Neither the father, nor author. Photo via Wikicommons Media

Even though I live pretty close to my dad, years can pass without us seeing each other. We talk on the phone sometimes, but only about superficial things: He asks me how college is going and I try really hard to come up with questions so I can seem interested in his life. We don't really have much to talk about because he knows practically nothing about me. He doesn't know my friends, doesn't know what I'm into, and doesn't have any clue about what I do with my time. He split up with my mom when I was just a baby and the only thing he's ever contributed to my life is sorrow.

As a kid, I'd sometimes get jealous when I saw how my friends' fathers would take care of them and teach them things. Thankfully that was a passing phase and I quickly realized that being blessed with a mother—who was equipped with enough love to match that of two parents—was far more valuable than having around an additional person, who only saw me as the result of a fleeting relationship.

People tend to throw you a few weird looks and the obligatory, "Oh you poor thing," when they hear that you grew up without a dad. What's up with that? My father never took care of me, so why would I miss him? You can't miss something you never had in the first place. It's as simple as that.

Related: Watch our documentary 'The Real True Detective'

What drives me mad is when people try to link my personality traits to my growing up without a father. The fact that I was raised by a single mother didn't turn me into some little monster who hates herself and needs to compensate for her daddy issues by sleeping around. Sure, I hook up with stupid guys sometimes, but that has nothing to do with my father. People who grew up with a loving father can be sluts, too. I'd never use my upbringing as an excuse to act stupidly. I'm not some traumatized, antisocial weirdo.

I've always believed that you should be direct with people who you like and the people that like you. Anything else is bad for the soul of at least one of the participating parties. That rule isn't just relevant for friends or relationships, but also for relatives, and just as much for parents. Some people are just assholes. If you dismiss assholes in other areas of your life, why not dismiss them from your family, too?

They say you can't choose your family but my father didn't seem to agree. For 20 years he thought that he could decide whether he had to take care of his kid. Now I'm deciding whether or not I want to have him in my life. People can whine about that being resentful if they want but that's where I'm at, after all these years of wasted chances.

Sometimes my dad says that he thinks of me a lot and that he loves me. I'd never be able to bring myself to say anything of the sort to the man. Yes, I'm aware that I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for his genetic material and the shitty relationship that he had with my mother. So, thanks for that Dad.

Overall, I'm mostly just grateful for one thing though: Now I know that you can have a happy childhood and turn out just fine outside the traditional family model.

Photo via Flickr user unukorno

Read: A Texas Man Claims to Have Killed Bigfoot

The guy who left his wife, quit his job, and sold his house to literally move into a van down by the river and spend 25 years hunting the Loch Ness Monster claims he finally solved the mystery that's captivated dumb tourists and conspiracy theorists for centuries, Reuters reports. Nessie, he claims, is actually just a really, really big catfish.

"I have to be honest. I just don't think that Nessie is a prehistoric monster," Steve Feltham told the Times on Thursday. "What a lot of people have reported seeing would fit in with the description of the catfish with its long curved back."

The real-life river beast he's describing, a Wels catfish, can grow up to 13 feet long, and looks like it could swallow a human being whole like the Roach in Men in Black. Feltham says that Victorians threw a couple catfish into Loch Ness about a century ago just for the hell of it, and they've been haunting the lake ever since.

Feltham's lifelong saga hunting Nessie—and winning him a Guinness World Record in the process—is mapped out on his website. The "about me" page is strangely beautiful, in a weird, sad sort of way.

"If you have a dream, no matter how harebrained others think it is, then it is worth trying to make it come true," he writes. "Have I ever regretted my decision? Never, not for one second."

Which politician is the one wearing the black hat? Photo via Prime Minister's Office

Anyone planning to vote in the upcoming federal election should get their ID in order, fast.

A last ditch effort to halt the Fair Elections Act—a contentious piece of legislation that has brought in stricter ID rules and could limit voters' access to the polls—has failed. And with the possibility of an early election, those planning to mark a ballot could face a tighter timeline to make sure they can prove their current address.

On Friday, Ontario Superior Court Justice David Stinson refused to grant an injunction against the Act, declaring that last-minute changes could be seen as unfair.

Though he agreed that the applicants made the case that some voters could be irreparably harmed by losing access to their ballots, Stinson wrote in his decision, "It is problematic to change the rules for elections at the last minute through the blunt instrument of judicial intervention."

Earlier this month, the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Federation of Students asked the judge for an injunction, arguing that the Act's new voter ID rules could disenfranchise young, Indigenous, and homeless voters in particular.

The current voter ID requirements can be found here. For those who have moved recently, live on a reserve, or have no fixed address, the information is particularly pressing, and it will be up to Elections Canada to communicate these new rules to electors.

To understand the new rules, we have to go all the way back to 2007. That year the Elections Act was amended to make it mandatory for electors to have their name and address on their ID. Previously, all you needed to do to vote was to show up at the polling station and state your name.

After the 2008 federal election, Canada's Chief Electoral Officer noticed that students, Indigenous voters on reserves, and seniors in long-term care homes found it harder to vote as a result of the new rules. So in the 2011 election, the CEO allowed these groups to use their voter information cards as ID, and 400,000 people took advantage of his permission slip and used them to vote.

In the lead up to this year's federal election, the CEO said he planned to let all eligible voters across the country use the cards to vote, as long as they had one other piece of ID. But in December, the Fair Elections Act became law, and wiped out that possibility. The new rules state that the voting cards that come in the mail three weeks before the election cannot be used as ID.

The Act also makes vouching a higher hurdle to clear. Previously, voters could have someone from their polling district vouch for them if they didn't have ID with their address on it. Someone in your polling district can still vouch for you, but they have to do so in writing, and you need two valid pieces of ID that show your name.

The federal government says the Act is necessary to stop voter fraud.

"If one person votes illegally, that cancels my vote," government lawyer Christine Mohr told the court.

Mohr argued it would be "extraordinary" for the court to grant the injunction, and that granting an injunction in relation to an election "has never been done," CBC reported.

Outside the courtroom earlier this month, Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, told VICE the Fair Elections Act is similar to voter suppression efforts in the US.

"This kind of legislation basically says: you're not welcome, don't bother," she said. "And that's the big concern—that it's just anti-democratic. It dissuades people from voting."

Barlow argued the new ID rules should be especially worrying considering the downward trend in the number of people who turn up to vote. Only 39 percent of eligible voters aged 18 to 25 voted in the last federal election, she pointed out.

"The tenor of all this is basically, we don't want you to vote," Barlow said.

Follow Hilary Beaumont on Twitter.

A horse in Enumclaw, Washington. All photos by Kelly O

"The only intimacy that separates the proud horse owner from the perverse horse fucker is the act of sex." –Charles Mudede

This article contains a bunch of disturbing details about men having sex with horses.

