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All photos by Matthew Leifheit

Fire Island has long been seen as a gay wonderland. It's a place where queers like W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, and Stephen Spender used to slut it up. Its sex parties and nude beaches were so notorious, they were immortalized in the fictional pages of "The Gay Gatsby,"Dancer from the Dance.These days, however, if you visit the barrier island that sits in the Atlantic Ocean, east of New York City, you'll find nary a twink.

Although it remains a popular gay tourist spot and you can still buy enemas at the hardware store, young gay dudes do not frequent the island the way they used to. Today, the homo haven is overrun by middle-aged retired guys and their fag hags. If you do see someone in their 20s, they're a Wall Street queer's miserable sugar baby. When I once told another 20-something gay I had gone to the Island a few summers ago to interview porn stars, he looked at me as if I had taken a time machine back to a 1970s Times Square porn theater.

However, in the 70s and early 80s, it was a completely different story. Gay clubs like the Pavilon's disco were bursting with sex-crazed young dudes who were took loads of drugs so they could dance and fuck all night. But when AIDS hit the gay community like a tsunami in the 80s, the Island changed. By the mid 1980s, gay visitors had swapped the late night bacchanalias for late afternoon "High Tea," a cleaner mix dancing and socializing. As AIDS slaughtered a generation of gay men, a "gay generation gap" grew, forming a divide between gay men who grew up fighting for AIDS research and young gays who came out when they were 14 and started using Grindr on their 18th birthdays. Nowhere is this gap more visible than on Fire Island.

Can young gays even enjoy Fire Island? Last summer, I decided to spend a weekend there with VICE's photo editor Matthew Leifheit, who is also a 20-something homosexual, to find out.

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Party promoter Daniel Nardicio was our guide. He's middle-aged, but he looks ten years younger, in a good way—unlike some older, body conscious gays who have more muscle than Schwarzenegger and look like they've overdosed on Botox. Daniel started organizing parties professionally about 15 years ago, after he threw an event attended by reality TV star Austin Scarlett, who laid about at the party, eating sausage, while everyone else danced around him. The last few summers, Daniel's parties have served a great mission: He wants the old and the young gays to socialize together and bring back the true spirit of Fire Island.

Daniel throws his generation-blender parties at the decaying Ice Palace nightclub in Cherry Grove, Fire Island. (The island has two gay beaches: Cherry Grove and the Pines.) On Fridays, he hosts underwear parties, and on Saturdays he throws concerts. Somehow, he has convinced gay icons like Liza Minnelli and Carol Channing to perform on the rackety stage where drag queen impersonators typically play.

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Daniel picked us up on the corner of Bedford Avenue and 7th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It was easy to spot him because he drove a giant pink Playgirl-themed van. He wore sunglasses and a fitted T-shirt. On the drive to the ferry, he spoke with a bald guy sitting next to him about Liza Minnelli and Alan Cumming—he referred to them by their first names—as Matthew and I played on our cell phones. "Look at them on their cell phones!" Daniel said as he looked into his rearview mirror. Before we parked his car on the ferry, we stopped at Costco to buy a shit ton of food.

"I know you think its all dancing on tables," Daniel said, "But this life is a lot of work."

It's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun. Daniel stays at a house on Fire Island with several of his friends. When we walked into his home, Daniel stripped down to his skitties and took out a penis-shaped water gun and started squirting people. A voluptuous blonde walked out of a room naked. She laughed. "God," she said, "Hurricane Daniel is here."

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The woman was a famous burlesque dancer named Dirty Martini. On any other island, she would have stood out, but she seemed normal in the house, where Daniel wore only underwear and there was a shelf full of sculpted penises and a plaque that read "Liza Memorial Fridge." Like a kid at Disneyland, I was mesmerized. This was gay heaven.

"You can't go in the pool with clothes on," Daniel interrupted me.

"I just need to take some notes first," I told him.

"God, you millennials! Always working!"

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Matthew and I stayed down the road at the Belvedere, a clothing-optional male-only luxury hotel. The founder, John Eberhardt, worked as a TV set designer and built the gay Playboy mansion out of old sets and antiques from the Mae West and Astor Estates. His portrait hangs on a wall in a main room, along with old clippings from the 20th century, a time when young men with big butts still hung out on the nude beach alongside their older counterparts. Today, the hotel is owned by John Eberhardt's adopted son, Craig Eberhardt.

RELATED: Matthew Liefheit's photo series, The Stone Dicks of Fire Island's Belvedere Hotel

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Each room revolved around a different theme, and all weekend the hotel supplied us with an unlimited amount of condoms and Danishes. (Gay men love junk food as much as we love promiscuous sex.)

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A barely legal houseboy named Nigel took us on a tour of the property. He worked with another houseboy named Elijah. (For some reason, all the staff twinks had the same names as Wild Thornberries characters.) Nigel was saving up for moving to New Orleans, where he planned to start a professional career as a drag queen. He had recently started lip-synching Taylor Swift during performances.

"I prefer [Swift's third album] Speak Now," he said. "[But] Red is good. 'All Too Well' is deep. Like, girl, did you just lose your virginity?"

When we reached "the yellow room," he took us through a sliding glass door onto an all white porch filled with Greek-style statues.

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Wearing nothing but a towel, he sat down with his legs wide open. Looking into the ocean, he told me that he'd grown up across the bay in suburban Long Island and always dreamed about a sexual, decadent gay life, not realizing he lived across from gay mecca.

"Where else can you be naked at work?" he wondered aloud.

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I understood Nigel's point-of-view. Growing up in suburban Florida, I also dreamed of a sexual deviant place filled with danishes and drag queens and boys. My hormones mostly motivated this fantasy, but I also wanted a gay mecca because I was sick of being one of maybe three faggots everywhere I went. At work, at school, often even at home, gay people live in straight people's world.

This is why gay men have moved to New York for decades. But as anyone who has ever met a baby boomer who did heroin once with Sid Vicious at CBGB knows, New York has changed. High rent and draconian regulation makes it difficult for slutty gay bars to survive. Not to mention, everyone spends all their time on their iPhones, swiping up and down on Grindr instead of connecting with people in IRL.

But at Daniel's Friday night underwear party at the Ice Palace, cell phone reception barely worked. Between the wooden walls and the humid air, the club looked decayed, but the crowd seemed very in the present. Men walked around in their underwear looking at each other's bulges instead of their phones. Everyone was actually tuned into each other. This is what I'd always been looking for.

Daniel stood at the door encouraging people to remove their pants before they entered. His staff took men's clothes and placed them in black bags. Eventually, rows of black bags full of pants and shirts filled the patio.

On this particular evening, Daniel accomplished his goal: Everyone from twinks to senior citizens attended the party in everything from boxers to jockstraps to briefs covered in pills. (One man skipped underwear and carried a golden fanny pack over his ass.) Some guests wore flip-flops, but all the go-go dancers danced in high-top sneakers.

For the first few hours, the crowd looked unfuckable, but Daniel promised me this was typical. The hotties always show up at 12:30 AM.

"It's like a Star Wars party the first hour," he joked.

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At the same time, Daniel hates when people complain about elderly guests because everyone's dicks get wrinkly one day. One time, Daniel said, he saw someone mock an old guy in his underwear, and he screamed at him, telling him it was his elderly relative who invented underwear parties years ago. The man apologized.

He sees himself as a connector and an instigator at his events. As people walked past Daniel, he encouraged them to drink despite his own sobriety.

"It's not a success unless I'm handing out day-one chips!" he said.

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Within a few hours, so many men had packed the party—Bravo host Andy Cohen even stood at the bar—I couldn't walk through without brushing past a twink's smooth legs or a tall older man's botoxed face.

