willful ignorance."

But for Dalton, the fight against trafficking isn't just about finding the people Rescue Forensics believes are "exploited": It's about abolition. That's how Memphis magazine headlined a 2011 profile of him: "A Modern-Day Abolitionist." That phrase, he told me, "comes from the premise that there are people who are compelled to do things against their will, and that is a lifestyle for those people," including "people who would not choose to be part of the commercial sex industry."

For him, "Abolition is the effort to undermine those criminal enterprises."

Before he co-founded Rescue Forensics, Dalton was a policy advisor to Shared Hope International, a faith-based anti-prostitution organization involved in "rescuing and restoring" people it describes as trafficked. The group claims that demand for commercial sex drives demand for trafficking and argues that websites like Backpage are facilitators of trafficking. They are currently lobbying Congress to redefine men who buy sex as "traffickers." They also organize a men's group called the Defenders, who pledge not to consume porn or any other form of commercial sex.

In their campaign "Demand Justice," Shared Hope makes the claim that "sex trafficking will end only when men stop buying sex." Last August, Dalton authored the campaign's launch announcement, inviting Shared Hope's supporters to become "an ally in the effort to eradicate the market force that fuels sex trafficking and victimizes the vulnerable."

Of sex work generally, Dalton told me, "I know there are people who choose to do that, but I'm not talking about those people... but there's a subset of those ads for people who do not choose that lifestyle."

To date, Dalton told me his company has collected "18 million records" from over 800 cities—a great number of them ads presumably posted by people who are not trafficking victims.

Rescue Forensics defends copying the ads on the grounds that they were public in the first place. But Sarah Jeong, a journalist who covers law and technology for Forbes, contrasted how Rescue Forensics scrapes ads with other websites caught in similar controversies over how they repurpose users' information. (Craigslist—which may be on Rescue Forensics' list of targeted sites—is still in a legal battle over this.)

"What Rescue Forensics is doing is reminiscent of what 3taps and Padmapper were doing right before they were sued by Craigslist," Jeong explained. "3taps was scraping Craigslist for data, which startups like Padmapper would then use to create maps of listings." There, the user data was quite a degree of magnitude less sensitive than the kinds of ads for sexual services that get posted on a site like Backpage. "It's certainly difficult to see why Craigslist's users would want Craigslist to go out of their way to shut down Padmapper," Jeong added. "But on the other hand, when it comes to Rescue Forensics, I imagine that a lot of the people advertising on Backpage don't want someone scraping Backpage and giving that information to law enforcement."

Rescue Forensics may believe they have the right to copy ads to build their own product, but they may also expose advertisers by repurposing their information in ways they never meant for it to be used. "You can see a similar privacy issue at play with the FetLife 'meat list,'" Jeong said, "where someone scraped FetLife to create a list of profile names, ages, locations, sexual orientations, and BDSM roles of women on FetLife under 30."

Scraping websites primarily used by sex workers can have even more serious consequences for the people who advertise there. "The ability to advertise online provides a level of safety for many," D'Adamo told me, "but does come with the very real fear of exposure and leaving behind a footprint." Despite Rescue Forensics claim to focus on those who are "exploited," their product runs on sex workers' ads. "Compiling all of this information and making it easily searchable will only exacerbate these fears," D'Adamo added.

I asked Dalton to tell me more about these tools. How does Rescue Forensics sift through that data to find people who have been trafficked? He declined to share specifics. When I asked him to let me use a dummy version of Rescue Forensics without any real data in it, he said the reason he wouldn't was he "didn't want criminals to reverse-engineer what we've built to find them."

Here it might be reasonable to ask, if Rescue Forensics has built tools that allow law enforcement to look through classified ads placed for sexual services and discern who among those ads might be "exploited," why are they not stripping out all the ads that don't match that criteria and keeping only those that "contain suspicious behavior" in their database?

That's probably because Dalton himself acknowledges what they've built isn't enough to identify someone who has been trafficked into sex work, and that there's no way to tell from an ad if someone is forced or coerced. "Our platform can't distinguish," Dalton explained. "It's ultimately up to a human investigator."

That's a different story from the one Rescue Forensics has been telling on social media, where some sex workers and their allies have asked questions about the product, which they are concerned is meant to target them. In response to a question about this, Rescue Forensics tweeted back, "We design our platform only to look for exploited persons."

Why were other people at Rescue Forensics misrepresenting the product, I asked Dalton, and to the people who very well could have their data caught up in it? "I probably haven't done a good job of being clear," he offered.

The best explanation I can offer for this gap in the truth isn't about tech PR, or technology itself. If the so-called abolitionist movement is where Dalton's coming from—a movement that believes demand for the sex trade is responsible for trafficking, and therefore seeks to abolish the sex trade—you start to get a sense of why he might not be "clear."

Though he insisted to me multiple times that he does believe there's a difference between sex work and trafficking, Dalton still stands to profit from a product that can't make that distinction, placed in the hands of law enforcement officers who also routinely fail to make it. Police use every weapon at their disposal to harass and arrest sex workers, and Rescue Forensics can't guarantee it won't end up being one more.

Follow Melissa Gira Grant on Twitter.

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It might appear that Port Richey, Florida is in the midst of a crimewave. Between 2012 to 2013, citywide crime increased 58 percent. However, almost half of all the city's unlawful activity is occurring at the local Walmart. Forty-six percent, to be exact, between February 2014 and February 2015, according to Port Richey Police Chief Robert Lovering.

From the outside, the Walmart looks pretty innocuous. It sits just off a busy highway plastered with billboards for accident and injury attorneys. The building is a blocky behemoth of a thing, behind a strip mall with a Mattress Firm and a Movie Stop. It's one of those all-in-one Walmarts—it has an optometrist, a tire shop, and the complete first season of the Big Bang Theory on DVD. It also boasts a whopping 63 percent of all the city's thefts.

"Last year," saidChief Robert Lovering, "we only had 13 burglaries in the whole year. If you take the Walmart thefts out of the equation, our numbers are miniscule."

Because of the concentration of crime, the local discount store has become a serious concern for Port Richey's local law enforcement.

"We're there two times a day," he said. "Sometimes more. On a bad day we can be there four, five, six times easily."

For reference, Port Richey is a town of about 2,600 residents and 2.1 square miles. The police department, according to the chief, has 16 police officers, and some shifts are only two officers and a supervisor. For Lovering, it's a matter of being able to serve the community, and not spend all his resources at the store.

"The taxes that come from Walmart are not even enough to cover two police officer's salaries," he said. "Residents are paying for police officers they're not going to be able to use, because they're not there."

Port Richey is located in Pasco County, Florida, the eye of the hurricane that is weird Florida news, and other Walmarts in the county are not immune from its reach. For example, there was that time a man shot another man in the face with a pellet gun because he thought he was Muslim.

There was that other time where a Sheriff's Deputy was investigating a theft, saw his buddy doing the crime on video, and then declined to investigate the case. Or the one where the elderly woman and man got into a tiff, and he ended up clinging to her car while she barreled through the parking lot.

Related: VICE travels to the Sunshine State to report on Florida's gun laws.

I drove to the Port Richey Walmart yesterday afternoon to see if anyone could give me any insight into the issue. I found a woman holding a baby in a carrier, walking to her car. She introduced herself as Ashley Sarah. She's 27, and she's lived in Port Richey since she was three years old.

I told her about the problem while she lit up a cigarette, and she nodded.

"I'm not surprised," she said. "It's probably because there's a lot of drugs around here. I'm scared for my daughter to grow up here."

A Walmart employee in a vest saw me in the parking lot and walked back into the store rapidly. Sarah explained that people often come up to her and other customers in the parking lot and ask for money, or look for used receipts to go into the store and fraudulently return items.

At that point, I saw an assistant manager talking on the phone near the entrance of the store. I went over to him to ask if he knew about all the crimes. He referred me to a number, which I called, and a recorded voice told me to either email or call, but not both. I also reached out to Walmart's media department, to ask about the crimes, but they couldn't be reached by the time of publication.

In a statement last week, Walmart told Bay News 9 reporter Leah Masuda it was aware of the issue and it was working with the Port Richey Police.

"Unfortunately, criminal activity such as shoplifting is a challenge all retailers deal with," a Walmart representative said. "Our asset protection team does a great job in identifying people who break the law in our stores, which demonstrates that Walmart is the wrong place to attempt these crimes. And while Walmart is effective at detecting these crimes, we will continue to collaborate with local police to focus on crime prevention."

Lately, the Port Richey police department has been upping its patrol of the area, but Lovering said a big part of the problem is that Walmart waits for someone to commit the crime, and then calls police, rather than preventing the crime in the first place.

"A lot of times store security will witness them getting a receipt from outside, and allow them to pick up [the item], allow them to check out, and then apprehend them," he said. "We want them to stop that crime from occurring in the first place."

