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

Cry-Baby #1: Barvetta Singletary

Screencap via Google Maps

The incident: A woman asked a guy she was boning for the password to his phone. He said no.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: She allegedly fired a gun at him.

Barvetta Singletary is a special assistant to President Obama and a House of Representatives legislative affairs liaison. She has worked at the White House for about a year.

According to news reports, Barvetta is dating an unnamed cop. She reportedly texted the cop last Friday and asked "for sexual intercourse." After meeting up and having sex, Barvetta allegedly asked the man about another woman he was seeing, before asking if she could have the password to his phone.

Wisely, he declined.

At this point, Barvetta is said to have taken the cop's service weapon, pointed it at him, and said, "You taught me how to use this, don't think I won't use it."

Then my actual worst nightmare happened: Barvetta demanded the man's phone password at gunpoint.

She then allegedly fired a shot in the man's direction, missing him, before wiping the gun clean with a towel in an effort to remove her fingerprints. The cop bailed and called some other cops who arrested Barvetta and charged her with assault and reckless endangerment. She was released on bail after posting a $75,000 bond.

In a statement to CNN, the White House said Barvetta had been put on unpaid leave pending an investigation. "We are aware of the matter and have temporarily placed the employee in question on unpaid leave and revoked her access to the complex until we have more information. We will take additional actions as needed," the statement read.

Cry-Baby #2: An Unnamed Islamaphobe

Screencap via Reddit

The incident: A Muslim woman drove an Uber.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: A lady allegedly contacted the Muslim Uber driver through Facebook and threatened to file a formal complaint against her on the grounds that she is a Muslim.

On Tuesday, a Reddit user with the handle gueriLLaPunK submitted a screencap to the site's /r/facepalm subreddit, showing what he says is a Facebook post by an Uber-driving Muslim friend of his. The post appears to show a screencap of a Facebook messenger chat between the Uber driver and another woman.

"I'm totally offended that UBER would allow a Muslim to drive and that she is allowed a berka [sic] when doing so," the first message reads. "If I ordered an UBER and she pulled up I would cancel immediately. Her Husband could very well be the enemy within. I will be sending in a formal complaint."

In a second message, the woman writes: "Furthermore, if you post this or share with anyone I will defiantly take action." She may or may not have meant to use the word "definitely" there.

In the Facebook status that accompanies the post, the Uber driver wrote: "This woman is trying to get me deactivated because she doesn't like that I'm Muslim and wear a headscarf while I drive."

According to comments posted on Reddit by gueriLLaPunK the angry, Muslim-hating woman deleted her Facebook account after the chats were posted. The Reddit user also claims that people have contacted the woman's employers to complain about her.

It is not clear whether or not the enraged woman took defiant action.

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here, if you could:

Previously: A woman who allegedly committed a hate crime against her neighbors in an argument over dog poop vs. a cop who pulled a gun on a guy for filming him.

Winner: The cop!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

A photo of vitiligo via

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

About a year and a half ago I developed round, red, itchy sores on my legs, ass, and lower back. When I first went to the doctor I was prescribed the wrong treatment, which made the condition much worse. When I returned about six months later, the GP googled my symptoms to find out what these parasitic red blotches might be. It turned out I was suffering from Seborrhoeic dermatitis, a condition that affects one to three percent of healthy adults. It's fair to say that my confidence began to fade away, as did my sex life.

It seemed to me that my doctor's cluelessness might be symptomatic of a wider problem, and a report published in 2013 by the UK-based All Party Parliamentary Group on Skin (APPGS) confirms that many patients felt that treatment from doctors regarding their skin was totally inadequate.

There is a severe shortage of dermatologists in the UK, which is particularly alarming given that it is estimated that around 54 percent of the population experiences a skin condition in any given 12-month period. Research has also highlighted the "extensive impact skin diseases have on all aspects of people's lives from schooling, relationships, self-esteem, and career choices to social, sexual, and leisure activities."

It found that while there is a vast spectrum of skin conditions: eczema psoriasis, acne, vitiligo, urticarial, and many more, each condition has the potential to impact one's mental wellbeing. Studies have also shown a correlation between skin conditions and a higher risk of drug and alcohol misuse, as well as suicidal thoughts. In 2011, a study involving 510 acne patients, for example, found that the vast majority reported levels of social and psychological problems that were as great as those reported by patients with long-term conditions such as chronic disabling asthma, epilepsy, and diabetes.

Stats like these have led to calls for more psychological support to be offered to those with skin conditions, but as of yet, very little has been done.

Related: Watch our documentary on 'The Sacred Art of the Japanese Tattoo'

Dr. Andrew Thompson, who has been doing research in the field of psychodermatology for over 15 years, tells me, "Most dermatology services don't have easy access, or dedicated access to psychological services." Only seven out of 127 hospitals have a dedicated psychodermatology service and, although other hospitals may have access to clinical psychology services, this is somewhat patchy.

The 2013 APPGS report makes it very clear that there is a real gap in services, but Dr. Thompson highlights that "what's really disappointing is that that's actually a follow-on report—the report in 2003 basically reported the same issues." So, a whole decade has gone by and the issues are still the same—poor access to psychological support, poor access to treatment, and little research. It's not as if the issues are not understood; they are articulately and extensively outlined in the APPGS report, but perhaps that's a testament to the low productivity of an All Party Parliamentary Group.

Dr. Thompson explains that the root of the problem stems in part from a lack of research: "The research simply hasn't been done, it hasn't been funded to have been done." Research is key because if you demonstrate that treatments are effective, the government, commissioners of NHS services, hospitals, and so on are more likely to dip into their pockets and fund these services.

The next question is, why hasn't the research itself been funded? Dr. Thompson answers candidly: "Maybe because both mental health and skin health are still considered Cinderella-services. It could be because a significant amount of the psychological distress associated with skin conditions is associated with appearance concern, and that might be considered vain." In other words, skin conditions have often been dismissed as cosmetic and consequently seen as unimportant in comparison to other forms of healthcare.

A patch of psoriasis Jenny had that was shaped like a heart

Jennifer White is a 32-year-old psoriasis blogger. She agrees with Dr. Thompson when she discusses her illness. "It's definitely perceived to be quite trivial I think." Jenny continues, "I think the other thing is that, for young medics, dermatology is not considered the most glamorous of specialties—rheumatologists get to deal with the grittier stuff—whereas dermatology doesn't necessarily come out as seeming that serious."

Another factor is that dermatology is rarely, if ever, considered to be a core module in university medical courses in the UK. Until dermatology is recognized as a key field in medical care, standards of provision are only likely to get worse. Very few skin conditions are life-threatening, so it is understandable that at times priority must lie elsewhere, but this doesn't mean skin conditions should be marginalized or under-prioritized as a whole.

Jenny has had psoriasis since she can remember and has never been offered any sort of psychological support, something she thinks would have been helpful because of how "hugely connected it is to [her] stress levels." She goes on, "The lack of control over your own skin is really horrible. I got engaged recently and I'd rather not be covered in psoriasis on my wedding day. But, if that happens, there's nothing I can do." Psoriasis, like many other skin conditions, waxes and wanes, it gets better and worse depending on a number of factors including tiredness, stress, or a low immune system.

The trouble is that your skin—especially when on your face—is subject to public judgment. Skin is the first thing that people look at; it's not something we can get away from. Jenny tells me many stories of strangers asking about her conditions in bathrooms and on the street. Other times people are just purposefully offensive. "I've actually had strangers tap on my shoulder in a pub and go, 'Excuse me love, do you realize you've got dandruff? Its disgusting.' That was pretty mortifying at the age of 20." It wasn't dandruff; it was flakes from the psoriasis Jenny had on her scalp.

Much of the problem seems to be the lack of understanding around skin conditions; Jenny says that most people she meets have never heard of psoriasis. "It can be especially embarrassing when you're at school because people don't understand what it is. I've definitely had experiences of being very young and having parents go, 'What is that? Is it contagious?'" The assumption that it is contagious is so common that the National Psoriasis Foundation's Twitter picture directly quotes, "We won't ask you... Is it contagious?"

