For four days in September of 2013, two out of three access lanes closed down at the George Washington Bridge toll plaza in Fort Lee, New Jersey, gnarling traffic in the sleepy bedroom suburb. It held up emergency vehicles, stalled school buses—by the time the lanes reopened, furious tristate commuters had lost a combined 2,800 vehicle hours each day.

At the time, public officials in New Jersey dismissed the lane closings as a traffic study. As we all know now, it was actually a plot hatched by officials in Governor Chris Christie's administration to exact political revenge on the mayor of Fort Lee, a Democrat who had declined to endorse the governor's reelection campaign.

Earlier this month, two former state officials—Bridget Kelly, Christie's former deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni, the governor's top Port Authority appointee—were indicted on federal fraud charges in the bridge closure scandal; a third, former Port Authority official David Wildstein, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy.

All three argue that that they weren't the only ones involved in the lane closures—that key members of Christie's office definitely knew what was up in those early days of September 2013, including, perhaps, the governor himself, a man who, at the time, was fashioning himself as the savior of the Republican Party.

But the question of just who knew what and when could remain unanswered for a while longer. Announcing the charges, the US Attorney for New Jersey acknowledged that there were other, unnamed co-conspirators mentioned in the indictments, but has said that he doesn't expect anyone else will be charged. But on Tuesday, prosecutors filed a motion to seal the evidence until the trial begins, claiming that they want to protect other public officials from "intense media scrutiny."

Lawyers for Kelly and Baroni have objected, saying that evidence is their best shot at vindication—in other words, that it will show they weren't the only ones behind the Bridgegate shitstorm. Wildstein's lawyer has also argued that "evidence exists" implicating Christie's involvement—but what that evidence might be is not yet known, and, if the seal is approved by the judge, we may not find out for another six months—just enough time for Christie to launch his long-anticipated presidential campaign.

Christie, meanwhile, is already taking his victory lap. Since loudly proclaiming his innocence at a nearly two-hour press conference last January, he has maintained that he knew nothing about the lane closures. As the Bridgegate scandal has unfolded, the governor's political persona has oscillated wildly, from distressed—a portlier Nixon, before the Watergate levees broke—to triumphant barnstormer, confident he'll outlast the naysayers. But after the indictments were announced, he took to Twitter to once again deny his involvement, casting himself as both the victim and the hero of the whole sordid scheme.

Related: Republicans Have Finally Turned on Chris Christie

He took this Bridgegate martyrdom one step further Thursday, appearing on CNBC's "Squawk Box" to attack what he sees as a liberal bias in the media's coverage of the scandal. He even went so far as to demand an apology from reporters who have questioned his involvement.

"I do believe there is an absolute bias and a rush to judgment. You all know this. You saw the coverage of me 15 months ago. I was guilty, guilty. I had done it," Christie said. "Now we're 15 months later, where are the apologies pouring in [now] that not one thing I said on the day after the bridge situation has been proven to be wrong?"

Of course, Christie's own brand of Bridgegate logic is completely detached from actual public perception of him and his adminstration. According to interviews with the New York Times, his closest acquaintances have all but dismissed the notion that the New Jersey governor has a chance with voters after the Bridgegate mess. Even his own state is sending a clear message: In a recent Quinnipiac poll, 65 percent of New Jersey residents said their governor wasn't fit to run the country.

The harshest words towards the governor came from a Newark Star-Ledgerop-ed this week, after Christie went on Fox News to defend his low polling as a sign that his people want him to stay in office in New Jersey, not on Pennsylvania Avenue. In the piece, entitled, "Gov. Christie loses his marbles on national TV," the paper said the governor was "out of touch with reality" in thinking that he can actually make a credible run for president.

"It's no wonder that New Jersey is screaming a warning to the rest of the country," the paper wrote. "God forbid he gets a chance to make an even bigger mess on a larger stage."

None of this seems to have deterred the governor from charging ahead with his planned 2016 campaign. In recent weeks, Christie has hired campaign staff in New Hampshire , a key early primary state, defended NSA surveillance in a hawkish foreign policy speech to boost his hawkish credentials, and enlisted his wife to reassure donors that the campaign they'd dreamed of back in 2013 was still possible, despite Christie's tanking poll numbers.

"It's clear he's definitely running for President," said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. "And that Bridgegate hasn't deterred him whatsoever. The best news for Christie is that the trial isn't going to be until November."

"He needs to rebrand himself as a straight talker, who can appease Democrats and actually win," he said. "How Bridgegate hurt Christie is that it halted any major accomplishments from getting done, and strengthened this narrative that he's a typical politician. And that's his whole thing: that he's not a typical politician."

There may still be time for Christie to make a comeback, Dworkin added, pointing out that the next six months could give the governor room to boost his poll numbers, and connect with voters in early primary states.

But Christie,in characteristic Christie fashion, doesn't seem too concerned with winning over hearts and minds. That much was clear at Wednesday's New Jersey Legislative Correspondents Club Show, an annual event where the governor and state house journalists take turns roasting each other, usually in jest. Usually, Christie shows a funny video, starring himself, but this year was different, with the governor launching into a profanity-laced diatribe against the reporters in the room.

"The reason we don't have a video is that we don't give a shit about you anymore," he announced. "We don't give a shit about this or any of you."

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

The end is nigh. That is, so it appears to be the case on our our consoles, our screens, our newsfeeds—all of the outlets through which we channel our societal jonesing for dystopian catharsis. Such is merely the beginning of the frequently stated thesis in Tomorrowland, a relentlessly earnest bumper sticker of a film which argues our love for the narrative of dystopia has become a self-fulfilling prophecy and that we've lost our once keen cultural calling for exploration and innovation as a result. It's a noble message, even a bold and necessary one, but one loses its potency when the film goes about expressing it with a megaphone.

Written by Lost scribe Damon Lindelof and the great Brad Bird (Bird also directed), Tomorrowland follows a teen of indeterminate age, Casey (Britt Robertson), who is first seen sabotaging the disassembly of a Cape Canaveral NASA launch platform where her father works. "Why are they taking the platform down?" Casey's little brother asks her one night. "Because it's hard to have ideas," she responds. "And easy to give up." Frustratingly, this is not the only exchange in the film that feels cribbed from the self-help aisle.

More on utopias from our futuristic buddies at Motherboard.

Casey comes upon a pin with the apparent ability to transport her to a secret world created by elites in both the arts and the sciences—a world beyond the graying, desaturated colors of her chronically uncurious Earth. At this point, Tomorrowland finally feels as though it is about to spring to wondrous life, like a blockbuster answer to the full-color reveal in Tarkovsky's 1979 dystopian classic Stalker, but here with gravity defying multi-layer pools and jetpacks with built-in crash cushions pushing A-grade futurist imagination candy. However, Casey's trip ends abruptly when the pin loses energy, leading her to join forces with the curmudgeonly old inventor,Frank (George Clooney, segueing comfortably into the winningly groggy grumpiness of late-period Harrison Ford) who was once a fixture in Tomorrowland before being mysteriously excommunicated.

Trailer for 'Tomorrowland' (2015)

And that's pretty much it. For a film that's gotten the full mystery box marketing anti-blitz, there's not a whole lot hidden for reveal here. While our initial glimpses of Tomorrowland are intoxicating—thanks in no small part to the crisp work of cinematographer Claudio Miranda, production designer Scott Chambliss, and composer Michael Giacchino—almost all of the ensuing film is about the not-particularly-urgent race to return, resulting in the cinematic equivalent of that Itchy and Scratchy cartoon from The Simpsons with the elusive fireworks factory. In that episode, Itchy and Scratchy pass a series of billboard promising the increasing proximity of a fireworks factory—an ideal venue for cartoon destruction. But instead of the fireworks factory we get Poochie, leaving Springfield's favorite loser Milhouse to wail in disappointment. In the elongated, feature-length act one that is Tomorrowland, we are all Milhouse.