But the problem isn't just a Port Richey problem. Lovering used to work in Tampa, a large metropolitan city, where he said about 10 percent of all thefts happened in Walmarts. That's usually the case all over the country.

Captain Bill Ferguson said he's sees a lot of the same faces over and over again, and it would help if Walmart would stop letting them back into the store. He also knows that because a smaller town might not have as many big stores, Walmart becomes a de facto gathering spot, as well as a center for crime.

"I would say that this is not just unique to Port Richey," Captain Bill Ferguson said. "Walmart comes into a small town and it also tends to cause havoc with your crime rate."

Follow Jon Silman on Twitter.

It's safe to say that the past year and a half has been a bit nuts for the New York Police Department.

Since Bill de Blasio took office as NYC mayor last year, his appointment of Bill Bratton—the forefather of "broken windows," a theory of law enforcement that targets low-level infractions often involving black and Hispanic men—as NYPD commissioner has come under fire from criminal justice reform activists. Last summer, the city was consumed with the videotaped chokehold death of Eric Garner on Staten Island. Protests in Ferguson were mirrored by protests on Broadway, both before and after both officers involved were walked away from the incidents without being charged with crimes.

One bad story after another—usually involving police brutality—made headlines, and reformers continued to call for changes that Mayor de Blasio supported as a candidate. So when the New York City Council announced on Tuesday that funding for an additional 1,000 NYPD officers would be included in its next budget proposal, the response wasn't exactly unpredictable.

In a letter sent to Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who argued last week that the hiring was necessary "to do effective community policing [and] at the same time we continue to demand reforms," dozens of civil rights groups demanded that her proposal be dropped from the budget immediately.

The additional officers would cost $68.7 million in 2016 and over $300 million spread out over the following three years, but the proposal also calls for overtime to be reduced by $50 million. The coalition, which includes Communities United for Police Reform and the NAACP, argues the money should be spent on community development alternatives like programs for the youth and homeless.

"Adding 1,000 new positions within the police department not only raises significant concerns for communities that have yet to see public accountability for the department," the letter reads, "but it also would come at the expense of more beneficial long-term investments in the safety and well-being of our neighborhoods.

"While there has been a focus on the issue of 'police-community relations,' there has not been enough attention paid to addressing the concrete and underlying issues of discriminatory and abusive policing," it continues.

It's natural that Bratton would support hiring additional officers, but Mark-Viverito has been a staunch critic of the NYPD's practices, both in her own district of East Harlem and citywide. As a council member, she voted for the Community Safety Act in 2013, a bill that established the position of Inspector General—who is tasked with monitoring the NYPD—along with measures to limit discrimination by beat cops. Unlike de Blasio, she dedicated a significant portion of her first State of the City address in February to police reform.

"We cannot continue to lock up those accused of low level, nonviolent offenses without recognizing the dire, long-term consequences to them and to our city," she said in that speech.

Now many of her own supporters and other reform advocates are asking a simple question: Wait, why do we need more cops again?

"Listen to what very good people, like Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Public Advocate Letitia James, are putting forward," Bob Gangi, the head of PROP, a police reform group who advocates for a "mend it before you extend it" policy, told me. "A thousand more cops? What do you think they're gonna do? Besides hand out more arrests and tickets to people who are supposed to be 'your constituents.'" (Last year, nearly 400,000 summonses were handed out to New Yorkers.)

The NYPD is already the largest municipal police force in the country, with over 34,500 officers in uniform on a daily basis. And the force has 51,000 employees in total, making it larger in raw numbers than the FBI. And that's actually a decrease: There are 6,000 fewer cops now than there were before September 11—a day that single handedly turned the NYPD into a highly sophisticated global counterterrorism agency.

The decrease in cops is pegged to the decades-long decrease in crime. And with murders at record lows in New York, logic would seem to suggest that the next budget shrink the force rather than grow it. But according to Eugene O'Donnell, a former Brooklyn cop and prosecutor at the Jay College of Criminal Justice, it's not always crime that justifies hiring. Instead, the problem of immediate response needs to be addressed, especially when the city receives millions of 9/11 and 3-1-1 calls a year.

"There is a case they are needed not so much for crime fighting—the city is generally super safe—but the demands for police service via 911, 311 and in person are unrelenting," O'Donnell told me. "Some precincts have a handful of officers leading to situations where 'they get there when they get there,' even for priority calls."

Further, the force is poised to shed thousands of officers to retirement in the years ahead. The rampant hiring of cops under the Giuliani administration in the 1990s, when crime was much higher and broken windows was first implemented under Bratton's first stint as commissioner, is now coming up against the reality of pensions that kick in after 20 years on the job.

According to Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant, that could squeeze the Department dry.

"A thousand cops is a drop in the bucket and will not even cover the attrition the NYPD is going through now," he said. "They will need to hire 5,000 just to keep up with attrition."

Giaccalone added that the thousand officers wouldn't even hit the streets for another year, so whatever "community policing" the Speaker is after may take a while. "When they put a class of recruits in, it takes six months to train them. Then they get field training for a few months. You are looking at close to a year before these rookies are really ready to do police work."

Now, strangely enough, the one major roadblock is the person who has found himself under attack from the NYPD more than any other city official: de Blasio, who, along with Bratton, blocked a similar hiring proposal last year. The Mayor has said he doesn't believe there's a need for a thousand more cops; his office didn't include that money in its preliminary budget earlier this year either. Instead, the mayor has stumped on behalf of retraining efforts, body cameras, and, this week, court reform. But that was also before Mark-Viverito, his strongest legislative ally, and Commissioner Bratton—his best chance of keeping peace with the boys in blue after months of internal revolt—demanded more.

Amy Spitalnick, a budget spokeswoman for the de Blasio administration, said that the mayor's office will release its Executive Budget this spring, and looks forward to negotiations with the City Council. In the meantime, de Blasio is dancing around the question of whether his city really needs all those new bodies on its police force.

"I think we've been over this now for a year and a quarter—we make budget announcements the day we make the budget announcement," he told one reporter at Gracie Mansion two weeks ago. "We don't just give you hints."

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

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"Welcome, Cybernauts!"

It was in 1996. Jean Chretien had been prime minister for three years, and he had another seven to go. The right wing of Canada's political spectrum had not yet united—Preston Manning led the Reform Party, Jean Charest was leading the Progressive Conservatives. The Bloc Québécois, led by Lucien Bouchard, was the country's second-largest party, and Alexa McDonough was the head of the nearly demolished NDP.

It was a simpler time. It was a time when MS Paint was top of the line, Java reigned supreme, and Adobe Shockwave was but a dream. Political parties were just beginning to explore the possibility of shilling for votes on the vast, open internet.

It was also a time when, upon logging onto the World Wide Web address of http://www.liberal.ca/home.html, you would be greeted by this hideous red-on-black design over the governing party's website. Clicking a little red maple leaf marked "English" would bring you to the homepage.

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"You have arrived at the home page of the Liberal Party of Canada. Perhaps you know who we are?"

The strangely familiar WebMaster had, just for you, created a website with such useful web portals as the InfoNet, which carried the daily InfoFax, full of political news.

Also, in case you had gotten yourself lost, the Liberal Party of Canada website carried a list of helpful links: AltaVista, a link to Al Gore's homepage, and an entire subhead featuring "Techno Stuff."

We are able to take this trip down memory lane thanks to Archive.org's Wayback Machine.

Ontario MP John English, on top of some seriously sick HTML skills, also showed off the best that fashion in the 1990s had to offer.

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English's colleague, Sue Barnes, had "Merry Christmas" in ten different languages on the landing page of her site, as it was December. Also, this kick-ass red book:

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The Honourable John Manley had this sick-ass page, best viewed in 800x600 screen resolution, which features a picture of Jean Chretien shaking hands with Bill Gates. Manley was minister of industry, so he had a link to the "Info. Highway." Get it?

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The stuffy folks over at http://www.pcparty.ca/ took a more minimalist approach.

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Before you even get past the splash page, the eerily pleading website is already asking: "Looking for somebody???"

Once you get onto the site itself, a black-and-white picture of Jean Charest is waiting for you—peering into your soul from the series of tubes that make up the internet.

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"Building a state-of-the-art consultation and feedback system to connect members and parliamentary representatives which is systematic, predictable, and accountable," reads an entirely out-of-context quote floating in the middle of the page.

Crawling through the website, you could enter the PC Party's bulletin board, which served as a proto-social media site, where you could read C Hastilow from Vancouver complaining that the party has insufficient resources in his province or check in on Ottawa snarkmaster B.G. drop some seriously '90s burns, like "WINDS OF CHANGE (NOT!)"

The most mysterious part of the website is the "Elsie File," a page featuring a bio of New Brunswick MP Elsie Wayne and a link to Wayne's email address, and nothing else.

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But the hands-down winner for the best political website circa 1996 is the Reform Party's confounding take on Richard Scarry's Busytown.

