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Photo of some random pills via Flickr user Victor

On Thursday afternoon, a key advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted 18-6 to approve a drug called flibanserin, which manufacturer Sprout Pharmaceuticals says could help women who suffer from a low or non-existent sex drive. Although the agency could still reject the drug, it usually follows recommendations from its committees.

The final decision is expected by the end of summer.

Flibarnserin has failed to make the FDA cut twice before because it's not all that effective and can cause nausea, dizziness, and sleepiness, the New York Times reports. This time, however, the pill was pushed by various women's groups and their leaders (some in cooperation with Sprout), who said that not letting women decide for themselves was tantamount to sexism.

Women who suffer from what's known as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, as well as practitioners who treat it, testified in front of the committee Thursday. They underscored the fact the condition is distressing, and that while there are 25 medicines to treat sexual dysfunction in men, no such thing exists for women.

One medical professional stood up in front of the panel and said that when her patients ask for help, "This is all I can tell them." She stood in front of the microphone in silence for several minutes, the Washington Post reports.

Want Some In-Depth Stories About Sex?

1. Brandon Wardell's Guide to Sex with Millennials
2. Why There's No Uber for Sex Work
3. Does Having Casual Sex Make You Depressed?
4. I Had a Sex Slave, and It Was Awesome

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Every June, as I am admiring the pithy speeches full of calculated wisdom delivered by people of accomplishment to various cap-and-gown clad audiences, I have the same reaction. First I breathe a sigh of relief because I didn't have to write one. Then I am pulled into a vortex of anxiety about what I would have said if I had been asked. What exactly did I get from having attended four years of college (besides how to quickly sign up for two more years when I couldn't get a job)?

Well, one thing I learned is to roll my eyes when I hear people tell brand new high school graduates that " college will be the best four years of your life." For some of us, those years were pretty rough.

Let's start with the physiological reasons. First of all, your brain isn't finished cooking. An idea as basic to clear thinking and smart decision making as "considering the consequences" doesn't become a permanent plug-in until your frontal lobe finishes hooking up in your late 20s. It's no accident that organizations like ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the NFL are made up entirely of people from this demographic.

Although I never saw myself as a big risk-taker, when I was a college freshman in the late 60s, I had no problem jumping into a car full of strangers who stopped me on the street and asked me if I wanted to attend a new kind of religious meeting. Absolutely! Make room for me! Fortunately, it turned out to be a harmless evening of chanting. But the fact that I didn't mind heading off to an undisclosed location without telling a soul is just the kind of hairpin I was back then. Below is film of me shot sometime around 1971, smoking and drinking by the extremely flammable acetylene tanks used for welding outside the UC Berkeley art building. The joke here was that there were signs everywhere saying this behavior was forbidden. Haha! Get it?

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ctRfBDiOzRs' width='640' height='360']

The author in art school, filming a parody of the macho male art department structure

The good news is that life actually gets easier after graduation. So in the interest of reassuring struggling students, I offer this partial catalog of some of the many bad ideas I accumulated during my college years.

Honesty Is Not the Best Policy

Maybe it's a post-teenage reaction to all those years of gaining leverage with your parents by pretending to be someone you are not, or the result of 12 years of taking tests that make you race a clock, but by the time you get to college, you are pretty certain that the best thing you can do is let your raw feelings be known the minute you feel them. That makes them real. It's important to be authentic, right?

Well, yes and no. As it turns out, one of the biggest lessons life has to teach you is that it's possible to say, "Let me think about that and get back to you."

In college, it's not uncommon for people to over-share their feelings. It's not necessary to apply the "total honesty" template to everything. It took me much longer than it should have to learn that the answer to "How are you?" does not have to be, "Well, I thought I was getting a headache but I took two Advil and a chewable zinc, so now I'm better. But I might be getting a cold."

No. The proper answer is "fine." Period.

Also—and this is big—you will discover that unless it connects to a life threatening situation, there's not very much your partner needs to know about your sexual history or past indiscretions. In most cases, the less said the better. Honesty be damned.

Much later in life, you will realize that there's a reason why your parents wound up so "compromised." It's because when they were your age, they did the same stupid shit you are planning to do and it didn't work. That's why they made up irritating cliches like "let sleeping dogs lie."

Half-Baked Ideas

At some point in college, some budding visionary will say to you: "I don't get why we have to wear deodorant. What could be more natural than body odor? In fact, why do we have to wear clothes? We should be allowed to take off our clothes whenever and where ever we feel like it!"

To this, you should reply: "Interesting. Get back to me after your frontal lobe finishes hooking up, and we can discuss the idea of the consequences that will result from a life lived stinky. Or naked."

Baboon males murder their rivals. Sand tiger shark mothers eat their young. Matricide, infanticide, and homicide are commonly found in nature. That means they are natural, too.

VICE takes a look at the racial tensions on the University of Alabama's campus in 'Black, White, and Greek.'

Drinking Is a Sport

Why drink at all unless you're planning to drink unlimited quantities? Isn't the only goal of drinking to get really fucked up?

Not that long ago, I was talking to my college student nephew who was suffering from a bad hangover. I said, "How much did you drink last night?" He said, "Not that much."

When asked to be specific, he added: "Like, four vodka shots. And eight beers. And a bottle of wine." To which I replied, "Actually, that is not only 'that much,' it's the clinical definition of 'that much .'"

When you are in college, people see evenings full of blacking out as a "rite of passage." If you still drink like that in your 30s, people will start to leave pamphlets at your house and want to talk to you about "your problem."

I still shudder when I remember whatever was in those monstrous jugs of purple liquid we all passed around. Or that drive I made home from a party, so drunk that not until I stopped to pay a toll on the San Francisco Bay Bridge did I realize I had come all that way with the emergency break still on. Then there was the time I was sitting at the kitchen table of my first apartment, drinking and talking about whatever, while making little sculptures out of rubber cement and setting them on fire. Yes, I managed to damage the ceiling of the kitchen. And no, I can't explain my motives to you now except to say that it seemed like a good idea to me at the time. It's almost like it's important for people that age to invent a couple of brand new ways a month to get killed or injured.

Potential is a Magical Prism

Everyone in college gets free points in "potential" just for attending. For these four special years, a brooding student who sleeps through classes and never turns in assignments can still seem like a genius or a prodigy—an embryonic Charles Bukowski or Sylvia Plath. Why? Because anyone can be anything! Who knows what will happen!

Sadly, after you graduate, the magic starts rapidly leaking out of that winsome notion. Now you only get points for what you actually do. As this begins to occur to you, the anxiety can be overwhelming.

To put it more harshly, a moody 45-year-old with a beautiful soul who is still "wasting her God-given talent" because she's too busy working at an automotive supply store is, in fact, a depressed person who works at an automotive supply store. Period. There are always exceptions, but as a general rule, if you meet someone who is full of excuses about why they have never accomplished anything they set out to do, you're probably looking at a personality disorder.

Bad Sex

College sex is where your poorly developed ideas about spontaneity, substance abuse, and passion for its own sake unite with your sense of yourself as a sophisticate to create a perfect storm. And this was happening long before "campus rape culture" was a phrase you heard or read every day.

You may never again give a more poorly-chosen group of people a roll in the hay than you do in college. Some of them will literally turn out to be people you would avoid sitting next to on public transportation. Others you will pretend not to recognize when you run into them years later.

Sexually speaking, there's a lot of faking going on in college. The truth is that young guys barely know where anything is on a woman (which is not to imply that they necessarily know that much more after they graduate). To those neophytes, may I offer a valuable word of advice: If you suspect you don't know what you are doing, you are probably fooling no one. In that case, for God's sake, don't do it harder.

VICE profiles the slut-shaming preacher who berates women on the University of Arizona's campus.

Finding the Meaning of Existence

You will never in any other period of your life have so many convoluted conversations about the meaning of existence with people who have given it so little thought or have so little experience to back up their theories.

The good news is that unless you become a " philosopher" or someone who likes to sign up for New Age retreats, you will quickly stop thinking this is a problem you need to solve after graduation.

Crushing Debt

College loans are mandatory for many. There is no question that they leave a big scar. But in some ways, it gets better because at least in your adult life, you probably will not incur that much debt that quickly without having something fancy to show your friends.

Frighteningly Random Living Situations

Living in a dorm is like agreeing to cohabit with everyone who shares your lane on the freeway. The good news is that unless you wind up in prison or sign up for a Carnival Cruise, you may never have to live with as random a group of wasters again.

The Tedium of Writing Coherently

Your college papers may be the last coherent writing you ever have to do where you will be judged and carefully critiqued on your ability to "substantiate an argument" or assimilate a piece of material. Blogging, song lyrics, poetry, political speeches, legal briefs, government policy, and literary masterpieces are just a few of the areas of post-graduate writing that will not require you to make any sense.

More good news: As far as I know, there is still no law that says you have to become a writer.

VICE parties on the island of Ibizia.

The Treachery of Being Cool

During your college years, a frightening premium is placed on having a lot of insider knowledge about transitory things. You must keep your head down and master the art of the wry but all-knowing facial expression as you commit to memory the details of the seemingly limitless list of bands, sports stars, cutting edge improv groups, comedians and cast members of SNL, comic book artists, poets, and philosophers your generation thinks are the real "game changers." You will also need to attend a lot of events in support of these things, while wearing the right kind of clothes and consuming the right kind of substances.