Someone projected Cobra Snake-like videos of a guy rimming someone's bubble butt on the wall, and the go-go dancers grinded on each other on the bar. When I needed a place to write down a note, a go-go dancer put his butt out so I could prop my notebook on his ass.

Before the DJ had even played two Madonna songs, guys had started making out and grabbing each other's bulges. Matthew asked an artsy-looking twink if he had met him before, and the twink said, "[No,] I just have really good underwear!"

The sexual vibe came across more as camaraderie than creep fest. We made friends with a group of guys on the patio. Their ages ranged from 21 to late 30s. An older stranger walked past and grabbed my dick in my underwear. He laughed and then everyone else laughed with him.

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The cross-generation bonding continued throughout the weekend. On Saturday night Kathy Najimy—a.k.a. the fat witch from Hocus Pocus—performed at the bar. Hoards of young gays and old gays (and a few fag hags) lined up, wearing shorts and dress shirts, to see her one-woman show. On stage, Najimy made jokes about Grindr and the "glorious underground moldy Ice Palace," which was both a compliment and a diss. She catered to the gay crowd, even reminding everyone, "Sarah Jessica [Parker] played the other witch [in Hocus Pocus]."

The young and old gays also sang along with the drag queen who performed every weekend. Inside the wooden club, she lip-synched to the summer's most popular pop while wearing a white dress that reminded me of Britney Spears's outfits on her Femme Fatale tour. "I gave up Beyonce for this song," she said before launching into her "song of summer"—Sia's "Chandelier." When she hit the refrain, she leapt off the stage, grabbed onto the ceiling's rafters, and then flipped upside down to hang like a sparkling bat.

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When we got back to our hotel room that night, we listened to our guests next door. They were watching Maury episodes. I looked up at the painting in our room and saw a sad man walking into the distance. I know that man: When you're gay, you often feel like him, longing for a world that isn't dominated by terrible straight men. But I didn't feel that way on Fire Island. No matter what your body looked like at the parties, whether you were carrying a senior citizen card or your first license to drink, you could be the big fat queen you want to be.

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When we weren't at a party or a drag show, we sat in the back of the hotel with a bunch of older men. At one point, one of them asked, "Where do the younger gays go?

I said, "Warehouse parties in Brooklyn," but with the help of Daniel's and more twinky word-of-mouth, the answer could soon be Fire Island.

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Want to party on Fire Island this summer? Visit Daniel'swebsite for underwear party dates and check out the Belvedere Guest House.

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Photos by Matthew Leifheit. For more of Matthew's photos of Fire Island, check out Mitchell Sunderland's travel essay about their trip.

Like an aging drag queen staring at twinks from the corner of a bar, the Belvedere Guest House for Men stands at the edge of Cherry Grove, one of two popular gay beaches on Fire Island. Set designer John Eberhardt built the clothing-optional luxury hotel out of old sets and items from the Mae West and Astor estates, according to his successor, Craig Eberhardt.

The late set designer decorated room around a theme, like "baroque" or music." Inside, beautiful paintings and ornate antiques clash with tacky set decorations, a perfect symbol for the way the lifestyles of gay men who mix high-class values (nights at the opera, expensive vacations, fashion magazine subscriptions) with crass low culture (pop music, fast food, messy anal sex).

When VICE photo editor Matthew Leifheit and I stayed at the hotel for a travel story, we noticed stunning old paintings, photos, and statues of young men adorning the Belvedere's walls. Here are our favorite pictures of the men of the glorious gay hotel.

#StephenColbert interviews #GeorgeLucas @TribecaFilmFest! | http://t.co/RJDSkKbHMk #LateShow #StarWars #tribecatalks pic.twitter.com/G2Q1ixlOKZ
— Prince Street PR (@PrinceStreetPR) April 18, 2015

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.

On Friday afternoon, I stood in a tight line of more than 300 people at the Tribeca Film Festival. However, I wasn't there to watch the latest obscure indie film—I was there to see an independent filmmaker you're definitely familiar with: George Lucas.

I say independent, because the Star Wars billionaire self-funds all of his films today. Lucas may have created the Rebel Alliance, but in reality he sees himself as a huge rebel fighting against the film establishment. And in his conversation with Stephen Colbert on the Tribeca Film Festival stage, his iconoclasticism was soaring. To hear George Lucas tell it, he's not a media mogul. Instead, he's an under-appreciated experimental filmmaker who bleeds for his art more than you can possibly imagine.

Sporting a shock-white beard, the "new" Stephen Colbert opened the talk by telling George Lucas, "I'm gonna tear you a new one! How dare you entertain me so well." But over the length of the hour, Colbert was mostly kind and his jokes were almost never at Lucas's expense. Jar-Jar Binks was never mentioned and Colbert's biggest dig at Lucas's infamous tinkering with the original Star Wars films was mostly summed up when he said, "I think I've got 14 different versions of your movies."

Instead, the conversation between one of the funniest men in America and one of the most successful filmmakers of all time was largely a series of reminiscences. Colbert, about his childhood fandom for Star Wars, and Lucas, about his early days as a filmmaker.

In chronicling his early successes, Lucas spoke like a weary solider who had been called into fight certain battles, specifically with the comedy American Graffiti. "It was the most successful movie of all time at that point," Lucas said with a certain amount of surprising bitterness, "because it was made for so little money... something like $750,000 total." It was also a film he said he'd been encouraged to write by his longtime friend and comrade-in-arms, Francis Ford Coppola. Regarding Coppola, Lucas insinuated that he believed that Coppola only made the Godfather as a kind of favor to Paramount and because it "had Italians in it."

Related: The Two Kids Who Remade Indiana Jones Shot for Shot

Still, Coppola was integral to Lucas making American Graffiti in the first place. "He came to me and said, 'No more of these experimental science-fiction robot movies"—a reference to Lucas's THX-1138—"'I dare you to do a comedy.' I thought, I can do a comedy. I can do anything!"

At this, Colbert cut Lucas off: "So you wrote one of the greatest American comedies as a dare. And he did perhaps the greatest film of the 20th century, just pinched it out as like a favor." Lucas smiled tightly and nodded, as though he and all his famous friends are personifications of humblebrags.

In Lucas's view, he's an experimental filmmaker who was sort of forced into creating more conventional films with what Colbert called "actual recognizable plots." It seems Lucas partially blames this on the pressure of his friends (like Coppola), but primarily he takes issue with "the creative industrial complex that actually tries to screw the creative people." A studio executive nearly didn't let Lucas put out American Graffiti, and if it weren't for Coppola's intervention, it may have never been released. And as Colbert probed Lucas about the early days of Star Wars, the scenario was similar; a board of directors nearly didn't approve the release of the movie. Because, in Lucas's words, "they just didn't like it."

"Did they ask any 13 year-old boys?" Colbert said, before launching into hilarious hypothetical reason why a dull person, or someone in a focus group, wouldn't like Star Wars. "Why doesn't kid move stuff with his mind? Why doesn't he just pick it up? Why does the tall black guy have asthma?"

Lucas also revealed that around the same time in 1976, his core group of filmmaker friends—including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Brian De Palma—mostly objected to the movie.

"Brian said, 'What the hell is the Force?'" Lucas recalled, laughing, "And I said, 'Brian, this isn't one of your movies... But Steven jumped up and said, 'This is going to be the greatest movie of all time!'"

Stephen Colbert certainly agreed that Star Wars changed his life and told Lucas a heartwarming story of winning tickets to see Star Wars in 1977 from a local radio station in North Carolina.