You can click on the community centre to get information on candidates and ridings, and to learn the name of the party's newsgroup (alt.reform.fresh-start.) You can click on the building marked "The News," which is ostensibly a newspaper, to get the Reform Party's press releases and to subscribe to the party's mailing list (which you can also do if you click on the house-sized mailbox). You can click the welcome arch to see a message from party leader Preston Manning and to get a map of the website. Clicking the clocktower brings you to a page about Parliament, for some reason.

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Reform was so forward-thinking that it built a website for each of its MPs. Diane Ablonczy, who is still a Member of Parliament, had one—"best viewed with Netscape Web Browser"—as did former BC representative Paul Forseth, whose website inexplicably has a grey wallpaper featuring the word "NEW" repeated endlessly.

They were even nice enough to link to the other parties' websites. (Although their link to the NDP site is just a page with a fallen skier.)

Ex-spy-review boss Chuck Strahl also had a webpage on the internet which featured a 23-second audio greeting (95kb, .wav), a hit counter (I was visitor 2,900), and a very dignified sandstone wallpaper.

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Then-rookie politician Stephen Harper had a page, too, that took minimalism to a new level.

The internet homepage for the New Democratic Party has got to be the biggest letdown—the Wayback Machine doesn't have anything for them circa 1996. Their 1998 site is archived, but all the links are broken.

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Once Jack Layton got elected leader in 2003, however, he seriously upped their internet game. (To see the full gif, click here.)

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Yes, a Bush Lied, People Died gif. An honest-to-god Bush Lied, People Died gif.

The NDP weren't the only ones with some sweet gif action, however. The Communist Party of Canada—which ran both a radio station and a video channel on its 1998 site—managed to Star Wars an entire description of class struggle into a single, incredible, 100-by-300-pixel animation. (To see the full gif, click here.)

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The 1998 iteration of the Communist Party of Canada's homepage is probably more modern-looking than the current one.

The Bloc Quebecois site remained largely text-based for much of the 90s, before the party saw the error of its ways and came out with a pair of seriously aggressive shit websites in the new millennium.

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The separatists' March 2000 site, the top one, appears to show a thousand damned souls crying out in pain and horror, trapped inside the Bloc Quebecois logo. Their update, in June, looks like my dentist's website from this year.

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

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Crocodile Gennadiy

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 so did its social services. The result across Russia and Eastern Europe was devastating; by the late 1990s there were an estimated 160,000 homeless children living on the streets of Ukraine, leaving them increasingly vulnerable to sex work, drug addiction, and HIV.

It was around this time that ex-Soviet soldier Gennadiy Mokhenko (nicknamed "Crocodile Gennadiy") started his work, which still continues today. When I first heard about his methods, they struck me as a little unorthodox. He abducts homeless kids off the streets of Ukraine, bundles them into his van, and locks them in his rehab center, Pilgrim, where they are forced to detox from whatever drugs they're addicted to.

While he clearly has good intentions, there's one question that's kind of inescapable: should he really be taking children against their will? For the past three years filmmaker Steve Hoover has been in Ukraine following Crocodile Gennadiy for a documentary named after the man himself, which premiered Thursday night at the Tribeca Film Festival. I had a chat with Steve about his time with Gennadiy.

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VICE: Hi, Steve. Can you tell me a bit about the work that Gennadiy does?
Steve Hoover: Something I've realized is that it's always changing. It's very ill-defined. When I first got involved in the story I thought he just worked with children on the streets of Ukraine, but I came to find out that there's a lot more than that. I feel like he works from a moral compass. As you see in the film, police call him and bring children to him. He takes on a social services role; he's a pastor.

Why is drug use among children in Ukraine so prevalent?
When Gennadiy first started his work in 1999, the problems had existed for quite a few years prior to that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But I don't think there's a specific reason for it. There's social apathy; kids who were on the street would use drugs to medicate their problems or keep warm; kids come from broken families where their parents have gone to jail or died, and the problem reproduces itself. Gennadiy always felt that social services were inept. They didn't act fast enough—kids that needed help would be stuck in situations that they shouldn't be stuck in. He came across situations that he needed to act on.

Do you think there's a danger in taking the law into your own hands, though? With something like social services, I'd assume you'd need to be trained to a certain degree in order to deal with a situation appropriately.
My perspective on Gennadiy's work is that it's a very complicated situation. I don't want my opinion to influence people before they watch the film. In some situations I thought I knew what was happening, and that maybe it's OK, but in other situations I wasn't so sure. The times that we filmed him only represented a handful of people and situations, so it's hard to say.

Related: Watch our documentary about Ukraine's Euromaidan protests

One thing that sprung to my mind was the danger of taking people off drugs so quickly, and the health dangers that come with that.
We didn't document anyone that was detoxing over a long period of time. He did mention that the work they do is on very rural farms and he said that they don't use methadone. He didn't give me any other specifics.

What were the children's attitudes toward Gennadiy?
The children were very drawn to Gennadiy. I found that surprising because he's a big guy and he's imposing, with a strong, deep voice. But the kids feel that they can approach him and they were never afraid of him. It was interesting how much respect the people around him seemed to have toward him.

A lot of children must have gone through Pilgrim over the years. Do you know if the majority of these were success stories? Do his methods work?
When I was looking through archival footage there were some kids that I recognized who had been there for ten years and were now healthy adults. According to Gennadiy, there's been around 3,000 children go through Pilgrim, but it's kind of a case by case scenario; some of them have gone on to be reunited with their families, some of the kids died, some of them ran away and would go back on drugs. But some kids had grown up to become great members of Ukrainian society. One girl who was disabled because of the drug use went on to get married and have a baby.

As each kid comes through, they become an investigation for him. He tries to figure out whether they had any identity at all.

[vimeo src='//player.vimeo.com/video/121205149?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0' width='640' height='360']

Why does he take photos of their track marks when they first come in?
For him, it was documentation to show people. Sometimes if a kid gets better he'd show them the before and after, and the kids would be proud of the photo as they've moved on. I have a book of some of these photos and it is shocking.

You got attacked in Ukraine filming this documentary. What happened?
We decided to go to a pro-Russia rally to film some footage, and we'd been told to be careful, but it was mid-afternoon, so the rally had died down. But people heard us speaking English and they were uncomfortable with that, so we realized it was time to go, but they started throwing stones and it escalated really quickly and a fight broke out—people were spraying tear gas. It was before war had broken out. There was a lot of speculation that there were people at these rallies who caused problems, politically. I can't work out exactly why they took such issue with us. We tried to explain that we weren't making a political film about the conflict.

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As the film goes on it takes a more political tone as the situation in Ukraine escalates. Was this an organic progression?
It was something that definitely developed over the course of 2012 to late 2014. But the socioeconomic status of Ukraine has a lot to do with why Gennadiy has been doing what he does. There's an undercurrent of displacement in Ukraine, and how that has directly affected Gennadiy. As [Euromaidan] all developed into a full-grown conflict it changed everybody's life in Ukraine. It was part of his story and everybody else's story.

Gennadiy has received some criticism for chasing fame, or for wishing to be perceived as a hero. Do you think he's vying for attention, and do you think this even matters?
Again, this is something that I'd rather leave for audiences to decide. I hope that the film starts a dialogue about this.

How do you personally think the drug problems among children could be sorted out in Ukraine?
Better regulations. The challenge is that there's so much corruption. Pharmacies were able to sell drugs without prescriptions, and this would remain unchecked. There are laws in place, but these aren't enforced for whatever reason. Sometimes the workers would say that they'd been forced to do it by their bosses. I don't think it necessarily started with the pharmacies early on; it was a street market that completely remained unchecked, but the pharmacies enabled it to continue as they became the dealers.

Have you kept in contact with Crocodile Gennadiy?
It's hard for us to talk because we need a translator—his English is limited, so our conversations can be broken. I've shown him the documentary and he had a very visceral reaction, in a positive way. He washed his face afterwards. There are moments in the film where he goes through intense situations, and he washes his face or his hands in order to clean his soul.

Thanks, Steve.

Crocodile Gennadiy is playing in New York at the Tribeca Film Festival through next week. Get tickets here.

Follow Daisy on Twitter.

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Erika Lust on the set of XConfessions vol. 4: Pansexuals. Photos provided by Lust Films

Erika Lust leans forward in her seat and looks right in my face, brows lowered, with a huge, conspiratorial grin on her face. She pounds her right fist against her open, outstretched left palm.

"It's time," she near-yells over the huge glassed-in meeting room. "Feminist porn needs to go mainstream."

Lust has been directing porn for a decade, and she's in Toronto for the tenth annual Feminist Porn Awards. She wants to teach young women who are new to filmmaking that they, too, can get into the business.

She depicts real, enjoyable sex that reflects actual pleasure for all, and not just tropes of woman-as-cock-hungry-damsel, man-as-empty-headed-stallion. She says porn needs to change.