Yet for all of the failings of Tomorrowland, almost all of them are noble ones. There's a lionization of braininess in the film that's genuinely inspiring and lends the movie its affecting final image. And while most summer tentpole films, good or bad, seem to rush through the talking in a race to the pyrotechnics. Tomorrowland goes full stream in the opposite direction.

Aside from a midpoint raid on Frank's home, staged with Bird's signature sugar-rush sense of giddiness, most of the action beats feel obligatory, as though Lindelof and Bird were on a warpath towards their true object of desire: constant, nudging, laborious affirmations about the necessity of optimism. I have no doubt that the team behind Tomorrowland is earnest in their intentions—the film bares not the stink of a committee-sanctioned hack-job, but rather the heated fervor of a passion project gone awry.

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Still from 'Tomorrowland' (2015). Photo courtesy of Disney

This makes a good deal of sense. Bird, an auteur of the whiz-bang variety, and a frequently brilliant one at that, has always expressed an inclination towards humanistic good vibes in the face of unimaginable destruction, whether those stem from the tensions of the atomic age (The Iron Giant) or the potential for comic-book annihilation (The Incredibles). He's a gifted storyteller, armed not only with tremendous imagination, but great generosity as well—an empathetic impulse that finds the same allure and beating heart in the delicately seared salmon plates of Ratatouille as it does in the endlessly cool gadgetry of his Mission Impossible entry. And of course, nearly all of his films have demonstrated an appreciation for the popping colors and shiny surfaces of 60s futurism—making this film a seeming confluence of aesthetic and tonal concerns that you would think spells out a slam dunk.

Nevertheless, the unwieldiness of Tomorrowland gets the better of Bird. His earlier films managed to articulate similar sentiments about the importance of visionary thinking, the dangers of cynicism, the value of iconoclasts, and the necessity of goodness. Here, the movie plays like the themes came first and everything else was an afterthought. The text swallows the subtext whole, and then monologues about it. The effect is exhausting.

Want to learn more about secret worlds? Dive into the lizard-filled mind of David Icke

It's all the more interesting that Tomorrowland never quite gets it together, considering its placement on the summer-movie calendar. Our multiplexes continue to assault us with visions of impending doom and death. A destruction of a major city in the climax of a superhero movie here, the collapse of the West coast in the new Dwayne Johnson vehicle there. As giddy as I am to see the Rock go mana-a-mono with an uncooperative fault line, a little utopia goes a long way these days.

Maybe that's why the new Mad Max feels like such a wake-up call. It's an action movie set in the dystopia to end all dystopias, a hellscape of fire, rot, sand, and blind, mutant, roving guitarists. And yet, the film is still rousing, even invigorating—a brightly colored and supremely humanistic dismantling of the establishment, one explosion at a time. If you're trying to find hope at the end of the world, shouldn't it at least be a good time along the way?

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Look at Stephen Maurice Graham's website, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

Kid606, whose real name is Miguel Trost De Pedro, has been making electronic music since 1998. The work of his that I'm most familiar with is his really intense IDM, which draws from his devout love of industrial, noise, and death metal. You won't be getting any harshness this time around, though. To paint a picture of the type of music Kid606 is making these days, he recently covered Brian Eno's Discreet Music in its entirety. Lately, he's been creating introspective, drony, ambient songs, rather than the dance-crazy MDMA-powered hardcore beats of his past, and they sound beautiful.

He's got a new album out calledRecollected Ambient Works Vol. 1: Bored of Excitement. Above is a music video for one of the album's standout tracks, "B Minor," which pairs Kid606's music with geometrical animation created by Jeanette Bonds, a talented young artist who recently graduated CalArts.

Buy Kid606's new album here.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas is the controversial Ghanian investigative journalist who's broken dozens of stories of corruption and organized crime in West Africa. He's also the subject of a new documentary Chameleon by Ryan Mullins, which follows Anas through his extensive undercover investigations that include everything from disguises, button cam surveillance, and a prosthetic severed albino arm. In a rare interview, VICE senior editor Raf Katigbak sits down with Anas to find out what drives his single-minded mission to bring justice to his country, the state of journalism in Africa, and how he responds to critics who question his methods.

Chameleon will have its US premiere at the Brooklyn Film Festival May 31.

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Photo via Wiki Commons.

Awareness of violence against black bodies by the hands of the civil servants charged with our protection has reached critical mass on the internet. It feels like every few days another black man, woman, or child is replaced by a hashtag. And while it is draining to traverse from anger to sadness to resignation and back on a weekly basis, it's important that I don't completely look away. I can't ignore what's happening to us. And I can't afford to forget that this crisis of violence isn't an abstraction, but something that has real, personal, human costs. These people are not merely symbols or martyrs. The families and friends left behind aren't just subjects of heartbreaking photography. I try to think about them as individuals. I think of Mike Brown, Rekia Boyd, Freddie Gray, Akai Gurley, and Eric Garner.

And I fear for who we might lose next.

News on Twitter is all about speed, and word of these killings and the subsequent protests and reactions is no different thanks to the work of activists like DeRay McKesson, Johnetta Elzie, and many others. Twitter has been invaluable for following these tragedies, but also for following how traditional media regards us and how the state itself tries to shape the narrative of what and who we are.

But it's not just about receiving the news. When you live your life around people for whom news of these events doesn't seem to register—much less resonate—we go online to express our personal and communal grief. And while this is important for black people online in particular, I feel it's important that everyone sees us—that they see how much hurt and anger these tragedies cause us, to dispel the idea that just because we live, we're removed.

And while it may not seem important how "others" see "us," this visibility is crucial. We can talk about racism, we can talk about body cameras, and we can talk about the failures of our justice system—and we should. We can talk about the neglect and political dysfunction that's ignored in our communities until there's something salacious and voyeuristic to look at. But a fundamental problem that endures is that we can't look past blackness and see humanity. We can't look past blackness and see just a person.

And while I believe that "ignorance is the burden of the ignorant," as Ta-Nehisi Coates once wrote, I also believe that the window Twitter provides into the diversity and complexity of black people is an effective teacher. It's easy to generalize, to create a broad understanding or lens through which to view people who are different from us. It's easy to understand the things you've spent time and effort getting to know and stop there. And it's not always easy to access black thought and emotion if you don't have that readily around you in a physical space.

Twitter changes that. If you truly want to know, we're out here. It's nobody's job to educate you, but no one is stopping you from listening.

On VICE News: Grand Jury Indicts Six Baltimore Officers Involved in Freddie Gray's Death

Blacks make up about 13 percent of the population in the United States and just 10 percent of the country's internet denizens, yet comprise some 18 percent of Twitter users. This overrepresentation makes Twitter a space where, perhaps, black voices are louder and better heard (if not better understood). It also contrasts with the physical spaces that many white Twitter users live in. Twitter is where you can find something other than the binary representations of middle-class Cosby kid or crack dealer. There are real people behind these accounts living varied lives and experiences, and talking about them in real time. And while it's easy to view or use Twitter as a layer to create separation, you can't help but see how human people are as you watch them grapple with the world we live in.

Still, the visibility provided by online spaces isn't all goodness and light, as we all—even President Obama—know. When we open ourselves up, the exposure produces many negative results. There's the personal cost of making your allegiances and sympathies known. Strangers will attack you. There's the communal cost, such as when people feel emboldened to twist the #BlackLivesMatter movement into #AllLivesMatter, sometimes with ugly real-life results, like at UMass-Amherst recently. Here we have an eerie convergence of what happens to black people in both physical and online spaces: We're either set apart when it's convenient, or swallowed up under the flag of inclusion that flies primarily for those already included.

But the costs are worth paying if it means that the dignity and worth of black people will be more broadly recognized. It'll be worth it when testimony that we are literal monsters is no longer credible and that being less than an "angel" doesn't factor into whether we live or die. And while we just want to be seen as human beings, it's important to note that police officers, prosecutors, judges and jury members are just humans, too. And if they can't recognize the humanity in us that they take for granted in themselves, as they plead for understanding of their fears and their actions when these killings happen, how can they be expected to truly serve and protect us?