You can find anything on the internet, even if you don't want to. The video "Mr. Hands" is testament to that—the gruesome 30-second video that was circulating on the grimmer corners of the internet in the mid 2000s shows a man willingly submitting himself to the romantic attentions of a horse. I've seen it. Please don't go looking for it.

Ten years ago this month, a resident of Enumclaw, Washington, named Kenneth Pinyan was pronounced dead due to "acute peritonitis [that resulted from the] perforation of the sigmoid colon during anal intercourse with a horse." A surveillance camera captured the license plate of the car that dropped the man off at the hospital after his horrific erotic encounter, leading detectives to 54-year-old James Michael Tait, who lived next to a 39-acre farm. At the man's trailer, the police confiscated the recording of Pinyan, or "Mr. Hands" as his zoophile friends called him, being fucked by a horse they referred to as "Big Dick."

At the time, bestiality was legal in Washington, and since there was no evidence of the men abusing the animals, Tait was only charged with trespassing. The scandal was so salacious, however, that Washington State made bestiality a Class C felony—punishable by up to five years behind bars and a $10,000 fine—shortly after Pinyan's death, with the state senate voting unanimously for the bill.

The accident, as well as the video documenting it, became national news and a viral sensation that bubbled out of creepy 4chan boards, seeping into the consciousness of internet users everywhere. Not only did the original Seattle Times report of the death become the publication's most-read online article that year, but the story of Mr. Hands and the group of male zoophiliacs who hung out together, got drunk, and lined up to get plowed by horses was the subject of a 2007 documentary called Zoo, which later went to Sundance and Cannes.

Charles Mudede was one of the writers of the nonfiction film, and he also reported on the accident itself for an excellent investigative piece published in Seattle alt weekly The Stranger in 2006. Zoo is a startlingly poignant film that portrays the "zoos" as tragic and lonely human beings rather than animal-abusing perverts. I reached out to Mudede to discuss the legacy of this wholly bizarre moment in American history ten years after it happened.

The gates outside the farm in Enumclaw where Mr. Hands suffered the injury that led to his death

VICE: Were you aware that it was the ten-year anniversary of Mr. Hands's death the other day?
Charles Mudede: Yes, I'm actually in Enumclaw, Washington, right now to take photos and see if anything interesting is going on. The town got rid of the sign on the farm where it happened—that was the only act of erasure that I noticed. No one wants to talk about what happened, though.

Once the law changed, and bestiality was made illegal in Washington, everyone sort of said, "It's over and it will never happen again. And if it does happen again, we'll know what to do." No one has been arrested for bestiality in Washington since, to my knowledge.

Once the law came into effect, the whole Washington community of zoophiliacs moved to states where it was legal to do what they wanted to do. They were absolutely terrified of going to jail. When I talked to them, they weren't breaking the law, and they didn't want to. That's part of the reason this was never a for-profit animal prostitution ring type of thing. After James Michael Tait, the ringleader, was caught, he moved to Tennessee because there are no laws about bestiality there [Tait was arrested and charged with animal cruelty in Tennessee in 2009]. They don't want to be thought of like child pornographers or child molesters. They don't want to be treated like those criminals.

Everyone in Enumclaw is very close to horses. It's a quiet, rural suburb with a view of the mountains. Everyone is a horse person, and as you know, the town included all types of horse worship. It was a place where you could fuck horses, and no one could tell. The line was difficult to differentiate between passion and zoophilia unless you were caught. If Pinyan didn't die, those guys he hung out with would still be fucking horses today and no one would have suspected anything.

It was a paradise for a horse fucker. I'm sure they were so angry because they must have thought, We had it so good!

While making the documentary Zoo, did you look for other real zoo communities, either in Washington or elsewhere?
We did look for them, but we couldn't find any. The one thing this group had was someone who was a really good organizer. Tait really went out of his way to cultivate the community. He was very selective about who could join and did the whole territorial thing. If you don't have that, it will fall apart.

Other zoos are probably more individual. They were afraid that if they were outed, they'd lose everything—which is exactly what would happen. So unless you had an extremely organized leader, you likely wouldn't be sharing this private thing with other people. If you can play it safe, animals don't talk. Zoos keep it quiet.

How do you think Mr. Hands's death affected the zoophilia community on a larger scale?
It disrupted them—they lost a lot by his death. If you have a moral problem with horse fucking, you might not find this to be a cool way to look at things, but I think the truth is that they lost a lot: stability, a weekend vacation getaway place, something to look forward to. They lost a community. When the death happened, they were exposed. They were looked at, they were investigated. It was a major disruption!

The zoophilia community is largely an internet-based thing. There wouldn't be a community without the internet. If you were a zoo, you couldn't go to something like a gay bar. You had to go to the internet. For the first time in the history of mankind, zoos could get find each other and get together as groups. That was new! That was absolutely unprecedented.

When I was talking to the zoos in Washington, I got an impression that they thought Mr. Hands was a bit of a weakling: He was an intellectual, he worked for Boeing as an engineer. They could take a horse-fucking and not have to go to the hospital. He was effete and new to it. They thought he ruined it. If he wasn't so self-destructive, they'd still be fucking horses on weekends. Dumping him at the hospital was really dumping him into the media and mainstream, and also ending the thing they had going.

For more on sexual fetishes, watch our doc on people turned on by quicksand:

How exactly did they train the horses to fuck them?
They would literally bend over and wait for the horse to fuck them. They'd also put some type of scent on themselves—the pheromone people use to get horses to breed.

Did they ever fuck the horses?
No, that wasn't their school. There are all different sorts of flavors of zoos. Their thing was about getting fucked in the ass. There were others who liked that, but that was not their circle. They wanted the studs and the bulls. Never cows. There was this element of cocks, big cocks. They never talked about pussies.

If my memory stands correct, these men were also fucking each other. After they got fucked by a horse, they'd play games with each other and their stretched assholes.

Did they pick specific horses from the farm, or were they down to be fucked by any horse?
They had preferences! They would figure out which horse was too strong, which had the biggest cock, which was the quickest fuck. It was like going to a horse auction.

They were really into the cows, too. One of the guys literally said he planned on eating one of the bulls after it fucked him. I found that to be very problematic. Getting fucked by something you were going to eat? He was super darkly into zoophilia in a way that was unlike the others.

A lot of these guys wanted to see themselves as massive animal fuckers—guys who could take on huge things. They would even talk about fucking dolphins, which supposedly have big cocks.