"Porn is always the same. Men are the main characters, and women are the fuck bunnies. Horny housewives, secretaries... There are so many stereotypes, and it's never really about our experience."

"I want to get inside people's sexual minds. Mainstream porn is run by middle-aged men. Their vision has very little to do with my vision or my friends' visions," she says.

Lust started watching porn while she was at the University of Lund studying poli sci and gender studies. She found it disturbing that the women characters in the films didn't seem to be getting any pleasure out of the sex they were having. She said she felt horny while watching it, but not necessarily happy about that.

Then, in 2004, she created her first porno, called The Good Girl, as the final project for a course. She's been at it since, and for the past two years, Lust has been working on her series XConfessions, (which is OBVIOUSLY NSFW). People write to her (anonymously, if they want) with their sexual fantasies, and she brings two of them to life each month. The stories are funny and personalized, and, most importantly, they depict consent from and pleasure for each partner.

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Still from XConfessions vol. 4: Eat with Me

"I want to see more young women dare to start making films," Lust says. "Otherwise, my daughters will learn from these guys."

She wrote an e-book called Let's Make A Porno a couple of years ago, and she shares with me a few pointers for getting started.

"Squash your fears"
"Porn is something that most people think is chauvinistic, or smut," Lust says. "You have to be daring, you have to be a bold person to do this." In other words, in order to make porn, you need to stop giving a fuck what other people think and just stick to your principles.

In time, she learned she doesn't always need to explain her work to people. It can be "shocking" for many people to hear the words feminist and porn paired together, but if you deconstruct it for them, it's not a difficult concept.

"I only explain it if I have ten minutes, because otherwise they just run away," she jokes. "If I have ten minutes I'm a feminist pornographer. If not, I'm an erotic filmmaker."

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Still from Power Pussy

"Remember, it's a film first and foremost"
To stand out in the market, she says, you need to think beyond the sex and tune in to the artistic side of what you're doing. In other words—make it appealing to watch and not like somebody's seedy amateur film shot in a dusty roadside motel.

"Most porn is poor, poor quality. I loved film, so that was another reason why I hated [porn]," Lust says.

Learning basic filmmaking skills is key. This includes the elements of production and finding a perfect location: in a word, avoid ye olde semen infested vinyl couch. Don't be afraid to screw up. Just use the goddess-given internet and teach yourself what to do.

You'll need to start with a camera, obviously. These days, Lust says, amateurs can start shooting with their phones and achieve some dece results. As your ambitions grow, you can find a way to upgrade.

"The most important thing is your idea"
Lust says it's important to learn good storytelling skills. Don't just start the film with your typical blonde, helpless woman in a slutty dress who is rescued from a horrific scenario by some horse-dicked bro in a muscle shirt. Set the scene, and spend time building the characters as unique humans with true desires. She asks herself questions like:

"What is really interesting about these characters? What's the context? Who are these characters, and why are they interested in each other? Where is the passion?"

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Still from XConfessions vol. 4: Pansexuals

Casting: "Learn who they are and what they like"
Because this is feminist porn, it means everyone needs to consent in advance of the shoot. That means no surprise items or appendages inserted into anyone else's bodily cavities. This is technically the way all porn should go down, but too often, it doesn't happen that way.

The performers should enjoy what's happening and be treated respectfully. If there is group sex in feminist porn, you are unlikely to see a woman being banged like she's a series of Fleshlights while everyone studiously ignores the existence of her clit.

Lust says being ethically responsible is crucial in feminist porn. Making sure people are well-paid and not sexually assaulted on set is ideal here. With mainstream porn companies, it's not always obvious that they pay their people in time, or that they ensure proper healthcare for performers.

"What porn you watch is the same as buying meat and eggs at the supermarket. Being responsible as a consumer is important, whether it's with food or porn."

Follow Sarah Ratchford on Twitter.

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Photo via the College of DuPage Newsroom Flickr

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.

Three nurses at a hospital in Las Vegas agreed to speak with me on the condition that they remain anonymous, since they worried sharing their secret terminology might affect their professionalism with patients. One is a day nurse, another a night nurse, and the third a liaison, who assesses the eligibility of potential patients to be accepted into a nursing facility. While unwinding from a 12-hour shift, they explained to me the ways that communication and vocabulary play in the world of nursing.

"Part of nursing is being an effective communicator," the night nurse explained. "You have to use a lot of precise, diplomatic language. You have to be able to tell people some sensitive shit in a way that isn't offensive, but still communicates the gravity of whatever information you're conveying. You have to really learn how to communicate and be comfortable with it, and also have good judgment with it."

When speaking to doctors, they tell me, calculated communication is key. "Talking to a doctor is like talking to a man, even if it's a woman: You have to make them think that whatever they're going to do was their idea," the day nurse said. "They're like cats," the night nurse added, laughing. "If you suggest it, it's a shitty idea."

Perhaps the most difficult communication challenge for nurses is discussing end-of-life care with a patient's caregivers. "There's a patient that's obviously better if they just die," hypothesizes the liason. "Now you have to convince the spouse or the children or some family member, 'You gotta let them go...' A family feels like, 'No way, I'm not gonna kill this person.' You're not killing them."

"And if they had something written out to instruct the family on what to do, these things would be taken care of."

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Brackets denote paraphrasing by the author. All other text is directly quoted for the sources.

Walkie Talkie: n. [A patient who] can get up, go to the bathroom on his own. Doesn't need your help, just needs you to bring him his meds.

Total: n. A person who can't do anything, [needs] total care. You have to bathe them, feed them. Sometimes they can respond to you, sometimes they look at you.

Frequent Flyer: n. Someone who gets admitted a lot. a.k.a "Repeat Offender."

Medi/Medi: n. A patient who has Medicare or Medicaid. They have a way to pay for it.

Indigent: n. People who don't have a home and are uninsured.

NPO: n. Someone who can't put anything in their mouth. No food, no drinks, sometimes no pills. Etymology: Acronym of Latin phrase "Nil Per Os," meaning "nothing by mouth."

FMP: n. (acronym, archaic) Fluff My Pillow. A patient who keeps calling you. Riding the call bell. a.k.a. Fluff My Pillow Syndrome

Pillow Therapy: n. To smother someone in their sleep. e.g. When someone's irritating you and you just want to give them some pillow therapy.

CTD: adj. (acronym) Circling The Drain. When someone is going bad on us, declining. Usage: People started to figure out what that meant, so we weren't allowed to say it anymore.

Make a Celestial Discharge: v. Die.

The Talk: n. The talk where [a nurse] explains [to a patient's family] that what's being done isn't going to help make their loved one better—nothing is—and explains the dying process, what comfort care is, et cetera.

Angel of Death: n. A nurse who is really good at having The Talk with people about taking people off of [life support]. She's so good at The Talk that the families will usually let them go, even if it takes a day or two.

Continuity of Care: n. Having the same nurse or the same doctor over the course of your visit.

Related: VICE editor Wilbert Cooper reports on the peculiar and troubling side of the for-profit addiction treatment industry.

B-52: n. A cocktail [of] Haldol, Ativan, and Benadryl. Knocks you out.

Hat: n. A little bowl that fits on top the toilet bowl. It collects stool or urine into it so we can measure it and look at it or take a sample or whatever the fuck we gotta do. Etymology: It looks like a hat.

Flush: n. [A syringe with] no needle on it

Blunt: n. A blunt-tipped needle. Used for drawing up meds from a vial but way too big to use to stick someone. e.g. "Can someone hand me a blunt?"

Sharps Container: n. The needle box. You can't just put needles in the garbage. They go in a special garbage with a lock and key.

COW: n. (acronym) Computer On Wheels

WOW: syn. COW.Etylmology: Acronym of "Workstation On Wheels." A patient thought that we were talking about her being a cow, so we changed it.

Code Brown: n. When somebody shat the bed and we gotta go clean them up.

Code Pink: n. When someone steals a baby; when there's a baby missing.

Code Grey: n. They need security because someone's getting violent. Some patient has gotten really strong all of a sudden and started to break necks.

Doctor Atlas: syn. Code Brown

THE TAKEAWAY

A total could be used to describe someone at work who can't do anything for their self. A walkie talkie could describe the opposite—someone capable who only requires occasional input. Pillow therapy is a great way to discretely threaten all the FMPs in your life. Continuity of care is something we could use more of in customer service (looking at you, Time Warner) and could also be negated to describe a restaurant where your server seems to change every five minutes. CTD can describe anything that's about to die, from a disposable lighter to a near-canceled TV series. Hopefully, you'll never need to invoke code pink. But if you do, at least you'll know something cool to say.

FURTHER READING

The night nurse recommended the online resource The Truth About Nursing and this NPR blog post about Big Hero 6 and the representation of nurses in media. The day nurse recommended the Radiolab episode "The Bitter End" for more information on the realities of end-of-life care.

Follow Nat Towsen on Twitter.