"When the title came on that screen," he said, "it was a life-changing experience. Now, I know this isn't breaking news here— Star Wars had a big impact."

"Well, you're very credible," Lucas replied in a rare moment of genuine humor from a guy who seems, in person, so much less interesting than his epic, world-changing Star Wars films.

Lucas says he doesn't know much about the new Star Wars movie and is looking forward to working on experimental movies that he thinks "no one will want to see." But he claims to be looking forward to seeing the new J. J. Abrams-directed Star Wars: Episode VII because he thinks he could actually enjoy it.

"When I saw the first one in the theater finally, and the big ship came down, I was like, 'Ho Hum.' I've seen this a million times. I made this... This time I can be excited."

Sporting a Walter White-esque windbreaker, white sneakers, and a rumpled plaid shirt, George Lucas is decidedly not cool looking. Colbert sarcastically described Lucas's fashion sense as "glitzy," and Lucas claimed he'd had the sneakers he's been wearing since high school. It's as though George Lucas has actually lived for his films and only his films entirely. Everything else about him is perfunctory. He is like the Jedi master Yoda, a true artist that maybe we shouldn't judge by his Dad jeans.

In mentioning his childhood experience of seeing Star Wars, Colbert asserted that he and his young friends had no idea how to talk to their peers at school the next day. Colbert wanted his classmates to know that "the world had changed," because prior to Star Wars, there hadn't been "space movies" that connected in quite the same way.

Colbert then asked Lucas what he felt like he "changed" about the world of filmmaking and Lucas said the thought that "all art is technology... and only humans have the ability to create an emotional connection through art... Star Wars is essentially a silent movie."

"So is the sound not important?" Colbert asked.

"No," Lucas responded, and then, acting like some kind of rock star who doesn't care about his lyrics, he explained, "sound is 50 percent of a movie. But not the dialogue. I don't care about the dialogue. I know I'm famous for wooden dialogue."

"George," Steven Colbert replied, lovingly, "that dialogue is hand-crafted."

Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can't Read and Other Geeky Truths forthcoming from Plume (Penguin Random House) on November 24, 2015. He's written for the New York Times, Electric Literature, the Awl, Tor.com, and elsewhere. He lives in New York City. Follow him on Twitter.

Gilberto 'Gil' Valle's fantasies of kidnapping and slowly roasting women on a spit earned him the tabloid moniker, 'The Cannibal Cop.' The desires never calcified into actual crimes, however, and the moral gray area he inhabited is the focus of the new HBO documentary, Thought Crimes, that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan on Thursday.

Gil's conviction was overturned on appeal in June 2014, and the film starts with frequent close-ups of him during a subsequent house arrest. Here is a portrait of your average Queens bro: a guy with an uneven flat-top haircut , showing evidence of a shaved-off widow's peak, dirty white Nikes, and a mom who couldn't be happier to have her son home. We are not looking at a manicured sociopath, because Gil is very much the guy next door. In an often-intimate portrayal, Gil addresses the camera with his simple hopes of getting to go to the beach or taking a cross-country trip once he is granted his freedom.

The initial arrest was made in 2012 after Gil's wife Kathleen installed spyware on his computer and found dozens of disturbing chat logs, some which centered on his desires to hang her by her feet and watch her bleed out. Gil had also been sharing photos of his wife, and other women he knew, with random users on a site called DarkFetishNet.

Our technology has become sophisticated enough to capture secrets and emotions, but it is also now being used against us. As Gil's wife Googled, "my husband doesn't love me," Gil was running searches on recipes for chloroform, how to kidnap girls, and the sounds bones make when being sawed into. The prosecution used Gil's search history to convince a jury that he wasn't just having sexual fantasies about torturing and eating women, but also had a high probability of manifesting them into physical crimes.

Still, mere ideas—even those as disturbing as Gil's—do not always lead to action. Thought Crimes explores how our legal system can use those ideas against us.

At the film premier's panel, Harvard Law Professor Dershowitz, who also appears throughout the movie , said that although other online users like terrorists and child molesters share similar dark thoughts, "There is nothing more dangerous than a government with a power to oppress."

We met with the film's director—and former VICE staffer—Erin Lee Carr to get into the meat of who Gil Valle really is, and learn about how an NYPD officer's erotic fantasies triggered the greatest thought crimes trial in New York City history.

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VICE: There was a quote in the movie by [New York writer] Robert Kolker, "He's not just the cannibal cop. He's patient zero in the Thought Police epidemic that can sweep the nation." What does that mean?
Erin Lee Carr: Gil Valle plays patient zero, [and] he also plays the villain, and the victim.

But who is Gil the victim?
Gil the victim is the most straightforward of the characters. He is somebody that lost his wife and child because he was looking at scary things on the internet. He was in prison at a federal facility for 22 months. He was in solitary confinement for seven months. And [he is] somebody who got out, but his life has changed forever.

What kind of cop was he?
He was an NYPD officer, a beat cop—somebody who patrols an area. He would often drive his sergeant around.

What brought a guy like this to the NYPD in the first place?
He has always maintained that it was to help people.

So when did his dark thoughts begin?
In middle school. He basically started having BDSM-type fantasies of tying female classmates up.

Related: An Interview with a Cannibal

What kind of sexual stimulation was Gil getting from these thoughts?
There is something that somebody talked about that was really interesting that didn't make it into the film called instructional masturbation. People were so confused, they were like, 'How could these Google searches be fodder for his fantasy? How is this sexual in nature?' It is hard for people to recognize that this is being used for a sexual act. But if you look at sexual routines or how people do it, it adds to Gil's fantasy that he was researching how to kidnap women, how to make chloroform—it added to the build up.

He was mainly using DarkFetishNet. How do these websites work?
It's a Facebook for fetishes. You have a profile with an interest, whether it be beheading or cigarette play. So basically, you sign up, it's free, and you talk and look at pictures of content that you like. This is like any other porn site but for things that most people find kinda scary. There's 40,000 people on the site and, the last time I checked, 6,000 active users on DarkFetishNet.com.

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How does cannibalism work in this situation? You put someone in an oven? What are the logistics?
Vore is not uncommon as a fetish. It is the most sort of dominant that you could ever be. So the fantasy mainly relied on these scenarios of kidnapping a woman, having her be helpless, putting her in an oven, putting her on a spit, roasting her, beheading her, and having her head—with a face of terror—be the centerpiece of the table.

Were there women on the other side who wanted to be dominated in this type of way?
His particular fetish is called non-consensual cannibalism. There is a fetish called consensual cannibalism. This is when a woman wants to be eaten and devoured. Non-consensual cannibalism is a non-willing victim. You are kidnapping somebody and torturing them.

Coming out of this experience, what are some tips for how we should be using Google now?
You should not change your Google searches. I think, of course, if you're harboring dark fantasies, maybe don't Google, "the best place to kidnap somebody"—that actually happened. Or, "the best place to hide a body"—somebody actually asked Siri that. If I recall, Siri responded, "There's some woods nearby." If you're not doing overt criminal behavior, you should Google whatever you want.

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Are you afraid Gil is going to stalk you once he sees the film?
He knows where I live. We sent letters back and forth from prison. I think that he has a lot to lose if he crosses the boundary, and he hasn't yet.

You've made a polarizing film. I thought he was innocent at first and by the end of Thought Crimes , I grew terrified that Gil was walking around NYC unrecognized. What do you think of his freedom?
I vehemently don't think this person should be in prison. I don't think we can put people in prison for their thoughts. I think his thoughts are unorthodox and uncomfortable, and he has been getting therapy. Had he gone into the real world and [stalked] someone and [took] the next step, then he should be in prison—but he did not. It was before that line. I don't think we can put people thinking about evil things in prison.