READ: VICE's mental health coverage

Alongside the risks of bullying, Dr. Thompson adds that, "There is research that indicates that [skin conditions] might have a real impact on things like employment prospects because interviewers might actually not recall as much information from the interview as a result of attraction biases; essentially they are distracted by differences in appearance." People have automatic responses which mean that initially they may overly focus on visible differences, rather than the person.

Evidence submitted by a woman to the 2013 APPGS report confirmed Dr. Thompson's suspicion of a weakening in job prospects: "I feel that in applying for jobs over the last few years, since my vitiligo has become more extensive, I've been passed over in favor of other candidates."

The British Skin Foundation conducted a survey in 2012 which found that, of 729 people who had suffered skin diseases, 47 percent said that they had been victims of verbal abuse one or more times, and one in six of the respondents admitted to having self-harmed as a result of their skin disease. Disturbingly, 17 percent (125 people) said they had contemplated suicide at some stage in their lives.

Dr. Thompson often works with NHS patients with a range of skin conditions; he recently worked with someone with acne scarring who had made several attempts at suicide. He told me that she would always compare herself to other women: "She'd constantly say, 'Oh, that girl's skin is so much better than mine, I'm hideous.'" Thompson points out that, often, people with skin conditions can experience symptoms similar to social anxiety and to some extent body dysmorphic disorder, becoming obsessed with their perceived skin imperfections. "We do need pathways into intense forms of psychological support, such as cognitive behavioral therapy for the people who might need it."

I was lucky enough not to be seriously affected by my condition, but I did experience higher levels of anxiety due to the critical gaze of strangers. And I only had it for a couple of months. The risk of developing a mental health problem is invariably higher for those with visible physical health problems. Far from being trivial, our skin encases our whole body, it is our largest organ and our most visible one and yet it is still being ignored. As long as there is an increased risk of anxiety or depression for those with skin conditions, there needs to be a better medical infrastructure to deal with it.

Follow Amber Roberts on Twitter.

A new website provided by The British Association of Dermatologists provides some self-help leaflets—a good place for people distressed by their skin condition to access information.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Every 28 days or so, the female body sheds its old uterine lining, therein marking the start of a new cycle in which a new uterine lining is generated. At the same time, follicles begin to form in the ovaries which eventually turn into an egg. The egg ultimately leaves the ovary during ovulation and, if it gets fertilized, it nests in the fresh, comfy uterine lining. If it doesn't get fertilized, it detaches and is eliminated in a bloody torrent along with the old uterine lining. This process repeats ova and ova and ova.

This, dear men, is what we call a "period." I know the subject—fuck, even the word—makes many of you slightly uncomfortable. And I know that there are others who fetishize it. And then there are the Donald Trumps of this world who seem so terrified by the thought of uterine lining that they freak out and accuse female journalists of being on their periods live on national television.

The thing is, a woman's period is completely natural. Your mom couldn't have made you without it. Did I just make you think of your mom's period? Great. We're getting somewhere. Here's a guide to periods for men so you can finally stop crying.

Fertility

Menstruation is amazing because it's basically a stream of blood that lets the world know how fertile the female body is. You bleed a bit in exchange for being able to give life—doesn't that make up for all the other crap? Well, not really. It's not that simple. You can be completely infertile and still be subjected to crippling monthly menstrual cramps. Regularly shedding your uterine lining doesn't necessarily mean that ovulation is actually occurring, either. The rumor that women can't get pregnant during their period is also a lie.

Photo via Flickr user

Money

Menstruation probably hasn't forced anyone to file for bankruptcy just yet. That said, there are actually several activists and journalists who are publicly calling for necessary hygiene products (tampons, maxi pads, and menstrual cups) to be subsidized by health insurance providers. It's not really about the financial burden that buying these things puts on women, it's about the principle. Let's face it, nobody buys a little cotton plug to stuff up their vagina for fun. The female sex didn't collectively decide on doing the whole menstruation thing, either. The fact that, in Australia, maxi pads and tampons aren't exempt from "goods and services tax" is completely baffling—especially given that condoms and sunscreen are.

And why does medication for "menstrual pains" have to be twice as expensive as regular painkillers? Having to shell out $15 a month just to avoid being crippled from cramps is completely unacceptable.

Pain

Guys, have you ever felt as if a pack of speed-addled moles were trying to burrow through your intestines? No? Have you ever had such relentless, disgustingly hollow cramps that you had to puke from the pain? Probably not. Were you forced to go to your job as if nothing was up because you can't call in sick two or three days each month?

You probably think I'm exaggerating, but the worst pain I've ever experienced was when I had my period and forgot to stock up on nuclear-strength painkillers. I was literally prepared to rip my own womb out just to make it stop. You guys have no idea what women have to endure each month.

Watch Broadly's documentary 'The Abortion Pill':

Blood. Blood everywhere.

Remember that scene from The Shining where thousands of gallons of blood pour out of an elevator? That's probably the most accurate menstruation metaphor a movie has ever used. Even though women only lose an average of 200ml of blood during their period, it feels like a lot more. Especially when you wake up in a pool of it.

I've actually had guys tell me that the smell of a period ("like raw steak") has something quite animalistic and arousing to it. Excitement surrounding such feminine issues should, however, be kept in check. Bleeding isn't something that's fun. Having to throw underwear away because of the, apparently insane, assumption that you might be finished gushing blood after four days, also sucks.

And while we're at it, since those supposedly super-absorbent pads we stick between our legs are somehow incapable of catching every drop of the red torrent—why don't they finally make a reliable, certified cleaning product that actually gets blood stains out of cloths, sheets, and fabrics? No woman wants to look like a murderer when they bring things to the dry cleaners.

Sexual interaction

Sex during your period is as difficult a topic as it is diverse. There's no real consensus on the matter. Some women feel so uncomfortable during the girl-flu that they just can't have sex. Others embrace their period and actually turn sex into a messy red celebration. Either way, it's understandable that not every guy is up for burying their head into an inexhaustible flow of blood and uterine lining.

Nevertheless, treating a menstruating woman like some contaminated sexual no-go area simply isn't OK. We can't do anything about it. We're the ones who suffer the most in this situation. Doesn't it just make you guys all the more manly if you're able to deal with the less cute sides of being a woman?

Photo via Flickr user

Disgust

At the risk of repeating myself, not everyone has to think it's erotic to suck on used tampons or to rub bloody pads on their face. But—and this is very, very important—the last thing a woman wants to hear about her period, is that it's "disgusting."

Believe me, we feel horrible enough, already. First of all, there are significantly more repulsive things than blood discharging from a body. And second of all, you probably wouldn't want us to leave the room puking if your cum tasted bad.

"She's definitely on her period!"

Darling men, you often say the stupidest of things simply because you don't know any better. Sure, you've grasped the basic (and correct notion) that women are more hormonal during their period and that it, of course, influences our mood. But that doesn't make our feelings any less legitimate. A woman on her period is a broken person who's being dragged through the depths of hell just to be able to bring your spawn into the world.

Don't ask yourselves why women don't take your ignorant babbling well. Instead, ask yourselves how we're able to withstand the sensation of a knife slowly stabbing us in the stomach.

Jared Russell initiates a new coven member. Photo courtesy Jared Russell

Patriarchy should be feeling a pricking in its thumbs right about now. The witch is back, and this time it's taking aim at the norms of gender itself.

Over the course of the 20th century, the popular idea of the witch underwent a transformation. Gone was the baby-eating, Satan-worshipping hag of Medieval Europe, and in its place emerged a potent female healer.

Second-wave feminists seeking a strong female subject latched onto the witch as the embodiment of feminine power. Witchcraft entered the feminist consciousness spiritually, though traditions like Wicca, and politically, as groups like WITCH—the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell—publically hexed everything from beauty pageants to fees for public transit. Yet while the revival empowered some, it excluded others, and many of the groups that emerged were reserved for women.

But the idea of the witch has come a long way since then. Witchcraft is seeing a resurgence among queer-identified young people seeking a powerful identity that celebrates the freedom to choose who you are.

Make no mistake, though: the new witchcraft is still all about hexing the patriarchy.

Soft-spoken and covered in tattoos, Colby Gaudet doesn't exactly fit the stereotypical image of the witch. But Gaudet's been known to launch into a witchcraft ritual when the moment is right. And identifying as a witch appeals to Gaudet's self-professed "strange exhibitionist quality" by playing with people's preconceived notions: of tattoos, of Gaudet's non-binary gender identity, and of how a witch should look.