[body_image width='1008' height='759' path='images/content-images/2015/04/17/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/17/' filename='the-woman-at-the-center-of-the-civil-rights-movement-whom-you-should-know-about-565-body-image-1429295154.png' id='47212']The judges of the US Court for the Southern District of New York, 1966. (Constance Baker Motley is in the back row, middle.) In 1986 she would become chief judge. Photo courtesy of Joel Motley

Over next two weeks, we'll be covering the Tribeca Film Festival 2015. Check back as we serve up essays and interviews on the festival's films, stars, and directors, and give you access to everything, from the red carpet to the after-parties.

The Trials of Constance Baker Motleyis an exceptional new short documentary that profiles one of the lesser-known, yet most influential players of the civil rights movement. In her second year at law school, Motley began working for Thurgood Marshall, and the NAACP's legal defense team hired her as an attorney shortly after. She soon became the first black woman to argue a case before the US Supreme Court, winning nine out of her ten cases, including the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education. She continued to accomplish more historical firsts in the years that followed: Motley was the first black woman to sit on the New York State senate, to become the Manhattan borough president, and in 1966 she became the first black woman to serve as a federal judge.

The 25-minute documentary, which is directed by Rick Rodgers and produced by Motley's son, Joel, is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday. The film opens with a scene that illustrates her personality and wry sense of humor. In footage from a 1966 press conference, a reporter says to her, "You've been described as being soft-spoken, but very tough. Would you say that's an accurate description?" To which Judge Motley replies, "I read that in the New York Times this morning, and I'm sure they're always accurate."

Her calm and fearless demeanor is striking considering the dangerous and grueling work in which she was immersed. The film meticulously weaves footage that speaks to her personality—home videos and personal photographs—with those of her accomplishments, shown through interviews, archival news reels, and recordings from a project undertaken by the Columbia University Oral History Research Office in the late 1970s.

As if to contrast the image of humanity and composure that Motley embodies at the opening of the film, minutes later we see footage of armed guards that had been sent to protect the homes she and other NAACP activists stayed in when visiting the South for desegregation trials. We're reminded of the threats, and stomach-turning insults: The film briefly shows one fragment of racist hate-mail that was sent to Motley, but the voice of one of the people she helped quickly interrupts the letter's hateful words. It is an interview with Charlayne Hunter Gault, whom Motley represented and helped to gain admittance as the first black student to the University of Georgia in 1961.

"It was still a battle," Gault says. "It was dangerous. Nobody ever knew what was going to happen when we walked out of the courtroom, or when she walked into some place in Mississippi where everybody hated what she stood for. You never got the sense that she, or any of those lawyers were afraid, when fear would have totally been justifiable."

Trailer of ' The Trials of Constance Baker Motley' from 03 on Vimeo.

Motley was the only woman on the legal defense team, and she often had to leave her young son and husband in New York for weeks at a time while representing these cases in Southern courts. Her son, Joel Motley, now an investment banker and cochair of Human Rights Watch, not only produced the film but conducted interviews.

"What my mother was doing was all before the women's movement," he pointed out when we met over coffee alongside his wife, Isolde, and daughter, Hannah. He recalled an incident his mother described in her autobiography, Equal Justice Under Law, about the first case she worked on in Mississippi.

"The judge decided to leave the doors of the courtroom open so that people could walk by to see the black lawyers," he said. "Which was wild itself, and seeing the black woman lawyer was like seeing something out of a carnival for them. The Southern newspapers didn't know how to describe her. One of them called her 'The Motley Woman.' There was no pattern for this person who was not just black, but female, in your courthouse."

He remembers that when he would see her on the news, he'd sometimes kiss the television screen. From a very young age, Joel knew that his mother was doing important work. "There are only a couple of times I am aware of that she was afraid," he said. "I think when the fear took a decisive toll, was in 1963. It was the year the girls were killed in the Birmingham church bombing, and when Medgar Evers, who was the chief NAACP lawyer in Mississippi, was killed in front of his house. Two years before that, I'd been there as a kid playing with his kids, and my mother realized that could have been me. She was close to Medgar, and when he died, that was around the time she started thinking about career alternatives like New York Senate."

There weren't any models for successfully being a black woman, and a wife, and a mother in that role.

His wife, Isolde, an author and former magazine editor, added, "That's when you really see what it was like to be a woman—a wife and a mother—in that movement. If you think of all the other things that she went through, and the other friends she lost, the fact that her only child had been staying in that house not long before, was what had more of an impact than anything else." Isolde said that she's happy about the film because there's been so little attention paid to women in the civil rights movement. "I remember her telling me when I was pregnant with Hannah, that when she was pregnant with Joel was one of the most difficult times. The women at the NAACP legal defense fund thought it was completely inappropriate for a pregnant woman to be out in court, appearing in public in that way. There weren't any models for successfully being a black woman, and a wife, and a mother in that role."

The film includes footage of Mr. Motley as a young boy, accompanying his mother at the March on Washington up on the platform with the speakers. He told me that they almost didn't go because his mother was tired from working so many cases and traveling. In his mother's autobiography, she writes, "I was overwhelmed with joy that [Joel] was old enough to remember that day... When Dr. King finally got his turn at the microphone, we nonbelievers in the effectiveness of trying to win over die-hard segregationists sat in awe as he made his 'I Have a Dream' speech. It brought tears to all of our weary eyes. It was the 20th century's finest hour."

At one point, the film shows a news story from when Motley was borough president, in which a journalist asks her, "How do you manage to run a home, be a wife, and be responsible for 1.7 million citizens in Manhattan?" It's a tired question for a journalist to ask a woman in the public eye today, but interesting to explore in a time when it was uncommon to see someone in a position of power who was also a wife and a mother. This was when Motley's granddaughter, Hannah, who was quiet for most of my interview with the Motleys, commented, "You would never ask a man that question."

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[body_image width='864' height='486' path='images/content-images/2015/04/17/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/17/' filename='the-woman-at-the-center-of-the-civil-rights-movement-whom-you-should-know-about-565-body-image-1429296082.png' id='47213']Constance Baker Motley with President Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House. Photos courtesy of Joel Motley

Hannah, who wears her grandmother's wedding ring on a chain around her neck, is carrying on her esteemed grandmother's legacy. She is in her first year at Yale Law School, where, under a supervising professor, she is already defending people who are facing jail time: She recently won her first case. Hannah said she is interested in the issues of 21st century policing, and of juveniles who have been sentenced to life without parole. If her grandmother were alive today, Hannah posited, "I think that she would be working against the mass incarceration of African American and Latino young men."

Her father agreed. "What really drove my mother was that, even though there wasn't as much obvious oppression in the North as there was in the South at that time, for anyone who was black, there was a major dislocation for, as the Brown case showed, your sense of self worth," he said. "The problem of separate but equal was that it made people feel inferior. I think still to this day that's part of what fuels a lot of anger and you see it re-erupted with the police shootings. That's just a rehash of the same feelings of being oppressed and cheated. As Hannah is saying, the mass incarceration is another example. You still see a Southern justice system and it's not just in the South. It happens up here—a justice system that is a tool of abuse as much as it is a means of maintaining law and order."

The family acknowledged Judge Motley's work as part of an ongoing struggle, and Joel added, "When my mother was in the last year or two of her life, she said she realized that because of Hannah she would continue to live on."

Hannah recalled her grandmother taking her back-to-school shopping every year, adding that she recently wore two of her grandmother's dresses to friends' weddings. "She's my role model," Hannah said. "When I was in first grade, I had to do a project on the civil rights movement, and my parents said I should talk to Grandma. I asked her, 'Did you know Dr. King?' and she laughed and said, ' Know him?' She told me about going to jails in the South and getting him and the other activists in the movement out of jail. That was where it started for me."

The Trials of Constance Baker Motley opens at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday, April 19. Find showtimes and other information here.

Follow Dale Megan Healey on Twitter.

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Steven Corcoran with his rig. All images via Steven Corcoran

You may not know this, but driving a truck is Australia's most dangerous job. According to this Australian insurance comparison site, 65 transport workers died in 2014. That's nearly a third of all industrial fatalities that year.

Driving any sort of vehicle is hazardous, and the odds against you grow the more you do it. In fact, if every driver in Australia set off on a 60 million mile road trip, just under half would survive according to numbers published by the Australian Department of Infrastructure and Transport. And sure, 60 million miles is a long way, but truck drivers are definitely the group playing those odds the hardest. That's why a Queensland truckie named Steven Corcoran wants $100 tax free, for every working truck driver, every day.

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To highlight the issue, and because he wanted one, Corcoran had a truck-themed coffin built for himself

"I've had ten of my mates killed driving trucks in the last 16 years," Corcoran explains over the phone. "But the final straw came in early 2012. I was having breakfast with a mate. We headed off in the same direction, him first, and he was killed in front of me." Corcoran describes how after a head-on, he put a fire out in the cab and then tried to drag his friend's body out "even though there was only half of him left." After that, and after recovering from the resulting PTSD, Corcoran focused on getting truck drivers to sign a petition asking the federal government to approve subsidies for the risks involved.