Technologies like Twitter have made the world a smaller place, certainly, yet that endeavor shouldn't begin and end with the closing of physical distance, but rather with the extension of humanity and understanding to a wider group of humans.

Follow Andrew on Twitter.

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Image via Flickr user Ingrid Richter.

Nearly four million people's personal information from the site AdultFriendFinder has been leaked to a darknet forum, reports Channel 4. The site, which according to its about page allows adults to not only "find online adult friends, but also horny matches and fuck buddies," was hacked by a man who goes by ROR[RG]. He claims to have carried out the hack because the site owed his friend nearly $250,000. The information exposed includes full names, email addresses (some with .gov accounts), marital status, IP addresses, and sexual orientation. ROR[RG] was considerate (?) enough to erase users' credit card information before uploading the information, which reportedly spanned 15 Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

In a post on the forum, ROR[RG] wrote:

it is a pervo website
they owe my guy money
had it coming clause
pay up or be fucked

AdultFriendFinder has released a statement regarding the hack. Read an excerpt below:

FriendFinder Networks Inc. recently became aware of a potential data security incident. The security of our members' information remains our top priority and, upon learning of this incident, we took immediate action including:
-Launching an internal investigation to review and expand existing security protocols and processes
-Taking steps to protect our members such as temporarily disabling the username search function and masking usernames of any users we believe were affected by the security issue.
-This means that our members will still be able to log-in using their username and password but the search function will be disabled in an effort to protect members privacy. We are also in the process of communicating directly to members on how to update their usernames and passwords
-Working closely with Mandiant, a leading third-party forensics expert, to investigate the incident, review network security and remediate our system
-Notifying law enforcement, including the FBI, and coordinating with their investigation into this attack

The statement concluded, "We will continue to work vigilantly to address this potential issue and will provide updates on this site as we learn more from our investigation. Protecting our members' information is our top priority and we will continue to take the appropriate steps needed to protect our members and their information."

Five in-depth stories about the deep web:

1. You Can Download the Darknet Market That Disappeared Without a Trace
2. Drug Dealers and Users Just Got Swindled Out of $12 Million by the Internet's Biggest Illegal Marketplace
3. My Top-Secret Meeting with One of the Silk Road's Biggest Drug Lords
4. Closing Silk Road 2.0 Isn't Going to Stop Anyone from Selling Drugs Online
5. This Chemical Critic Was Given Thousands of Dollars Worth of Drugs for Free

Follow Drew on Twitter.

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Screenshot via Youtube

To hear some people tell it, freedom of speech in Canada has had a rough month. It's getting so that men can't even shout unfunny, sexually aggressive things at women for no reason anymore without fear of getting publicly (and privately) humiliated! Truly, we are witnessing male chauvinism's Charlie Hebdo moment.

Despite the fact that the "fuck her right in the pussy" post-mortem has been done to death by some of Canada's smartest women, some dudes (inevitably, dudes) are determined to defend their liberty from the creeping gynocratic Gestapo. Stephen Harris, a board member of the Libertarian Party of Canada, took it upon himself last week to mansplain to anyone who'd listen that disrupting a woman's workplace by screaming sexual obscenities at her isn't really a big deal because women love the D.

Why not take this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion? I mean, if she's in front of a TV camera, she's probably looking for attention anyway. Why not just say she was asking for it?

At first it might seem sort of surprising that a libertarian would come to the defence of a guy getting fired for saying sexist shit in public. I mean, the whole movement is essentially designed to uphold employers' rights to do almost whatever the fuck they want to their underlings. But it's possible that because the guy was fired from Hydro One, Ontario's government-owned (at least for now) electricity company, this could be seen as an act of state repression as heinous as food safety regulation or public transit.

But this isn't even a free speech issue. A man freely volunteered his considered arguments in defence of criminal sexual harassment to a national television crew. As any good small-l liberal can tell you, the right of free speech comes with an obligation to take responsibility for the things that you say. In this case, the cost of telling a reporter she's lucky she wasn't assaulted with a vibrator was about $106,000 a year. Sounds like an appropriate price to me.

So then why would a libertarian spring to sexism's defence? A cursory visit to the Manosphere can show you a statistical link between libertarians and anti-feminist men's rights activists. Even self-identified "libertarian feminists" like Jessica Flanigan note a tension between the goals and values of libertarians and those of feminists. In the end, even her very generous reading of the situation concedes that feminism will ultimately be subordinate to the libertarian impulse to "not interfere" with "voluntary choices" that perpetuate sexism.

When you look at it this way, it's not hard to see that libertarians and men's rights activists are two sides of the same reactionary coin.

REALLY MAD MEN

For those of you who are blissfully unaware, men's rights activists are basically weaponized douchebags. They tell us that feminism has gone too far and men are now second-class citizens. MRAs believe women wield enormous secret power because they can make men do whatever they want with their sex appeal and/or false rape accusations. Worse, they can banish men to the dreaded Friendzone, a hellish nightmare world where you have to be friends with a girl you aren't fucking. Also, more men die in wars and workplace accidents than women and this is feminism's fault.

MRAs are the disaffected losers of a male-dominated world. They are legitimately upset that they have to put up with all the bullshit that traditionally masculine gender roles impose on men (do dangerous work; live and die by your dick; defer to "naturally" nurturing women in child-care custody battles; etc) but they don't enjoy any of the payoffs they were promised for playing along. Patriarchy is a pyramid scheme, and for every Don Draper at the pinnacle there are a thousand Pete Campbells underneath them, whining that they can't get their due.

But MRAs never ask if there's something wrong with the gender binary itself, or the system that binary upholds. Instead, they blame women and the feminist movement for these problems, despite the fact that the whole point of feminism is to overturn bullshit social hierarchies based on gender. For MRAs, the pyramid scheme of hypermasculinity is the source of all their grief, but it's also the engine of their aspiration and sense of self. When feminists challenge it, it's a challenge to their fantasies of social power.

You can see why these people would get along with libertarians, who are also very emotionally invested in maintaining bullshit social and economic hierarchies under the veneer of individual rights.

YOU CAN'T SPELL FREEDOM WITHOUT 'ME'

One of the basic premises of libertarianism is that only individuals exist. There is no such thing as a group or a gender or a race or a nation or a community of any kind. There are only individuals who may or may not have one of these labels attached to them and who may or may not choose to associate with other like-labeled individuals.

So right off the bat, the idea of feminism makes no sense within this scope. It's incomprehensible, for the committed libertarian, that one group ("women") could be oppressed by another group ("men") in the absence of explicit state violence. Listen, lady: if no one is pointing a gun to your head and telling you to stay in the kitchen, you're just dealing with a few isolated jerks, not an actual social problem. Not all men, remember?

Obviously, the idea that we all go through life as isolated individuals and that group identities (race, class, gender, sexuality, etc) don't define us in any meaningful way could only seem plausible to a white man of at least moderate financial means—or anyone bound up in the aspirational fantasies of whiteness, masculinity, and economic elitism. Whiteness, and especially straight male whiteness, is treated as the de facto standard from which others deviate, to such an extent that a straight white (cis, able-bodied) man can completely forget his experience is not universal. From within that perspective, it's easy to see freedom as consisting in, and only in, being left alone to do whatever you want with your money.

Because feminism is very much in the business of not leaving obnoxious men alone—dismantling gendered hierarchy requires we change the way we relate to ourselves and the people around us—it's not super popular among militant sooks. Anti-feminism has always been in vogue on the radical right. Libertarian YouTube "philosopher" Stefan Molyneux once declared that feminism is socialism in panties (he also gives great dating advice) and The Libertarian Republic recently ran a piece where a man answers 20 Stupid Feminist Questions for Men by arguing that women aren't funny.

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

This vision of atomized individuals isn't even an accurate picture of human existence. Human beings come into the world already bound up in all sorts of social networks. We're born with a name (given and family) already decided for us. We're born with a skin colour and assigned a gender identity (which may or may not reflect the gender identity we eventually come to embody), and both determine many of the life experiences we have in our given society—although how we respond to them is another matter. We're born not even able to live independently from our parental figures for the first several years of our lives.