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Photo by Flickr user Magnus Bråth

Sanae Suzuki is a chef in Los Angeles, where she runs the macrobiotic vegan restaurant Seed Kitchen along with her husband and their six dogs. Suzuki, a longtime vegan, is as serious about feeding her dogs as she is about feeding her customers—she makes them homemade vegan food for nearly every meal.

Veganism is having a "moment" right now, but is it a viable diet for dogs? I asked Dr. Joe Bartges, a veterinarian who specializes in canine nutrition, if it's safe to feed your dogs homemade vegan food. "The short answer," Dr. Bartges told me, "is yes and yes. Dogs are omnivores, not carnivores, so they can be fine with that." The caveat, he said, is that dogs' nutritional requirements are different from humans' nutritional requirements, "so the concern, when you look at a lot of the lay books that aren't written by professionals, is that the diets are not complete and balanced. There are board-certified veterinary nutritionists who can look at dog's diets. We can do all types of diets: tofu-based, tilapia, yak... I've done a kosher dog diet. You can do a homemade diet, but it really should be assessed by someone who's a trained, board-certified animal nutritionist." (Note: you can find these board-certified animal nutritionists at the American College of Veterinary Nutrition's website.)

Suzuki has recently written a cookbook, Healthy Happy Pooch, designed to make cooking vegan fare for your dogs easy. She hasn't had the recipes book reviewed by an animal nutritionist, but she does regularly consult with Dr. Sally Lane, a holistic doctor of veterinary medicine, who also wrote the forward for the book. I spoke to Suzuki about the book, the movement to feed dogs better quality food, and the things we do when we really, really love our pets.

VICE: What inspired you to write this book?
Sanae Suzuki: I had ovarian cancer in 1993. I can't have babies because of it. Dogs became my kids. I started cooking for my dogs in probably 1994, because one of my dogs had arthritis, and I thought maybe [a change in diet] would help.

Some people don't want to change [what they feed their dogs], and that's OK. That's up to them. I say in the book, if they want to keep feeding their dogs meat, that's OK, they just need to choose the best quality meat. But if they are willing to change to vegan/macrobiotic, I show them how to do it. My main goal is: stop feeding packaged, canned, and bagged food to them all the time. Obviously, once in a while, you might have to, but I feel sorry for the dogs that have to eat this food 365 days a year. Dogs can't speak, so I want to be their spokesperson.

What are your dogs' names and breeds?
Right now, I have all Golden Retrievers. I have six. Their names are Kula, Oro, Leo (named after Leonardo DiCaprio; my neighbor said "he's a good looking boy," so I called him that), Bubu, Lumi (I believe she's the smallest Golden Retriever in the whole world—she's only 35 pounds), and Happy. I have a lot of dogs to cook for. [ Laughs] I also have two cats.

Do you cook for the cats, too?
Yes, I make food for the cats too! Some people say, "Are you going to release a cat food book?" I say, "First things first." [Laughs] I know more about dogs than cats. I've had many dogs in my life—maybe 15 or 17.

Related: The Westminster Dog Show... On Acid!

Do people criticize you for feeding your dogs all vegan and homemade food?
I don't see it as criticism, but many people are shocked to hear it. More about the "homemade" part, vegan or not. People will say, "Do you know what you're doing?" They think that packaged food has all the nutrition dogs need. But it's not like that. It's like with humans, if you had a choice between frozen broccoli or fresh-picked farmer's market broccoli, which one would you choose? The best choice is the fresh-picked vegetable. That's what I'm providing my dogs. Packaged food is still good, just as a supplement—like vitamins for humans.

I feel like people have a lack of information [on dog diets]. Some people say, "Don't you worry they're not getting enough nutrition?" No, I don't, because I would know if they weren't. I observe them so much. I think I can feel when something is physically or even emotionally off.

It seems like these days, there are a ton of natural options for bagged or canned dog food. Has packaged dog food changed in recent years?
Yes. I really believe that it's better now. But the problem is that dogs eat the same thing every day. You need to change it up. My book shows that you can still use packaged or bagged food as a supplemental food, whether or not your dogs are eating meat.

Do you think people's attitudes toward packaged dog foods will change?
I believe they will change. It's like cigarettes. Can you imagine, now, being able to smoke indoors in restaurants, like you could years ago? The same thing will happen with dog food. I will not give up on our food, or dog food. People ask me, why are you cooking for your dogs? The simple answer is, there's no restaurant for them! If I don't have time to eat, I can go out to a restaurant. But they don't have that. I wrote in my book, one day maybe there will be a restaurant we can go to with dogs. Do you think that's crazy? [ Laughs]

Not really. At least not in LA. We're nuts about our dogs here.
Exactly!

Sanae Suzuki's cookbook, Healthy Happy Pooch, comes out on May 16.

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Check out Berliac's website and Tumblr, and follow him on Twitter.

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Spoilers for the first four seasons of the show are ahead.

Winter was coming when I moved from Miami to New York in mid-November, so I ended up doing what a lot of people do in the Northeast when it gets cold and dark and miserable for months: I stayed inside and watched TV. I watched all the TV. All the TV except for Game of Thrones.

When I told people this was because I didn't like "fantasy," everyone, without exception, replied, "But that's only, like 5 percent of it!" That would actually go a long way in explaining why it's HBO's most popular show ever. After all, there's no way that all 18.4 million people who tune in to Game of Thrones on the regular are the kind of people who read Wheel of Time books. Correctly or not though, I had the idea in my head that the show was merely dwarves fucking princesses with some dragon cameos, and as such, it didn't have much to offer a person like me.

But season five has started, and that means everyone is talking about it again, and I decided, after a period of peer pressure that bordered on bullying, that it was my duty as a screen-watching citizen of the world to catch up on it, or at least try to, and this morphed into the idea that I should watch every episode —a.k.a. 41 hours—of Game of Thrones and film myself doing this. I would be like David Blaine; David Blaine in a Dungeons & Dragons version of Videodrome.

SEASON 1

It turns out that the rumors are true about the sheer amount of fucking that goes down in Westeros. About an hour into the show, I think I've seen every possible configuration of characters have doggy-style sex. I feel extremely bad for Daenerys, who gets creeped on by her brother and then married off to a terrifying, muscular husband, though she cheers up after she suddenly gets into him after following some Cosmo sex tips from a servant. Also I'm confused—there are 500 characters and they are all named D'horen. It's a lot to keep track of and I fear I am unable to follow the plot. That does not bode well for this experiment.

Two friends come over and order Mexican from the place downstairs, but given the incest and evisceration continually playing out on screen, food doesn't seem appealing. Watching Daenerys eat a horse heart doesn't help, either. I don't think this experiment is the ideal way to watch a show; it kind of stops you from enjoying it and forces you to endure it. I like Arya well enough—but when her dad gets decapitated and she becomes a Dickensian street urchin, I remain unmoved. Am I broken?

SEASON 2

I had planned to take a short break in the middle of seasons one and two, but I don't pause the marathon. I want to keep the momentum I have going. Also I've been watching this show for long enough that I don't really know what I'd do for a "break." Anyone who binges on TV knows this, but after a few hours of the binge you're past the point of shame. What's the difference between watching eight episodes of a show and watching 15? Either way you're probably going to lie to everyone about what you did over the weekend. By the start of season two, every episode feels like a step forwards on a long long journey. I imagine it provides the same sort of high as leveling up does to people who play World of Warcraft .