On the bright side, it turns out that because this is so much work, the list has no expiration date. Unwilling to waste that much time on pop culture ever again, many adults hold onto the list they learned in college for the rest of their lives.

White-Knuckle Studying

You will never again study as hard for something you don't specifically need to know. In your real life, studying will be related to things like the DMV.

Do not make the mistake of believing that the only point of being in college is to get good grades. In fact, you will find that many of the important people you meet late—including future employers—will never ask to see your college transcripts. They will, however, expect you to actually know stuff.

This is why the biggest waste of your time is finding ways to cheat. Use your time to develop an affinity for learning.

College is a fantastic place to develop secondary and tertiary passions. Look for things that interest you outside your "requirements" because they will come in very handy later in life to help heal the wounds that come from being kicked hard in the primary passion center. That will definitely happen, no matter what you pursue. You will get knocked down in your area of expertise and have to pick yourself up again.

Secondary passions help you keep going. By caring about botany or literature or abnormal psychology, you will be better able to maintain your sense of purpose as a member of humanity.

So on balance, while your college years may not be the best four years of your life, you can definitely make them profitable if you make a point of training yourself to be excited by the learning. It's not only the greatest gift, but it's also a path to joy as you enter the more sedentary but generally happier years of greater maturity, where you can look forward to less vomiting and fewer crab-infested sex partners.

Follow Merrill Markoe on Twitter.

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North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Abandoning his promise not to enact additional restrictions on abortion, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory said Wednesday that he would sign a billthat would require pregnant women to wait 72 hours before getting an abortion after consulting with their doctor, tripling the state's current waiting period. Once the bill is signed into law, North Carolina will become the fourth state, along with Missouri, South Dakota, and Utah to force women to wait three days for an abortion—the longest waiting period in the country.

In the month leading up to the bill's passage, McCrory had worked with state lawmakers to tweak the legislation. But though the final language has definitely been toned down, the governor's decision to sign the measure into law has outraged critics. "Going back on his word by allowing these new restrictions to become law would represent a fundamental betrayal of voters' trust," Alison Kiser, a regional spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood,told Fox News.

But for McCrory, a one-time moderate who was swept into office in 2012 as part of a conservative wave that put Republicans in control of both the state house and the governor's mansion in North Carolina, the decision to sign the new abortion restriction was just one more concession he's had to make as he struggles to keep the far right-wing of the state's legislature in check.

Last week, McCrory used his veto power on two bills: An 'Ag-Gag' bill that gave businesses the right to sue employees who report illegal activity or steal secrets, which the governor criticized as being too broad, and a bill that would allow court magistrates to recuse themselves from performing gay marriage ceremonies, which was legalized in North Carolina last October. In both cases, state lawmakers promised to override the governor's veto.

The likely passage of all three laws this week is another sign that, just six years after Barack Obama won North Carolina in his first presidential election, the state has become one of the most conservative in the entire nation. In addition to measures on social issues like abortion and gay marriage, Republican lawmakers in the state have pushed through a series of ultra-conservative reforms, including slashing taxes on the wealthy, implementing a school voucher program education, cutting higher education funding, and making sharp reductions in spending on social safety programs, like like unemployment insurance.

While Republican legislative accomplishments in North Carolina read like a Tea Party Christmas list, the state has seen backlash from progressives: 'Moral Monday' protests, targeting the reduction in social services and voter ID restrictions, as well as abortion restrictions, began at the capitol in Raleigh in April 2013 before spreading to other states.

This week's abortion waiting period bill is just the latest attempt by Republicans in North Carolina to restrict abortion. In 2013, McCrory signed a law, inserted into an unrelated motorcycle safety bill, that required abortion clinics to follow the same regulations as outpatient medical centers. Another bill, which passed the year before McCrory came into office, required women to have mandatory ultrasounds before getting an abortion, but was struck down by the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"By signing this legislation, Governor McCrory will further restrict access to health procedures and force doctors to submit copies of women's ultrasounds and private medical records to his political appointees for review," North Carolina Democratic Party spokesman Ford Porter said in a statement about the abortion law. "Women across North Carolina will remember that when the chips were down, Governor McCrory just wasn't on their side."

Follow Paul Blest on Twitter.

It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Jay Foster

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Lanarcia Walker with two relatives. Screencaps via Google Maps and WREG

The incident: Some people cheered at a graduation ceremony after being told they weren't allowed to cheer.

The appropriate response: Shushing them or throwing them out.

The actual response: Warrants were issued for their arrest.

Last month, 18-year-old Lanarcia Walker graduated from Senatobia High School in Senatobia, Mississippi.

As she made her way across the stage to collect her diploma at the school's graduation ceremony, several of her relatives in the audience shouted things at the stage. Normal graduation shouting things: Lanarcia's father shouted, "You did it, baby!" Another relative shouted the girl's name.

This created an issue, as Jay Foster, the superintendent of Lanarcia's school, had asked the crowd not to applaud or cheer until the end of the ceremony. They had been told, according to a report on WREG, that doing so would get them kicked out.

As a result of their outburst, four members of Lanarcia's family were asked to leave the graduation ceremony.

A couple of weeks later, the ejected family members were served with papers telling them that they were being charged with "DISTUBE PEACE," which, presumably, is the same thing as disturbing the peace.

The papers described how the family had used "loud boisterous noise" to "disturb the public peace of Jay Foster." Their bonds have been set at $500 each.

"It's crazy. The fact that I might have to bond out of jail, pay court costs, or a $500 fine for expressing my love, it's ridiculous man. It's ridiculous," said Henry Walker, one of the charged relatives.

WREG attempted to speak to Jay Foster, the superintendent who had pressed the charges. He refused to appear on camera, but reportedly told the station that he was determined to have order at his school's graduation ceremonies.

The family are due in court next Tuesday.

Cry-Baby #2: Fred Smith

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Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A woman took some guy's favorite seat at a bingo hall.

The appropriate response: Finding a different seat.

The actual response: He slashed the woman's tires.

82-year-old Fred Smith (pictured above) and 88-year-old Ethel Britt both regularly play bingo at the Lake Ashton Club House in Lake Wales, Florida.

According to what Fred later told police, he entered the bingo hall to find Ethel sitting in a seat that he usually liked to sit in. This sent him into a rage.

Security camera footage of the incident obtained by the local Fox affiliate shows Fred briefly returning to his vehicle, before using an ice pick to puncture two tires on Ethel's minivan. He then fled the scene.

"I didn't think anyone would be low enough to do that to my car because I didn't know I had any enemies in my life," said Ethel. "I thought everybody was my friend, but undoubtedly I have one enemy."

According to Lake Wales Police Department deputy chief Troy Schulze, Fred admitted to the crime as soon as they showed up at his house to question him. "It's quite frankly a childish-type crime," the officer told Fox. "He was apologetic. He said he was embarrassed. He regretted doing it, but he took ownership of it and said that even in the embarrassment he had to face consequences."

Fred was charged with criminal mischief. He has also been banned from playing bingo at the Lake Ashton Club House. So Ethel can sit in the chair whenever she feels like now, I guess.

Which of these guys is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll here:

Previously: A who woman stabbed someone in the eye in an argument over ribs vs. a guy who allegedly choked his fiancé in an argument over NASCAR.

Winner: The ribs lady!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Hansib, a black and Asian specialist publisher in the UK, started in newspapers during the 1970s with the Caribbean Times, the Asian Times, and others. Arif, the director and founder of Hansib, thinks the next five years will be good to left-wing publishing. "I can tell you, because we have been established for so long and I have seen Tory governments come and go, that we will we sell more books when the Tories are in power. Ironically, we make more money."

Post-election, you'd be forgiven for thinking Britain is a reactionary, conservative cloaca of shy and not so shy right-wing shafters. That's not a mistake, looking at the state of it. You might also be forgiven for thinking there hasn't been a viable parliamentary alternative for a long time. During the late 20th century, the publishing left slunk into the cozy arms of academia and theory to nurse its Thatcher-sized wounds.

At one point it felt the future might forever belong to crusty old Marxists beefing with die-hard anarchists for the right to show who could be less out of touch with normal people. By the 1990s, many radical and independent bookshops started closing, along with printing cooperatives and publishers. However, over the last few years, things have started changing.

The first thing radical publishing seems to have learned is that there's no point in having a radical position if you can't survive for any length of time. And by survive, I mean: make money. The fun part of being a radical publisher is feeling like a hypocrite for trying to generate cash through sales. The radical left has a problem with sales; the problem being that good salespeople tend to like the other side of the fence.

However, with online shops, social media and the emergence of events such as the London Radical Bookfair, selling to interested readers has been made easier, removing that gut-squirming feeling of trying to hawk a book to someone who doesn't know they want to buy it. Even if you're a nonprofit, you've still got to generate money so you can pay your writers.