We are biologically social, and social out of a basic material necessity. We are born and raised into prefigured identities and systems of power that shape our most intimate experiences of ourselves. We are all distinct individuals, but we are also obligated and connected to the people around us in the same way that they are obligated and connected to us. No man is an island; an injury to one is an injury to all.

Both libertarians and MRAs are dedicated to missing this point. They speak in the language of individual rights and equality because by reducing all the complexity of the social world down to a set of isolated units, they can pretend that everyone's privileges and disadvantages are rightfully earned. Or at least they would be rightfully earned, if it weren't for those meddling Social Justice Warriors and their Nanny State. Even the imagery of the "Nanny State" is hilariously sexist—as if the government is a giant woman, nagging the boys to do their homework and making them go to bed before the good TV shows are on.

If there are no systematic patterns of social injustice that operate along lines ofrace, class, or gender, you never have to question your part(s) in them. It's an easy way to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted that still lets you publicly gloat about your moral and intellectual superiority. And if there's one place where libertarians and MRAs often overlap, it's in being smug, condescending pricks on the internet.

So let the feminazis tremble at the manarchist revolution. Dudebros of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your jobs.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

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On a recent afternoon this month, I stood in the lobby of a large building in the West Village, doing my best to convince a doorman to let me up to the writer Vivian Gornick's apartment.

"There's no Gornick here," he said.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "I think there is. G, O, R—"

He flipped open a binder and trailed his finger down a list of residents.

"Nope," he said, tapping the binder. "No Gornick here."

I went back outside and wondered what to do. I made a phone call, and then another. Shortly thereafter, I was allowed upstairs.

"What do they mean I'm not on the list?" Vivian Gornick said, opening her apartment door. "I've lived here 30 years."

The Odd Woman and the City , Gornick's latest memoir, gives a gleam to these everyday moments—the fleeting misunderstandings, collisions, hostilities and camaraderies that compose quotidian urban life. The book is a collection of encounters, observations, and eavesdroppings from Gornick's daily walks through Manhattan; it is studded with meditations on literature and loneliness, work and love. A friend of Gornick's—a man she calls Leonard—moves through these pages as well. The two meet weekly to walk, chat, and commiserate. He is, at times, both foil and mirror.

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Gornick is a native New Yorker, born and raised in the Bronx. Growing up in the Jewish ghetto, she writes, "Manhattan was Araby." As a journalist in 1970s New York, she covered—and embraced—radical feminism, which continues to drive much of her criticism, which is characterized by its sharp and uncompromising nature. Gornick is also a teacher, having taught and worked in writing programs at Harvard and the University of Iowa, as well as the author of an invaluable book on personal narrative, The Situation and the Story . Her world is both political and literary, and her writing—memoir and criticism alike—is imbued with a clear-headed kindness, a genuine engagement with the human condition. The Odd Woman and the City is colorful and gutting, full of dark humor, insight, and heartbreak; the reader is never held at arm's length. It is a deeply human book.

In person Gornick was knowledgeable, curious, and generous, disinterested in small talk or frippery, and had a Bronx accent that made me homesick (I left the city for San Francisco two years ago). At a certain point, she schooled me briefly on the history of women's rights; I deserved it. Though I intended to ask primarily about the new book, our conversation meandered, detouring through feminism, cultural decline, hookup culture, and publishing-industry economics. As we spoke, her two small cats fought zealously on the floor.

VICE: Some have positioned The Odd Woman and the City as a companion piece to Fierce Attachments. Do you see it that way?
Vivian Gornick: It wasn't intentional. To some degree it's true, in that the narrator of Fierce Attachments is indeed me, 25 years ago, and to some extent the narrator of this book is me, 25 years later. The end of Fierce Attachments is a scene in which my mother says to me, "Why don't you go already? I'm not holding you." I realize in a flash that I'm half in, half out. I can't really leave: I can't stay, and I can't go. And that is the person who writes that book.

Now, here she is, 25 years later. For better or for worse, this is where she stands. And you can see that many of the strands that make up this collage are there in Fierce Attachments: walking the streets of the city, work, friendship. So to some degree it's true.

It started, actually, as an essay about the city. It started, really, with this character Leonard, a very good old friend. I've always wanted to write a book about the two of us. I thought that our friendship was paradigmatic of our time and of our place. I'm the odd woman, he's gay, we're in New York City. We've both been involved in feminist and gay politics for 25, 30 years. We each live alone. And that, especially—living alone—was central to our lives and to our situation. Never before in history have so many people like us been living alone. In other words, as I say in the book, we lived out our conflicts rather than our fantasies. And this is where those conflicts have taken thousands of us. I wanted to develop that.

"The thing about friendships is that they're really just like marriages—they bring out in you all that is neurotic, all that is strong. Every trait and characteristic that you're capable of is there in a friendship."

There's a common language—however insufficient it may be—for talking about familial relationships. There isn't a common language for friendship. Did that surface for you in the process of writing this book?
I feel very close to the recognition that a friendship is as deeply psychologically engaging as anything else. It draws from us our best and our worst. And I couldn't agree more—there is no language for it.

The thing that does stay central to me is the recognition of what urban friendship is now. I go to a party and somebody comes at me: "Oh, we were so tight two years ago." Somebody else comes over: "Oh, I miss you"—she lives two blocks away from me. And that has been on my mind for many, many years. What is that all about? How does that happen? Why does that happen? It probably has been true in every phase of life, but in the city it feels really vicious. And very, very central. It doesn't feel vicious to me now, but that has been something to really think about: the circumstantial nature of so many friendships. And the inability to achieve stability in these relationships. It is as much an indicator of the world we live in as anything else.

Do you think that people collect other people in the city to build a fortress against what would otherwise be relentless loneliness?
Oh, of course. Since we're all in so much crisis about marriage, and family—committing ourselves to marriage, or being married, or staying married—friendship is absolutely vital. The loneliness is generic; it's crude. All people living alone suffer horrendously from loneliness. The thing about friendships coming and going, I think that is true everywhere, at all times. But in the city, it feels existential.

The thing about friendships is that they're really just like marriages—they bring out in you all that is neurotic, all that is strong. Every trait and characteristic that you're capable of is there in a friendship. You're the same people. You're not a better friend than you are a love partner, or a daughter, or a parent, or any of those things. I think you can learn as much about yourself in the world through a single friendship as anything else.

But in the city, where everything is moving fast and there are thousands of ways to distract yourself, it becomes apparent that friendships are either central or contingent. And mainly they're contingent.

"We live in a world that has made endless use, in every way—culturally, politically, socially—of women's subordinate position."

In your writing about the neighborhood where you grew up, there are many friendships between people who might not necessarily find each other under other circumstances. Friendship becomes a mode of survival and self-preservation.
The Bronx was just like that: It was a ghetto. It was like a small town, and everybody knew everybody else—which was often comforting, and often extremely confining, imprisoning. There were so many people who had to know each other. There was no way not to. You were glad, finally, to not have to know them when you moved to Manhattan. And that is the trade-off. You move here and then you experience a loneliness: crude, gross loneliness that you never experience when you're living in a beehive, whether you like it or not. I know many people who began to lead the life that I lead, and they just ran right back.

There's a conversation happening now, around women who choose not to have children, who choose not to get married. This collection by Meghan Daum just came out called Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed —

I reviewed that, in Bookforum. [The collection] was refreshingly clear-headed. Forty years ago, any woman who said, "I don't want children" would have been branded unnatural, instantly. But it is true that there have always been women who knew that they don't want children, who knew that they'd be lousy mothers, and just never had a way to pursue.

In this case, all these people are writers, so they have the advantage of knowing that they are true, solid, serious workers. And that becomes a metaphor, in a life, for devotion to the experience of oneself as a worker, rather than as a mother and a wife. If they were just ordinary people with no particular passion for any particular work, it would be harder to put a name to it. In this case, these writers have the excuse of saying, "I realized one way or another that I couldn't work flat-out if I had children, and this is what I really choose to do."