Soon, though, it becomes clear that Game of Thrones is the most terrifying show to binge on, because there is so much death and misery. Every scene is someone getting gutted by swords or hate-fucked by someone else for political gain. It's so stressful. My stomach lurches, and I realize it's about 1:30 in the morning and I haven't eaten anything in a long time since well before Joffery became the devil incarnate. Nothing's open, so I call a diner in Queens and select an open-faced chicken salad sandwich slathered in yellow American cheese and almost-raw bacon. I take about two bites and throw it on my bed, where it will sit for the next 12 or so hours.

I get extremely paranoid that I'm hallucinating everything and I conclude that my mental state is definitely deteriorating. I keep watching.

At 3 AM, the only new friend I've made since moving back to New York, a guy I'll call Tom who lives down the street from me, texts and says, "buzz me in? i need a minute." I don't know what he needs a minute for, and I don't care, I just want company in my tiny room that feels increasingly like there should be padding on the walls.

But when he comes up he starts sobbing on my couch and unspools a complicated story about a sick friend, coming home late, and his parents kicking him out. He keeps repeating himself over and over again to the point where I figure he must be on something. Game of Thrones rages on in the background the entire time, although he doesn't seem to notice or mind that I haven't looked away from it. Tom then offers me a hit of acid that he had wrapped in tinfoil. I consider it for a second, but decide that throwing my mind any further into this fantasy world would be an incredibly bad idea. He sleeps on the couch in my living room and the next day acts like none of this had happened.

I keep watching.

That afternoon, when normal people are awake and doing things again, some other friends come to check on me, and I sort of get to experience what I imagine being a drug dealer is like. People drop in for a few minutes to sit on my couch, leave, then come back to find me still sitting on my couch doing the exact same thing I was doing last time.

Once the visits dry up, though, I grow unspeakably lonely. "When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die," Cersei, who I've now decided is my spirit guide, forewarned in the first season's seventh episode. "There is no middle ground." As I approach the halfway point of my marathon, these words speak to me. I am playing the true Game of Thrones and I will win or I will die.

During all this, I was filming myself. I had some idea that the footage would be funny (though only one part—beneath—turned out to be). At some point I notice that a light on the camera filming me is blinking red, so I text a guy who understands cameras, and ask him what to do. Almost immediately, he sends me two pictures of the back of the camera and step-by-step instructions on how to change the memory card. It's all a block of meaningless text. I can't make sense of the words even as I read them out loud and try to isolate each sentence as a separate directive. He emails me a video. The narrator's voice is a monotone, and no one is getting beheaded, which is presumably why I can't pay attention. I watch it twice before giving up.

I've been futzing with the camera for an hour, and as I try to pry off a clearly bolted-on part of the camera with my bare hands, I get the sense that I'm being laughed at. Except no one is there. I take the barely-eaten sandwich and emphatically throw it in the garbage to regain some sense of agency.

Finally, I call someone else who knows how to use the camera. She explains that I push the button that says "push" to eject the card. I start the show again and hundreds of men are being burned alive in their ships.

Nothing shocks me anymore. Life is cheap in Westeros, and blowjobs are cheaper.

SEASON 3

I haven't taken an official count but I estimate that I've seen Peter Dinklage get 47 blowjobs. I am completely inured to this. In fact, nothing shocks me anymore. Life is cheap in Westeros, and blowjobs are cheaper. Earlier Maester Aemon explained earlier that there was a winter coming that "will be long, and dark things will come with it." My life is a long winter.

Twenty-five hours into Game of Thrones, I am a shell of my former self. But when things start gearing up for a royal wedding, I sense something climactic is coming and gather the strength for a second wind. That instinct proves correct, because one scene, which I now know is referred to as "The Red Wedding," is possibly the most intense thing I've ever seen on TV. The first time I watched Kids, when I was like 17, I spent the entire last five minutes on my feet screaming at the screen. I have pretty much the same reaction here. Although I've been able to deal with all of the deaths thus far, even Ned Stark's, I can sense tears streaming down my face. I stare fixedly at the screen throughout the credits and only snap out of it when the glow of HBO's logo startles me back into reality. This is what that looked like:

SEASON 4

The outburst leaves me spent. For the first time, I feel like I could actually fall asleep if I wanted to. I seriously consider putting on a baseball cap and sunglasses Weekend at Bernie's–style to fool the camera. I conclude it is a "good idea" and that "no one will know." I give the camera angry side-eye, because I now consider it my enemy.

The Red Wedding, actually, is the last plot point from the show I can remember. I begin season four, but I am completely out of it to the point where I might as well be staring at a blank wall. Game of Thrones washes over me like some bloody wave, but I was disengage from it, my eyes glaze over, and completely by accident I fall asleep.

When I wake up on my couch with my shoes on about 11 hours later, the first thing I see is the blinking light telling me that the camera is no longer recording. The second thing I notice is that it's a goddamn beautiful day outside.

As I waddle down the staircase to experience the first day of spring, I feel less like a grown person than two toddlers wearing a trench coat. The lower half of my body doesn't want to coordinate with the top. But it doesn't matter. Winter is over. And it has been a long one.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

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Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

On April 14, former Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleg Kalashnikov sent an e-mail to a friend saying he was receiving a "regular dose of threats and insults," and complaining of "the genocide of dissent, threats of physical destruction, and constant, dirty affronts" in Ukraine today. The next day, he was shot dead on his doorstep. One day later, journalist and historian Oles Buzina was killed in a drive-by shooting outside his home in Kyiv. Both were vocal opponents of Ukraine's post-revolutionary government.

A member of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych's defunct Party of Regions, in the weeks before his murder Kalashnikov was under investigation for organizing violent anti-protest groups during the EuroMaidan Revolution, and for supporting subsequent separatist movements. Buzina was a well-known critic of the new government and had become popular among opponents of the EuroMaidan Revolution. Last month he compared the current administration's strategies in dealing with political opponents to those of the Yanukovych regime.

The two killings are the latest in a spate of murders and suicides of members of Ukraine's opposition. In addition to Kalashnikov and Buzina, seven former Party of Regions officials have been killed or committed suicide since the beginning of the year. Investigations into five of the seven officials' deaths are ongoing, though the government has been reluctant to disclose substantive information about them; when Maxim Tucker from Newsweekasked the General Prosecutor's Office about the former officials, he was told that their deaths are a state secret.

The investigation into the murder of former Odessa prosecutor Sergei Melnychuk, who fell to his death from his eighth-floor apartment on March 22, raised concerns about law enforcement's diligence and transparency: police initially reported the death as a suicide, despite the fact that they had been called to the scene to respond to neighbors' reports of a fight. Mykhailo Minakov, a professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, held that several of the deaths that have been ruled suicides are in fact quite "dubious."

President Petro Poroshenko has dubbed Buzina's and Kalashnikov's deaths "a deliberate provocation that plays into our enemies' hands."

The secrecy surrounding the investigations into the officials' deaths has brought lingering divisions in Ukrainian society to the fore, Minakov explained to VICE in an email, "provok[ing] deeper cleavages in Ukrainian society, where supporters of the Maidan program [constitute] barely over 50 percent of the population." The "absence of trustworthy information," he argued, has created "an atmosphere of mutual suspicion in Ukraine."

Since Yanukovych was overthrown in February of 2014, the post-revolutionary government has had difficulty erasing longstanding political allegiances to pro-Russian political parties among certain segments of the population, particularly in the country's war-ravaged east. And across Ukraine, the government has struggled to gain the confidence of its people. In a poll conducted in mid-March, 79 percent of Ukrainians called the political situation "fragile." One-third of respondents approved of President Petro Poroshenko's job performance, and only one-quarter approved of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's performance.

"The Poroshenko government is in a difficult position because when it makes concessions to people in the eastern regions, it loses support from people in the west, and vice versa," Paul Stronski, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told VICE.