On Friday, Corcoran will tell the Brisbane Fair Work Commission that $100 per day will not just compensate incurred risk, but will also help to pay higher insurance premiums charged by insurance companies. (It's worth noting that Life Insurance Finder investigates which jobs are dangerous because risk affects their bottom line). Corcoran also argues that $100 is less than what overseas military personal receive (currently $150 per day in Iraq and Afghanistan) despite the fatality rate in both regions being lower than it is for truck drivers.

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Corcoran, with another rig

As for where this danger money will come from, Corcoran claims that the consumer will pay, as retailers will be passed on the cost. "And over an average truck load of 24,000 kilograms, $100 is not even a cent extra per kilo," he says. Not surprisingly, Toll, Linfox, Coles, and the Australian National Retail Association have all called for the application to be rejected.

Corcoran believes the opposition is to be expected. According to him, truck drivers are the lowest priority in a long ladder of cost cuts, essentially driven by retailers. As he explains, drivers don't even get paid for the hours it takes contractors to load and unload their trucks. "So we're only paid for the hours on the road, and those margins are so low," he says. "And then there's a huge risk of dying. That to me just isn't fair."

The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal will be considering the proposal later in the year. You can email your submission to inquires@rsrt.gov.au or check out the other submissions here.

Follow Julian on Twitter

In the wake of the Great Recession, America's lawmakers have come up with some creative ways to demean poor people looking for a little help from government programs. Tennessee, for example, makes people applying for government money piss in a cup, and 12 more states are currently considering similar drug-testing programs. But Kansas has now outdone all this, passing a law that says people receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families there can't even be trusted to withdraw more than $25 from an ATM at a time.

The bill was touted by Republicans as one that would help Kansans escape the cycle of poverty by requiring that they work 20 hours a week or go through job training to receive benefits. However, the new restrictions also keep welfare recipients from spending their money on lingerie, alcohol or concert tickets—basically the things that make life worth living.

"By signing this bill into law, Gov. Brownback has added to the burden that the poorest Kansans already carry," Shannon Cotsoradis, president of the advocacy group Kansas Action for Children told the Kansas City Star. "It's always been hard to be poor in Kansas. Now, it's going to be a lot harder."

Since coming into office in 2011, the state's ultraconservative Republican governor Sam Brownback has been busy turning Kansas into a real-life Galt's Gulch in the middle of American heartland. In 2012, he appeared on MSNBC'sMorning Joe to talk about the largest package of tax cuts in his state's history. "We'll see how it works," he said. "We'll have a real live experiment." That experiment has made so much of a mess of Kansas's finances that Standard and Poor's Ratings downgraded the state's credit score, predicting the state would face a deficit in 2015.

Brownback's radical experiment is extending far beyond fiscal policies ---- he's creating a Tea Party utopia one piece of legislation at a time. "Every time poor economic numbers come out, some new social attack occurs," Marcus Baltzell of the Kansas National Education Association told me. "Gays, abortions and guns. Their strategy is to get people's attention off the fact that they're closing schools or doubling class sizes by saying 'look over here' at some inflammatory issue."

These inflammatory social policies have quickly turned Kansas into the reddest state in the union. In February, the governor signed an executive order allowing the state to discriminate against its workers on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. "What we want Kansas to be is the best place in America to do two things: Raise a family, grow a small business," he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in a March radio interview.

Earlier this month, on April 2, Brownback signed a bill that eliminates the permit requirement for concealed weapons. Five days later, he signed a law outlawing so-called "dismemberment abortions," which refers to the popular second-trimester procedure in which a doctor dilates the patient's cervix and removes the fetus with forceps. This procedure accounted for 9 percent of all abortions performed in the state last year, according to Elise Higgins, Kansas Manager of Public Affairs at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.

The law, which goes into effect in July, makes Kansas one of the most restrictive states in the country in terms of women's health. "Before 2011, Kansas was not a laughing stock on social issues," Higgins told me. "Now we're replacing the knowledge of a doctor with the will of a national interest group."

There's still a bill currently making its way through the state Senate that would effectively ban sex education, and that, if passed, could potentially scare teachers from introducing Shakespeare and classical art into classrooms. A second bill that's in House could potentially make Kansas an "opt-in" state for sex-ed, which means it would make zero instruction the default.

All of this amounts to what Baltzell the educator calls a distraction from other troubling developments. As Brownback prepares to release his new fiscal plan in the upcoming weeks, educators fear that he might be about to dip into the school system, which accounts for about half of the state's total budget.

"I like to explain it like it's the Wizard of Oz," Baltzell says. "The strategy is to keep people from paying attention to what's happening with the man behind the curtain."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Earlier this week, a Czech citizen named Vít Jedlička declared the creation of a new libertarian micronation on a small plot of unclaimed land between Croatia and Serbia. The Republic of Liberland, as Jedlička calls his new territory, lies on 2.7 square miles of land between Serbia and Croatia, on the western bank of the Danube River, in what is known as the Gornjua Siga region, which lays unclaimed as the two neighboring nations continue to hash out longstanding border disputes.

Although Jedlička, a 31-year-old leader of the Czech Republic's libertarian Party of Free Citizens with a moderate Facebook following, has done little more than raise a flag and make a declaration, he's already invited people from around the world to apply for citizenship, digital or residential, by sending him an e-mail with a scan of any photo ID and a cover letter explaining their desire to join him in his libertarian utopia.

"The goal of the founder of the new state is to create a society in which honest people can prosper, without having the state making their life difficult with unnecessary restrictions and taxes," reads an official statement from the Republic, as recorded by Croatia Week. "One of the reasons for the establishment of Liberland is the increasing influence of interest groups on the functioning of the states and worsening living conditions."

Although Liberland has yet to come up with a constitution or set of laws, we know a little bit about the contours of Jedlička's ideal society: The self-proclaimed state describes itself as a constitutional republic with elements of direct democracy. Statements made to the Czech media suggest that the governance structure will draw on the model of the Swiss constitution, and consist of a 10- to 20-man assembly elected by an electronic voting system. Operating under the motto " To Live and Let Live," the state will maintain open borders, keep no standing army, and limit the power of politicians, requiring them to maintain a low tax rate and explicitly forbidding them from accruing national debt.

The nation, which has a flag and coat of arms, currently uses Czech, Hungarian, and Serbo-Croatian as its official languages. Although citizenship is theoretically open to anyone who respects libertarian ideas about personal freedom and private ownership, Liberland will not accept applications from present or past communists, Nazis, or any whom deemed to have an unacceptable criminal past.

Since news of Liberland first started popping up on Balkan social media on Tuesday, the news has taken off—especially since it's become clear that Jedlička is apparently dead serious about his new country. He has stated that he will try to seek recognition from Croatia and Serbia, before turning towards the rest of the world, and claims to be devising a digital currency (for now the use of alternative currencies will be allowed).

He recently told TIME that he's received 20,000 citizenship applications and expects that number to jump to 100,000 by week's end, with some people offering to relocate immediately. Jedlička plans to accept just 3,000 to 5,000 applications, and aims for a national population of 35,000 in the future, not all of whom will live on-site full-time.

"It started a little bit like a protest," Jedlička told TIME. "But now it's really turning out to be a real project with support."

It's worth noting that the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, the basic smell-test for whether one has a claim on sovereignty, requires that independent entities have a permanent population, defined territory, established government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states—only one of which Liberland now has.

Jedlička is far from the only one out there seeking recognition for a micronation, a self-declared sovereign entity, different from recognized microstates. There are over 400 active micronations in the world. Some are just the size of an individual home, while others are larger than existing countries (Liberland itself is on the small side, although larger than Monaco and the Vatican). The microstate concept is so popular that there are how-to guides for creating your own state, and a guidebook to the world's existing micronations published by Lonely Planet in 2006. Most of these micronations declared their existence and asserted their independence in the 1970s and 1990s, but even today a few pop up occassionally—each with vastly different aims and identities.

"There are incredible differences among them and no clear sense of unity at all," Judy Lattas, a professor of sociology at Australia's Macquarie University and an expert on micronations, told CNN last year. "Some are secessionists and some aren't. Some are more like virtual game-playing, some are art projects, some are very cyberpunk and others are quite serious political protests or indigenous sovereignty movements."

Most of the world's micronations aren't quite as serious as Liberland appears to be, creating flags, titles, and declarations but never following through on seeking independence. There was actually a non-serious parallel to Liberland last year, when a Virginian claimed a patch of terra nullis desert between Egypt and Sudan, Bir Tawal, just so that his daughter could be the Princess of North Sudan for a bit. Some are outright jokes, or bids at attracting tourism, like the Czech Republic's highly monetized and publicized Kingdom of Wallachia. A few are outright scams, like the Dominion of Melchizedek or the Kingdom of EneKio, which exist to dupe immigrants into buying passports, citizenship papers, and such.