And the proof is on the page.
Absolutely. Wonderfully written.

Want to see what it's like to meet Miranda July?

On the one hand, there's a book like Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed, which points to people having passions and interests that have nothing to do with family life and everything to do with work. Simultaneously we have [Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg's] Lean In and the pursuit of "having it all." The latter conversation seems to me like an appropriation of the former, in some way.
You think it's manipulative on the part of capitalism? Is that what you mean? Well, all these things are manipulations. Anything that becomes prescriptive is a manipulation. Anything that becomes an ideology is a manipulation. When we started in the 1970s, all we were saying, essentially, was, "We have been described as creatures who are happy to be mothers and wives and nothing else. This is not who we are." We live in a world that has made endless use, in every way—culturally, politically, socially—of women's subordinate position.

Every two minutes, there's another prescription: Lean in, lean out, do this, do that, you can't have it all, you must have it all—I don't know what the hell it all means. You know, it's an illusion, "have it all." Now one of the reasons you can't have it all is because there is, as yet, no achievement of those early goals. It's generational work; it's work of a thousand years.

That's what you're living through—you're in the eye of the storm, and you will be as long as you live. I never hope to see much more than I see now in my life. The question of equality for men and women is so unbelievably fraught it brings to the surface anxieties that are absolutely existential in nature. Metaphysical. Really the heart of things. So people come up with prescriptions every two minutes. And that's the journalistic need, to make news. Every five years the New York Times announces we're post-feminism.

"[The] culture of people showing each other their best selves was 100 years ago. It was a romantic notion."

They'll be the last to know.
They will be the last to know. That's right. You'll be the first, they'll be the last.

You're living in a world whose rules we helped reduce without replacing them. So everything's up in the air, and you're all on your own. But! There's so much more room for you to struggle in an open field, to find your way. You're freer than ever before to ask: What makes me feel exiled within myself? What doesn't? What feels good? What doesn't? What's exhilarating, what's depressing? That's all that you have. And it is true that people on the left, for instance—all my life—have been looking on women's rights as an instrument of capitalist manipulations. And I can't see it that way anymore. What we want is not revolutionary. On the contrary, what we want is a more perfect democracy. We want what the democracy promised. An equal shot at being equally miserable. An equal shot at being just as unhappy as anybody else, but not because of race, or sex, or whatever.

So there's an increased freedom. But once you go to exercise that freedom, you still haven't set the terms of the world you live in.
Well, you may, eventually. It depends on which way a critical mass develops out of all this. First that has to happen. That's why it's incumbent upon each of you to become the best person you can be, as whole a human being as you can be. It's the only thing you've really got, but you do have that. I believe firmly that that is how you change the world. And as old as I am, I take that as my responsibility. And I will take that until I die.

In The Odd Woman and the City , you write about the performance, in a friendship, of one's best self. What is the relationship between writing and performance of this best self?
What I want is to create a character who will tell the story that needs to be told. In writing, what you must be devoted to is the writing. In other words, you are devoted here to making the writing be the best it can be. I don't want or need to be a virtuous self through the narrator that I create. That narrator has to be able to serve the story. And by the way, in the book I say that that's not our culture anymore: That culture of people showing each other their best selves was 100 years ago. It was a romantic notion.

Friendship has become more confessional.
Now we share our worst selves. We're in the therapeutic culture. We share our angers, our hungers, our jealousies, our humiliations—that's the nature of friendship, now. You know, two women can run into each other after not having seen each other in 30 years, and sit down for a cup of coffee. In 20 minutes, they're telling each other all.

I think it's a mode of protection. Sharing an intimacy is a way to give someone what appears to be part of yourself but actually obscures what you hold dear.
You can sit down with somebody and they can reveal in 20 minutes how bad they feel about this, that, or the other, and it makes you assume that because this person has told you how bad they can feel, they made themselves vulnerable to you, and therefore, out of that you can expect a certain kind of behavior. And that is not true. But it was the same when people only showed each other their virtue. That wasn't true either.

Vivian Gornick at the Tenement Museum in New York earlier this month

You've been writing about New York for a long time. Do you ever feel a desire to resist or acquiesce to other narratives of the city?
No, I don't. When I read something that moves me, that I recognize as true, I appreciate it. I feel like I have a comrade. When I don't, I just ignore it.

I know many, many people who spend their lives bemoaning the loss of New York. I never felt that. For me the city is unchanging. What I appreciate in New York is watching the 50 different ways in which people survive. By survive, I mean try to remain human beings . I love that. I see that all the time, everywhere. My mother died at 94—she never stopped having adventures on the street. She'd walk up to the box office at the New York City Ballet, and she'd put her hand down on the grille and say to some young person behind the grille in the middle of the day, "I'm 85 years old, and I live on Social Security, and I love ballet. Do something for me." And they would.

That's what's great about New York: People do.
It's amazing. It changes, and it never changes. The people doing it are changed perhaps, but the essence doesn't change.

There have been a number of books published recently that turn inward, emphasizing narratorial interiority and realism. Daily life is documented, analyzed: Not much happens, but there's a lot of internal processing, a lot of anxiety. People seem very excited about these books right now, myself included, but I don't know why, or why now.
It's in the wind. All these young literary men, all they write about is how depressed they are, how nothing feels real, how they can't experience anything.

I think this happens when a culture's falling apart. I really do.

What do you mean?
Well, I think this has happened, no doubt, in the past: [Goethe's] The Sorrows of Young Werther, or something like that. I think that the more a culture stops giving satisfaction, the more people start navel-gazing. There are so many young men writing literary books, all about how depressed they are, and how they read email all day long, right? Isn't that right? Every time I feel lousy, I go back to look at the email? And they're praised to the skies. The reviews write about them as if it's first-rate literature.

But that's been forever.
That's right, it's been forever.

I'm sure this story is apocryphal, but it is said that when Sparta and Athens were involved in the Peloponnesian War and Athens was going under, philosophers proliferated in the streets. All Athens had been—its great contribution to the world, to life, to history—was its philosophers. And as the culture was dying, there were more and more third-rate versions of what had once been great.

Somehow it feels like that now, as the book-publishing world is dying and print is dying, there's all this incredible visual noise created by technology. There's mass culture like never before in history—such a mass culture. Which means culture that's sinking to the lowest common denominator. And all of that is quite depressing. And I think it's out of that, that this kind of literature is why people are turning so interior.

That's why we're all writing memoirs instead of novels. Novel-writing is not so promising anymore. But the need for narrative persists. It will persist as long as human beings are alive. That need to tell a story—that need to create order out of the chaos of experience—will never stop. It's like air and light, food.

Vivian Gornick's The Odd Woman and the City is out now from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Anna Wiener is a writer from Brooklyn who lives in San Francisco. Talk to her on Twitter here.

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We love smiling piles of shit. Photo via Flickr user Rob Marquardt

Just when I thought we hit Peak Emoji, I was proven wrong. Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit corporation that standardizes emojis internationally, has released 38 more design concepts for their next version of the Unicode Standard. Some of these new characters could "change the emoji game" and save you from typing literally dozens of words.

But my main concern is: why the fuck do we need any more emojis?

We've already made use of the symbols for our every need, even the dirty ones. We humans have used our collective intellect to turn an innocent eggplant into a penis, and an equally pure peach into a butt. We have even pushed Instagram to ban the eggplant emoji hashtag to cleanse our pornographic minds.

Canada has collectively decided that the poop emoji is our most nationally used symbol. Clearly we don't need anything else.

Plus, these new emojis also come a little over a month after Unicode released the skin tone-varied emojis and gender-varied ones too. As of Unicode version 7.0, we have around 550 emojis to work with. Another 240 if you include flags. And of all those 790 emojis people still feel the need to request more.

According to the proposal, these new potential emojis come from "popular requests from online communities," and will be "filling the gaps in the existing set of Unicode emoji."

We took a look at all 38 to determine just what gaps we're filling with cute little cartoons.