Gaudet first discovered witchcraft as a teenage boy growing up in rural Nova Scotia in the 1990s. The message of self-acceptance and personal freedom Gaudet encountered in books from the '70s and '80s allowed them to explore a queer identity in a space free from shame and guilt.

"Those were my first steps into embracing my own sexuality and the first glimpses of exploring my gender," Gaudet told VICE via Skype from Vancouver.

But it wasn't a perfect match; the witchcraft tradition Gaudet had discovered was founded on a male-female binary, which didn't fit with Gaudet's developing sense of gender identity.

"I felt myself in that philosophy, but I didn't see myself in it."

As they entered their mid-20s and began identifying as non-binary, Gaudet rediscovered witchcraft through queer witches who directed Gaudet to more subversive practices. The timing was hardly coincidental; Gaudet says the capacity for witchcraft to accommodate alternative expressions of gender is what makes it appealing to a new generation of witches.

Jared Russell is part of that new generation. Russell was raised Mormon in the small Nova Scotian town of Pictou. Growing up, he wore skirts, makeup, and nail polish because they made him feel most comfortable in his own skin. Sometimes it was hard, he says—he was bullied.

But connecting this to his identity as a witch has given Russell the license to stand out. Dressing as a witch helps him find strength in the spiritual side of witchcraft—which he says includes spells, celebrating eight annual equinoxes, and devising his own witchcraft tradition—and in challenging dominant expectations of gender.

"It allows myself to express myself without this constant ego filter," he says. "When I picture myself [as a witch], without judgment, everything just fits."

But witchcraft isn't just about identity; it's also pretty practical.

Goat femme fatale: Dakota Hendrix. Photo courtesy Dakota Hendrix

Dakota Hendrix, a non-binary, trans witch based in New York—an identity Hendrix jokingly refers to as "goat femme," describing their combination of body hair, a smoky eye, and talons for nails—says the practice of witchcraft is a way to take control in a world that can be both metaphysically and mortally threatening.

It's a supernatural form of self-defense that Hendrix says includes amulets that fight off mis-gendering, rituals that provide protection when walking down the street, and honour paid to queer and trans ancestors who don't have descendants of their own paying homage. Not to mention—because Hendrix says contemporary witchcraft is connected to social justice work—a hex or two on the NYPD for good measure.

But while the rituals are plentiful, the rules are not, and Hendrix says being a witch is all about choosing one's own path.

"Being a witch is being autonomous; that's the whole point. That's how we draw power. We are defying the patriarchy, we are defying the submissive norm."

"There is no one way to be a witch," says Mey Rude. "It's a really freeing identity."

Dakota Hendrix

Rude is a Latina witch who was raised Catholic in Idaho, and though she moved away from the church and into witchcraft after she came out as transgender, her practice is informed by her religious roots. This means a lot of candles, shrines dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe ("She's a very queer goddess," Rude says) and traditional Mexican herbal remedies.

Rude says that playing with gender by wearing aggressively dark makeup is also part of her witch identity. While individual ornamentation may seem superficial, it's as important a ritual as anything else.

Identifying as a witch makes her strong, she explains. It's intimidating to be a trans woman of colour in public, and the tools and rituals of witchcraft make her feel like she's just as formidable as the culture that would threaten her.

In Medieval Europe, the idea of the witch was used as a weapon against marginalized people, and the person most likely to be accused of witchcraft was the old crone at the edge of the village.

But those roles have been reversed, and what was once used as a weapon against marginalized people is now working to defend them. Witches might still be on the edge, but they're claiming that place for themselves, and drawing power from an identity that celebrates defiance while embracing difference. After all, what is being a witch if not owning the right to be yourself?

Follow Moira Donovan on Twitter.

Tyler, the Creator. All photos by Atiba Jefferson

If all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, then Jack never met Atiba Jefferson or learned that the trick is to make a job out of doing something you love. And if what you like to spend your time partying... well, you don't have to be sorry about it. Atiba Jefferson isn't.

After many failed attempts to reach Jefferson, I finally managed to catch up with the renowned photographer-turned-entrepreneur at home in Los Angeles. Fresh off a 21-day work bender with the Baker dudes, he was already mid-Uber to DJ a double-bill at Known Gallery and the West Hollywood bar he co-owns with professional skateboarders Heath Kirchart, Jerry Hsu, and Braydon Szafranski. It became very apparent that the man is in high demand with no sign of slowing down except (in the case of the recent Baker tour) to do the occasional shoot with Big Sean and Lil Wayne, or NBA superstars like LeBron James and Allen Iverson.

Life wasn't always moving so fast for the 38-year-old Colorado native. 20 years ago, when his family was living off food stamps, he moved to California with his brother and best friend with the idea of landing a job as a 7-Eleven clerk. An extremely grateful, compassionate, and positive person, Jefferson attributes most of his success (and downfall) to his "love everyone" attitude. But loyalty, particularly to skateboarding, has served him well and is why he will always prefer thumb-gunning beers in alleyways to bottle service and first-class flights.

Despite all his popular success, Jefferson has maintained his roots in the things that truly make him happy: skateboarding, music, and basketball. And he keeps his personal interests at the forefront of every business decision he makes. He wanted a better camera bag, so he started Bravo. He drinks a lot of beer so he got involved with Saint Archer... But it can't be that easy, you've got to eat right? He co-owns a restaurant in downtown LA, too, and that's not all!

VICE: Before you were known for your photography, you filmed. What was going on there and how did you make that transition?
JEFFERSON: It was like, my first high school photography class and I had a camera, then I broke it and I kind of took some time off from shooting. It was never anything serious, but I just didn't have a camera. That was my junior year, and in my senior year something kind of switched and I took it a little more seriously. I worked with a friend that summer on trying to get an article published, and got one in Transworld. I'd met Josh Beagle that fall and that relationship kind of sparked me into, 'Oh, I want to be a photographer.'

Epicly Later'd with Eric Koston, part five

But then when you moved from Colorado to California, you ended up filming, but taking photos on the side?
I was just lurking around and I didn't really have any idea what I wanted to do in terms of work. I was gonna go work at a 7-Eleven. [Dave] Swift had hooked me up freelancing for Foundation, and Heath [Kirchart] and Josh—they were my two friends, so they got me a situation where I was just filming them. Back then, you filmed and you had a Hi-8 camera and you shot photos. So you did both—it wasn't one over the other, you know. That was just the formula that Swift and Ortiz and all these dudes did. Skaters would do stuff twice; you'd take a photo and then film it. It was great to learn how to kind of do that, to be honest. When the Foundation video had finished, I was going to a job interview at 7-Eleven, and Grant was like, "Dude just help me send back photos to photographers and assist me part time and it will help pay your rent." I started doing that and Ako had already started working there [Transworld Skateboarding Magazine]. Then my role kind of transformed because if those guys were gonna go shoot something they didn't wanna film it too so they would bring me to film. So there was actually a big period where I was kinda mostly a filmer than photographer during Uno, 4WD, Cinematographer...

I still remember that redux Grant Brittain cover of Transworld of you 360 flipping on flat. And then some time after that it seems you started shooting photos with Eric Koston?
The funny thing is I have actually known Eric for a long time. I have photos I shot of Eric in 1995. I went up for a weekend and remember staying with him and he was super cool and we were trying to get this table line and he wasn't happy with it because he was tic-tacking and he was getting mad and I was like, "This is amazing!" And I shot him with Swift once where I shot a sequence of like the first switch smith for an Orion [skateboard trucks] ad, and it was a really big deal and I actually got poached by Filmer from 411 [video magazine]. He was literally at the spot and he was filming it from above—I think he put it out first and that's why that term 'Poach' came about. Long story short is I did shoot Eric in '95 and that's when I met him and we became friends. I was always a big fan and through the years I lived in San Diego, but we'd always stay in touch and I would come up to LA and skate with him. We had a lot in common, we were both big basketball fans and I started doing a lot more basketball stuff—shooting basketball games, shooting the Lakers games and that's when that relationship really kind of blossomed and the friendship really took off. I moved up to LA in '99 and thats when we really, really became good friends.