READ: 'Ink Spots' – our column about the people preserving print culture

Verso—one of the most prominent radical publishers in the UK—was set up in 1970 (the year of a surprise Conservative victory) and has recently produced some genuine a bunch of big sellers, like Private Island by James Meek and Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy by Gabriela Coleman. Leo Hollis, the senior editor at Verso, told me that, "radicalism seems to have skipped a generation." We are seeing more "post-2011" readers emerge, boosting sales from a lean period in which Blair-era supposed left-wingers ended up purchasing buy-to-let homes instead of filling their shelves with capitalist critiques.

Verso have also, recently helped in the return of radical populism—publishing writing from a harder left perspective but aiming for popularity, as with the likes of Chavs by the omnipresent Owen Jones and Inequality and the 1% by Danny Dorling. Radical populism is something that was seen as positive in the 19th century, but suspicious in the late 20th, which was possibly due to our society's lurch towards individualism. Now Verso's strong presence on Twitter and other channels has reached a much wider audience than previously could have been possible.

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Photo by Kit Caless

Multiplicity is also what radical left publishing needs if it's to grow and stay true to its own ideas and principles. It's not simply a case of white-owned publishing companies printing books by black and Asian writers, but also making sure platforms are shared with self-organized black and Asian publishers.

I asked Arif if being a black and Asian publisher was in itself a radical position. "Being a minority publisher is absolutely a radical position to start with," he told me. "We were virtually unknown when we started. We had to get friends, people we know, those who are receptive to our community to help us. We couldn't get into the market place. I wouldn't have approached you, 20 years ago, to buy one of my books. But now, we have white people buying the books, too. We have got over that hurdle, but we definitely need more of us." He says now is a good time to set up a non-white publishing house. And if selling books is about one thing over anything else, it's finding your market.

Developments in print and desktop publishing have made printing books cheaper and easier to do. Self-publishing has experienced a boom like no other, but the radical side of things is unlikely to produce sexy Twilight fan-fiction. (On the other hand, Chubz: The Demonization of My Working Arse by Huw Lemmy might qualify as radical publishing's closest equivalent.)

Self-publishing is now a legitimate route to getting your material out there, but more often than not, having an editor or a small press behind the book helps legitimize and publicize the writing. The question of eBooks is a tricky one— creative commons licensing is good, Amazon is generally bad. eBooks are cheap to produce but getting retail exposure means mostly dealing with huge corporate monoliths. Even so, if you were thinking of setting up a radical press, this year would be a great time to start.

In 2015, it's much harder to distinguish, aesthetically, between books produced by huge publishing companies and those from very small imprints. This means, in a democratic space, most books have a level playing field. It is now possible to make a printed book look as well produced as any other. A good looking book will always beat an eBook for style, like vinyl beasts the mp3. If new publishers want to get new ideas and work out there, they can compete in a bookshop, and pick up readers who might initially be put off by the themes or content at first.

The 2015 London Radical Bookfair showed a truly wide range of radical publishing, not just from acts like Verso, Zed, Zero, Pluto, Five Leaves, and PM but also from imprints with far fewer funds such as Myrdle Court, Merlin, Active, and radical magazines such as STRIKE! and Red Pepper. There were many new publishers at the fair with their first books on sale. This seems to be a strong reaction to the continual disappointment with Parliament and mainstream discourse.

Tansy E Hoskins' Stitched Up: An Anti-Capitalist Guide to Fashion is published by Pluto Press. Stitched Up moves between Karl Lagerfeld and Karl Marx, exploring consumerism, class, and advertising. Tansy told me, "Stitched Up would not exist without a publisher not terrified out of their brain by the word 'capitalism.' Pluto also understood that there was an audience for a book about fashion written from an anti-capitalist perspective and were confident enough to stretch their boundaries by engaging with the fashion world and its press."

Hoskins believes, as I do, that radical publishing is more important than ever. "We have to protect what we have but also create space for discussions of a better world," he says. "With the coming launch of the Left Book Club I hope radical books will become a greater part of more people's lives."

Related: Our documentary on the London Black Revolutionaries

Radical publishing is still in the margins, but it is growing. With tighter networking, a little more unity, inclusivity, and awards such as the Bread and Roses prize, more people might be willing to take the plunge. This five-year Tory term could prove quite the money-spinner. Besides, the right-wingers may dominate politics, the media, and know how to market books, but from my perspective, all the best writers are on the left.

It's fairly easy and cheap to set up your own book publishing outfit without knowing how to print a single thing. And with all the above in mind, here are some tips:

1. Find a great book to start your press with, either through someone you know or an open submissions process (see newly-formed Repeater Books as a good example). Anthologies often work well as a first book. Edit it in MS Word and make sure all contributors are happy with the alterations.
2. Download a crack of Adobe Indesign and Photoshop (or pay, if you want to).
3. Learn which format you want your book to be in. Basic guides are "B (standard novel size), "Demy" (slightly oversized), "A5" (a bit square) and "Crown Quarto" (big bastard) are the standard sizes.
4. Choose bookwove cream 80gsm. There's no need to print text on anything else. It's darker and sexier than white, so text reads better off the page.
5. Register your books for ISBN with Nielsen. This is the unique identifier that means libraries and bookshops can catalogue your books. Once your book has an ISBN it will automatically appear on online retail sites.
6. For most books, set your Indesign file margins as 20mm on the inside and 16mm on the outside. This means the text won't tuck into the spine in the middle of the book. Set the dimensions as per your book size and off you go.
7. Find a printer. There are many short run, digital printers—from Berforts to Short Run Press to Bell & Bain—who will help you. Or you can find a cooperative printer like Footprint. Once you have decided who gives you the best price, ask them for a spine width calculation—then design the cover with this in mind. Most short run printers will give you 30 to 60 days to pay your bill after the delivery of your books, this gives you time to sell them before paying the invoice.
8. Send two files off—a pdf of the text and a jpeg of the cover—to the printers. They will send back unbound proofs so you can see what the book will look like and spot any mistakes to correct before doing the print run.
9. Do some "branding"—e.g., design a logo.
10. Ask other small and independent publishers for advice. Most of them are more than willing to offer pointers and help you.
11. Set up a website with a payment gateway plugin such as PayPal or Big Cartel. Set up a twitter account. Tell people about the book and get them to order it.
12. Once the book is back, take it to bookshops with an "Advance Information Sheet" (A4 paper with book cover, synopsis, details on the author, key selling points, and contact details). Convince the bookshop to stock it on sale or return. Bookshops such as Housmans, Freedom, and Bookmarks stock a truly wide range of radical literature, so approach them first. Also take it to your local shops. See what happens—it might do well.
13. Send copies to bloggers, writers you like, other publisher types and get the word out there.
14. If you liked doing that, repeat the process with a new title.

Follow Kit on Twitter.

It was my first time in a prison cell since last August.

Fortunately, no matter how real it felt, it was just an exhibit at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, DC. You might say that's an odd place for an ex-convict who spent 21 years in the federal Bureau of Prisons to be posted up, but there I was, taking in the sight, sounds, and artifacts just like a regular tourist.

For whatever reason, our country is obsessed with crime and criminals. They permeate our movies, TV shows, and video games. Anything gangster or illicit or criminally-related is a viable commodity in Hollywood these days. From rich alleged killers like Robert Durst to the gangbangers on the street, crime is an endless source of national fascination.

Let's just say I much preferred the prison cell at the crime museum to the real thing.

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The author in a prison cell at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, DC. All photos by Diane Ferranti and Tracey Brown

When I walked up the winding stairs at the museum, the first thing I saw was an image of good ol' Charlie Manson, the counterculture icon and psychopathic killer. Manson's just about as notorious as you can get, but the Crime Museum was full of established figures, and while I was never locked up with Manson, I am in tune with the criminal underworld.

My wife was with me on this visit, and it wasn't long before I was joking about putting her in the Shrew's Violin, a popular form of punishment for suspected witches and quarrelsome wives centuries ago. The apparatus holds the arms and head of the victim in a rigid and unnatural position, which caused terrible cramps and painful muscle strain over hours or days. As soon as I voiced my opinion, however, my wife turned it around and ordered me into a worse predicament: the stocks.

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Crime and punishment go together. I know this as fact because I committed a crime by selling LSD and went to prison for it. Maybe for longer then I should have because I didn't kill anyone, but with the war on drugs in full swing in 1993, it was something I had to endure. There are worse fates—like being beheaded—but I paid my debt to society, and also used the time to make something productive out of my life and become an author. Now I write about crack-era gangsters from America's inner cities, the street legends who are venerated in hip-hop.

At the Crime Museum, I found that the kind of writing I do goes back a long way.

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The dime novels from the Old West helped launch America's national obsession with outlaw heroes. My own stuff is just a byproduct. Hollywood has glamorized the gunslinger, gangster (and gangsta), and infamous criminals maintain a grip on our national consciousness. The Jesse James Stories exhibited in the Crime Museum are an integral part of the American outlaw mythology that has been romanticized since our country's founding. Viewing the original dime novel just validated what I do every day.

Related: Our documentary on an ex-con trying to put his life back together.