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The late Oleg Kalashnikov. Photo credit: Yuriy Kirnichny / Getty Images

Though the investigation into Kalashnikov's death is in its infancy, Anton Gerashchenko, a member of Ukraine's parliament and an advisor to the minister of the interior wrote in a Facebook post that, among other motives, police were considering the former Party of Regions MP's "political activity, including in connection with the organization and financing" of protests in support of the Yanukovych regime during the EuroMaidan movement. He said the circumstances surrounding Kalashnikov's and Buzina's murders were "similar."

Stronski believes the wave of recent deaths, regardless of who is to blame, is cause for concern: "The political violence we've seen in Ukraine recently is very worrying and it underscores the fragility of the new government," he said.

The deaths have elicited a "mixed reaction from the [current] establishment in Kiev," according to Minakov. Borislav Bereza, a current MP and former press secretary of the nationalist "Right Sector" group, wondered whether Ukraine is "turning into Al Capone's Chicago or simply returning to the tumultuous 90s." The "wave of banditry, political murders, the rampancy of crime," he said, "must be stopped."

Some in Ukraine have celebrated the opposition leaders' deaths: in March, after four opposition officials had died, Gerashchenko called the string of suicides a "positive moment." "Finally," he announced on live television, "we are seeing the principle of the inevitability of punishment arise in Ukraine."

Ukrainian MP Mustafa Nayyem, one of the leaders of civil society during the EuroMaidan Movement, struck back against those who celebrated the recent murders. "I don't like murder. Even of those who are the most unpleasant, unloving, and hateful to me. But I have even greater contempt for those who take pleasure in these murders and deaths," he wrote in a Facebook post.

What little information is available about the killings has been highly politicized by the Russian and Ukrainian leadership: During his annual televised call-in show on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the killings were politically motivated, using the opportunity to question the Kyiv government's European aspirations: "this isn't the first political assassination. In Ukraine, there has been a whole series of these murders... in Ukraine, which claims to be a democratic government, and is trying to move towards democratic Europe [the investigation and arrest of the perpetrators] isn't happening."

In a statement on Thursday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko dubbed Buzina's and Kalashnikov's deaths "a deliberate provocation that plays into our enemies' hands," calling on law enforcement "to find the perpetrators and organizers of the recent murders as soon as possible." Gerashchenko announced that he could "not rule out that these murders are organized by Russian special services to create an atmosphere of terror in Kyiv." Other government leaders and members of civil society have echoed this sentiment, suggesting that the murders were an act of provocation by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).

Related: Ukraine Burning

Corresponding theories quickly proliferated: Ukrainian journalist Denis Kazansky posited that Buzin's murder was designed to look like the February murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, giving the Kremlin an opportunity to reflect its own problems onto Ukraine, and discredit the government in Kyiv in the eyes of the international community. Others suggested that the officials, most of whom were being investigated for crimes committed under the previous administration, chose to kill themselves rather than face a lengthy trial and prison sentence—what one Ukrainian journalist called a "harsh form of lustration."

As the death toll among opposition leaders climbs, observers fear that the violence will spiral out of control. Minakov warned that Buzina's murder in particular might "provoke a chain-reaction leading to more tragedies in peaceful parts of Ukraine" because of his popularity among anti-Maidan supporters.

Nestor Shufrich, an MP in the "Opposition Bloc," the successor party to the Party of Regions, offered a more ominous warning: "The current leaders of the country would be wise to remember, that in the history of humanity, political terror in the end turns against those who indulged in it."

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Photo courtesy of Cara Hoffman

In Cara Hoffman's novel Be Safe I Love You, Lauren Clay, a young combat veteran from the Iraq War, returns home to her working class roots in small-town upstate New York. Lauren's struggles to readjust to civilian life ultimately manifest in full-blown PTSD, and Hoffman's prose provides a lyrical, harrowing reminder of war's rippling repercussions. But Lauren's story is as much about the society she lives in as her mental state, as the novel centers more on class and gender than bombs and battalions.

Since its release last year, Be Safe I Love You has been named one of the five best modern war novels by the Sunday Telegraph. It's currently being made into a movie by Saudi director Haifaa Al Mansour, and the paperback edition is set for release on April 21.

VICE spoke with Hoffman about the dual roles of nurturer and aggressor that falls on female soldiers, the surprising statistics about rape in the military, our perception of gender in combat, and what relationship Lauren Clay bears to Jeanne d'Arc:

VICE: Be Safe I Love You has received more praise than we could fit into this article! What do you attribute the book's overwhelming reception to?
Cara Hoffman: 2014 was a good year for women. There was a rise in groundbreaking work by women, from Jen Percy's Demon Camp to Virginie Despentes's Apocalypse Baby. There's a growing interest in women's lives outside of the retrograde, domestic tale. That's part of it. I think the other is that it was simply time for this story to be told.

It's strange to me that war writing is considered a genre, like adventure, or science fiction, or romance.

Why did you decide to write about a woman soldier?
People who can give birth are now training to kill and taking life in higher numbers than they ever have before. It's more complex than the tales we've been reading for centuries about war. I wanted to write about [a woman soldier] because [this story] reflects the time in which we live. Lauren Clay is, in many ways, a typical American soldier in that she comes from the working poor and enlisted to get the signing bonus and support her family. Hers is not a story of privilege and ideology, and neither are the stories of most enlisted people.

Lauren becomes obsessed with the Jeanne d'Arc basin oil fields in Canada. Why?
Jeanne d'Arc is a salient symbol throughout the novel: a teenage soldier who had to disguise herself as a man and who suffered hallucinations. She's the precursor and also the counterpoint to Lauren. Jeanne d'Arc becomes a saint the way most saints do: through connection to religious phenomena, and through terrible torture. Lauren's view of religion is cynical at best and often hostile, but she holds things sacred and makes sacrifices, she's inspired by holy music and recognized for her gifts, and she has visions brought on by trauma and hypothermia. The Jeanne d'Arc basin is also a mirror of the oil field she guarded in Iraq.

Related: Watch our HBO special on veterans with PTSD:

Do you consider yourself a war writer? What's your connection to the military?
I come from a military family. My brother served two combat tours in Afghanistan and was disabled there. I'm not a war writer. It's strange to me that war writing is considered a genre, like adventure, or science fiction, or romance. Be Safe I Love You is about war and trauma, but it's also about holy minimalist music, arctic exploration, sibling relationships, class, and religion. There are great works about war of course, but generally that one note that has been struck with the myth-making literature of war since Homer is very tired.

Female soldiers seem to exist in the popular press and public consciousness only when stories about sexual assault in the military and whether or not women should be allowed to fill special operations roles come to the fore. What do you think the result of this very narrow focus is?
I think mainly that it's unrealistic. The fact that women can do the same jobs as men is not news, but it still gets brought up as if it's significant. The issue of women being sexually assaulted in the military needs to be addressed, but again the narrow focus on women prevents people from seeing the bigger picture.

Which is what?
The armed forces has a rape problem that transcends gender. Rape in the military preceded the rise of women enlisting. [Some statistics show that] 35 percent of men in the military are raped. In 2012, 14,000 men in military service were raped. That's essentially the same proportion as women who are assaulted in civilian life. And because more men enlist than women, that means more men have been raped in the military than women; far more, over a far greater period of time.

When military rape is discussed around issues of women being victims, or arguments about whether they should be serving beside men, all intelligent discourse goes out the window. And the fact that a significant part of the military population engages in rape goes unexamined. That the military has similar male on male sexual assault stats as the prison system is something no one wants to talk about. There was a great article by Nathaniel Penn in GQ on this issue that everyone should read.