How much have things changed between you guys since that first time you stayed with Eric at the Alta Vista house?
Eric is so much different than when we were kids. He has my vote for best dad ever of the year award. It's weird, even as kids out skating Eric was like, hmm, whatever... like everything was kind of whatever unless it came to the Lakers. It wasn't like he didn't have a passion for skating, it's just like he was too good. It came too easy. He was the kind of dude who was more worried about like what kind of car should I get. He used to get a new car every year. Now he's had the same car for 10 years, I swear to god.

Another group you're tight with is Supreme and Odd Future. I've always thought (and maybe it's been said before) that Odd Future was this generation's Wu-Tang Clan. Having toured with them for The Skateboard Mag, would you agree with that statement?
Yeah, definitely. I'm totally a supporter of those dudes and I'm so stoked for those guys because they've built something really special, and built it with a group of friends. I think they see what Wu-Tang did, you know: keep your squad together, keep what you're doing together. Man, it's not easy to be in those guys' shoes. For something to really blow up so big and be like, 'OK, what's next.' You know, everyone's so quick to judge, and that sucks, especially when you're a kid. It's one thing when you're 40 years old, it's like, okay break me down, tear me down. But yeah for those guys it's totally Wu-Tang related. I always say it's like Souls Of Mischief and Wu-Tang together. They skate and know skating and love skating. I'm always really proud of those dudes and what they do and what they've done. I'm like, let's get a Goat [Atiba's band] and Odd Future show going and they're like, 'No, I'm not ready.' Then overnight I'm like, I'm not even gonna ask... you guys are too big now. But they'll go to our shows and Ty will be front row and that's fucking rad. You know those dudes really did it and it's so fucking rad to see.

What was it like being on tour with them?
It's just complete hijinx... The funnest thing I ever did, I went on a Big Day Out tour. They call it the Big Day Out because there's so much free time between shows. So this tour came about and Tony [Hawk] asked me to go. It was Tony, Riley [Hawk], Clint Walker, Neil Hendrix, and myself, but there were some other skaters and they would do a demo for a half hour, 45 minutes... So we kinda went just to street skate and hang out. It was cool because that band Battles was on, and Odd Future. Tyler was always the dude who would call in the morning being like, 'Let's go skate, let's eat pancakes, let's hang out,' and then at night it was Hodgy, Left Brain, and those other guys hitting me up being like, 'What club are we going to, where's the party?' So this whole time I was just surrounded by Odd Future around the clock. Like I'd go rage with those dudes, wake up in the morning be thrashed, and then go meet up with Tyler and Taco for pancakes. And being in Australia—a fuckin' white ass country—with Tyler was so funny because he likes to make everything awkward so he was just calling everyone out and they had a lot of bad press for being anti-gay which is so fucking stupid. There were protests in one province, maybe it was Perth or New Zealand, they wouldn't allow them to play, and so they made a tour shirt called Big Gay Out with two cats fucking. It was just a really good time to see those dudes not give a fuck and just go there.

Back when you, Grant Brittain, and Dave Swift left TWS to start The Skateboard Mag, would you have ever imagined that you would wind up working with/for Eric?
No, no I'm really happy it worked out this way because he's one of my best friends and it just reinstates never feeling like you're working when you're working with him. And I think we came out on the other side a lot better than where [The Skateboard Mag] was a couple years ago and that's what people are kind of seeing. We ended up partnering up with Eric and The Berrics and it's giving us a lot more opportunities that we didn't have on our own, and I get to work with my best friend.

Both Koston and yourself are huge into basketball. When you started assisting the photographer for the Lakers would he come out on shoots with you? Did you guys ever hang out socially with basketball players?
Not necessarily. When Shaq was on the Lakers I got a call from Eric, 'Dude, I'm filming this 311 video with Shaq, come to the set,' and it's super funny because he had to do an air over him. But Shaq, when I saw him was like, 'Oh, what's up?' because I was working for the Lakers. Back in the day, we would see them in clubs but we weren't like all at a table or something. Eric's done that and I've done that on separate occasions, but we've never really done it together.

It must be such a trip going back and forth with NBA Players to skaters because the way those guys go out on the town is such a different thing.
Yeah, they're not really going to Black to just like go to a bar. I'm waiting one day to get one of them out but no, they're very simple people. There's actually this old NBA player that used to go to Cha Cha but he was retired. Cherokee Parks. He would rage with us—it was super funny.

When you started getting involved in owning a bar, where were your places of inspiration? Max Fish in New York?
Oh, absolutely. Max Fish—one of the first times I went there was probably '98 or '99 for my friend Marc Razo who was working there. I think every bar wants to be the Fish. I've been to a lot of bars you know, and there's always a skate bar in every town from Paris to Australia, whether it's Changelings in Sydney—skaters like to drink and have a good time and there's always that spot you need to go to. LA never really had it besides Cha Cha.

It's pretty amazing that there's a place you can go and get a drink from Heath Kirchart.
It's kind of like the graduation of when board companies started popping up owned by skaters. Now there's other things like Saint Archer beer and bars you can go to.

Yeah there are bars, there are restaurants... there's a restaurant that not many people know [myself] Ako and and Eric invested in called Dominick's. All that stuff is fun. I think that's the success of a lot of stuff. That's the success of Saint Archer. It's great that skaters support skater owned things.

So you have a beer company and restaurant, a bar, a bag company—which we should talk about—as well as being an original founder of The Skateboard Mag, playing in The Goat and DJing in Blackouts... am I missing anything?
It's unannounced, but I'm stoked because I'm a part of this thing called Grapes—a cell phone charging bank like those portable batteries. I'm really stoked to be part of that because you know everything that I'm a part of is stuff that I use. That's the key someone told me a long time ago is invest in stuff you use. So for me that's an awesome opportunity because I'm always needing to charge something whether it's a camera or a phone, I need electricity. So I got asked to be a part of that with a group of friends and it's awesome to be a part of. All these projects are amazing.

Beside the studio portraits you do—obviously the people you shoot represent the lifestyle of skating. Even Weezy and Big Sean, skaters can identify with them when they look at those photos. But I've alway sort of thought you're not really the "from-the-hip" kind of photographer at all.
No, I'm very stylized. I wish I could be the from-the-hip dude. It's a fine line between calling that stuff simple or shitty photography and calling it art. And the reason why I call it art is because I can't emulate that kind of raw street photographer. Honestly, I think I've been too polished as a photographer because I know too much. And I think that style of photography is knowing the basics and sticking with that and not trying to become polished. It's the same with music, you know. I listen to Dr. Dre and it's the same thing that I feel about Jay Z and these guys that were really raw at one point in their career and they learned too much about life, money, and success and you can't go back. You know, The Chronic is always gonna be The Chronic because that's him being young, and to shoot raw is the same thing. Like, it's what I would be doing in high school I can't go back to that and I'm fine with that. I've loved how everything has worked out with me and everything that I know I can just walk into every situation—with photography, a lot of things happen on set or when you're shooting and you have to figure out how to fix it. But yeah, I'm not raw or shoot from the hip.

But maybe that's all for the better because if you had pursued filming just as much as you did photography we wouldn't have Sorry For Partying because you might be filming it with a RED or something.
I like pushing myself and I don't just want to shoot one way—I want to learn. Photography for me is an obsession I have and a passion that I have. And whether or not I was getting paid to do it wouldn't matter, I just want to know and make the best photos possible. I always see a photo and see things I can improve on. I never see a photo and think, oh, that's perfect. I'm always like, fuck why wasn't that here why wasn't that there? It's not in a self destructive way it's just like, hey let's make the best picture possible.

You and I were talking about social media a while back on the phone and how it's saved photography. But for you, you must have to think about how you are representing yourself as a photographer when you are posting random stuff. Is that something you need to put consideration into?
I used to. Not used to, I mean I did for a sec. Then I decided I'm not gonna put my career on Instagram and social media. I'm not gonna take it seriously—that's like social, I'm here for a good time. [I'd rather] see professional work go to my website. I know people judge that but I'm not gonna sit here and put my whole life/career on Instagram. And for me, it's called social media—not job finding media. To me it's supposed to be social it's supposed to be fun it's supposed to show things you know that aren't in a magazine or a book—it's another resource. I don't even know why I have so many followers, but I feel like hopefully it's because I don't take it serious and because I show them different things they want to see.