Rolling on the floor laughing: Because acronyms like ROFL are so goddamn time-consuming, especially if you want to get creative and use something like ROFLCOPTER.

Drooling face: Instead of saying "that food looks good," or "that outfit is hot," or "I have a hypersalivation condition," just send a face with saliva dripping from the mouth.

Clown face: I'm still trying to think of when you would use this (other than to describe your latest sexy nightmare).

Nauseated face: This one could come in handy, I must admit. (See above)

Lying face: If you are in fact telling a lie, I would advise against using this. But then when the heck else would you use it?

Face with cowboy hat: More hats they said.

Call me hand: You're on a phone just call them yourself. Alternatively this could be used as an ironic 1987 throwback "hang low surfer dude" hand sign.

Selfie: You don't need this emoji. You also don't need to take a selfie.

Raised back of hand: Pimp-slapping is bad, and I'm pretty sure this emoji encourages it.

Left-facing fist: We couldn't survive with the fist facing in only one direction; fisting equality is important.

Handshake: How is this not a thing yet? We've got high-five and fist-bump but no good old fashioned handshake?

Hand with first and index finger crossed: Don't send this to anyone if you're lying either, obviously.

Pregnant woman: This addition just makes sense biologically. Otherwise, how were the emojis going to reproduce?

Face palm: I am face-palming IRL.

Shrug: The ASCII shrug "¯\_(ツ)_/¯" will never die!!!

Man dancing: What about a woman dancing? Oh right, women don't dance.

Prince: There are only two princes worth emojing and this is neither.

Man in tuxedo: Only acceptable if it is Tuxedo Mask.

Mother Christmas: Fighting sexism one emoji at a time—or is this Mary, Jesus's virgin mom?

Wilted flower: We will finally have a "can't get it up" emoji. You know who you are and it's OK, Tom.

Scooter: Scooters aren't cool and you shouldn't use them unless you're under the age of 12. Same goes for this emoji.

Motor scooter: I knew the transportation emojis were missing something: a taste of Euro.

Octagonal Sign: Because "stop" is four too many letters to type out.

Clinking glasses: When you can't make it to the party and the FOMO is real, you can cheers virtually. Or if you can't afford champagne.

Black heart: Emos need love too.

Croissant: "Hurry up with my damn croissant emoji."—Kanye West's original lyric from "I Am a God."

Avocado: For that moment, when you need to describe yourself as soft on the outside, but with a stone in the centre where your heart should be. I'm sorry, Tom, OK! I'm sorry!

Cucumber: Instagram should probably ban this one off the bat, I foresee this being the penis emoji 2.0.

Bacon: Just make sure this is nowhere near the already existing four pig emojis.

Potato: The people in online communities were demanding potatoes? PEI Potato Lobby gets action again.

Carrot: Now my boss has a digital carrot to put out there instead of giving me stupid assignments and winking.

Fox face: As if Tinder needed another way to tell me I look foxy.

Eagle: Good call. I actually noticed we had no predatory birds in the palette!

Duck: I guess we don't have any aquatic birds either.

Owl: How many birds to we need??

Bat: Are bats birds?

Shark: Not relevant unless there is also a tornado emoji, which unfortunately doesn't exist.

Clearly, we need more emojis.

Follow Sierra Bein on Twitter.

It's hardly been a week since some gross bros made international news at a Toronto FC game by yelling "fuck her right in the pussy" into a female sportscaster's mic and then defending the act as a joke. We're still talking about it, in fact, and while there's some disagreement over whether or not someone should lose their job over harassment-comedy that happens outside the workplace, we can at least rest assured it will be a few months before a media personality sticks his foot in his mouth regarding women. Right? Because journalists have been obsessed with this story, happening as it did to one of their own, and surely men can think, reflect, and shut their goddamn pie holes while they decide if a thing really needs to be said.

Oh, buddies. Guys. Men. Come on, now. I had so much faith in you to not fuck up for at least a week or two! But you couldn't do it, could you? The siren song of being a jerk on TV proved irresistible for Jeff MacArthur, and he ruined it for everyone.

Global's Morning Show in Toronto did a segment this week about a comedian, Jen Grant, who took to her blog after being harassed during a gig. A few audience members yelled degrading things at her, and because it was a corporate gig, where the rules are different, Grant couldn't tear them a new one. Grant, along with fellow comedians Jess Beaulieu and Julia Hladkowicz, talked about some of the shitty experiences they've had as female comedians, there was some stilted B-roll of Hladkowicz walking down the street (god bless local news), and cut to the anchors for a short wrap-up before commercial. Maybe some morning TV viewers have had their minds opened, and we all move on.

Not quite, because co-anchor and apparent comedy expert MacArthur needed to set the record straight on a few things. A few things these "professional comedians" and "women" didn't get right about being a professional comedian who is a woman.

"I guess in [Grant's] rider she signed off on, that she couldn't kind of come back at, take down hecklers," MacArthur said to his co-host, Liza Fromer, who may be an angel sent from above to deal with MacArthur's shit. After she explained (again) that corporate gigs have stricter, more audience-friendly rules, he stuck to his guns. "You talk to any comedian, you can't do that. You can not allow the audience to take control."

There's a lot to unpack in MacArthur's oblivious response to three women who actually know what they're talking about. Christina Walkinshaw, another Toronto comedian, had some thoughts.

"I think the big point Jeff is missing is that we're talking about sexual harassment here. NOT heckling. There's a difference," she wrote to me today. While heckling might be someone angrily yelling "get off the stage" or responding, "Oh yeah, that happens to me all the time!" to a joke, those comments don't carry the weight of implied violence that, say, a demand to " show us your bush" does.

"We all know how to engage hecklers," Walkinshaw added. "I love to ask crowds for their opinion on stuff from the stage, and interact. That doesn't make me feel vulnerable at all.

"But 'my friends and I agree—we'd fuck you' is threatening. Makes you think you should sneak out the back door and pray you never run into this guy on the street."

"It's enraging and unfair," wrote another comedian, Rhiannon Archer, to me today. "Leaves you feeling trapped and helpless. Why can't I just do my work and not be commented on?"

Archer says she rarely deals with sexual material in her act, but has been introduced to audiences by other comedians with lines like, "Your next guest is a female, guys, so if you play your cards right..." "Your next guest and I were making out in the back and I licked her," and, "Your next guest is hopefully funny as she is sexy."

Professional comedian Jeff MacArthur would probably have some sage words of wisdom for Walkinshaw and Archer, something about how they should just stand up for themselves and not take that shit. After all, he went on to say to Fromer that if Jen Grant signed a contract knowing she couldn't say whatever she wanted to the audience, she might as well have known some drunk corporate types would harass her while she worked. What else did she expect? What else do any of these women comedians expect, being funny and crass in public?!

MacArthur ended the segment saying that "whether it's males or females, when it comes to comedy, all I'm going to say is that if that's harassment, then you better be able to live by your own rules and not ridicule and go after other people."

I mean, sure. I think we all agree comedians shouldn't sexually harass audience members! Apparently there's less consensus, at least at one Global TV office, that audience members also shouldn't harass comedians.

Follow Tannara Yelland on Twitter.

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Heather Hironimus has been fighting for four years to make sure her son kept his foreskin, but after her arrest on charges of interfering with custody, it appears the battle is finally over—and she's giving in.

Hironimus had been locked in combat with her ex-boyfriend Dennis Nebus over a circumcision procedure she had agreed to permit before changing her mind. The legal machinations of this case endured well past the usual age for circumcisions, but neither parent would relent.

But, according to the New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Hironimus received an ultimatum from Judge Jeffrey Gillen: Sign a form consenting to the procedure, or be stuck in jail for some indeterminate amount of time. She appeared in court on Friday and refused to sign, and was sent back to lockup.

But moments later, she decided to cave, and the court was reconvened. Hironimus cried as her lawyer held the document in place, and she struggled to use a pen while in handcuffs. In the end, the document was signed, and the foreskin's fate was sealed.