The majority of people who suffer from PTSD are civilian women who have been physically and sexually assaulted.

From "shell-shocked" veterans after World War I to veterans with PTSD today, several stereotypes of a traumatized soldier have emerged: The veteran who descends into alcoholism, drug addiction, and general burn-out, and the seemingly-fine ex-soldier who suddenly shoots up a military base or kills a family member being the most common. What do you think of these stereotypes? How accurate are they?
The most interesting thing regarding stereotypes and PTSD is not that they are inaccurate or that they unfairly make some soldiers out to be troubled, but that they are profoundly sexist. PTSD is in the news and in public consciousness because of the recent wars, but the majority of people who suffer from PTSD are civilian women who have been physically and sexually assaulted.

To put this in perspective: Since 9/11, 6,800 American soldiers have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and 50,000 injured, but 20,000 American women have been murdered in their own homes. [Around 300,000] women are raped every year. That's more than 4 million since 9/11. The fact that rape, assault, and fear of being murdered can cause PTSD is not news, yet national interest and funding to address PTSD has been linked almost entirely to war.

Our perceptions need to catch up to reality: The facts are that more men get raped in the military than women because there are simply more men in the military than women, and more women suffer from PTSD because civilian life carries greater risks for them.

I don't explicitly talk about these things in Be Safe I Love You. Lauren is not sexually assaulted while deployed, nor while at home, and like most soldiers, she has a relatively good experience in the military. But it's the convergence of the war and the war at home that women face in one way or another—as caretakers or objects of desire and aggression—that leads to her undoing. Her survival is based in art and love and camaraderie among men and women. It's in giving up the delusions we cultivate when killing or allowing others to kill on our behalf.

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What are you working on now?
I've just finished my third novel, set in Athens, Greece, and am now working on the fourth. I'll be consulting on the script for Haifaa's movie based on Be Safe I Love You. And there are some interesting things in the works with my first novel, So Much Pretty. It does seem like things are moving quickly. But we're all making up for lost time. It's easy to forget it was illegal for women to vote in this country less than 100 years ago. If you keep it in mind, it's incredibly motivating. We have a lot to get done.

Check out the paperback edition of Cara Hoffman's Be Safe I Love You, out April 21 from Simon & Schuster.

Follow Elizabeth Nicholas on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

All across the world, governments are rethinking their attitudes toward the criminalization of cannabis. Yet in Britain, fussy politicians terrified by that video of Jon Snow losing his mind on super-skunk are refusing to free the weed, uncurb the herb, or liberate the oregano dream pipe.

We went to Hyde Park to join London's most ardent weed advocates for the annual 4/20 celebrations, which this year doubled as a protest rally for those who want cannabis to be legalized.

We caught up with Big Narstie, watched the police make an array of arrests, talked to some of the activist-stoners, and found out why you should always smoke through an Eric Cartman bong.

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Caption: Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in 'Daredevil,' shown walking down a New York street with cane. Photo: Barry Wetcher © 2014 Netflix, Inc. All rights reserved

Potential spoilers for the first season of Daredevil below.

When the 13 episodes of season one of Daredevil went live on Netflix on April 10, Daredevil/Matthew Murdock, played by Charlie Cox, instantly became the most prominent disabled character in media.

The online community of disability activists was certainly excited. (I am a member. My son has Down syndrome and I often write about disability-related stories for mass media.) A friend of mine in England had watched ten episodes before I even got out of bed on the 10th. Alice Wong, founder of the Disability Visibility Project, organized a viewing and live-tweeted episode one under the hashtag #daredevilDVP.

But before people could even parse the quality of the episodes, the decision by Netflix not to provide audio commentary became a problem. Many blind people follow television through specially added audio descriptions of scenes and actions. The issue swept through social media. Many articles commented on the irony of a show entirely based around a blind main character being inaccessible for the blind. An online petition was launched . After a few days, Netflix made the wise decision not only to add audio commentary to Daredevil (available as of last Tuesday), but the company also promised to add audio descriptions to lots more of its programming. Regardless of whether or not Daredevil will defeat Kingpin (Vincent D'Onofrio), he's already won a victory for accessibility.

I went into the show interested in how the directors would handle scenes of what might be called "ordinary" blindness, scenes in which Murdock simply goes about his day as a regular non-superhero. Murdock is, of course, anything but ordinary. Through his heightened senses, he's able to perceive the world in ways that mitigate the disabling effect of his blindness. But he is still blind. When he's fighting, it's easy to forget that he can't see, because this show (as opposed to the 2003 Ben Affleck vehicle) rarely tries to depict how the world "appears" to Murdock. The fight scenes fixate on the fleshy brutality of hand-to-hand combat in which Murdock's skill at taking punishment matters as much as his ability to dish it out (the one-take five-minute hallway fight scene at the end of episode two is particularly epic).

Trailer for 'Daredevil'

Still, when not clad in a mask, he's a blind lawyer moving through the streets and buildings of Hell's Kitchen. I found a lot to like in those moments about the series' portrayal of life with visual impairment. Murdock negotiates space using touch. His electronic devices—phone, alarm clock—talk to him. He frequently has conversations in which his sighted interlocutors catch themselves using visual cues (nods, shrugs, etc.) and then redirect. His closest companion, partner-in-law Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), acts as an interface for Matt and does so without awkwardness.

For example, early in episode one, Foggy is being shown around what will become the law office of Nelson and Murdoch. The realtor tells Foggy, "The corner suite has a view of the Hudson. You can flip a coin with your partner for it." Murdoch enters and says, "Uh, he can have the view." The realtor spins, says that she's sorry, sticks out her hand to introduce herself, then sort of curtseys when Matt doesn't reach out to her hand. Murdock slides forward, offers his arm, and asks the realtor to escort him around the space, allowing her a gracious way out.

Later, Karen Page (played by Deborah Ann Wall, whose boyfriend is blind and cosplayed as Matt Murdock at the LA premiere) is hiding out in Murdock's apartment. Murdock gets water, and touches the table lightly as he sets the glass down, in a moment of excellent verisimilitude for how the visually impaired navigate space. Page says, "Can I ask a personal question?" Murdock responds, without waiting, "I haven't always been blind," then admits that this is what everyone wants to know, and follows it with a joke, "that or how do you comb your hair?" The following dialogue is gentle, thoughtful, and exploring the nature of disability, trauma, and memory. Murdock talks about all the ways he's recovered from his accident, but admits, "I'd give anything to see the sky one more time."

That might not please every disability advocate out there, but I thought it had a useful realism. Murdock, as a superhero, has fully adapted to his visual impairment. He can move through any environment and uses his altered senses to fuel his superhuman villain-fighting skills, but it's still OK for him to miss seeing. Murdock then asks Page if he can ask her a few questions, and she nods. The scene hangs in silence for a moment, before Page says, "Go ahead." Murdock replies, "You just nodded, didn't you." And she laughs and admits, sheepishly, "Yeah." That, too, has a kind of realism, as the abled individual forgets that not everyone can see.

This type of scene becomes less common in the later episodes of the season (as they become overwhelmed with violence) and that's a pity, because when they happen, they offer something rarely depicted on television. Scope, a British disability-rights organization, has a wonderful web series called End the Awkward. The videos and related materials emphasize not letting our differences—or the moments when we forget to take difference into account—freeze social relationships. They advise: Just acknowledge the moment and move on. The quiet moments of Daredevil, to my pleasant surprise, embrace the "end the awkward" mantra of inclusion for people with and without disabilities.