What happened to Sorry For Partying, I was a big fan of those videos and I think it's really cool to show people that skate another side. You know, like even Malto skating the streets of NY, goofing around, the party stuff is great! What happened?
It just turned into too much editing. It was just one of those things where I was just over it, you know. But I have to edit it. It's gotta be the way it is. Yeah, I hope to [make more], but at the same time I'm like ah, I'm kind of okay with it.

There was a photo you shot that got published in TSM recently that stirred some controversy with skaters. A lot of comments were about jocks hating on skaters which hasn't really been a problem for at least 15 years since skating is so widely accepted. What do you make of it?
I know it made a lot of people really mad. It's funny because it was almost the cover. I get good comedy and I understand people being made fun of, but I've never made fun of people and never used that to get where I'm at and I think that's why I am where I am. But you know, I get it, I've always hung out with people that talk shit—that's a part of skating. But that one was really funny because no one got where that photo came from. No one really understood that that's a day in the life and that's what we chose to do. And you know, people are just gonna be bitter about that

There was a shop from Colorado—my home state—that cancelled [their subscription] with us and I was like, whoa you know that's their football team. You know, I get it. I was that way... Thrasher had a cover that said "Skateboarding Is Dead" in the '90s and I was a kid. I was gonna write a letter that says, 'No it's not. It's fucking the best it's ever been...' You know to me it's such a waste of energy to even worry about that stuff. I don't say that in that sarcastic way—I really do care. I was just like, yeah you guys don't get. That that's what we did for our day and that's what we chose to do and that's who we are. But it's the same way if you really read into Instagram: most comments are talking shit or people saying super mean and super cruel stuff, and I just feel bad that that's all these people have in their day.

You know, without this sounding arrogant, I am so lucky to be as successful as I am, I grew up on foodstamps and welfare with a single mom who worked two jobs to put food on our table. I've had a job since I was 12 years old bussing tables. No one can ever bother or tear me down because I was never supposed to have the level of success that I have. I was never supposed to be here. So to me, every fucking day that I live is straight paradise. I've just got no time for hate. I've never had time for hate.

Anti-abortion activists demonstrate in Vladivostok in 2007. Photo via AP Photo

"The feminists are out on maternity leave!" I shout. It's the fall of 2011 and I'm with Pussy Riot, protesting against the possibility that Russia will adopt a restrictive new anti-abortion law. We're in our balaclavas are playing old-school feminist punk rock on a narrow platform atop some construction scaffolding in a Moscow subway station, six meters above the heads of our audience and the cops. It's Pussy Riot's first concert.

Back then, if you had woken up the average Russian feminist in the middle of the night and asked her what she was most worried about, she would have immediately answered, "Whether they'll pass the anti-abortion law." The bill proposed removing abortion from the list of free medical procedures provided by the state, and would have banned abortions without the consent of the woman's husband, if she was married, or her parents, if she was a juvenile. It would also have obliged doctors to provide women who come in asking to end their pregnancies with seven days of "time to think" before getting the procedure, make them go through a "psychological consultation," and require that they "be informed about the dangers of abortion" and "hear the fetal heartbeat." (Similar rules requiring women go through a waiting period or look at an ultrasound image of the fetus before getting an abortion have been proposed or adopted by various US states.)

"You mentioned the anti-abortion bill in your song. Why?" a female journalist asks us after the concert.

"Of course we mentioned it," I tell her. "We already live in a country where there's no fucking right to choose."

"Women have it hard enough already, and they're trying to restrict us even more," adds Bullet, another member of Pussy Riot.

"We need to just stop screwing," the activist called Hat says, breaking into our conversation. "What's the point of ever screwing at all?"

Watch: Young and Gay in Putin's Russia

In the end, the 2011 anti-abortion bill was only partially adopted. The mandatory "week of silence" between a woman's visit to her doctor and her abortion was written into law, meaning Russia embraced the idea that women are irrational creatures who can't be trusted to come to the correct decision about their own bodies without prodding from government. The new law also allows doctors the right to refuse to provide abortions due to "personal convictions."

Now deputies in the Russian Duma are considering a bill that would remove abortions from the list of services covered by state care and ban private clinics from performing them. This bill came into being after Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, spoke at the Duma in January and claimed that among other things, abortion restrictions would help drive up Russia's low birth rate. "If we manage to cut the number of abortions by 50 percent we would have stable and powerful population growth," he said.

On VICE News: Military Confrontation Between NATO and Russia Is Increasingly Likely, Warns New Report

This talk of population growth is serious business in Russia—here, declining birth rates are spoken of in tones reserved for national crisis, and President Vladimir Putin once said the country needed to "cleanse" its gays in order to get birth numbers up. The birth rate is also invoked by politicians who want to attack reproductive rights.

Gennady Onishchenko, who used to be the Russian equivalent to a surgeon general and is currently a cabinet adviser, said recently that "fabricated rubber products (condoms) have nothing to do with health." The bureaucrat's line sounds even worse when you consider the fact that the number of Russians with AIDS has gone from 500,000 in 2010 to over 900,000 today—a trend that's the opposite of what you'd expect from a developed country. Onishchenko also expressed hope that a ban on the sale of imported condoms would force Russians to "be more discriminating, more strict and selective, in choosing their partners," and that the ban "may serve our society well by solving demographic problems."

It's strange that the Patriarch and Onishchenko don't know this, but reducing abortions does not mean abortions will increase. According to the Russian-language site Meduza, from 1990 to 1999, the number of abortions in Russia fell by a factor of 1.8, while the number of births fell by a factor of 1.6; the birth rate in Poland continued to fall after an abortion ban was introduced there in 1993, and in 2003 the Polish birth rate was one of the lowest in the world. Demographic losses in the early 1930s led Stalin to ban abortion in the Soviet Union, a prohibition that lasted from 1936 to 1955. That law had almost no effect on the birth rate: 1937 saw a jump of about 10 percent in births, and then the rate went back to falling while the maternal mortality rate rose sharply.

Anti-abortion initiatives will probably not provide Russia with a higher birth rate, then, but they nevertheless harmonize well with Putin's pivot to conservative values. They fit another trend, too—the one by which Russian authorities resort to bans to solve problems, rather than working to improve the conditions causing those problems. A ban requires less expenditure of government resources. We ban foreign cheese, ban vacations outside of Russia, and ban abortions. This tendency to ban everything is fertile soil for groups in the community that dispute a woman's right to control her body.

In Russia, as elsewhere, many anti-abortion groups argue not just against abortion, but also against modern contraception.

This desire for control, for women to submit, courses through the anti-abortion movement. "Any woman knows that, objectively, the purpose of sexual relations is the birth of children, while pleasure is of secondary importance to her body," says the website of the Russian anti-abortion group "Warriors of Life" "IUDs and hormonal formulas are commonly listed among modern methods of contraception," the site continues. "But both are actually methods of abortion. There is no particular difference between cutting a person up and poisoning him. The result is the same." In Russia, as elsewhere, many anti-abortion groups argue not just against abortion, but also against modern contraception.

In 1920, Russia became the first country in the world to legalize abortion. But that decision was reversed by Stalin by the end of that decade, and conversations about sex and birth control were driven underground, into the public subconscious. It wasn't polite to talk about sex in the Soviet Union; in 1986 a Russian woman became famous for saying, "There's no sex in the USSR" on a joint USSR-US telecast. That summed up the situation perfectly. When the US went through its sexual revolution in the 1960s and 70s, the Soviet Ministry of Health was writing about the dangers of hormonal contraceptives. Russia still hasn't overcome its mistrust of modern birth control—which may explain the country's notoriously high abortion rates.

For every 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in Russia, there are 25 abortions. In the US, there are 17. Reason, history, and experience tell us that if we want to reduce the number of abortions, bans are not the way to achieve that result. Abortion numbers can be reduced by making sure reliable information about family planning methods is available, by ensuring people can consult with specialists regarding those methods, and by offering a wide variety of modern birth control options and sex education.