[The sex writer and then Stranger editor-in-chief] Dan Savage and I would talk about if it was a fetish for animals, or a fetish for massive cocks. That question was there the whole time we were working on Zoo and I never found out the answer. This could undermine their claims of being zoo. I must admit it was on my mind, but we didn't explore these questions enough. We were mostly focused on Mr. Hands's actual death, and the community and culture of zoos he was involved with at the time. To me, it's clearer today that these guys had this worship of cock that may have had nothing to do with horses.

Based on your research, do you think zoophilia a fetish, or is it more of a lifestyle and sexual identity?
The horse that killed Mr. Hands was nicknamed "Big Dick," right? It wasn't called "Nice Horse," or "Beautiful."

Coyote, the narrator of our doc, was the real deal. He was a real zoo. He had this thing with dogs and other animals. He was making love to them, not just fucking them. That was his thing. It was actual passion and love for animals. The other guys, who were into big dicks, could have just had intense fetishes.

I don't think Mr. Hands was actually a zoophiliac. I think he was just into fetishes. He was into extreme things and hurting his body. We didn't get into this in the film, but he was involved in a motorcycle accident. He lost a lot of his ability to sense things and had bad neural damage. People in this zoophilia community thought that putting the horse cock in his ass was an effort to feel things again—getting into extreme stuff was a way to regain neural sensation. He was into fisting, he was into big dildos, he was into pushing things sexually.

I don't think Mr. Hands was actually in love with horses. While researching, I went to the house Mr. Hands was building in Washington. He was constructing a barn and he wanted to live with a horse. Maybe he was developing feelings for the animal, but maybe not. There might have been animal love, but when you really got down to it, they were just into horse cock.

Zoophilia is not a cohesive thing. There's a main road to it, but there are lots of other alleys.

Did you stay in touch with any of the men you interviewed in the film?
They loved [Zoo director] Robinson Devor and thought he was a real ally. They still email him and keep in contact. He was much more sensitive than I was. I met them and connected them to Rob, [but] he would listen to them and not laugh.

Have you noticed any attitude shifts about zoophilia since the media first covered Mr. Hands? Is it just as much of a taboo now as it was then?
It's absolutely as much of a taboo as it was ten years ago. No one wants to think about it or talk about it.... Zoophilia is so out there in terms of sexuality that it's very hard to broach, and there isn't support for it from other minority groups or sexual communities. There's already enough trouble about people deciding if we should keep doing tests on chimps, but to talk about if we should be allowed to fuck them, too?

Follow Zach Sokol on Twitter.

Sacred Circles VI, by Rosalie H Maheux. Courtesy http://rosaliehmaheux.tumblr.com/

A seemingly innocent piece of art that is actually a collage of pornographic images has been on display in the lobby of an Ontario government office building in Toronto since June 30, but is now receiving criticism from the province's Progressive Conservatives.

"Sacred Circles VI," by French-Canadian artist, Rosalie Maheux is currently being featured at the John B. Aird Gallery's "30 under 30" Exhibition.

At first glance, "Sacred Circles VI" is an intricate mosaic, but upon giving it a closer look, the image is made up of nude women in sexual positions and performing sexual acts. The close-up view isn't one that the PC party wants anyone to see in a government building.

PC women's critic, Laurie Scott, has spoken out and made clear her "disappointment" that the Liberals would allow for this piece to go on display. "Regardless of the aims or intent of the artist, Ontarians expect their government to lead by example in combating the sexual objectification of women," said Scott in a statement reported by the CBC.

Maheux has said that this piece is meant to be beautiful from afar, but jarring up close to represent the beauty and disgust that are common in both religion and pornography, she wrote in a statement. Mandalas, or sacred circles, are known as spiritual guidance tools in many different religions, to help with meditation and symbolize purity.

"The irony in my work is that it becomes more challenging as you approach it, as its elements draw our attention to our stake in the politics of looking, voyeurism, sexual degradation, sexism, sexuality, and so on," wrote Maheux.

When VICE spoke to Maheux, she said that she was surprised by the backlash, and that she worries people have not really engaged with, or even seen the art before they speak out.

"This series is a series I've shown many times, I've gotten good feedback all the way, that brings a lot of interesting, positive discussion," Maheux told VICE.

"It's not about women objectification at all, it's the opposite, totally," she said. "The piece is not pornographic, I use pornography as a medium to express that idea."

The Liberals, as well as the gallery have defended Maheux's piece, saying that the space is public and operated by an independent board of directors, comprised of volunteers from the community and four art societies.

In a statement from the gallery, they said the painting "creates a confrontation with the sacred" and that it is not in their practice to censor pieces of art.

Follow Sierra Bein on Twitter.

So shiny. My precciousssss. Photo via Flickr user Benjamin Thomas

I've lost count of the number of times I've stood in front of a spit-flecked mirror in the dingy washroom of a shitty dive bar, stared at my swaying reflection and thought, "I should probably drink less." I've also lost count of the number of times I then marched straight to the bar to drown out that voice of reason with another pitcher of beer or round of shots, because fuck it dog, life's a risk, and being drunk is really fun.

The friends who I drink with down about the same amount as I do, and we usually have a great time, so when I saw that the Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey defines low-risk drinking as no more than two drinks a day and 10 a week for women, and no more than three drinks a day and 15 a week for men, my first thought was, "That seems kind of low." Apparently, a lot of people think the same, because according to the 2012 survey, the most recent year for which data is available, one in four Canadians between ages 15 and 24 exceed the guidelines for low-risk drinking. I mean, what my friends and I drink is not a daily thing, no one's been injured, no one's ended up in jail, and no one's had alcohol poisoning, so how risky could it be?

Dr. Corine Carlisle, an expert in youth and alcohol use at the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, sympathized with the drinking culture that a lot of university-aged kids get involved in.

"I think it's hard for young people to find that balance ... And how to sort of navigate the guidelines versus your realities, seeing what happens on college campuses," she said. From about 14 to 24, people go through an intense period of brain development that makes them more prone to feeling invincibility. It's a good thing because it lets us establish ourselves as independent adults, but it also makes us vulnerable to risk-taking—including excessive alcohol use.

"It's like we get the ability as people to put our foot on the gas before we have the ability to put it fully on the brakes," she explained.

But being young and dumb doesn't mean I get a free pass for blowing past the guidelines, which turns out actually serve a purpose that isn't just the government trying to kill my buzz—they're based on population statistics and on the impacts of alcohol on the body, and are also set to limit the chance of alcohol use becoming misuse becoming a problem becoming dependence.

So, as someone who can down the weekly recommended limit in a night, does this mean I have a drinking problem?

Well, "drinking problem" is a little tricky to pin down.

"If somebody drinks once in their life, they get heavily intoxicated, they get in a car, they crash their car, they kill somebody, that's a problem, right? Is that problem drinking? Well, it was, that one time they drank, it was a problem. So I think it's so hard to say what constitutes problem drinking," Carlisle said.