Of course, no crime museum would be complete without figures from the Wild West, but the pirate exhibit and the lifelike Blackbeard statue caught my eye. Maybe some people go to this museum for the history and to analyze trends, but I was there to see my heroes. For an ex-con like me, the bad guy is the thing. In prison, we always rooted for the bad guy. Tony Montana from Scarface was the man.

As I moved on in the museum, I came across the gangster section, and then came the guns. Even though I cannot legally possess a firearm, I still enjoy looking at them. What criminal or ex-criminal doesn't?

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Checking out the stuff on John Dillinger, Al Capone, and Bonnie and Clyde, I finally felt like I'd moved into the modern era. These were criminals I could understand. They were not only notorious, but they had become Hollywood's darlings. Their criminal exploits were emblazoned across the walls on large posters; Dillinger's death mask and the wooden gun he used to break out of jail were in the display case. The car from the Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway Bonnie and Clyde film was on display, bullet holes and all. A shrine to Al Capone was in full effect. This was home.

The halls were packed with people, so many that I had to wait to get photos of myself with all the relics and artifacts in the exhibits. They even had an exhibit with the Don of Dons, the baddest gangster on the planet, John Gotti, with a Tommy Gun and suit on display. (In prison, we used to joke around, like, "Hey you're a tough motherfucker, what, you got John Gotti on the phone?")

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I eventually made my way to the serial killer section: Manson, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy. Sick fucks in my book, but our society does seem enthralled with these guys. I took the obligatory photos, including some of the clown outfits associated with Gacy. They seemed sort of out of place, but as I learned in prison, crime takes all types. It's not always the loudest dog you have to be scared of, either, because the quiet ones will bite you just the same—and usually when you least expect it.

Next was the "You're Under Arrest" section, where the booking, lineup and prison process was explained to the uninitiated. I'm a seasoned pro when it comes to this stuff, so it didn't faze me to be around it all. Still, I'd never been in a lineup, so I enjoyed standing there, and it was funny to hear the voices on the intercom telling me to step up and say, "Give me your money!" so a witness might identify me.

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From there I moved on to the prison cell. I felt at home, having been in plenty of them. If you do 21 years, you will inhabit quite a number of cells, and I was comfortable sitting on the bed, the top bunk, the desk, or the toilet. I felt like the bright colors I was wearing really set me apart in the drab room; if I'd had that polo shirt in prison, I could've sold it for a fortune.

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Surprisingly enough, the museum had very little on the prison gangs that control most aspects of prison life. The big four prison gangs from California—Aryan Brotherhood, Mexican Mafia, Black Guerrilla Family and La Nuestra Familia—were all mentioned, but this attraction in the museum seemed somehow incomplete.

Finally, I entered the law enforcement section. Not my favorite spot, for obvious reasons, but between crime and punishment usually comes the police. I got on a police motorcycle to see what it would be like—not really my style, but still.

The crime museum isn't like the Smithsonian or other museums in DC because it's privately owned. But even—no, especially—as an ex-con, I enjoyed it, and as a true crime writer, I liked it even more.

Now if I can just figure out a way to get them to cover the crack-era gangsters that I write about—if they've got Gotti and all those guys, why not their successors?

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.

A drug called Truvada is the first FDA-approved means of preventing HIV infection. If an HIV-negative person takes the pill every day, he or she is nearly 99 percent protected from contracting the virus. Controversy continues to surround the broad uptake of Truvada, but the landscape of safer sex and HIV prevention changes fundamentally from this point forward—particularly within the gay male community, the population hardest hit by HIV in America. In this episode of VICE Reports, VICE explores the future of the Truvada and its revolutionary impact on ending HIV/AIDS.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A new report has found that London has more cocaine in its sewage system than any other European city. Apparently someone is measuring that. And that someone is the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction ( EMCDDA), who found 737mg of the stuff per 1,000 people in the capital's effluence and waste—a touch more than the famed drug city of Amsterdam.

The EMCDDA published the news today, after fishing test tubes full of turd juice out of the sewers of 50 major European cities before compiling—and this is not a joke—a Cocaine In Sewers League Table. Yes, that is the most niche league table that science hath ever wrought, but London's still ahead of Amsterdam.

Related: The War on Kids, VICE's documentary about Jesse Snodgrass

Basically what scientists were looking for is the main cocaine metabolite, benzoylecgonine, rather than wadded up panic-flushed wraps that posh rude boys ditched whenever they heard the toilet door creaking. And it's extremely weird what they can tell about drug usage just from looking at the pee-poop systems that run constantly beneath our feet: Amsterdam, for example, has a deep weekend, partying through Saturday into Sunday (peaking at 765mg/1,000) before pissing it all out, contrasted with London's big Friday-big Saturday-very quiet Sunday cycle. Antwerp goes hard on public holidays (the average usage is 632mg/1,000), while the Finnish city of Jvaskyla barely touches the stuff, registering just 0.2mg of cocaine per 1,000 people living there.

The EMCDDA study showed some other semi-interesting drug trends, not least that Bristol—the only other British city tested for cheeky dabs of piss-coke—had around 250mg per 1,000 sloshing around beneath it. England, Wales, and Spain are the only three countries that reported cocaine usage among more than 3 percent of their young adults (ages 15 to 34). For comparison, the Europe-wide average is 1.9 percent of the age group, approximately 2.3 million young men and women in various different shiny cocktail bar toilets snorting white powder and yelling to anyone who will listen about how they don't get enough recognition at work even though they are "really fucking smashing it at the moment, actually."

There are economic factors to the piss-poo-cocaine science here, too: the year 2008 is treated as a sort of watershed moment in coke usage across the continent—more than 6 percent of the UK young adult population were users, regular or otherwise, before that whole financial crisis hit, and then it went down to a little above 4 percent—a downwards-facing trend has been mirrored across the EU, and in 2015 it's still on the downslide. Look deeply into the dark and swirling piss slurry of a European sewer, and you will see these words telegraphed back to you from the abyss: YOUNG PEOPLE ARE TOO POOR AND DOOMED TO DO COKE ANY MORE.

Trending on MUNCHIES: Chef's Night Out—Rita's

More pee-poo fortune tellings from the EMCDDA include the fact that Amsterdam showed the highest usage for ecstasy and cannabis, while Oslo and Dresden both knocked it out of the park for methamphetamine (London having no trace at all). MDMA and ecstasy use were both generally on the rise across Europe, while amphetamine use was generally stable, with chronic usage more common in northern European countries. Isn't that crazy? You go through your life, pooing and peeing and vomiting with wild abandon into toilets, never thinking the trace amount of metabolites in your droppings might be collected by a central European drugs agency to make an 83-page report about drug use. What else might they be monitoring us for? We may never know.

Still, our sewers are partying. Our sewers are waiting around in a pub for an hour-and-a-half, frantically checking their phone, occasionally loudly making phone calls going "WHERE ARE YOU, MATE? YOU SAID YOU WERE IN TRAFFIC HALF AN HOUR AGO?" Our sewers are turning up to work at 11 AM wearing sunglasses. Our sewers are corralling all the pretty girls at the party and talking to them about their favorite Louis CK sketches in tedious and appalling detail. Our sewers are sweating profusely and worrying their moms. Our sewers are really, really interested in the practical applications of drones. Our sewers still owe you $100, somehow. Our sewers get aggro if you decide to open the curtains before 1 PM. Our sewers are still having fun.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

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Photo via Flickr user Eli Christman

I was 13 when my mom dragged my brother and me to a "psychic." We were visiting family in Malaysia and somewhere amongst a few palm oil plantations was the house of an old woman who claimed to be able to channel Buddha. My mother was enthralled during the hour-long ordeal, during which the woman basically rolled her eyes often so the whites were showing, dropped her voice a few octaves, and made astonishingly mundane statements that could've applied to anyone (examples: our house had ants out front; my grandma was old and having some health problems). Combined with my love of Harry Houdini (who spent the last few years of his life debunking psychics and mediums) and teen angst that made me hate everything my parents liked, the experience left me convinced that psychics were con artists who separated vulnerable and desperate people from their cash in exchange for poor acting.

My stance on psychics hasn't really changed since then, but I also consider myself a fairly open-minded person and love having my views changed when enough solid evidence is presented to me. What if there really was something to psychics, but my mom had just chosen a bad one? What if she had just been asking the wrong questions? What if Malaysian psychics were just sketchy? So many people have turned to psychics for so long that there must be something to it all, right?

The questions floated around in my head for awhile, but it wasn't until last Sunday that I decided to act on them. Inspired by Houdini, I made up a basic pass/fail test that I could apply a few times to see if someone was actually in tune with all the truths in the universe: If I made up a dead sister and asked a bunch of psychics to connect with her, how many wouldn't be able to tell I was full of shit?

I don't have a sister and am the oldest child in the family, so I figured inventing a big sister would keep any interfering energies or whatever it is psychics pick up on out of the picture. And so, I created "Emily"—her birthday was Jan. 31, 1990, she died in a car crash on June 2, 2014, and her boyfriend, who was driving the car, died with her.

A quick Kijiji search came up with dozens of psychic/medium listings in Toronto and four immediately responded to my texts and emails. I was set.