Still, quite a few micronations actually arise as legitimate forms of political protest or experimentation—to publicize a cause or concept, or test the limits of international law. In 2010, with Latta's help, some of the most serious micronations convened a global conference in Sydney to explore new ways of earning recognition and functional sovereignty (many micronations exist on other nations' claimed territory, and some even still pay taxes, although they prefer to call it a tribute or protection money).

A number of the world's previous dead-serious micronations were, like Liberland, libertarian utopian projects. Among the most notable were the Principality of Freedonia, which attempted to buy territory from the de facto independent region of Somaliland in 2001, but wound up accidentally inciting a riot, which may have led to Freedonia's collapse. In a more direct parallel to Liberland, the libertarian Republic of Minerva tried in 1971 to claim a few unclaimed coastal reef islands 250 miles off the coast of Tonga in the South Pacific, well outside of territorial waters, but the King of Tonga responded by claiming the islands for himself and ousting the American idealists when the British navy rolled in and scared them off.

Some of the more serious micronations have managed to survive for some time, achieving a degree of autonomy without being conquered. The Principality of Hutt River, founded in 1970 in the Australian outback as a protest against farm quotas, has managed to operate on its own for over 40 years, despite some tensions with the government, by keeping to itself on land that no one is especially concerned about.

Sealand, founded in 1967 by the late patriarch of Britain's eccentric Bates family on a WWII-era fortification off the United Kingdom coast has managed to assert its independence in British courts, thanks to its location beyond English territorial waters. Sealand's location, and the general lack of interest in the tiny, worthless land, has allowed it to become an online data haven and pirate radio station, and get away with other quasi-unsavory bids to earn enough income to keep its few residents solvent.

If the history of micronations tells us anything, it's that their survival likely depends on them not rocking the boat—and on no nation deciding to take umbrage with or finding value in the land they've claimed. If Jedlička raises too much of a ruckus, his project could easily fall into the same trap as Freedonia or Minerva, invaded or run out of the region. Time will tell whether the idealistic Czech protestor-turned-state builder has the stamina to push the project forwards, and just how willing Croatia and Serbia will be to tolerate his project.

"The only thing that could stop us is an army," Jedlička told Bitcoin Magazine.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

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Still from the trailer to 'Birdman' (2014)

In the world of teasers, trailers, and promos, it's been a big week. The new Star Wars: Episode VII teaser trailer launched yesterday at a huge fan convention, and it already has over 24 million views. Zach Snyder posted a link to a teaser trailer for the real trailer for Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice on Wednesday. And we got a new Terminatortrailer on Monday that is so detailed, it actually makes the movie seem interesting. While, the people behind Mad Max: Fury Road also released a trailer on Wednesday that's mostly footage from older Mad Max movies.

With summer blockbusters trying to out-smash each other, and huge Christmas tentpoles like the new Star Wars looming on the horizon, the film industry depends on trailers to do the heavy lifting for their marketing departments. Last year, the 50 Shades of Grey trailer amassed 93 million views on YouTube. Between all the trailers, trailers for trailers, trailers comprised of old movies (possibly shown as trailers themselves), it begs the question: Are we in the throes of YouTube-fueled trailer mania?

Trailer to 'Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice' (2015)

The history and evolution of trailers as we know them follows fairly close to that of movies themselves. As Filmmaker IQ describes in an article titled "History of the Movie Trailer," "1913 would be what many historians consider year zero for the movie trailer... Nils Granlund, advertising manager of Loews Theaters, made a short little promotional film for the Broadway play Pleasure Seekers showcasing actual rehearsal footage." Meanwhile, in Chicago that same year, serialized screenings of The Adventures of Kathlyn , featured "a cliffhanger often with a title card inviting patrons to come back the following week to see what happens."

That's where the term "trailer" comes from—the advertisements for more installments or new movies would trail the feature presentation. From the early days up into the 1950s, the National Screen Service produced and distributed most movie posters and trailers. Their trailers, like the classic Casablanca, featured bold text, stuffy narration, and choppy shots of action and romance. When you think of the classic, old-school trailer, you're thinking of an NSS trailer.

Trailers from past eras

As directors of movies became auteurs, the trailer evolved into an art form. David Fear, writing for the Dissolve, described Hitchcock's trailer for Psycho as a "six-and-a-half-minute trailer that offers a personal tour of the Bates Motel and that sinister-looking house on the hill, complete with Hitch's pitch-black humor and some tantalizing hints of the gruesomeness to come." He goes on to describe Kubrick's experimental trailer for Dr. Strangelove: "Minimalist black-and-white title cards featuring single words flash by, stopping only to register a scene with a word or two of dialogue from the film—"Base," "Fluids," " Coca-Cola machine"—before whizzing off to the next image."

The release of huge blockbusters in the late 1970s and 1980s brings us into the pre-internet age of trailers. These were cut like mini-movies. Braggy and bombastic, they told you everything you needed to know about all the best parts of the film.

But now, with viral marketing, teaser trailers, and tentpole trailers being tied to other movie releases, we've become increasingly addicted to trailers. And studios often force their trailers on movie theaters, as Edward Jay Epstein wrote in his piece on the economy of film: "Often, getting the coming attractions shown involves the studios 'leveraging our goodwill,' as one studio executive explained. The studios will threaten to hold back a popcorn movie, such as the new Harry Potter or Star Wars sequels, unless the chain agrees to play a full reel of trailers."

This week's onslaught of big-budget, big-name trailers got me thinking about the economy and practice of trailers. To help me understand, I spoke to professor Jehoshua Eliashberg, professor of marketing at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.

"Based on the research that I've done, it is my belief that they make too few trailers," the professor explained. "Sometimes they make only one trailer, the idea being one size fits all. But in my opinion, there is room to make more trailers because the market is fragmented and different groups are looking for different aspects that attract them to the movies. So you have to generate these attractive aspects based on the market sub-group that you go after."

Trailer to 'Star Wars: Episode VII' (2015)

His call for more trailers surprised me. What about oversaturation? Professor Eliashberg explained, "The whole idea started with [ studios classifying] a movie with a single word, such as 'drama' in the 50s and the 60s. Later they realized it was an inappropriate description of a [film]. So now you can see more and more movies with multiple genres. Which means there is more than one message that should be sent to the audience in order to give the movie a fair chance of being described."

I wanted to know what it was like to work in the trailer business, so I talked to one of the best in the field, Mark Woollen. He and his company made the above-mentioned record-breaking 50 Shades of Grey trailer and the cutting-edge Birdman trailer, among many others. He walked me through the process of trailer production.

"Typically, the studios hire agencies like ours to work on their films. There's a certain amount of footage to work with and we're coming up with ideas, sometimes we're receiving dailies and receiving hundreds of hours of film." Woollen explained that when they get the footage there's rarely any special effects, music, or sound effects added in yet, and "the movie's still being edited and still being figured out sometimes as we're having to deliver the trailer."

As we spoke, one trailer from this week's deluge kept sticking in my mind. I couldn't get over just how little they revealed in the new Batman Vs. Superman teaser, and Professor Eliashberg concurred: " Quite frankly, I don't see the logic behind [releasing a trailer with almost no information in it]. Would that make you more educated about what the movie is about? I don't think that's a good use of the money. It's part of the major flaw that I see in marketing movies."

However, Mark Woollen disagreed. "I'm always a big fan of the less is more approach," he said, "and leaving something back that you promise they'll see if they go and see the movie." Nonetheless he admits that teasers for trailers are a bit silly. "In my personal taste, the teaser for the teaser for the teaser... it 's just kind of funny," he said. "It 's something that we joked about years ago when we did a short piece, 'Oh, it's a teaser for a trailer.' But now it's real."

Woollen expounds upon the purpose of trailers, saying they should be "about information, and they should be provocative, and it's really about teasing a film." But a trailer fails when "it's not serving the movie, and certainly when it's revealing too much. That's a pretty big trailer failure."

I love watching trailers in an actual movie theater—that's when I eat the popcorn with the most butter on it—but with the constant presence of spoilers, TV spots, teasers, and add-ons, the classic trailer can get lost in the shuffle. So what does the future hold if we continue in this trailer mania? Woollen's guess is that we'll "tune in someday and watch a trailer being built frame by frame." I sure hope not. I want to save some room in my brain for the movie itself.

Follow Giaco on Twitter.

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Check out Esther Pearl Watson's website and Instagram, and get her books from Fantagraphics.

We're now deep into the third season of our show VICE on HBO. So far this year, we've taken a look at climate change in Antarctica, American militias taking law into their own hands, and traced the cocaine highway that leads from the streets of Venezuela to the sinuses of European teenagers, among other stories. We just aired a new episode where host Thomas Morton investigated the rise of superviruses immune to our antibiotics and the scientists searching deep into the jungle for new, natural sources of antibiotic compounds before our world is hit with a global pandemic. We sat down with Morton to debrief the episode. Check it out above.