'End The Awkward' Bending Over to Wheelchair User—Scope's Alex Brooker TV Ad

The other key moment is when Murdock reencounters his old childhood mentor, the blind warrior Stick. Episode seven unfolds with conflict and collaboration between Stick and Murdock both in present day and in flashbacks.

In the trailer above, Stick informs Murdock that he is gifted. Clark Matthews, a self-described "crip filmmaker (many people in the disability community have claimed crip, once an insult, as a badge of pride) and originator of the hashtag #dare2describe (calling for audio descriptions), argues that this is a strong metaphor for the power of the disability community. So often, in film and TV, disabled characters learn to accept their disability from the abled, teaching them that we are more alike than different. Stick's response to such platitudes would be unprintable. Clark told me, "Stick is an unapologetically miserable ass, but the lessons he shares with a young and vulnerable Matt Murdock are profound. The fact that Matt learns important wisdom from another blind man, as opposed to some kindhearted sighted character, is crucial." And that's right, because clearly no one but another blind person should be teaching a blind child how to adapt to the world, superpowers or not.

Despite its strengths in dealing with disability issues, Daredevil is far from perfect. Over email, Mikki Kendall, a writer and cultural critic (whom VICE profiled in 2014), noted that in the show, "People of color are either villains or victims, and despite them being the ones most at risk, much of the show centers on how them being harmed/killed impacts the white leads emotionally and advances their development as characters. Sure, Matt, Foggy, and Karen want to help. But these white saviors don't mind getting the people they're trying to help hurt in pursuit of their crusade. [There's] lots of diversity in the cast, but the people of color are mostly plot devices instead of fully fleshed out characters."

Overall, the show is very dark and plays up the savagery of the violence—this is Frank Miller violence, not the biff and pow of earlier comic-book eras. Moreover, because Murdock somehow has perfect lie detection, he routinely uses torture to find out what he wants to know. The show is at its best when Murdock is in his mask, fighting, or when the show yields to the magnificent Vincent D'Onofrio as Kingpin and our protagonist is nowhere to be seen.

But like it or not, there is no blind character on television with the kind of exposure that Matthew Murdock/Daredevil has—at least for this month. Thus the little scenes that depict life with disability in the show matter. Disability involves constant minor negotiations, the need to finesse potentially awkward moments, decisions when to stand fast against ableism, and major reassessments of how one understands the world. Daredevil, in the quiet moments between fistfights, depicts those complex realities in a widely popular show. And that's why it's important that they get it right. The reality of disability is complex, nuanced, and, like the rest of life, constantly negotiated—even if you're not being attacked by ninjas or Russian mobsters.

Follow David on Twitter.

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Beyond the Wall in Baffin Island. Photo via Flickr user Mike Beauregard.

The last time Jerry Natanine witnessed his remote Inuit community come together in protest, he was 12-years old.

Now, Clyde River is home to about 1,000 people and Natanine is mayor. Located on the northern side of Baffin Island, the community faces Baffin Bay with Greenland in the distance. Sitting a world away from Clyde River in a Toronto community centre, he relives the second protest he'd ever seen. In fact, he instigated it.

Last July, Natanine went on the local radio station and told his community it was time to show their frustration over the years-long ordeal they'd gone through with representatives from a consortium of oil and gas companies looking to survey Baffin Bay.

"And if you want to back us up we're going to have posters and walk around," he said, mimicking his radio announcement.

The group marched in a circular path chanting 'Where's Leona?' in reference to Leona Aglukkaq, the Conservative environment minister, of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, the Arctic Council and their MP. Occasionally, the march stopped so people could make speeches. He described it as energetic and fun.

"Elders came out and it was just really amazing," he told his Toronto audience.

Natanine is currently in Toronto to testify in court against the National Energy Board's decision to give the consortium's a five-year license to search for oil and gas on the seafloor of Baffin Bay using a seismic surveying. After Monday's hearing a judge will decide to quash the NEB's approval of seismic surveying or uphold it.

It's a controversial survey method in which air guns shoot compressed air into the water at 230 decibels so that the sound waves go through the seabed to reverberate off the solid rock strata below. The reverberation is recorded to map whether gas or oil deposits exist below the rock. The waves are shot into the water every 13-15 seconds for 24 hours a day over weeks or months, according to lawyer Nader Hasan, who will represent Clyde River in court.

The NEB is purported to be an at-arms-length federal body that considers development proposals based on environmental, human and economic factors, but that isn't the case according to Hasan.

"In recent years it's enjoyed a reputation as having a very cozy relationship with the Harper government and the oil industry," he claims.

That coziness is how Hasan explains the NEB's decision to approve a license to the consortium in light of every governance body in Nunavut opposing the proposal.

Though Natanine now leads the opposition, he was one of the project's supporters initially. He noted the 100-house shortage in Clyde River, the lack of paved roads and so little infrastructure that airlines looking to update their planes can't because of the gravel landing strip.

"We were hoping we could benefit from oil and gas," he said.

But the project lost Natanine and others' approval when it became clear the company wasn't interested in supporting the community and their specialists' responses to questions and concerns didn't add up. Clyde River is not opposed to development, said Natanine, they just want it done right, which, for now, means stopping seismic surveying.

"We've never fought like this before," he said. "We're fighting for our life, our way of life."

Natanine reached out to Greenpeace, weeks after the organization issued an apology to the Inuit for its campaign to end the seal hunt, to team up to challenge the consortium's proposal for seismic surveying and Canadian government in one fell swoop.

A petition, circulated on Clyde River's behalf, has garnered more than 100,000 signatures to date and a solidarity statement boasting names like activist and author Naomi Kleinand even Xena the Warrior Princess actress Lucy Lawless.

Seismic surveying is globally controversial technique as the blasts have the potential to kill animals at close range, disable animals or alter migration patterns. In Trinidad, fisherman have tried to stop seismic surveys by surrounding surveyors' boats by water.

Natanine remembers hearing stories from his father and uncle after seismic surveying was done in three locations during the 1970s.

"Winter came, spring came and they were hunting seals and the seals were deaf. They would try to hunt them and catch them and they wouldn't even move. They were not affected by gun shots or noise," he said.

When animals' health or migration patterns change, ramifications are huge for Natanine's community where most follow a traditional diet consisting largely of seal, fish, polar bear or caribou (seasonally dependent).

"If we weren't eating traditional food, I don't know, we'd probably starve," he said.Food imported from southern Canada is extremely expensive, as in $19 for a bag of grapes expensive.

The impacts wouldn't be isolated to Clyde River either. The 30,000 Inuit living in Nunavut who rely on regular migration patterns and healthy animal populations would also feel the effects of the surveying.

Beyond the food security of thousands, at the heart of the case are the Inuit's constitutionally entrenched rights to live off the land according to their traditional way of life before colonization and Canada's duty to consult them on activity that would affect those rights.

"Those words mean absolutely nothing if those words can't be enforced. And that's really what this case is about—it's about enforcing those rights," said Hassan. The case could also represent an important precedent for projects like the Line 9 reversal, Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan.

If Clyde River wins the case, the consortium's license will be revoked and any future development starts from square one. If they lose, Hasan said they will appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

"Win or lose, the fight's not going to be over," he said.

Follow E.K. Hudson on Twitter.

Mad Decent is the label brainchild of popular electronic music mastermind Diplo. Since 2005, they've been one of the only reasons white kids listen to moombahton or Brazilian funk music. Daktyl is one of Mad Decent's star artists, cooking up killer electronic music that shifts from reflective ambient to bed-breaking sexy R&B to tasteful club banger at the drop of a hat. He's got a new album out, Cyclical, and Mad Decent has kindly given us first access to a preview stream. Check it out.

Listen to more Daktyl on his Soundcloud.