Abortion remains legal in Russia, but it's obvious that anti-abortion—and anti-contraception, and anti-choice—forces are on the rise. As for sex education, I remember being told, "Your future child will resemble the man who took your virginity. Your body remembers that first man, so be careful who you choose!" at the only "sex education" lecture in my entire school career. In two hours the lecturer never once uttered the words sex or contraception. That was in 2005.

Things are scarcely better in 2015. This year, the Russian Federation Public Chamber held a meeting of the committee on science and education. Members of the clergy and conservative organizations filled the room, including Larisa Pavlova, a lawyer for the prosecution in the Pussy Riot trial. Eventually all those voices blend into one in my head:

"I'm a teacher myself, and we have these people in our school now... They talked about safe sex, if you'll pardon the expression."

"We will be filing complaints with the prosecutor's office against anyone conducting sex education among our children!"

"The main role of young people is to ensure the reproduction of society. But our informational environment today is implanting our youth not with spiritual values, but with hedonism, individualism, and other negative values."

"The forces working to destroy the family are using salami tactics, cutting the family up into slices."

"We could demand that modules be added dedicated to family values, throughout the basic curriculum. Even to math and computer science!"

"When hiring school principals, the focus ought to be not on the person's professional qualities, but on the spiritual, moral image they project!"

"Hitler destroyed only half as many Russian people as the Soviet government did with its abortions. Abortion was made legal in the US only in 1972, so they had a 50-year head start."

"We must assert firmly that society is against sex education in the schools."

Voices like that are why Pussy Riot sang, "Give the holiest what they need! Make the women love and breed!" at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in 2012 before we were arrested.

The next time someone asks me why I brought my punk prayer into the offices of the Orthodox Church in 2012, I'll tell them this: I don't want abortion to be criminalized.

In the Donetsk People's Republic, the pro-Russia region that has broken away from Ukraine, abortion is no longer legal. Article 3 of the DPR Constitution, adopted in May 2014, reads: "The human being and his rights and freedoms are of the highest value. Recognizing, observing, respecting and defending them is the obligation of the Donetsk People's Republic, its government agencies, and officials, and is guaranteed from the moment of human conception." Any artificial termination of pregnancy is tantamount to premeditated murder.

I have a question for the people who argue against a woman's right to decide whether or not to be a mother: Are you prepared to accept the DPR as your role model?

The next time someone asks me why I brought my punk prayer into the offices of the Orthodox Church back then, I'll tell them this: I don't want abortion to be criminalized. I want me, and someday my daughter, to be able to use our bodies at our own discretion. And I want it to be possible someday for feminists in Russia not to worry about how long they'll have control over their basic biological functions.

Translation by Brendan Mulvihill

Claire, we don't want to worry you, but there's something...Yeah, it's behind you.

One hour, 12 minutes and 53 seconds. That was the Resident Evil 2 speed run record I was trying to beat. And it still is. Despite playing the game, start to finish, three times a day for over a month, I couldn't get below one hour 20. I stopped to pick up too many herbs. I carried the Red Jewel when I should have had the Spade Key. I botched weaving through a crowd of zombies, got bit, and lost three seconds. My name never made it into the hallowed annals of speeddemosarchive.com, and now that I'm 25 years old, and without the time to finish most games, let alone drill one into my head like muscle memory, it probably never will.

But boy, do I know Resident Evil 2. I know that, despite the ability I once had, to beeline through the whole thing quickly and cleanly, it's a very tangled game—it's two aesthetics colliding with each other, and not always to beautiful effect.

Clichéd as they are, environments in the original Resident Evil are consistent and familiar, lifted from universal cultural landmarks like haunted house movies and Frankenstein. The word's often used to exonerate, unfairly, games that are plain stupid, but the original Resident Evil is truly schlock. It's kitsch. It's camp. It's not just in the zombies or the booby traps or the one-keyboard soundtrack, it's Jill in her floppy beret, the cast of characters FMV at the start, the intensely homoerotic Albert Wesker. Resident Evil is like a Brock Landers–style porn parody, just without the sex. Resident Evil 2 is trying to be more serious.

You open with the brutal, shock death of gun shop owner Robert Kendo then transition to the bloodied roads of Raccoon City itself, replete with bodies thrown through windshields, monsters eating flesh off the pavement and police cars on fire. The amount of zombies you encounter in that streets section (32, I can count them in my head) is close to the amount you meet across the entirety of the original Resident Evil. It's immediately set up as a more urgent, brute-force kind of horror game. The humor, intentional or otherwise, which pervades especially the opening of RE1, isn't present in the sequel. From the go, it has a straight face.

But then you reach the police station, and it's filled with the same colorful, absurd puzzles as the Spencer Estate. You're pushing statues, finding jewels, collecting chess-themed keys, and once you're done, you head into the sewers and come up in an enormous, impossible Umbrella laboratory. What begins as a graphic, muckier horror game gradually devolves into familiar VHS tawdriness. At the beginning of RE2 you're dodging zombies on a graffiti-covered basketball court behind an alley. By the end, you're inside an enormous chrome research lab, battling sentient plant vaginas. It's a game of violently clashing sensibilities and styles, where one minute you're in the forensics room of a metropolitan police station, the next you're being chased through a sewer pipe by a gigantic spider.

But the thing is, Capcom almost makes it work—the progression almost feels natural. It was only after playing Resident Evil 2 time and time again that I started to notice how it completely loses its mind about halfway through. For the most part, it clicks perfectly. Its makers do a terrific job of marrying completely off-the-wall monsters and scenarios with ostensibly mundane environments.

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Related: Swap zombies for vampires and watch VICE's film, The Real 'True Blood'

Given this was 1998, I can't help but appreciate that kind of lavishness. When Atlus was putting you up against a single monster in Hellnight, and Konami was busying itself with psychology in the original Silent Hill, Capcom went with outright color and adventure. You flip on the Resident Evil 2 inventory screen and it's all garish reds and greens. Examine Leon's cop outfit, and it's comprised of pads and body armor and fingerless gloves—it's gone straight from the concept art desk into the game. Some visual markers are lifted from the real world, others are taken from trash novels and Hammer Horror—Resident Evil 2 collides them, in such a carefree way, that it fashions a look all of its own.

And it's filled with so many great moments. The crane-up shot when you arrive at the police station. The repeated jump outs of Mr. X, signaled by a sting of cheap synth. Sherry Birkin, slipping and falling down the sewers like a chump. Resident Evil 2 is alive and silly, unburdened by concerns of tone, consistency, or prestige. At the same time, it's very disciplined and constrained. Puzzles lock together perfectly. Scares are precisely timed. The length, even though it confounded my speed run, is absolutely right.

On Motherboard: Read about the horror game that heals, 'Nevermind'

Resident Evil 4 often gets talked about as a great rollercoaster ride, the way it carries you from a fight with a monster on a lake, to battling trebuchets outside a castle, to a shootout on a mine-cart. But Resident Evil 2 is just as eclectic. You go from the streets to the police station, the sewers to the lab. And along the way you have all these great micro set-ups—from picking up the first key to unlocking the final door, RE2 clicks together as one long puzzle, but it's sprinkled with scenes like the bodies getting up in the morgue, or the Licker crashing through the glass of the interrogation room.

In the most positive sense, it's a busy game. You play horror nowadays, things like Slender or Amnesia, and although they do it under the banners of subtlety and slow-build, they have just nothing going on—they're like found-footage movies, where 70 percent of the time you're just watching empty filler. Resident Evil 2 isn't the scariest horror game, and it's definitely not the most ornately constructed, but it's never dull. And even when the frights don't land, because RE2 is so vibrant, and popping, and up for it, I'm still inclined to smile.

Generally, though, the game's an oddity—when I think about what I like and dislike in games, Resident Evil 2 is a strange exception to the rule. I'm frustrated by immaturity. I think games are brash and excessive, and need to pare down. I don't like fantasy. And yet, RE2 remains a game I truly admire. Perhaps it's because, when I think of "experimental" games nowadays, I think of dry, essayist, state of the medium titles like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. And when I think of "wacky," games, I think of Bulletstorm, Advanced Warfare, Borderlands—games that, rather than the fruit of eager imaginations, feel like the products of a boardroom meeting to construe what young people are into these days. Resident Evil 2 is filled with colorful and conflicting ideas, to varying success, but contrary to a lot of games today, it has a willingness to try that always feel genuine.