Intact America is an activist group that has been very vocal about this case. In an email to VICE, Georganne Chapin of Intact America referred to the situation as "beyond appalling."

According to the Palm Beach Post, Hironimus has yet to be arraigned for interfering with her custody agreement, and a bail hearing for that charge not yet been scheduled.

As we've previously mentioned, multiple judges have ruled that the circumcision should take place, since Hironimus had formally capitulated to the father's wish that their son Chase be circumcised when she signed the initial custody agreement with Nebus.

But according to Nebus's attorney, May Cain, there have been "death threats," against Nebus, prompting him to consider taking the four-year-old out of state to have the procedure performed. According to Local10.com, the judge has authorized Nebus to take Chase out of state and unilaterally make all medical decisions on his behalf.

But Chapin of Intact America told VICE that to do so would be "despicable." She explained that "no physician in the United States can consider Heather Hironimus's signature—obtained while she was in handcuffs, exhausted, and under threat of indefinite detention—to be valid."

The judge told the parents, "You are going to have to learn to deal with each other in a civil and amicable manner," according to the Palm Beach Post.

Protesters were gathered outside of the courthouse before Hironimus signed. In a video, one protester named Tara Shipley told the Palm Beach Post. "We're standing beside Heather. We support Heather, and we hope she knows that she's not alone." She added, "The court has shown that they're really not thinking about the boy's best interest."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore.

On Friday, 2016 presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee announced on Facebook that he and his wife are standing by 19 Kids and Counting'sJosh Duggar, a conservative Christian reality TV starwho is currently embroiled in a child molestation scandal.

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The "bloodthirsty media" Huckabee is referring to is In Touch Magazine, which revealed this week that Josh, the eldest of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, was the subject of a 2006 police investigation into allegations that he had molested multiple underage girls as a teenager. Duggar admitted that the first incident had occurred in 2002, when at age 14, he "fondl[ed] a minor's breasts while she slept." On Thursday, a judge in Arkansas ordered that the 2006 police report be expunged from Duggar's record.

On Thursday, Josh, now 27, issued an apology on the official Duggar Facebook page. The post also included statements from the Duggar parents and Josh's wife Anna. Here's Josh's statement:

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Huckabee has been close with the Duggars for years. The family supported the former Arkansas governor during his 2008 presidential bid, and endorsed his 2016 campaign earlier this month. Just last week, Josh Duggar tweeted a photo of himself and Huckabee in Washington, DC.

In a January interview with People, Huckabee said of the Duggar family, "I've pointed them out as an example of something that's wholesome and wonderful."

Five in-depth stories About the Christian Right:

1. How Mike Huckabee Turned Running for President Into a Business Empire
2. Are Fundamentalist Christians Getting Away with "Pious" Domestic Abuse?
3. The Religious Consumerism of Megachurch Pastor Joel Osteen
4. At Home with Three Young Anti-Abortion Protestors
5. A Group Is Trying to Make Christianity the Official State Religion of Mississippi

Follow Drew on Twitter.

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Kama Sutra illustration via Wikimedia Commons

A group of Brazilian doctors recently published a paper in the academic journal Advances in Urology identifying "woman-on-top" (aka cowgirl) as the most dangerous sex position in terms of the sheer number of dicks broken mid-fuck. Analyzing data from three accident and emergency units in the Brazilian city of Campinas over the past 13 years for clear cases of penile fractures (in which the ligament in the penis either tears or overextends, often with a loud, painful crack), the doctors determined that half of all such fractures came when women rode men, with 29 percent resulting from over-vigorous doggy-style and 21 percent resulting from missionary sex.

Those who made it trough the wince-inducing study may have tried to take comfort in the fact that sex-related injuries are rare. As it turns out, that's not entirely true. Urologists at the University of Washington Medical School alone say they see at least one or two penile fractures a month. More generally, a British study found that up to five percent of the workforce takes time off for expressly sex-related injuries every year. And although there's a great deal of under-reporting, self-treating, or misreporting of sex-related injuries, most estimates say that up to one-third of adults will suffer some kind of injury during or directly from the dirty deed—often without realizing the pain they're in until the morning after, thanks to our lovely, sexed-up endorphins.

Related: How I Broke My Dick: A Cautionary Tale of Average Length

Many of these injuries could happen outside of carnal embrace: carpet burns, pulled muscles, sprains, and the like. But many more are fairly serious, associated with specific sexual scenarios, and utterly avoidable with the proper precautions.

To save ourselves some grievous harm at the most unfortunate of times, VICE dove into the literature on sex-related injuries and spoke with renowned sex therapist Dr. Kat van Kirk to create a list of the six most injurious heterosexual sexual positions and situations. (While there is overlap between heterosexual and homosexual sex injuries for both men and women, there are enough differences to merit their own future posts.)

Our rankings were based on the severity of injuries involved and the frequency with which practitioners encounter them. We also identified the safest heterosexual sexual position, and a few very simple tips to help you avoid serious harm in any position to make sure sex doesn't wreck your bits.

SIX OF THE MOST DANGEROUS HETEROSEXUAL SEX POSITIONS

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Photo via Flickr user Abhishek Singh Baloo

WOMAN-ON-TOP / COWGIRL

The boys from Brazil were right about this one— it's fairly easy to hit things at the wrong angle and get a snap-crackle-pop when a woman puts her full body weight down on a penis.

"This issue is basically the woman's pubic bone," explains Dr. Van Kirk. "It's slightly differently positioned in each woman. At times there's not enough lubrication when the woman goes to sit on the penis if there's enough force or friction or the penis catches on the pubic bone, that's when that bend will occur in that ligament. That is more common than people think."

FYI: Apparently, the angle involved in reverse cowgirl is even more dangerous than cowgirl.

DOGGY STYLE AND ITS VARIANTS

This one's mainly dangerous because forceful penetration at the wrong angle can, according to Dr. Kristi Latham, a pelvic health specialist at Dallas's Beyond Therapy & Wellness clinic, cause vaginal tearing (which is least common in cowgirl thanks to the woman's greater power to control depth and motion). Additionally, according to Dr. Kat, deep and vigorous thrusts in a short vaginal canal can cause cervical bruising or even bleeding. But wait! There's more: issue associated with doggy.

"I'll often see from rear-entry positions guys going to penetrate the vagina and fairly often the penis will accidentally go into the anus," says Dr. Kat. "And because there wasn't any preparation, there can be anal tears and things like that."

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Photo via Flickr user Michael Baun

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Oral sex is a great fast pass to pink eye if your partner isn't as hygienic as he or she could be, leading to the introduction of fecal matter onto the cornea. But two parties engaging in the practice simultaneously is double trouble when it comes to the sewage-face conundrum.

TITTy FUCKING

You'd never expect this one, but apparently men run into trouble when penis meets breast.

"I've seen a few penile fractures, not just with the pelvic bone, but when guys are in the process of trying to give a pearl necklace," says Dr. Kat. "Sometimes they'll put so much force against the woman's sternum that it can fracture [the penis], and if you're not using any lube, the friction can cause some problems too."

MISSIONARY

Even the most seemingly boring, safe, and sacred position poses risks. According to Dr. Kat, while it's not as common as in rear-entry positions, it's pretty easy for women with short vaginal canals to suffer cervical bruising or other abrasions from deep thrusts.

SIX OF THE MOST INJURIOUS SEX SITUATIONS

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Photo via Flickr user Abhishek Singh Baloo

POORLY LUBRICATED SEX

"Regardless of position, one of the main things I see are vaginal and penile abrasions from not enough lubrication," says Dr. Kat. "If there's not enough lube and you're just trying to force things or if you're just jumping into it without a whole lot of lubrication or foreplay, it can cause nasty abrasions. I've seen those get infected pretty regularly."

Unfortunately, just slathering on lube isn't good lubrication either, because so many people wind up having allergic reactions to many over-the-counter gels (and condoms and sex toys) leading to further irritations.