Susan Bondy, a researcher who studies alcohol use and health effects at the University Toronto, said it's hard to say when someone goes from being a drinker to a problem drinker (it's a spectrum, not black and white), but once alcohol starts to become a crutch or affects your day-to-day ability to function, you should probably start thinking about cutting back. But just because you don't have issues now doesn't mean you won't be making your life worse, later.

We've all heard about liver cirrhosis and stomach cancer, but I've always associated those with people who've been drowning their sorrows for decades. I figured my body could take a couple more years before I'd have to worry about any health problems (young bodies bounce back from everything, right?), but turns out there are a bunch of more immediate consequences that come with 26-ers being your best friend.

Impaired mood regulation and the ability to experience joy, poorer memory, a greater risk of feeling depressed and an increased risk of stomach and breast cancer are all effects I can experience in my very near future (or am already experiencing) if I don't cut back a bit, Bondy said. There are also all the well-known side effects of doing dumb shit when you're drunk, like having unprotected sex, driving, getting into fights, and spending all your money on booze, that can come back to bite you in the ass.

"You [may] not experience any problems this week or this day with the amount that you drink, but if you keep it up over a period of time, you're putting yourself at risk of health consequences down the line," Bondy said.

It's not just the frequent drinkers who have to deal with this stuff - even the occasional weekend warriors are at risk.

"Binge drinking, each and every time, has an impact on the brain," Carlisle said.

You don't even need to feel wasted or drunk to get all the bad stuff because tolerance means nothing—as long as there's an excess of booze running through your veins, your chances of screwing yourself with some crappy disease or mental affliction is there.

This should all seem like common sense, but as someone still going through the invincibility stage of life, having it laid out bare helped make it painfully obvious. Knowing I've possibly already screwed myself by downing one (or two or five) too many pints every couple of days is a bit of a bummer. I knew I drank a lot, but minus the occasional bout of queasiness the morning after, I always felt fine and told myself that as long as I taper off once I'm older, I'd be alright. And if I'm lucky, that may end up being true, but statistically, I've opened the door to a whole bunch of shit future me would probably really rather not deal with.

Which is a bit sobering, I guess.

Follow Jackie Hong on Twitter.

You, arguing with Graham Linehan on Twitter via

Avast, me hearties! Pick up that QWERTY-cutlass and assume the fightin' stance, cause you're about to get into an argument on the internet. Prepare your body for a beating, sailor, because this could end very badly for you.

It's funny when someone tells you they love the internet because of the increased allowance of communication for people the world over. I can "have a conversation" with a woman I've never met—in New Zealand! Wow, so cool! But I can also "have a conversation" with some fucking jerk off seven miles from me who thinks Parks & Recreation is better than Only Fools and Horses.

The rules of the flame war are always changing. The spats of today aren't at all similar to those our forefathers fought before modems; a changed arena requires a different tact. You can't approach a fight on Twitter like you would one on the street, though ultimately it pays to be a total prick in both situations.

But that shouldn't be too hard should it, prick face? Let's begin:

CHAT ROOMS

You, being told you're a n00b via

People don't really go on chat rooms these days. The only time you really see them are on the side of livestreams, both legal and illegal. The legal ones are on things like gaming site Twitch. Adenoidal Americans doing speed runs ofZelda or whatever, and these don't usually breed a lot of animosity as everyone's just posting ASCII cat faces to each other and referencing impenetrable game memes ad infinitum. This is about as close as you'll get to a "safe space" anywhere online.

So that leaves the illegal streams, and, let's face it, most of those are reserved for sports. Boxing matches, football, whatever Americans watch in their spare time—we all want to consume it, but we'll be God damned if we're going to pay for it. Cue a madcap, multi-tab search on all websites in existence for a stream that chops more erratically than a nervous chef. Once you get to it you can relax and watch the game... Or can you?

No you can't, cuz some dilweed is spamming messages about how shit Alex Song is, or talking about "registas" or other things that don't really exist. They're a real eyesore too, these stream chats, as they allow you to choose the color and font of your messages, which is invariably a big serif font in lime green. The reason no one gives a shit about chat rooms any more is that they've been around so long that people have become accustomed to their wiles. No one's impressed by them, and with one click you can hide the whole thing. This means that, luckily, you don't have to engage these types, unless you want a reason to justify your Nurofen addiction, so just zoom into to sporty part until the stream dies and you plunge an ashtray through the screen.

FORUMS & MESSAGE BOARDS

A forum moderator about to bash your modem into bits via

This is where a lot of veterans of cyber beefing cut their teeth. Before micro blogging allowed everyone to act like a piece of shit at a moment's notice, forums were the biggest hornets' nests on the web.

Whatever you're interested in—music, comedy, body building, anime, Nazism, hot sauce, architecture—there's a forum full of anoraks waiting to discuss it with you. The more tame the subject, the less likely it is that personally hurtful zings will be pinged your way. I used to frequent the forum of the urban music magazine RWD, mostly as a lurker. Before it was rendered obsolete by a poor redesign that upset the user base, RWD forummers were party to some incredible incidents: real-life exposures, the posting of nudes and addresses, the continuation, repercussions and serialization of IRL beefs, members hitting on other member's girlfriends, all expressed in the coliseum of the forum's "Whatever" room, away from its much less volatile "Sports" and "Music" rooms.

Trending on Noisey: Hip Hop in the Holy Land

People on forums can and will become your friends. It's a bit like being in a prison that you voluntarily go to every day, having to make pally with a bunch of people you're stuck there with. But other times it's more like prison in a way that some weirdo will find your IP address and e-stab you by posting your address in a thread entitled "I'm coming 4 u RedRibbon32." Tread carefully.

XBOX LIVE

Your head, being held aloft by some kid called 'Cody' or something, after losing a game of Team Deathmatch via

If you're a white person and you've never been called the N-word in your life and you want to see how it feels, head on over to Xbox Live. Historically, giving a voice to the voiceless has been considered a good thing, but in the case of Xbox Live, giving a voice to children with Xbox Live was a terrible, terrible idea.

Watch our new documentary about a guy who can stay submerged in ice for 53 minutes without his core body temperature changing: ICEMAN

Let's face it, arguing with children is the hardest thing to do, because they just don't give a fuck. They don't give a fuck about you, how you feel, what your opinions are, how you formed them, or what degree from what shit Uni you went to. All they care about is calling you a "fag." If Xbox Live children were around during the war they would have been fast tracked to the SS. There is no arguing with these kids, so your best bet is to troll them in whatever game they're playing, do stuff they don't like and make them rage out and cry.