Like one of Umbrella's viral experiments, Resident Evil 2 was a case of doing it just to see what happens. If the results kill you, or if they become a messy bricolage that doesn't quite chain together, then hell, so be it.

Follow Ed Smith on Twitter.

On Thursday, Connecticut's Supreme Court abolished the death penalty. The ruling was certainly great news for the 11 forlorn souls condemned to die in the state, but it was also a bit confusing for anyone who was paying attention back in 2012, when lawmakers there originally abolished the ultimate punishment for future prisoners.

But that's how things have played out over the course of American history with state-sanctioned killing: It's been banned in fits and starts, a reflection of a national character that is alternately progressive and puritan.

Laws governing executions have varied across America since colonial times, but by the end of the nineteenth century, the movement to abolish the death penalty was in full swing. During the Progressive Era, when women's suffrage and concern for the exploitation of immigrant laborers were atop the national consciousness, the death penalty was abolished in ten states between 1897 and 1917, only to be reinstated in eight of them by the 1930s. (Some scholars believe reinstatement was a response to a combination of economic recession and vigilante violence; lynchings in the Jim Crow South were common at the time.)

In the middle of the century, support for the death penalty declined again, and in 1972, the US Supreme Court ruling Furman vs. Georgia brought about a temporary national moratorium on executions. That moratorium was lifted by the Supreme Court in 1976, and the following year, a Utah firing squad shot an inmate named Gary Gilmore.

Today, 19 states and the district of Columbia have death-penalty bans in place. And even though the Connecticut ruling doesn't have any direct impact on death penalty laws across the country, "that doesn't mean it doesn't have persuasive value in other states," Robert Dunham, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center told VICE. Nebraska ditched its own capital punishment regime earlier this year, and the one-two punch of wildly different political cultures ditching execution could resonate widely.

As for the condemned, if you're on death row and suddenly can't legally be executed, you aren't just let into the general prison population right away. "People on the row will then file motions in the state courts in which they were convicted, and then the courts would overturn their death sentences, and impose the alternative sentence," Dunham said.

The move to "gen pop" from death row often represents a major improvement in quality of life for affected inmates. In the book The Wrong Man: A True Story of Innocence on Death Row, law professor Michael Mello provides an account of his correspondence with an innocent death row inmate named Joe Spaziano. When Spaziano gets temporarily moved out of death row, it's a game-changer:

In the general population, Joe could hang out with his Outlaw brothers who were also incarcerated at Florida State Prison. He was given a job outside the walls (but inside the razor-wire fences) picking up trash. He began a cartoon autobiography of his twenty years in prison for crimes he didn't commit. And he could call me on the telephone pretty much anytime the prison phone was free.

In her dissent on Thursday, Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Carmen E. Espinosa took issue with language in the majority opinion about how the death penalty "no longer comports with evolving standards of decency," noting that, "there is nothing that requires that the standards of decency evolve only in one direction."

That's not to say the reinstatement of the death penalty has gotten anyone tossed back onto death row, according to Dunham. "Once the decision is final as a matter of law, the death penalty is gone from that particular case," he said.

So while the death penalty has shown incredible resilience in the face of more than a century of abolitionist sentiment, the 11 Connecticut prisoners on their way out of death row are almost certainly never going to see the inside of an execution chamber.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Watch VICE's documentary on gay conversion therapy camps

Earlier this week, a bunch of Catholic priests got together in Michigan for a national conference to talk about homosexuality. The 400-priest meet-up was called "Welcoming and Accompanying Our Brothers and Sisters with Same-Sex Attraction," and it spanned three full days—apparently the priests had a lot to say about the various stuff people choose to do with their dicks and vaginas and butts.

According to Detroit Free Press, popular Detroit priest Reverend John Riccardo took the stage at one point during the conference to share some advice about how to talk about gay issues with young folks who may not have strong opinions about homosexuality.

"This is the question which is asked by junior high kids: Why does God hate gays?" Riccardo said. "Here's the image that I use."

Riccardo reportedly asks the middle school students what they would say if he "just ripped a bagel, I take it, and I cram it in my ear."

The kids, apparently, respond with, "That doesn't go there."

"Exactly," Riccardo tells them. "That will ruin your ear canal."

The conference was met with protests by liberal Catholics, who were appalled by the way the Church still considers homosexuality a disorder.

The priests at the conference have "a limited view of sexuality," protestor Tom Nelson told the Free Press. "They don't know what they're talking about."

Prince is a lavishly styled, coming-of-age film about 17-year-old Ayoub who tries to win the heart of the neighborhood girl by falling in with a gangster named Kalpa, played by Freddy Tratlehner. We sat with writer and director Sam de Jong to talk about his debut film, its influences, and working with cast of nearly all non-professional actors.

Prince is now in theaters and available to watch on iTunes and OnDemand.

Image by Andy Baker

Suffering from anxiety, depression, insomnia, or even schizophrenia? It'll probably come as no surprise that there's now an app for that. With modern life completely dominated by smartphones and tablets, innovators in the field of mental health are rushing to develop ground-breaking digital solutions to the problems in our heads. But are they any good?

As of July 2015, Apple's app store boasted 1.5 million apps, while Android users are able to choose from 1.6 million in the Google Play store. Needless to say, as with all of these apps, the tools designed to improve your mental health and wellbeing vary greatly.

Many draw on the Buddhist practice of mindfulness—the most popular of which, Headspace, boasts two million users, Gwyneth Paltrow, Emma Watson, Fearne Cotton, Jared Leto, and Arianna Huffington among them. Others, meanwhile, use techniques from more modern psychological tools like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Andy Gibson is "Head Gardener" of Mindapples, a social enterprise dedicated to educating people about nurturing and nourishing their mental wellbeing. "What we're seeing is a growing interest in people wanting to take care of their minds," he says, "so I see a large number of these apps as an extension of the self-help market."

He adds: "There's an obvious extension into the app world of monitoring behavior, getting support from peers, feedback, that kind of thing." This is exactly where the Mindapples app, Moodbug, fits in: it combines a tool for tracking and monitoring your moods, similar to the kind of "mood diary" you might use in more traditional CBT, with interactions similar to a social network—where users can view their friends' moods and offer support where necessary.

There's an obvious parallel with the equally fast expanding market for fitness tracking apps like Strava or MapMyRun, where users not only log their exercise sessions, but also share them socially, liking and commenting on each other's efforts. In fact, Headspace is even marketed as "a gym membership for the mind."

"The health applications space is inundated with physical fitness apps, and people are starting to realize, due to the high pressures that life brings, that mental health is equally as important," says Ustwo's Alana Wood, who is product lead on the new app Moodnotes.

Related: Watch the Motherboard documentary about using virtual reality to treat PTSD

Produced in collaboration between game developer Ustwo and the two clinical psychologists behind Thriveport LLC, Moodnotes draws on CBT and "positive psychology" approaches to help users track their moods, identify and challenge negative "thinking traps," and develop techniques for re-evaluating and modifying their thinking.

"We are already seeing that some people use it every day to log their mood. Some people just use it when they encounter a stressful situation at work, to unstick their thinking. Then we're also seeing people who use it to discover what makes them more content in life," Wood explains.

Another app, Sleepio, was co-developed by Professor Colin Espie, one of the UK's leading sleep experts, as a CBT-based tool to tackle insomnia. "Self-help is the first port of call for most people, so apps make information, education, and indeed therapy much more readily available," he says. "The dynamics of an app allows for interaction, so it can be engaging and supportive, to assist people with behavior change, but not intrusive or dominating."

Read: The VICE Guide To Mental Health

Of course, the key challenges with any app are both understanding what it can and can't do for you, and knowing which apps are actually worth your time and money, and which could end up doing more harm than good. "You can't replace human contact, and the more cynical driver of [mental health apps] is obviously cost saving in healthcare," says Gibson.

"In something like mental health, where we know isolation is really bad for people's minds, it would be counterproductive to try and replace people with an app—there's still much need for nurses and peer group support. For me, it's important that apps shouldn't be used as an excuse for continuing to keep mental health services underfunded."