UNCHARACTERISTICALLY ACROBATIC SEX

This one's simple: if you're out of shape or doing something you're not used to, you just might hurt yourself. Lifting someone at the wrong angle or bending in the wrong way can lead to pulled muscles at best and broken extremities and heart attacks at worst, especially when you're getting down on iffy surfaces like stairs or rickety tables.

"People trying to do things in the shower or in their cars," says Dr. Kat, "there I see things like actual broken bones just from trying to do things that might be outside of their typical range."

UNPRACTICED KINK SEX

Although usually low-level injuries are related to excessive spanking or hair pulling, at times people try whips and chains and other exciting things without reading up on how to properly use them. This trend actually spiked during the release of the 50 Shades books and movies, and seems to be on the rise in general, probably thanks to the rise in awareness of kinky lifestyles in the media but not a concurrent rise in open, candid, and common conversations on safe kink sex practice.

"I don't see it typically with people who have practiced it for a long time or at least with one partner who is well versed," says Dr. Kat. "But things that have been wrapped around the penis or limbs too long or too hard and causing bruising or contusions or things of that nature. Most of those practices, if they're done responsibly, are not very unsafe [though]."

FORGETFUL SEX

Whether in the anus or the vagina, men and women often forget that they've placed things inside of themselves, leading to lodged objects only discovered much later.

"Lost condoms, lost tampons, lost sex toys, and sometimes other lost items that shouldn't be used for sex toys in the anus and vagina," says Dr. Kat. "Especially when people have been drinking or using some kind of substance, their judgment is off and their ability to sense and feel sensation might be altered in some way. I've seen it plenty of times: People won't even realize that something was stuck there. They either figure that the condom got thrown away or that the little vibrator was taken out at some point.

Then they present because of other symptoms like infection symptoms, [like] itching and discharge. The cervix can become so inflamed that it bleeds. I've seen it more with men than with women [in the anus]. Retrieval requires emergency personnel because you have to employ ultrasounds or x-rays, because the anus can go up into the colon." Hope you have health insurance!

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Photo via Flickr user Michael Baun

UNCLEAN SEX

The presence of fecal matter during sex can lead to the contamination of the urinary tract for men and women (but more often and more acutely for women) leading to urinary tract infections. Cleanliness isn't just a matter of wandering fecal matter, though. More often than you'd think, spicy food on hands and lips becomes an irritating issue during sex.

STRESSED-OUT SEX

As you might imagine, sex just isn't as enjoyable or relaxing when you're stressed out. But according to Dr. Latham, it can become physically painful as well due to the over-clenching of the pelvic floor, causing orgasms to feel more spasmodic and causing unpleasant sensations during penetration in women due to reduced flexibility.

Related: People Who Just Had Sex

A LESS DANGEROUS SEX POSITION FOR ALL!

For those discouraged about their (heterosexual) sexual safety, take heart: there is one sexual position that seems, anecdotally and wholly unscientifically, safer than the rest.

SIDE-TO-SIDE SEX / SPOONING SEX

"Even probably better than missionary when it comes to sex is the side-by-side position," says Dr. Kat, "which is typically recommended to couples who are pregnant."

"There's no real pressure on any specific joint. Insertion, even though it's typically through rear-entry and not through the front, usually has a little bit of buffer with the body so the penis won't hit the pelvic bone as quickly or bruise the cervix as often."

But just because this position is inherently safer than most others, that doesn't mean that you should only spoon-fuck from here on out. Every position can be a safe position so long as a few very basic and fundamental precautions (and preconditions for good sex) are observed.

"All [positions] are very safe if you're lubricated," says Dr. Kat, "if you're communicating, and if you're not trying to force things before somebody's ready."

If you do wind up suffering some manner of injury, it's not the end of the world. Most can be treated with simple approaches like icing, rest, or cranberry juice. But for serious pain, just suck it up and visit a doctor. You don't want to fuck over your sex life permanently, do you?

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In case the 2016 presidential election doesn't feel "real" to you yet —and why would it, really, when Jeb Bush hasn't made it official yet, and Hillary Clinton is still in hiding—it's time to change that tune. Why? Here's why: Because we're finally talking debates.

American presidential primary debates usually fall somewhere between an insane vaudevillian farce and a sort of OK night of television. In the last election cycle, a painkiller-addled Rick Perry oopsed his way out of a presidential career, Newt Gingrich tried to eat a CNN moderator, and Michele Bachman launched the Great Vaccine Panic of 2012. Each of the 7,345 debates was an anxious exercise in just how much crazy the Republican Party could take before it spinning off its axis. The answer was much more alarming—and entertaining—than any of us could have imagined.

The 2016 Republican primary debates hold their own promise. By my last count, there are approximately 1,200 men and women running for the GOP nomination; RealClearPolitics currently aggregates polling numbers for 14 of those likely candidates, ostensibly the ones who might actually be vaguely plausible options.

With so many candidates vying against each other, the idea of a debate is daunting. Put them all on a stage together and you basically just have a town hall of very rich people. Leave some of them out, and you risk tainting the democratic process—and bruising some very large egos.

The solutions so far have been... interesting. Fox News announced this week that its GOP primary debate—the first of the cycle—would feature just the top ten candidates, as determined by national polls, while the sad, jowly also-rans pace the media spin room and wonder why Ben Carson is up there talking about their flat tax plan.

Related: How Each Republican Candidate Will Kill His Own Presidential Campaign

If the debate were held today, according to Fox's criteria, it would include Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Carson, Chris Christie—I know, I'm surprised too—Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum. Even without the other 1,190 other candidates, it's going to be a crowded stage. It's hard to imagine most of these men ceding a microphone to their wife at their wedding, let alone playing nice with nine other blowhards auditioning for the same job.

But wait, it gets better. CNN, which will host the second GOP debate at the Ronald Reagan Library in September, will similarly limit the stage to the top 10 candidates. But they'll also host another, B-Team debate for any other candidate who's polling above 1 percent—which sounds like the most madcap development in US presidential politics since the days when the runner-up just got to be VP.

Of course, these new rules raise plenty of legitimate questions: Why ten candidates and not six, or eight, or 12, or 100? How is this going to work? Will Ted Cruz finally make another candidate cry? What will Wolf Blitzer do then? What we do know is that speaking time will be short and the spotlight hard to come by. So it would be wise for the candidates to start shaping up their closing remarks early. I have some suggestions.

Scott Walker: "With the Koch brothers' support, I have the budget of a medium-sized European country. I will literally pay you to vote for me."

Marco Rubio: "I will be whatever you want me to be, America. Please just let me know."

Rand Paul: "I occasionally say I'm against the widespread surveillance of Americans, which I guess makes me a really out-there politician. Apparently no one remembers my dad."

Mike Huckabee: "Do I want to be president? No, not really. So just put up with me for a few more months, and then subscribe to my new internet channel, coming January 2017."

Ted Cruz: "One word: America." [Smirks for several minutes]

Ben Carson: "If I can do brain surgery, I can do White House stuff, because these things are very similar. And I just compared Obamacare to slavery, the Islamic State, and the Third Reich on national television, so I already know you're all mine."

Chris Christie: "People may joke about my weight, my rudeness, my anger issues, and the allegations that I'm comically corrupt, but at least I'm not Ben Carson."

Rick Perry: "I wear glasses now. I am totally different and much smarter than I used to be. I am president. Call me president."

Rick Santorum: "The only way to get rid of me is to elect me. Otherwise, I will continue running every four years until the Earth is eaten by the sun. God bless."

Carly Fiorina: "I'm a woman, like Hillary Clinton, except I didn't do Benghazi. And I ran a company once, but we don't have to dwell on that. Just Benghazi. That's it."

Bobby Jindal: "Can you believe that people are still talking about me? I can't either!"

Lindsey Graham: "I'm a single-issue candidate and that issue is war. I like war."

Jeb Bush: "Here's the deal: Unless I like, smoke meth on camera in the next 90 minutes, I've got this locked up. So let's just get this goat rodeo over with, OK?"

Follow Kevin Lincoln on Twitter.