FACEBOOK COMMENTS

Your uncle Roy, wondering out loud why 'no one speaks the lingo' via

This is where it can get a little weird. Now it's not random Belgians with obscure handles you're calling a twat, it's your aunt's friends, your girlfriend's dad, your best mate's girlfriend. Sometimes the link is tenuous enough that you needn't worry about the repercussions of slating someone with your full government name on show, but be careful: you never know when they might wander into your local B@1. Anyone who's spent any time on WorldStarHipHip will know that Facey-B comments can be serious business. Hair dragged around, sucker punches thrown—Facebook is just real enough for your actual life to be implicated in it. If you see someone post a photo of St. Paul's Cathedral with the caption "The Muslims want to turn this into a mega-mosque" in red writing, don't bother trying to set them straight: they were born and will die idiots. It's better for everyone to just unfriend people like this, until they are left loudly broadcasting their own mental failings to an audience of three people who are also massive racist cunts.

ARTICLE COMMENTS

Some losers about to trebuchet your office because you don't fully understand the Mad Men finale via

Article comment threads are rat kings of frustration, the biggest pseuds corner in existence. Right now on the internet, hundreds of angry looking middle-aged men with holiday bucket-hat-and-sunglasses avatars are locked in an exchange of treatises on why there shouldn't be a third runway at Heathrow. Not only is this type of beef the most frustrating, it's also the most boring. It's the online fight equivalent of being stuck in a pub with a trekkie and a Star Wars fan arguing about which is better. We all know commenters are the worst people alive, a tiny, annoying voice that demands to be heard. Clock up enough posts and the delusion of grandeur sweeps over them like they're the head of OFCOM and whatever article they're posting under is Honky Sausages. Yes, I'm talking about you, reader! Tell me why you're mad below and I will completely ignore you.

TWITTER

You, about to be beheaded for tweeting that Beyoncé didn't "slay" at the VMAs via

Here she is. The mother load. The life ruiner. Twitter is some dangerous shit, guys. This is the place where it can all end for you. You'd better hope all your jokes and shit are clean from any vaguely problematic content or you could be hauled out in front of the million man jury and condemned to death by deactivation. It may not have the same real-life implications as say, having your router smashed by an angry forummer or an irate uncle on FB, but it can be just as personally devastating.

Imagine: 10,000 people with Pokémon profile pictures calling you a cunt and wishing you dead. You can't even begin to fathom the negative energy. If you get into a small, individual one-on-one beef then you have a chance of getting out alive, maybe even winning. But if you start beefing the wrong person, if you step on Napoleon's shoes, then you'd better prepare for the Grande Armée to find out your real name, home address, every time you've said something untoward since you were 15 and use it to get you arrested. Twitter users are the gigabyte Gestapo, the not-so-secret police that will hound you for your comment crimes if you're unlucky enough to be stupid and crass. Avoid Twitter beefs like the plague.

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The internet isn't what it used to be. Once upon a time, everyone understood that the internet was about finding strangers. Everything was left online, but it's all too real now. Tweets make it to the news, screenshots of Facebook threads are posted on fucking Reuters, there's no escape. Your best bet is to fight the old-fashioned way; with a bottle in one hand, a bit of pipe in the other, and a waterfall of expletives gushing out of your mouth outside a cab rank.

Ah, the good old days.

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In Albania, there are on average 24 bunkers per square kilometer—that is roughly one for every four inhabitants. The bunkers, built during the 40 years of communist rule, were used as a propaganda tool, leveraging the fear of war to hold power and stamp out dissent. VICE Serbia went to Albania to meet a notorious Albanian tattoo artist who's set up shop in one of these leftover and forgotten concrete bunkers.

Pope Francis via

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Tom Green's successor has finally been found, after years of frantic searching for a new po-faced uber-prankster, and it's in the form of Playboy playmate Victoria Xipolitakis. The Argentine glamor model was booed and jeered recently when she attempted to approach his holiness the Pope with no bra on and a child clasped to her side. The Pope was doing the rounds in South America, and Xipolitakis was queuing up to meet the man himself, but security led her away from the scene after the public became riled.

Of course, women's breasts are Satan's water wings. Disgusting, evil raviolis on the figure of the otherwise pure and good female body. And for them to be unholstered, like a particularly sexy but dangerous cowboy's golden revolver, in front of the leader of the Catholic church, is untenable. They weren't exposed, mind you—this isn't an episode of Sexetera. She was wearing a semi-transparent white top, through which the outline of her evil, protruding nips could be seen. A couple of Beelzebubs nearly testing Pope Francis in the wilderness of Asuncion, Paraguay.

Aside from her pseudo-#FreeTheNipple protest not being tolerated by that papacy, Victoria has been causing havoc all over the world. Only last month she was involved in another controversy, after two pilots were fired from their jobs at Austral Airlines after they allowed her into the cockpit to hang out and take photos. The 29-year-old took some photos of herself and claimed that she "Even flew the plane." She was on an internal flight from Buenos Aires to Rosario in Argentina when she was allowed into the cockpit during takeoff, with the pilots allegedly letting her take control of the plane during the most dangerous part of the flight.

It seems that Victoria can't really go anywhere without trolling the shit out of some idiots. Six months ago she was embroiled in a controversy in which she attempted to win a carnival queen competition with a clearly photoshopped image. And we're not talking using-magic-wand-to-get-rid-of-the-laughter-lines photoshop, we're talking waistline-looks-like-someone-cutting-a-Cheesestring-around-the-middle-with-garrotte-wire photoshop. I mean, have a look:

Photo via

It appears Victoria has a habit of doing the photoshop thing. But does she really know what she's doing, or is she totally oblivious to the trail of carnage she leaves in her wake? Is this part of some knowing, elaborate art project for Playboy Greece, where she makes many appearances, or does a subconscious sense of mischief just touch everything she puts her hand to? With regards to the plane incident, Victoria said "I want to apologise from the bottom of my heart to everyone. That was insane. I didn't realize what I was doing and my life also was being put in danger." So perhaps she isn't the MTV daredevil we had hoped.

Watch our new documentary about a guy who can stay submerged in ice for 53 minutes without his core body temperature changing: ICEMAN

Either way, this form of japery is a breath of fresh air from the kind of horrible mulch that passes for cheekiness online, like insidiously baiting black guys into beating you up by pretending to steal their phones, or pinching actress's buttocks while pretending your hand is in your pocket.

In a few months we will hopefully see Victoria pull even more stunts, perhaps involving more religious leaders. Victoria Xipolitakis arrested for trying to milk the Dalai Lama. Victoria Xipolitakis accidentally nudges the Archbishop of Canterbury into a canal. I could go on.