My first reading was via phone call—the ad said the psychic was offering free mini-readings. She asked for my full name and birthday and Emily's. I gave her the details and almost instantly, she told me Emily wanted me to know that she's in a good place and that she's watching over the family. She also wanted me to be happy too, but my happiness only seems to last temporarily (note: aren't all emotions temporary though?).

Could she tell me how I can be happy? Or at least what's holding me back from true happiness?

No, but she could see a happiness-ripping darkness surrounding me.

But how's Emily doing?

She's doing good, she doesn't want me to worry about her, but there's something going on here, what's going on in my love life?

"Not much," I answered truthfully.

Could I be doing better in love, happiness and success?

"Well, yeah, I guess?"

Apparently I'm meant to have a lot of money and success, but no matter what I do, something's leading me in the wrong direction. For $250 plus the cost of two candles and a crystal, I could've had a circle of protection put around me—and would see improvements in three to seven days.

The call ended soon after.

The second reading, also free, was done over email, which I didn't know was a thing. I had a response in my inbox within 10 minutes of sending out the enquiry message with my name, Emily's and Emily's cause of death. Even with the shift in technology, my sister was still doing fine—more than fine, in fact:

"It's a little different than what she expected on the other side, but she is quite happy and sees things very differently. I get she had a little of a 'wild' streak in her," Psychic Two wrote. She said Emily was mentioning something about clothing and I said she and I had exchanged necklaces.

"She's saying not to worry about her, she is OK. She says not to worry as she is fine and with you. [S]he wants you to live your life, a happy one," she wrote back.

Even though the answers were still pretty vague, this was the most detailed description I would get of Emily all day. The Houdini in me was doing backflips. Two for two.

To up the difficulty for me and to make it easier for the psychics (it's one thing to lie over an email or call, but another to lie to someone's face), I decided to see my next psychics in person—who knows, maybe getting readings via email didn't provide a strong enough spiritual connection or clues to see I was lying. I also looked for people who charged for readings (maybe you get what you pay for?) and settled on one for $20 and another for $40. Both told me to bring a photo so I pulled one off a (very much alive) friend's Facebook and, armed with Emily's backstory and a few years of high school acting/improv experience, headed out for my third reading of the day. At the point, I was almost hoping to be called out soon—it was too easy.

Psychic Three's studio was nestled in a suburban strip mall and plastered with the classic psychic decor that makes graphic designers consider seppuku—deep purple signs with all-caps yellow text and neon crystal balls. I scampered up a bright red stairwell and into a purple room (same purple as the signs) where a smiling woman wearing a tank top and sweat pants was sitting at a small table. I sat down opposite her and took in the weird mix of art—a small tapestry of what I'm quite sure was Jesus and his disciples on the table, but also a fair share of Buddha statues, too.

She asked for Emily's photo. I handed her my phone. She stared at the screen and told me to say Emily's full name and birthday, then looked up at me. My heart dropped—would my face betray something?—and immediately jumped back into my chest when she told me she could feel Emily's presence and that she was happy. In a new development, Emily had "passed on" and become my guardian angel.

It took an incredible amount of effort to not burst out laughing. Using all my willpower to keep a straight face and sombre-sounding voice, I asked if Emily was mad about dying.

No, the psychic said, because it had been her time. Throughout the eight-minute reading, she repeatedly told me Emily's death was meant to be. Emily was sad that she left me behind, but she's in a positive place now and is the reason why I feel a presence around my house (it's her watching over me and I should try talking to her). I also learned that after death, souls hang around Earth for six weeks which is why I dreamt of Emily a lot right after she died.

My fourth and last psychic was 30 minutes late for our meeting at her downtown condo because she hadn't expected traffic to be so bad (should've taken that as a sign). She charged the most, but I received a 45-minute check-in-on-Emily/see-your-future combo that was leagues above the others in experience and sheer entertainment.

Psychic Four was very motherly, constantly calling me "darling" and telling me how sorry she was for my loss. Her method of Emily-contact was a mix of prayer and coffee-dregs reading. She made me a small cup of Turkish coffee and when I finished the liquid, she placed the saucer on top of the cup, had me hold it with both hands while moving my arms in a circle three times and then flip the cup and saucer over and put it on the table. She put a blue glass cube with white circles on all six sides on top of the overturned cup and had me to put my finger on the cube and make a wish. I did, and she asked me for the photo. I handed her my phone. She put a small statue of a Turkish philosopher and an angel snow globe in front of me and told me to hold on to both and praying while she turned on her laptop and started playing weird reverb-heavy New Age music featuring a man and woman speaking about being intoxicated on love (not Beyonce style, unfortunately). She was going to ask Emily to make herself known to me.

After 10 minutes of bowing my head and trying really hard not to laugh, the music stopped.

The psychic, who'd had her hand on my phone screen the whole time, said she had felt it shaking and that it was probably a sign Emily was around (my friend had sent me two texts around that time). She also said she had been praying and crying with me too (I'm recovering from a cold and sniffled a few times to try to keep mucus from dripping out of my nose). She took the statue, closed her eyes and murmured for 30 seconds, then took the glass cube off the cup and lifted the cup. The dregs formed a vaguely heart-shaped smear on the saucer.

"Love! You have love in your future! And tears," she said, shaking a few drops of coffee free from the cup.

The short version predictions are as follows: I have two men competing for me, I will pick one, be engaged by 2016, married by 2017, and have two children (a boy and then a girl) immediately after. My mother, struck hard by Emily's death, will forget the pain once I give her grandchildren. Emily is my guardian angel who will deflect bad things from coming my way. She died young because God loves her so much and wanted her with him, and she's wearing all white and dancing with her boyfriend in heaven. I, on the other hand, have a long life ahead of me. I can afford to take this summer easy because I'll be hired into a full-time job come September (I currently work full-time), and not only that, but the job will be well-paid and I won't be some pleb—I'll start pretty high up the ladder, thank you very much. She also sensed I studied something like social work and the coffee dregs told her I went to the University of Toronto (I majored in journalism at Ryerson).

Emily wanted me to be happy and wanted to get some rest too. It's important to remember her and even talk to her but it isn't healthy to dwell on her death, Psychic Four said, and for the first time that day, I began to understand how some people can find going to a psychic comforting. She hugged me a few times as I was getting ready to leave and the last thing she said as I stepped out the door was, "Life is a gift."

As much as I liked Psychic Four though... She was fourth out of four psychics that had apparently connected with a non-exist Emily. Thirteen-year-old me had been vindicated. Houdini was smiling down on me.

Still mildly in disbelief that I had successfully bullshitted my way through four psychics, I decided to follow up with all of them via text (email, in Psychic Two's case) to see how they would react to the fact they had claimed to connect with someone who didn't exist.

Psychic One: "There's a spirit around trying to tell you something, but why would you do that anyway"

Psychic Two said it became obvious when I lied about the necklaces, nothing more.

Psychic Three called me a few minutes after I sent my text. She said she read the picture and told me what the picture told her, and the picture told her the person in it was happy. It didn't necessarily mean she thought the picture was of Emily. I asked her about the guardian angel and passing on bit but she stood firm.

"The picture reading shows me what goes on in the past life and in this life ... So if it shows me she was your guardian angel at one point, she was a guardian angel," she said. She added that the reading wasn't accurate because I had come in with the intention to trick, that the energy I came in with was one about my sister which is what she picked up on, that the whole thing wasn't very "civilized" of me and that she'd be calling other psychics and warning them about me. She told me she's been tested by people who declared their intentions and passed their tests, and offered to give me a reading that would reveal secrets about me that not even my closest friends know. I declined.

I'm not sure Psychic Four understood my confession: "Well darling, you have a sister and protects you! And loves you.. You take care of your self (sic) you need meditation and I am sorry for your loss again"

I don't think any of these women intentionally bullshitted me. I'm sure they believe they possess abilities to communicate with the dead and tap into people's lives. But, again, out of four psychics—people who claim to have special powers to know greater truths—not one noticed that the very premise I approached them on was phoney. Maybe it's because I sprung for the cheaper ones. Maybe it's because I found them on Kijiji. Maybe I'm fantastic enough of a liar that, like Psychic Three said, I managed to conjure up enough spiritual energy to bring Emily into existence. (I guess there's also the possibility that they all knew I was lying but didn't care because I was paying them.) Or maybe psychic powers don't really exist.

Besides reaffirming my belief that I'm a great liar and should do it more, my test also gave me some insight on how psychics work. They're talented when it comes to finding ways squeeze emotions out of you and make general statements that allow you to fill in the blanks yourself—you're contributing to your own deception (example: They say they sense a female presence watching over you, at which point you say, "Oh shit, my aunt/grandma/mom/friend/cousin/sister/teacher died a little while ago—it MUST be her!"). I think so many people turn to psychics because they help ease the fear of the great unknown that is death and give meaning and purpose to seemingly unfair and random events in our chaotic universe. To me, that's a form of preying on the weak and exploiting people at their most emotionally vulnerable, but if you believe in the afterlife and psychic powers, I can understand how the experience would be comforting - after all, who doesn't want to know that a loved family member, living or dead, is doing okay?