Watch VICE Fridays on HBO at 11PM, 10PM Central or on HBO's new online streaming service, HBO Now.

Learning to tattoo takes skin. Yes, fake skin and other synthetic materials are available for artists to practice on, but the general opinion in the industry is that skin alternatives are bullshit. You can only really learn to tattoo by actually tattooing, and tattooers tend to begin with the most readily available skin they have—their legs. Some of New York's most prolific tattoo artists—who are, more often than not, covered head-to-toe in gorgeous tats—keep their early efforts in their pants, hidden from view. I spoke with tattoo artists from Saved Tattoo, New York Adorned, Greenpoint Tattoo Company, and Kings Avenue Tattoo to learn more about how they honed their technique and style by experimenting on themselves.

John Reardon, Owner of Greenpoint Tattoo Company

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Self-done tattoos pictured: dragon, gray wash test strip. All photos by Graham Hiemstra

VICE: When did you get your first tattoo? And how soon after that did you first tattoo yourself?
John Reardon: I got my first homemade hack tattoo in maybe 11th grade. It was some stupid circle thing and some Black Flag bars. Then I got my first professional tattoo in January of my senior year, 1996. I was 18. Freshman year of college is when I did my first tattoo—an outline that fell out—and then sophomore year, I did the dragon.

What was the first tattoo you gave yourself?
I outlined a Celtic piece above my knee using pelican ink and the entire thing fell out. I grabbed the wrong pelican ink. Thank god my fucking leg didn't fall off. That was the first one and it really fucking stung down by the kneecap. But then that completely fell out and just left a scar, so a year later is when I did the dragon in that same spot.

I was at my parent's house and my dad came down and yelled at me because I was supposed to draw a similar dragon for him and I hadn't done it yet. I was sitting there tattooing myself and he was pissed. He was like, "Where the hell is mine?" Sorry, Dad. I eventually did it.

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After tattooing yourself, how long did you wait until you took the machine to do someone else?
Oh, I gouged right in on people. The first tattoo I did was on my buddy's knee actually. Everyone came out of the woodwork to get tattooed. I didn't really need to tattoo myself—I had plenty of people to get tattooed. I just did it because I knew that I had to. I always needed the practice but, you know, you gotta fucking tattoo yourself. It's just something you gotta do.

Will Sheldon, Saved Tattoo

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Self-done tattoos pictured: palm tree and pyramids, dagger, black snake, mouse character, hammerhead shark, globe with script, butterfly, multiple hand pokes

VICE: When did you get your first tattoo? And how soon after that did you first tattoo yourself?
Will Sheldon: I started getting tattooed pretty regularly when I was 17, so five years ago. I got a tattoo machine in 2011.

What was the first tattoo you gave yourself?
The pyramid with the palm trees and the dagger, those were the first. I did them both in one day. I had a Sailor Jerry outline book and that design was in there, and I thought it could be a really simple, funny, fun tattoo to have.

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Your legs actually inspired this story. Why did you do so many on yourself?
I was fucking up so many of my friends, so I thought I needed to fuck myself up, too. After I started seeing all these tattoos I was doing on my friends heal up and seeing how shitty they were, I was like, Oh my god. It became a thing where I had to just keep on doing them on myself and practicing. They are little reminders of how shitty I was, of me learning. It's great, you know. Having bad tattoos is part of it. Having something that reminds you of where you came from is good.

Virginia Elwood, Saved Tattoo

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Self-done tattoos pictured: flowers

VICE: What was the first tattoo you gave yourself?
Virginia Elwood: The two flowers were the first ones I gave myself.

After tattooing yourself, how long did you wait until you took the machine to someone else?
I tattooed someone else first, a tattooer named Dave Shoemaker. I did a rose on him because he was blacking out his entire arm. He was like, "do whatever you want." So I tattooed him first, then I probably did a couple other ones, and then I did these ones on my leg.

So most of your learning was done on other people?
All of it, yeah. And that's why I don't live where I learned to tattoo.

Stephanie Tamez, Co-owner of Saved Tattoo

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Self-done tattoos pictured: Gallic inspired tribal designs, top of foot design, skull

VICE: When did you get your first tattoo? And how soon after that did you first tattoo yourself?
Stephanie Tamez: I got my first tattoo when I was 29. I'm 52 now, so that was 23 years ago. I first tattooed myself about a year later. I got my first tattoo by a very well-known tattooer. At that time I didn't know anything about tattooing, I just lucked out and we became friends. I was doing a lot of art and design, replicating album covers and things like that, and he saw what I was into and he put the bug in my head that maybe I could do this. He was able to guide me and show me the basic principles of things. I did one on myself, did one on a couple of friends, and by the end of it I knew this was something I could definitely do for a living.

What was the first tattoo you gave yourself?
It's the little question mark shaped doodle on my ankle. Looking back I think it was probably inspired by Tibetan art that I had seen somewhere that just stuck in my head, but at the time I didn't know my vocabulary. That's the cool thing about tattooing, it's a life and art lesson. You really do learn about so many different art styles from different cultures. It opens you up to a tremendous wealth of knowledge about art you wouldn't have otherwise have been exposed to, whether it's from fellow tattooers or even clients. It's like the best art school, really.

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What's the story behind the tops of your feet? And the skull?
I did the tops of my feet a few years after doing my first tattoo. I was going to New York a lot and would always bring my gear. One time I was visiting my best friend who I grew up with in Texas, and I had just broken up with some gal and I was bummed out so I was like, I need to tattoo myself. I'm gonna do something for me and stay on my own path.

I didn't realize how awkward it would be to do something on my feet. I hadn't been tattooing very long. I was still learning. As soon as I got into it, I had to bend myself in all these crazy positions trying not to tangle up the machine and when I was all squished up in the corner of my friend's apartment she came in and was like, "What the fuck are you doing?" I was dancing around like a monkey trying to get the right angle. Who knows what the hell I was thinking at that time. It's funny, sometimes when people see it and say it looks like an old ruin. I kind of like that idea. It really is an old ruin.

Related: Check out our video series,Tattoo Age.

Frankie Caraccioli, Kings Avenue Tattoo

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Self-done tattoos pictured: casket with web, star, boombox

VICE: What was the first tattoo you gave yourself?
Frankie Caraccioli: A star. I thought I'd do that one to practice straight lines. It seemed simple enough but it was too simple—every mistake was going to show. I should have gone with something sketchier, you know. Any bump or messed up line is going to show.

After tattooing yourself, how long did you wait until you took the machine to someone else?
It was the same night that I got the star actually—a tattoo machine tattoo party. I tattooed the star, then tattooed my buddy, then tattooed the boombox on my ankle right after.

Bart Bingham, New York Adorned

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Self-done tattoos pictured: green rose, bic lighter, skull

VICE: When did you get your first tattoo? And how soon after that did you first tattoo yourself?
Bart Bingham: I tattooed myself before I was old enough to get a legal tattoo. I got my first legal tattoo when I was 18 and I did my first tattoo on myself at 16 or so. My friend James from high school worked at a tattoo shop and because I could draw I would always give him a hard time like, "Oh, that's easy, I could do that." And one day he just got fed up with me and set up a tattoo station and picked up a machine and stepped on the pedal. It went zzt zzt and he said, "That's how it works. Go ahead and tattoo yourself." So, I tattooed myself and it was a disaster. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

After tattooing yourself, how long did you wait until you took the machine to someone else?
I was tattooing straight out of high school, at 17. I did a lot of bad tattoos for a long time. I probably tattooed from '93 until 2000 just doing crap on people until l got into a good shop and started learning how to tattoo.

I never planned on being a tattooer. I thought tattoos were silly. I still kind of think tattoos are silly. I was going to school, working full time, and living out of the back of my car, so I needed what I thought would be an easy second job.

So I just walked into a shop and told them I had been tattooing for years. I lied. This was back in '93. The world was a very different place then. There was no Instagram, people didn't have portfolios. They didn't give me the job off the bat, so I went to a friend's place and drew up the same stuff they had on the walls and went back to that tattoo shop and showed them what I had. Next thing you know, they hired me and I went to work tattooing the general public the next day with zero experience—no apprenticeship, no teaching. I couldn't ask for help because they were under the impression I knew what I was doing already. I just made it up as I went.

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What's the story behind the sketchy Popsicle tattoo on your calf?
That's my favorite tattoo on my body, just because every time I look at it I remember what a great time I was having. It's such a ridiculous looking tattoo—it's a vampire popsicle. My friends and I were in a hotel room drunk, giving each other tattoos with the door open and this really cute girl walked by so I was like, "Hey you, come here. You wanna get in on this, you wanna do some tattoos?" And she was like, "hell yeah." She had never even held a tattoo machine before that. Somewhere I have pictures of my bloody leg with her no-gloved hand rubbing ink into my tattoo.

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