Perhaps the shenanigans will come to an end, and a life of good behavior awaits our glamorous goon. If so, we must say thank you for the laughs, Victoria. Thank you for the laughs.

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Screen grab via YouTube.

Bojack Horseman is an amazing show about a washed up comedian/anthropomorphic horse figuring out his life post-fame. "Washed up" might be the wrong term; Bojack is still rich and still recognized as a celebrity when out in public, but he's a minor one, permanently associated with Horsin' Around, the bland, early 90s sitcom which made him famous. During the height of his career he spent most of his time partying and alienating large swaths of Hollywood. The show's first season is technically about Bojack's attempt to write an autobiography with the help of a (human) ghostwriter voiced by Allison Brie, but mostly it's about his search for happiness. The second season premiered on Netflix last night. You should watch it.

For a few months, the back half of Bojack season one was my semi-regular nightcap. I would come home drunk on a Saturday or Tuesday night or whatever, get stoned, and commiserate with a cartoon horse loosely based on Bob Saget and voiced by Will Arnett. My focus was the short arc of a character named Charlotte, a deer voiced by Olivia Wilde. In a mid-season flashback, we see her skip out on Hollywood in the 80s to pursue the simple life in Maine. Several episodes later, Bojack goes on a mystery pharmie binge and hallucinates an alternate version of his life where he cuts his showbiz dreams short and follows Charlotte into the woods. They live out their days happily and quietly, raising a daughter (who is a deer, I think) in a log cabin. He then dies peacefully in the pond in their backyard.

You have to squint a bit to understand why I identified with this scene—I'm not rich and famous, I'm not subtly haunted by something I passed up years ago, and I'm not a horse. Instead, I'm in my 30s and on my tenth year in Brooklyn. I moved here with vague notions of becoming a professional DJ and/or writer and/or music producer and, after a couple years of doing what I actually went to school for (genomics), I quit my day job. For eight years, I've been paying my bills with a rotating arsenal of hustles. I'm not ballin' out of control, but I do fine; I rarely have to do anything I hate or wake up before noon if I don't want to. My debt is manageable and I have health insurance.

That said, I have no idea what I'm doing in the long term. I've got a bunch of irons in the fire and slowly unfurling schemes scheduled to pay off months later, but no real plan for how I would raise a family. I've had job offers but none that seemed better than my current situation. Given the ongoing flux in the publishing and music industries, it's hard to think of any position as long-term. I don't want to freelance forever, but there's not much incentive to stop hustling and find something more stable.

This paralysis is symptomatic of my generation. We grew up hearing we were capable of anything and being encouraged to pursue our passions, even if they involved accumulating six-figure debt to get advanced degrees in poetry. Then we graduated into an economy dominated by corporations loath to pay anyone without an MBA anywhere near what they were worth. Meanwhile, the rise of the internet drastically lowered the bar to entry for going out on your own. Sites like Etsy and Soundcloud and Vimeo and Amazon provided a marketplace, PayPal gave anyone access to online billing and social media opened up untold opportunities for marketing and networking. It's never been easier to make a living doing some creative shit you're good at, and the alternative has never looked less appealing. The corollary is that it's harder than ever to know when to pack it in and find a day job.

(A note: It's hard to find data to back up my point. The tally of freelance workers in America also includes those taking on side projects to make ends meet and folks who had their positions restructured so their employers could avoid giving them benefits. Which is also to say I acknowledge there's a level of privilege in my position. But the average household computer is capable of making a professional quality album and everyone's phone has an HD camera in it. Ask Soulja Boy, who's living proof you can DIY your way to a pop culture dynasty.)

Screen grab via YouTube.

Earlier last year, I went through a similar phase with the Tonight Show arc in season three of Louie, in which the titular comedian backs into a chance to take Jay Leno's hosting slot when he retires. He meets with his ex-wife to mull over the offer and hash out how their kids would deal with bicoastal parenting. She brutally cuts him down to size, making it clear that as a touring comedian whose best days are behind him, this could be his last shot to level up. His success is more important than his parenting. (I won't spoil it for you, but David Lynch and Parker Posey are amazing.)

But Louie CK comes from a different era. Twenty years ago, making ends meet as a comedian (or a musician, writer, artist, etc.) was an all-or-nothing proposition. It took years of hard work and dues-paying and a good bit of luck to even sniff the level of stability afforded to me and anyone like me. The fictional Louie already overcame great odds to stall out on a much higher plateau; the idea that he has to reach another level is almost comically demoralizing.

On Motherboard: Goodbye International Space Station, Hello Moon Village

This brings us back to me, properly zooted at 3 AM on a Thursday, watching Bojack Horseman watch his own personal version of Sliding Doors. To Bojack, life with Charlotte means more than just the satisfaction of raising a family: the day-to-day challenges of life in the woods provide structure and discipline he so badly craves, to the point where he follows a straight path all the way through to his own death. There's something very appealing about that calm logic when your life lacks obvious direction, whether you got there by making a successful fictional sitcom, or by establishing yourself as a freelancer.

That said, things turn out all right for Bojack. After hitting rock bottom, he bounces back and ends season one set to star in a biopic about Secretariat. It's his dream role, as he has idolized the famed racehorse his entire life, a project with enough personal heft to give his life the meaning and direction he sought in life with Charlotte. Can he live up to the demands and responsibilities of a life with purpose? Find out in the second season! I will be tuning in to find out, probably at 3 AM in the middle of the week, for the next few months.

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Someone asleep who is not a villager in Kazakhstan. Photo by Flickr user Alex Bellink

Read: Officials Are Evacuating the City in Kazakhstan Where Villagers Fall Asleep At Random

For years, residents of remote villages in Kazakhstan have been plagued by a mysterious sleeping illness, causing more than 140 villagers to fall asleep at random, sometimes for up to six days at a time. No one could provide a solid explanation of exactly what in the hell was happening, until now.

This week, Kazakhstan's Deputy Prime Minister Berdibek Saparbaev announced what he believes to be the cause of the real-life Rip Van Winkle epidemic: Uranium mines, which had been closed in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union. According to the government, the mines had raised carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons in the air, the Guardian reports.

The uranium mines had been suggested as a cause of the sleeping sickness earlier, but when Kazakhstan's health ministry tested nearby homes, they didn't find any evidence of radiation from the mines. More strangely, blood tests of affected people came back without signs of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Without an official explanation, most people who suffered the illness were diagnosed with "encephalopathy of unclear origin," which basically means "there is something wrong with your brain, but we have no fucking clue what it is." Some suspected that the mass sleeping was a form of mass psychosis, and others suggested that it was caused by a bad batch of vodka.

The population of the towns is only 810 people, so the 140 sufferers represent about 17 percent of the population. The strange condition affected young and old alike; even the governor of one small town was hospitalized for abruptly falling asleep. Upon waking, people reported memory loss, confusion, and hallucinations.