So, there you have it, my first (and probably last, since I'm apparently shitlisted) foray into psychic-busting. I'm not going to tell people to stop seeing psychics - if it makes you happy and you have the cash, go wild. Whether you go in as a believer or as a shithead like me, the psychics are the ones making bank, so either way, in the end, they win. And who knows, maybe I have a sister I don't know about whose birth and death dates I guessed right, in which case, I should set up my own psychic shop. I'm sure Emily would approve.

Follow Jackie on Twitter.

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Geralt of Rivia, the protagonist witcher of 'Wild Hunt.'

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Geralt of Rivia never quite seems welcome, no matter where in the Continent he goes. For me, playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and exploring its vast fields and innumerable villages has been an exercise in lukewarm receptions. I can see it in the way peasants chatter when Geralt rides into town, wondering what he's up to, asking him to stay off the lawn and, in some extreme cases, not to steal their children. I can see it in the way his enemies immediately move to fantastical slurs, cursing him as a mutant and a monster. I can see it in the way nobles and barons eye him, like he's a coiled viper.

Geralt is a witcher, a monster hunter born from magic and years of brutal training. He plies his trade as a contractor for hire, selling his silver sword and an encyclopedia's worth of knowledge to anyone who can pay for the service. In Wild Hunt, he's on a mission to find his adopted daughter, Ciri, but as he searches he must also scrape together the coin he needs to keep going. And you wander with him, taking on Geralt's liminal role in his world.

Geralt is my favorite part of Wild Hunt, and his characterization, with the mood and atmosphere that it brings to the experience, is a significant part of why the game appeals to me where other big fantasy romps don't. It helps that Geralt draws from one of my favorite character types. He's a wandering swordsman, a rōnin, on the fringes, an odd mix of empowered and powerless.

I first encountered the idea of a rōnin as a teenager obsessed with Rurouni Kenshin. Written and drawn by Nobuhiro Watsuki, it's a manga about a man named Himura Kenshin, a wandering swordsman in Japan during the Meiji era of Japanese history, where the feudal system was replaced with the more centralized and modern government that would define Japan from the late 19th century until now. Rurouni Kenshin isn't quite historical fiction, but it weaves real history into its shōnen; Kenshin is a samurai in a world where samurai are no longer needed and wanted, where the prowess of the sword-bearing warrior is being replaced with the might of a standard military.

When the story opens, Kenshin is simply floating from place to place, surviving. He was an assassin during a past war, we learn as the story goes on, a brutal killer. As a rōnin—in the most traditional sense of the word, a samurai with no master or allegiance—he refuses to kill, using a sword with a dull, reversed blade when he needs to fight. When he comes upon an injustice, he corrects it, going out of his way to help others, using his strength to defend instead of kill.

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Himura Kenshin, via Comicvine.

Within a few chapters, Kenshin meets other characters and settles down, but it's those first few that stuck with me, that captured my imagination. He was kind and innocent, but behind that he hid ferocity and a world-weary sense of justice. He was at odds with the world around him; the local police frequently hassled him for carrying a sword, viewing him as a potential threat to the new order. There's just something romantic about the idea of the rōnin, that mixture of vulnerability and strength, a hero with few allies and no home. A wandering swordsman who hides kindness behind a sense of alienation, who tries to use what little power—usually just a skill at violence—to try to make the places he encounters a bit better than they were before.

The character type, of course, predates Rurouni Kenshin by a while. It exists in Kurosawa, codified in his film Yojimbo, and an American counterpart flourished in Westerns. And it's based on a decidedly less romantic historical reality: samurai sometimes lost their masters, and they would have to find work elsewhere as displaced soldiers for hire. They were more mercenary than hero.

Playing The Witcher 3, though, I can't get Kenshin out of my head. Geralt and Kenshin are different in a lot of ways; Geralt's cruder, rougher, more prone to killing. But his portrayal draws from that same fictional vein, and his role in his world mirrors the role Kenshin played in his post-feudal Japan. They're both power fantasy heroes without the ensuing ability to shape the world they occupy. And in a video game like The Witcher 3, that's a surprisingly refreshing distinction.

Related: The Mystical Universe of 'Magic: The Gathering'

Alternatively, meet Scotland's DIY rocketeers

"There are no schools currently training witchers." That's one of the informative titbits dropped into Wild Hunt's loading screens (when you actually see one). It's central, however, to how Geralt relates to the world around him. Witchers are relics of an older world, a less settled one, when humans and the myriad of terrifying monsters were first intermingling. As time has passed, public opinion has turned from ambivalent about the presence of witchers to largely negative, and due to their propensity for violence and their unnatural mutations, they are viewed with a degree of mistrust. Like Kenshin, Geralt is one of the last of a dying breed, a breed whose very existence poses a problem for those in power.

Geralt, as such, has very little influence over society, despite his relative power and wisdom compared to those around him. He's a superhuman master warrior, but he's only ever trusted as a problem solver, a hired sword to slay the most pernicious monsters and get whatever other dirty jobs done. There are moments during the game where you are able to weasel your way into nudging at larger systems, pushing politics this way or that, but these roles are always accidental and temporary; no matter what happens, the north and the south will fight one war and then another, and the machinations of the larger world will continue apace. Besides, Geralt's almost a century old, and is a bit of a cynical bastard. Even when he can change things, he knows it won't do much good. No, Geralt's influence is much smaller—help a tiny village with their noonwraith problem, share some food with some hungry kids, get in a fight with some bandits.

Wild Hunt has you living the quintessential rōnin life; just passing through, doing a little good, getting a little coin, then heading on your way. This is different to what most open-world games offer. In those, you tend to play characters of your own creation, placed at a critical place and time in the worlds they occupy, readymade heroes. You are, essentially, a salvific blank in these games—the Dovahkiin in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Inquisitor in Dragon Age: Inquisition. A placeholder character, customized to your liking, told the whole world depends on you. Why? Because, well, you're the player. Why else?

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'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt', official launch trailer.

Wild Hunt's greatest success is that it doesn't do that. Geralt has a specific role to play in his world, and it's a somewhat alienated one, that leans on the empowerment fantasy these video games offer without allowing the more simplistic fantasy of massive influence to follow. You remain an interloper in a world that sometimes needs you but never quite wants you, and the specificity and resonance of that position allowed me to connect and roleplay in a way other open-world games never did.

Geralt's role also more directly mirrors the experience of actually playing an open-world game. While it makes little sense for Dragon Age's Inquisitor to run around solving the problems of every member of her constituency, doing odd jobs is his job, and he needs the money. (This also serves to make the game feel oddly blue collar, but the jobification of open-world games is another essay for another time.) Geralt ties the play experience together, which, along with their excellent writing, is what lends even the most menial fetch quests in Wild Hunt a sense of purpose. For a witcher, even one of the last witchers, it's all in a day's work.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/lc_JmcRxdx8' width='560' height='315']

The 'Rurouni Kenshin' manga inspired a 2012 film, trailered here, which was followed by two sequels.

In one early mission, I encountered a dwarf blacksmith whose shop had been burned down. He had been forced by the local invading army to work on their armor and weapons, and the village around him didn't take too kindly to it. I offered to find the person responsible. It seemed only fair and just that the victim got to confront the guilty party. So, using my witcher senses, I hunted him down. He was stinking drunk. I dragged him back to the blacksmith by the ear.

After I did so, the blacksmith called the invading soldiers over and told them that he had the arsonist. Since the blacksmith was a military asset, the drunk's crime was treasonous against the new order. He was to be hanged immediately. I watch—Geralt watches—as they drag him away. There's nothing we could have done without calling down the wrath of the whole Nilfgaardian army on us. Instead, Geralt grimaces, says something about the punishment being a bit harsh, and gets back on his horse.

I'm reminded of Kenshin, doling out justice for the people around him but unable to carry his blunt sword without clashing with the police. The image is overly sentimental, sure, and certainly not a realistic portrait of people who carry weapons on their backs. But as Geralt rides out of town, I feel like I imagine he felt. The rōnin is a hero who does his best, knowing the world is bigger and crueler than he has the power to take on. And if I'm going to play as a hero, that's the type I'd like to play as.

Follow Jake on Twitter.

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The towers of Nanterre and Alliaud. Photo via Flickr user Dominique Cappronnier.

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

The last time I was in Nanterre was a little more than a month ago. That weekend, I spotted Raymond Domenech enjoying a four-cheese pizza at a local restaurant. Rumor has it that the former soccer coach is hiding out in a nice little house close to the Nanterre-Préfecture train station. Which isn't that strange because, just like any other suburban town, everything in Nanterre is all jumbled up together. The rich live right next to the poor, the social housing blocks are right next to pricey semi-detached houses, and Catholic churches rub right up against shiny new mosques.

It hasn't always been like that, though. People who've been living out there for a long time are full of stories from "the good ol' days"—about how it used to be a slum and, of course, May of '68. Maybe when I'm older, I'll be full of tales about the 2002 town council massacre or the fact that the media dubbed it a "cannabis hub." Who knows? Whatever you want to call the place, Nanterre is the town where I was born and bred.