Although it's still unclear how the inactive mines were producing such widespread, toxic levels of carbon monoxide, the government is making strides to evacuate the villagers. Officials began moving families in late January; the Guardian reported that authorities have relocated 68 out of 223 families so far.

Photo via the hitchBOT website

A talking, hitchhiking robot that's been traveling the world in the backseat of strangers' cars since 2014 is about to set out on a coast-to-coast road trip to San Francisco, AP reports.

Armed with nothing other than an outstretched robot thumb and a limited vocabulary of small talk, hitchBOT—the brainchild of two Canadian researchers, Frauke Zeller and David Harris Smith—is leaving Boston today with a bucket list. It's already toured Canada and Europe, where it crashed a wedding, sat in on an Indian Reservation powwow, and spent a week with a metal band. Now it wants to do America, and with the help of some of its 34,000 Twitter followers, it shouldn't have much trouble.

The robot stands about as tall as a six-year-old and is made out of a bunch of weird shit. Its body is a plastic beer bucket, its arms and legs are pool noodles, and it wears big, rubber gloves and rain boots. Zeller and Smith topped it off with an LED face stuck in a permanent grin and an AI personality, but didn't give it the ability to move on its own. Instead, hitchBOT needs fellow travelers to help it spend a night in Times Square (bad move), catch a live jazz show in New Orleans (good move), and do the wave at a sports game, along with a few other things on its checklist.

hitchBot's built-in camera and GPS tracker allow it to document its trip, and the robot will tweet about its current location throughout the trek. If things go according to plan, people will cart the robot across the country in their cars, dropping it off wherever they please with its thumb stuck up in the air for the next traveler to pick up. If not, some asshole will smash it to pieces with a baseball bat, or a tornado will turn it into dust.

"We want to see what people do with this kind of technology when we leave it up to them," Zeller told the AP. "It's an art project in the wild—it invites people to participate."

All photos and clips courtesy of Universal Pictures

"What can I say about Amy Schumer?" asked Family Guy creator and star Seth MacFarlane when he introduced the then-30-year-old at the Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen in September 2011. "I actually mean that sincerely—I've never heard of this woman. So please get ready for the comedy stylings of the fourth runner-up of the fifth season of Last Comic Standing."

From there, Schumer could have easily faded into oblivion: if not a has-been, then a never-was. Instead, less than four years later, she and MacFarlane are now peers, both with their own television shows and top-lining summer blockbusters from Universal. Ted 2 (co-written and directed by MacFarlane) made more than $33 million is opening weekend, and Trainwreck (written by Schumer and directed by Judd Apatow) just might surpass it at the box office. It opens in 3,157 theaters today.

Schumer was nominated yesterday for four Primetime Emmy Awards for her Comedy Central variety half-hour, Inside Amy Schumer, including Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. This spring Inside Amy Schumer, which premiered in 2013, also won a Peabody Award—the highest honor in broadcasting—and she hosted the MTV Movie Awards. She is on the July cover of Glamour magazine and the August cover of GQ (wearing Princess Leia's bikini and sucking on the gold-plated finger of C-3PO, the droid sidekick of the most anticipated film of the year, Star Wars: The Force Awakens).

"My whole life, I felt like people wanted the girls to be a little quieter," Schumer recently told The New York Times. Instead, encouraged by her parents, the Upper East Side native who studied theater at Towson University became a stand-up comedian.

"My parents are actually kind of dirtier than I am in nature," she told me at GQ's 2013 Men of the Year Dinner that November at Carbone, a Manhattan Italian restaurant. "I feel like people are always like, 'Are they embarrassed?' But they're so supportive. I'm about to go on tour, and the name of the tour is Inside Amy Schumer's Back Door Tour, and my mom was the biggest fan of that name."

Several Inside Amy Schumer sketches have gone viral during its three seasons, especially ones that reveal something about how women think. For example, "Hello M'Lady" called out always-available, effusively polite nice guys who swoop in when a women's left feeling jilted by machismo. At a November 2014 panel at the Paley Center panel presented in association with the New York Comedy Festival, which I attended for Vulture, moderator Jason Zinoman of the New York Times said, "I've never seen the 'Hello M'lady' guy lampooned and skewered from that perspective... It seems like a subtle thing, but I recognized it immediately. But I haven't seen it on TV before."

In "Compliments"—which Trainwreck co-star Tilda Swinton told me at last year's Gotham Awards is her favorite Inside Amy Schumer sketch—well-meaning women excoriate themselves to avoid ego inflation (I made my own psychiatrist watch it when he said I tend to negate praise). Accomplished panelists belittle each other by relying on an all-too-common verbal tic in "I'm Sorry," while "Last Fuckable Day" (co-starring Patricia Arquette, Tina Fey, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus) acknowledges the theoretical finite death of a woman's sex appeal. "Acting Off-Camera" was noteworthy because it was the first time Comedy Central censors allowed the word "pussy" on the air (meanwhile, the word "dick" had been fair game for years). And in "Football Town Nights," she assailed campus rape culture with a head coach who challenged his players to abstain from sexual assault.

Along with earning upgrades from "the new queen of comedy" (Bust, April 2013) to one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" (April 2015) to "the funniest woman in the galaxy" (GQ, August 2015), Schumer was thus declared a "feminist hero" in The New York Times. Between her show and a 2014 speech Gloria Steinem asked her to give at the Ms. Foundation for Women's Gloria Awards and Gala, she has made feminism accessible to young women used to hearing their idols (Madonna, Katy Perry) balk at the term. The sex-positive comedian has also gone far in her quest to encourage women to embrace their body images. While accepting her Trailblazer of the Year trophy from the Glamour UK Women of the Year Awards last month, Schumer said, "I'm probably like 160 pounds right now and I can catch a dick whenever I want."

Though Schumer perfected her onscreen delivery with Inside Amy Schumer and guest-starring roles on 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Louie, and Girls, Trainwreck is Schumer's first lead role in a film. As in real life, her character in the Apatow universe is named Amy, she has a sister named Kimberly, and their father, Gordon, is stricken with multiple sclerosis. But instead of playing a comedian, Schumer's alter ego is a writer for the fictional men's magazine S'nuff. "Before you judge, you should know I'm doing fine—my friends are awesome, my apartment's sick, and I have a great job." Still, she's the titular trainwreck, a commitment-phobe who smokes, drinks juiceboxes full of wine at the movies, and dumps guys for the wrong reasons (i.e., when his inability to talk dirty overshadows his homosexual proclivity). Then she's dispatched to profile Dr. Aaron Connors (Bill Hader), the least-cool dude in a posse of pro athletes (LeBron James, Amar'e Stoudemire) who seeks a girlfriend.