Read: France's First Cannabis E-Cigarette Is Completely Legal

I remember it clearly. The blast made my windows shake. A few hundred meters from where I lay sleeping, a gas leak had completely demolished a building. That's probably my first childhood memory from Nanterre. The second time a noise got me out of bed was when some guy tried to climb up my balcony. He came from the building across the street and had clambered up the tree in front of my window. When I popped my head outside to see what was going on, he got so startled that he fell down into the garden and scrambled off, panicked, looking for a new place to hide. Whatever problem he was facing was a symptom of "Le Bateau"—the gigantic concrete mass of social housing that faced the humble residence my parents bought in the early 1980s.

Terms like "violence" and "insecurity" are lost on me. I've never had any trouble in Nanterre—or anywhere else, for that matter. Even though I was a skinny 85-pound teenager who stumbled around in baggy pants with a Walkman eternally plugged into my ears, no one ever bothered me. I never really thought twice about those guys running the streets surrounding my house. They were just my neighbors. Some of them were even my friends in primary school. It took me a long time to understand the intricate shortcomings of the French educational system, the rife unemployment, and the boredom that drove them to live that life. I guess when the first person you meet walking outside your door is a guy who spends his entire day hanging out right there, in your hallway—there's quite a good chance that you'll end up befriending him.

I'm rarely scared. The only time I've ever cried out of fear was on my very first day of secondary school at this private Catholic institution in Rueil-Malmaison. The sheer immensity of the school campus, the gigantism of the buildings, and the fact that I was surrounded by boys was terrifying to me. To this day, I have no idea how I was ever able to adapt.

There is no shortage of stories from that school. There's the one about the priest who had fooled around with one of the pupils. Or the student who jumped off a bridge. It seemed as if all of my classmates had grown up with divorced, separated, or absent parents. For the latter, it was easiest just to chuck their kids into a boarding school and forget about them. All of these kids grew up to be insecure adults.

There were also those pupils who would lose it because they weren't at the top of their class. Their parents had stuck them there as if they were some sort of real estate investment. The kids were well aware that their parents were expecting a healthy return on that investment. Which, when you've just turned 12, is a lot of pressure.

When you spend your entire youth around boys, you learn to fool everyone into believing that you're much better at things than you actually are. This is true just as much for the bourgeois as for the suburban boys. If you tell someone that you play soccer, then they're going to tell you they play for PSG. If you mention you hooked up with—let's say, Marie-Charlotte—then, all of a sudden, your mate happened to score Madonna last weekend.

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The author and his mates before going out one night. Photo courtesy of the author.

The fact of the matter is that when you go to a boys' school like mine, girls aren't exactly accessible. They all lived in their own camp way over on the other side of the school campus. If you were ballsy enough, you could sneak around the woods or cut a whole in the fence to catch a glimpse of them—all the while worrying that the security guard and his dogs would find you. Otherwise, you had to wait until the day was over to go stand in front of their school doors and wait for them to come out—of course you never actually talked to them. I always figured that the guys who hung out in front of my apartment block probably had the same problem because there were never any girls around them either.

Personally, I was in limbo: I was too poor for any girl who came from the nearby Le Vésinet neighborhood and too well-off for a girl from Nanterre. I was always caught between these two social classes—probably one of the key factors that rendered me incapable of properly getting involved in social interaction. So I developed a taste for solitary activities. I'd spend my time listening to music and hoping to become the next Tom Araya, watching movies and imagine I'd grow up to be the next Kubrick, playing football so I could be better than Ginola. Well, that and spending hours on public transportation realizing that I'd probably never amount to any of these things.

Related: Boy Racer

Growing up in the suburbs is a study in the art of patience. Even something as simple as just going out became a challenge: We'd have to take a bus, then another bus, then walk for at least 30 minutes trying to find anything fun happening. There was a club we liked to go to called l'Enfer—but to get there we'd have to take the train for an hour. And even then, when we actually made it, there was no guarantee we'd be allowed in. When we actually managed to enter, we'd have to stay out until 6:30 in the morning so we could catch the first Metro home. One night, I missed the last bus and ended up having to walk for three hours.

Back then, Paris wasn't my city but I really wanted it to be—more than anything else in the world. Maybe because it wasn't tangible to me—it was more of an idea. A place where something was always possible, no matter who you were or what you were doing. Those nights that I went to Paris with my friends just depressed me. I'd look at the people sitting around the local bars enjoying their long evenings and there was me—having to head back to my static, narrow suburb.

For plenty, the suburbs are something to be proud of—I mean, how many people have written or rapped about coming from a place like that? Is the place we come from, in some way, a synonym for who we are? Probably.

I just never understood why the ones who came from the suburbs were the same ones burning the place down. I guess we are all consumed by the rage of having built a universe and a lifestyle that we ended up hating because of the loneliness and frustration that come with it.

The sort of frustration that makes you hate your next door neighbor, the guys hanging out in the staircase, the kids living in the opposite building, the people in the suburban town next to yours and so on. Some people have ended up trapped in this hate. But if you only know one way of life—one made up of acting like a big shot and being a dick to basically anything that moves—then it's hard to believe that there's any other way to be.

Le Bateau has since been demolished. My boys' school has become a mixed school. My friends—well, many disappeared along with the concrete housing block. It's not like I feel nostalgic or anything, but most of the things I've learned about life have come from my childhood in the suburbs. So, I guess a small part of me will be there forever.

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Photo by Flickr user Hrishikesh Premkumar

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explains how humans became, as Science magazine puts it, "the fat primate." Over the course of about 30 years, two scientists studied the composition of apes and humans, a feat that required 49 dead humans—which are easy to get—and 13 dead bonobos—which are almost impossible to get.

The idea behind the research was to come to a plausible hypothesis about how humans became human. What few fossils we have can tell us a little about what's sometimes called "chimp-human divergence" in evolutionary history, but fossils lack something very helpful in understanding biology: flesh.

It occurred to Dr. Adrienne Zihlman, anthropologist at University of California Santa Cruz, that non-extinct apes do have flesh, so she cut a whole lot of the dead ones up in order to figure out the differences between them and us. From there she was able to make some educated guesses about what happened in that unknown period.

One of those differences is that humans got fat. Chimps and bonobos are 13 percent skin, and we're only 6 percent skin, but we compensate for that by being up to 36 percent body fat on the high end of average, while bonobos average 4 percent. That's a wildly disproportional fatness differential.

In the paper, Zihlman and her partner, Debra Bolter hypothesize that our ancestors wandered around diverse ecosystems, sometimes in intense heat while looking for food. We needed fat for lean times, while chimps just hung out in forests. I called Dr. Zihlman to find out more, and just to hear about dissecting 13 dead bonobos.

VICE: Hi, Dr. Zihlman. How'd you get all the dead bonobos?
Dr. Zihlman: That's a long story.

I have time.
I got the first one through Sue Savage-Rumbaugh in 1975. She was interested in the behavior, and I was interested in the anatomy. Eventually I started collecting them. Three of our best animals came from [the Milwaukee Zoo] a year ago January. Three adults, beautifully preserved. One of them had died more than two years ago. They were kinda saving them for us.

Were they preserved in formaldehyde, or frozen?
Frozen. At my lab, we don't do pickled animals. You get a truer measure of the tissues [from frozen animals].

How do you study their body mass?
So we started just seeing what we could find, taking them apart, doing a "quantitative anatomy."

What's that?
You take the last body weight in life. Then you take the animal apart and you weigh everything. What it gives us is a real database for looking at the evolution of the rest of the body.

For more about fat humans, watch The Fat Farms of Mauritania:

What did taking apart apes teach you?
This gives us kind of a representative possibility for something that could have been like our common ancestor. Before the common ancestor to ourselves and apes.

So what happened on the path from common ancestor to Homo sapiens?
One of the things is, you've gotta shift the body around and change the muscle from the forelimbs if you're a quadrupedal ape. Our ancestors—and most apes—can venture into open areas, but they live in forests. They're really tied to having tree cover available, because they get hot.

So we developed fat so we could get away from forests?
Compared to the apes, we have less muscle, which is an energy savings, because it's such an expensive tissue. Two important things about the way we store fat: We store it around our buttocks and thighs, but you want to make sure that you're storing fat so it doesn't interfere with locomotion. You don't want it on your feet, for instance. So you concentrate it around the center of gravity. And you also don't want it to interfere with being able to get rid of heat.

What was the benefit of having fat down low and weak arms?
If you're moving away from the forest and tree cover, you want to be able to exploit food in a more mosaic habitat that has areas of bush and a few forests around rivers. You want to be able to move into a lot of different areas. So you've gotta get rid of your hair, and really ramp up those sweat glands. Our skin has really been reorganized for a lot of different functions.

Do chimps and bonobos not have sweat glands?
They have sweat glands. They're not really functioning. All primates have eccrine sweat glands in their hands and feet. Monkeys have them on their chests. [But] they're not stimulated by heat.

What else happened to human fat?
What happens in humans is, without hair cover, you can really see the form of the body more. You can really see more prominently the breasts, the buttocks, and so forth.

That's different from chimps?
When chimpanzees and gorillas are nursing, they develop fat deposits in their breasts. Usually when they're no longer lactating that fat disappears.