Trainwreck will likely reaffirm that female-driven comedies like the Apatow-produced Bridesmaids and the Pitch Perfect films can clean up at the box office, boding well for December's Sisters (starring Amy Poehler and Tina Fey) and 2016's gender-flipping Ghostbusters reboot with Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. Sisters scribe Paula Pell, a veteran Saturday Night Live writer, was even a guest at the Tavern on the Green after-party following Tuesday night's screening of Trainwreck co-presented by Film Society of Lincoln Center and Universal.

Right before Schumer received a hug from comedian Chris Rock, who told her he loved Trainwreck, I complimented her for uttering some of cinema's saltiest language—including a novel pronunciation of the word bitch and clever variations on the pejorative dick.

"I'm all about breaking boundaries," Schumer said.

Trainwreck opens in theaters nationwide today.

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Photo courtesy of the NYPD

Photos of what looked like a couple of people with big guns in a Staten Island parking lot had the borough's residents freaking out Friday afternoon.

Panic and confusion erupted after a picture taken by a retired NYPD cop in the Midland Beach neighborhood depicted a woman in a headscarf holding either a paintball gun or, more ominously, some kind of assault rifle.

By late Friday afternoon, traffic on the island was reportedly a total nightmare. According to the Staten Island Advance, there's a heavy police presence at Gateway National Recreational Area in the neighborhood of Fort Wadsworth. CBS News is also reporting that all vehicles leaving the island are being checked. The ones in the photographs bear New Jersey plates A83FCB and PSJ52V; NYPD Deputy Commissioner John J. Miller said in a statement this afternoon that "interviews conducted by NYPD and FBI investigators in New Jersey have revealed that the registered owner of one of the vehicles indicated that he was planning to go paintball shooting with friends today."

Local cops were likely already on edge because today is the one-year anniversary of Eric Garner's death. The 43-year-old father of six was standing on the sidewalk in Staten Island's Tompkinsville neighborhood on July 17, 2014, when he was put into an illegal chokehold by Officer Daniel Pantaleo. After crying "I can't breathe" 11 times—video of the altercation went viral and sparked protests around the country—Garner went into cardiac arrest en route to the hospital and died. About three dozen people gathered Friday at the scene of the confrontation in order to celebrate Garner's life, the New York Times reported. A white dove was let loose by Garner's 15-month-old daughter Legacy.

Earlier this week, Garner's family settled with New York City for $5.9 million before their wrongful death lawsuit went to trial. Meanwhile, Officer Pantaleo is still under 24-hour surveillance for his own safety.

CBS News pointed out that officers are also on edge after yesterday's shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

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All photos by Christelle de Castro

Today marks the one year anniversary of Eric Garner's untimely death at the hands of the New York Police Department. Garner's killing, which was caught on video, helped bring America's focus back to its police brutality problem and unresolved legacy of racially-charged law enforcement. And Garner's 11 pleas of "I can't breathe" became a rallying cry for those fighting against these systemic woes, serving as catalyst that helped mobilize a whole new generation of activists.

Christelle de Castro, a New York-based photographer and art director, was there when the water began to boil over and people hit the streets in protest. The images that follow were taken toward the end of last year at three different demonstrations in New York City inspired by brutality perpetrated on unarmed black men. Check out the images and read what Christelle has to say one year after it all began.

VICE: What inspired you to document these protests?
Christelle de Castro: My roots are in street photography. But seven years into working commercially, my relationship with taking pictures changed. I forgot what it was to have my camera on me everyday and document everyday things. In fact, I almost left my house for my first protest of last year without my camera. It was a last minute decision to take my gear with me. Activism is in my blood—I rallied against Bush in SF as a teenager. The difference now is that I'm a professional photographer, so I've gained a new platform for activism, which I define as honest reportage though pictures.

What did the death of Eric Garner say to you as an artist of color, and a New Yorker?
As a New Yorker, it makes me incredibly sad. As a person of color, it makes me feel frustrated and angry. As an American, I guess I mostly feel shame.

A year after Garner's death, where do you think we are with the issue of police brutality?
Let's talk about Sandra Bland, who was recently found dead in her jail cell. America was built on violence directed at the bodies of people of color, particularly enslaved African Americans. Police brutality against blacks is a continuation of this legacy. I don't believe much has changed.

How do you feel we can push the #BlackLivesMatter movement further and what responsibility do photographers and visual artists have?
I don't think visual artists have a responsibility to be activists. My work is political at times, because I'm a political person. As a person of color and given the times, it's hard not to be. For instance, 80 percent of my daily Facebook posts are about race or sexism, but those social media conversations are reflective of my lived experience as a queer woman of color and not necessarily motivated by a sense of responsibility as an artist. I bring activism into my work because it's my personal way of expression, connecting with others, and dealing.

I think Americans have a responsibility to change the history curriculum taught in schools. Our history books need to be honest, as brutal as it may be. Students are taught a light-weight flowery version of how America was "founded" that obscures colonialism and how insanely barbaric, violent, and horrific slavery truly was.

We need to be honest to our kids so we aren't raising a bunch of uninformed, racially biased, brainwashed Americans. The ignorance of white privilege operates on such opaque histories. The lack of perspectives written by, told by, and seen through the lens of people of color is one major reason why the history curriculum is so vague about the violence this country was built on. We need to give students more black, brown, and queer theorists to study from, look up to, and be empowered by. Maybe then we can all breathe.

All the following images taken by Christelle de Castro. Follow her on Instagram.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Pete

Related: France Wants You to Eat Ugly Vegetables

According to a 2012 paper published by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Americans waste 40 percent of all produced food. Unsurprisingly—considering our country's obsession with image—much of this wasted food is tossed out simply because it isn't deemed to be aesthetically pleasing enough to sell in commercial stores.

Fortunately, a new project called Imperfect Produce has stepped in to save the day by advocating for the rights of unfairly trashed ugly produce. According to its website, Imperfect Produce aims to "reduce food waste while making produce more affordable for all families" by giving "consumers the chance to buy delicious, wonky-looking produce at a discount." Currently, they have listed a few different "produce boxes" that are available for preorder, all ranging in price from $12 to $18.

Until recently, Imperfect Produce had primarily marketed itself as "a home and office produce delivery service," and were scheduled to start deliveries in early August. Now, however, a few weeks ahead of its delivery service launch, Imperfect Produce has partnered with a northern California supermarket chain, Raley's, to sell "Real Good" produce in select locations as part of a nine-month pilot program.

Ten Raley's locations are now stocking Imperfect Produce on their shelves and selling the ugly produce for up to 30 percent cheaper than the pretty produce to which we have become accustomed.

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