I have to point this out: some apes are super fat.
Orangutans have much more of a problem in captivity. What they do is, in the wild, it's like feast or famine. When there's a lot of food they put on a lot of body fat. What happens in captivity is that they're really prone to putting on fat, and they can get diabetes.

[body_image width='1500' height='882' path='images/content-images/2015/06/04/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/04/' filename='science-can-now-explain-why-humans-are-such-fat-apes-394-body-image-1433460852.jpg' id='63336']A fat orangutan face, via Flickr user Jim Bowen

The other thing you notice, if you're looking at male orangutans, is how much fat they carry in their cheek pads. We weighed those. That's several pounds of fat on your face.

But chimps and bonobos don't normally carry fat like orangutans?
Males don't have much fat at all. They are solid muscle.

So if you had a starvation contest, between a male chimp and a human, the human would last longer?
It's a solid working hypothesis.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Björk first debuted her new music video for the song "Stonemilker" from her album Vulnicura at various locations around the globe earlier this year. At the time, Pitchfork wrote that the video "isn't something you can simply watch on YouTube" because it was an immersive, 360-degree experience requiring VR helmets to view. Now, apparently, it is something you can watch on YouTube, because Dazed premiered the video's online incarnation this morning. In it, the singer (and a steadily growing number of replicas) sings on a beach in Iceland. You can swivel 360-degrees by dragging your mouse around or clicking arrow buttons in the top left of the screen. Play around above.

Want Some In-Depth Stories About Björk?

1. A Sneak Peek at Björk's MoMA Retrospective
2. Björk: The History and Style of a Music Maverick
3. The Opening Party for Björk's MoMA Show Was Interesting
4. Björk's New LP 'Vulnicura' Is Like Bill Murray, So It's Got That Going for It

Follow River on Twitter.

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Image via Pixabay.

I haven't ridden a bike for at least three years. The reason being I was doored while riding my fixed gear by a parked driver. She was looking at her phone and threw her door open as I rode past. My sternum was cracked down the middle and the top of the door pierced through my pectoral next to my shoulder. I bought a road bike after that.

About a year later, I broke my spine in a non cycling-related accident. Just when I was considering getting back on the bike I saw a driver with a provisional license cut off a rider in slow-moving traffic. The rider—who was riding at a reasonable speed down the bike lane—went right over the roof. He landed on his back, still clipped into his cleats, in front of the car. The poor guy was unable to stand and obviously in a lot of pain. Just as he was about to lose his shit, the car door opened and out slunk a teenage girl in a Pokemon onesie. The guy almost laughed and lay back down defeated.

I decided after that maybe I would stick to jogging.

But in spite of these stories and the many others I could tell, this article isn't about cyclists getting hurt. It's about the reasons people aren't generally very sympathetic when it happens.

Not many sports double as transport and a way of getting fit. Cycling and skateboarding are probably the only two that are socially acceptable. But while skateboarders are expected to be dicks, even celebrated for it, cyclists have to deal with a disproportionate amount of community anger.

Now the short answer to why that is probably boils down to the fact that driving in built-up areas fucking sucks. What driver wouldn't be mad at the guy zipping through traffic and enjoying the sun and wind on his oversized quads?

But there's more to it than that, and with this in mind, here are a few suggestions on how one might ride a bike without being a dick.

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Image via Flickr user Anne and Tim.

Starting out

Ideally, start out young. I know many of us don't have that luxury, usually moving onto cycling after our knees are too damaged for high impact sports or after years of HBO box sets and bad eating have taken their toll.

Generally speaking, the move onto a road bike begins as a solo endeavor.

After smoking a few middle-aged office potatoes up a hill, you'll inevitably start to believe that this was your calling. Maybe you're the next Contador. And much like the score on Candy Crush you thought was unbeatable, you'll soon find your dreams pummeled when you see the high score table. So keep a lid on it.

Related: Watch our documentary on Black Bike Week

Don't hate on Lycra. You will end up wearing it.

Yes, we all go through it. You start out casual with your vintage Italian racer or French track frame, commuting comfortably between home and work in your selvedge Japanese denim.

Eventually though, you will want to head out on longer rides. Rides with your new cycling buddies where there's fresh air and hills to climb. At this point, jeans won't cut it.

At first you'll tell yourself that a pair of chino shorts will suffice. But when you're curled up on the couch bleeding from the perineum, you'll be punching your credit card into Wiggle before you know it.

Wearing Lycra is popular because it works. There's no shame in it. It's much like a public change room or a urinal. We're all aware of the dicks on display, but we keep our eyes up and pretend they're not there.

Besides, that extra padding in the groin is there for reasons we shouldn't need to explain.

Avoid car-hating stickers

"One less car" doesn't mean much if you can't afford a car and would otherwise be catching public transport. It means even less if it's stuck to a bike that's on a roof rack.

(Disregard this item if you literally traded your car in for a bike at a place that then destroyed that car.)

Wear a helmet

It's not for you, it's for everyone else. No one wants your brains splattered all over the bonnet of their Suzuki Swift.

"It's my body, the government can't tell me what to do with it," I hear you say. But firstly they can, that's what all those fines you keep getting are for. Secondly, when you get into an accident, where's the first place you'll go looking for help with the medical expenses?

Also, don't wear a helmet with the strap undone. You've already smushed your pompadour, so what are you trying to prove?

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Image via Sydney Cyclist.

Don't cable-tie your helmet

This trend perplexed me for ages. Why do men with beards and a very unnecessary amount of reflective gear put cable ties on their helmets?

The answer: to stop magpies and other territorial birds from swooping them.

You're wearing a helmet to protect your head! This seems like the one and only time you can be comfortably swooped by a magpie, safe in the knowledge that the bird will come out second best.

If anything, wear cable ties on your head at all other times when your scalp is vulnerable to attack.

Or better yet, avoid being the wacky cyclist in general.

This goes for recumbents, which are a great way to wind up in the wheel hub of a dump truck, and nude rides. These are less a form of protest as they are an opportunity for men to expose themselves to kids outside of Chatroulette.

Act like a car

Don't go getting pissed that you're not respected as a vehicle on the road and then ride up on the sidewalk or run a light when it suits you.

Bikes are great because you get to ride through the gaps in traffic jams while everyone gives you death stares. You hardly have to stress about finding a parking spot outside of finding a suitable pole to chain to.

Of course, this is sort of pointless advice. You're only human and if the opportunity is there you'll take it. Just remember it gives ammunition to all the bike-hating drivers watching you.

Get your bike off my train

If you're not willing to commit to your chosen mode of transport, then maybe cycling is not for you.

No one wants to be crammed onto a peak-hour train. It's bad enough having to breathe in a strangers diseased air. Having your muddy tires jamming into everyone's legs is a really shitty start to the day.

Rolling two blocks to the station and then walking your bike into your work coffee in hand is not fooling anyone.

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Image by author

Ride single-file

Yes, many drivers are assholes. There's no doubt about that. But riding side by side while in traffic is a total dick move. Take the opportunity to coast off your buddy's slipstream and enjoy the sight of those sexy, Lycra-wrapped glutes. There will be plenty of time to discuss the peloton you passed or the headwind you ran into when you stop for a banana.

"Girls bikes" are death machines

This goes out to everyone, regardless of gender. The average vintage step-through bike is incredibly heavy with handlebars that turn in at wrist-snapping angles. When combined with a giant basket full of produce from the local farmers' market, these are terrifying to drive past.

Unless you wear a petticoat and an ankle-length gown when riding, get a regular bike.

Bell ringing

In Australia it's actually illegal to ride a bike without a bell. In my experience if some clown is about to back into you with their car, yelling "CUNT!" at the top of your lungs is far more effective than an irritating, high-pitch ting. Nevertheless it's a good idea to have one solely to avoid the occasional police crackdown.

Whatever you do, please use your bell only when necessary.

Watch where you chain your bike

This one's pretty simple. Chaining your bike through someone else's bike is just not cool, deliberate or otherwise. It just takes a second to check your surroundings and avoid ruining another rider's day.

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Image via Flickr user istolethetv.

Don't tow your kids

I'm not sure what you call them, but those little covered bubble trailers that city types tow their kids around in are plain irresponsible. I don't know much about parenting, but dragging little Heston around at ground level is asking for trouble.

Waiting in a side street while you drag your bean-fueled commuter uphill toward the local Montessori school will have even the most patient driver ready to floor it the moment you pass. Let's not deny the world another Junior Masterchef.

Get some good lights

Most serious riders these days are lit up like a Christmas tree. You don't need a spotlight, just something to let people know you're there.

If nothing else, it puts you in the right when someone clips you with their door.

Talk about something else

Once you get serious about riding you'll want to find friends to ride with. These new buddies will have one guaranteed shared interest: cycling.

This doesn't mean that you should talk about nothing but bikes. If you go out with work friends, you are expected to leave your work behind and talk about something different like My Kitchen Rules or god forbid, football.

Nothing is more soul destroying than going for a ride with a group of guys that talk about nothing but play-by-play replays of previous rides or price comparisons of online chainring purchases.

Don't be afraid to talk a little about your other interests: music, sports, movies. You may just find you have more in common than you thought. Like, I don't know, home-cured meats or beard grooming.