For Dr. Edrick Dorian, one of the clinical psychologists who makes up Thriveport, the organization behind MoodKit and Moodnotes, the potential for digital mental health tools is much more about augmenting existing therapeutic services.

"It's foolhardy for anyone to expect an app to replicate what can be done with a live professional in the room; you can't discuss any of the nuances, and of course you miss the interpersonal aspect and the feedback of a trained professional," he says.

"[An app] is certainly capable of communicating some of the education, principles, tools, and techniques that one would learn in therapy, and supplementing therapeutic services," he adds.

Likewise, Professor Espie highlights that, "One obstacle is that [the app industry] is largely unregulated, so anyone can make claims that 'this will transform your life.' What we're endeavoring to do with Sleepio is very much pioneer the evidence-based app, so GPs are more able to direct you toward things that are going to be safe and effective. The standing of the [developer] within their field is important, knowing who is actually behind it."

Likewise, Gibson adds, "With apps like Headspace, that have got a huge following, at least you know there are a lot of happy users. It's also worth knowing the free ones are often better than the paid ones, because a lot of these are made by charitable organizations or healthcare trusts for the purpose of improving health, so don't feel you've got to spend a lot of money."

Quality control is an area where the sector is now developing, albeit slowly. Research published by the University of Cambridge at the start of August found that "brain training" game Wizard helps people with schizophrenia, and Sleepio has been successfully piloted with patients affected by depression and anxiety—conditions in which sleep plays a significant role.

"The Department of Health and senior NHS people have recognized that innovation is coming from entrepreneurs, so they've set up the NHS Innovation Accelerator [to which Sleepio's co-founder Peter Hames has been appointed as a fellow], to bring in people who have done good things in an evidence-based way."

He adds: "I see [apps] as components of the new healthcare system going forward; we should see it as a great opportunity." In that spirit, both Sleepio and Moodnotes feature functions that allow GPs and psychologists to access and track their patients' progress, so the apps can be used to provide feedback in face-to-face sessions.

However, until using and recommending apps becomes mainstream within the health service, Dr. Dorian's advice for finding reputable, credible mental health apps is to use resources like the NHS health apps library. "It has a clinical team of reviewers who go through the content, inquire about the developmental history of the app and its developers, and ultimately determine whether they consider it to be both a safe and trustworthy app," he explains.

Ultimately, Professor Espie believes "the apps that really help best will be the ones that last, and the ones that really don't work will end up being just a waste of some people's time and money. The risk is that in the interim they could actually do some harm."

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The latest Satan statue has been erected. Photo via Instagram user Instagraemeberglund.

Another naked devil statue mysteriously appeared yesterday in Vancouver, on top of Gene Cafe at the intersection of Main and Kingsway in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood (near Dude Chilling Park).

This comes about a year after a giant, red, and equally naked devil with a giant erect penis appeared in Vancouver's east end. The same site was once home to a bronze statue of Christopher Columbus, and is now where a cool penguin statue stands.

The horny red devil didn't stand for long before city crews removed the statue from above a small plaza pedestal where it stood. The city said that it did not commission the statue (obviously).

The most notable thing about the new statue, however, is that there was no penis—rather, this one was a white female satanic figure with black horns a pregnant belly. Both devils held one hand up bearing a "sign of the horns" (also known as the "rock on" hand gesture.)

Last year, a man named Darryl Greer, and occasional VICE writer, started an online petition to bring back the original red-dicked-devil. The petition—which also criticized a statue of a poodle that cost the city $100,000 to install—currently has 2,500 signatures and is addressed to the mayor of the city.

"The Giant Satan-With-an-Erection statue, unlike the porcelain dog, cost the city nothing and was far more visible and likely to stir public debate than the barely visable (sic) cartoonish canine on a pole," reads the petition.

VICE spoke to Greer last year, when he described the city's art scene as, "Too expensive and fucking lame." (Greer isn't responsible for either statue, though at the time, he said he wished to be able to shake the artist's hand and buy him/her a beer.)

The new pregnant-devil statue was taken down very quickly. Less than an hour after alt-weekly Georgia Straight contributor Michael Mann had posted a photo of it on Twitter, the figure was already gone.

The city has not yet said if it was their crews who removed the statue. No one has claimed responsibility for the devil lady either.

Follow Sierra Bein on Twitter.

Image via Flickr User Nicholas Wang

New York City is always loud, but residents' tolerance for roof parties, loud bars with outdoor seating, traffic, and noise in general might be lower than ever. This week, a reporter at amNewYork did some impressive analysis of NYC OpenData's unwieldy 311 Service Request call logs to reveal that there has been a noticeable increase in noise complaints compared to summers past.

In July, there were nearly 18,000 residential noise complaints and nearly 8,000 environmental noise complaints (i.e. noise coming from the street or sidewalk). That's a big increase from July 2013, when there were just over 11,000 residential noise complaints and fewer than 3,000 complaints about sidewalk and street sounds

Many people told amNewYork that the problem was the city was getting louder, for a variety of reasons.

"Longtime New Yorkers and gadflies say a number of trends have conspired to profit party people at the expense of peace seekers," wrote reporter Sheila Anne Feeny. "Laws prohibiting smoking have driven more drinkers outdoors. Ever-growing invasions of tourists (56.4 million last year) who do not have to get up early to afford NYC housing costs also pump up the volume. An explosion of luxury residences offering rooftop 'event spaces' and balconies as well as the construction of more hotels—many of which sport rooftop and outdoor bars—also add to the din."

But it's worth keeping in mind that an increase in noise complaints over a two-year span doesn't necessarily mean New York City is getting louder and becoming some kind of toxic waste dump for awful sounds. Could it be that residents are just complaining more instead? Maybe, said Dr. Arline Bronzaft, an environmental psychologist who helped revise the city's noise code and advised multiple mayors about how to reduce sound pollution.

"Is New York a noisy city? Yes. Has New York always been a noisy city? Yes," she told me over the phone. "But here's what's changed: We are less likely to tolerate it anymore."

Bronzaft suggested that when the NYC noise code was updated in 2007 (the previous one dated to the Reagan era), residents became more aware that there was actually something to be done about loud shit going on next-door or down the street. NYC's 3-1-1 hotline, which provides residents with non-emergency services, has been around since 2003, but the noise code update—and publicity surrounding it—may have led to an uptick in complaints.

Bronzaft says she's personally received an influx of calls from aggravated New Yorkers (some who were recommended to her by 3-1-1 operators, according to the psychologist) looking for advice. "I would say the calls have multiplied," she told me. "People want to know that somebody might listen to their grievances, even if the problems aren't resolved."

For more New York City stuff, watch our interview with Senator Chuck Schumer:

John Longman, president of acoustic consultant firm Longman Lindsey, told me that he thinks the rise in complaints is a function of a shift in the zeitgeist. "The younger generations are now more concerned with quality-of-life issues than before. Gone are the Wall-Street, dog-eat-dog type of New Yorkers you found in the 80s," he said. "People have different values today... New Yorkers, believe it or not, are more socially responsible these days."

Matthew Schaeffler, a senior associate with acoustic consultancy Cerami & Associates, added that certain areas of the city are being "rezoned from industrial to commercial or industrial to residential." He thinks this is a good thing because the zoning changes require that residential buildings in the area receive an additional (E) designation, and must upgrade building façades and add thicker windows (often tripled-glazed or laminated glass) to deal with environmental noise such as traffic. But there may still be an interim period between when, say, an industrial area is transitioning into a residential one, and it could take time before those renovations are handled by property managers and landlords.

"A lot of people call 3-1-1 about neighbors, but that type of noise relates to lease law and your landlord," Bronzaft told me. "Various types of noise complaints get split up and handled by different bodies of authority, specifically the police, the Department of Environmental Policy, and lease law. And not everyone knows that, so they just call 3-1-1 every time there's an issue. Or they call me!

"There's a greater expectation that we have a right to complain," she continued. "Once you educate people that they can complain, there's going to be an increase. The only downside is that many don't get responses."

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All screens from 'Destiny: The Taken King,' courtesy of Bungie

"Can you write a piece about Destiny, a year on?" asked VICE. You know, "about its enduring appeal," apparently. How could I say no? I was excited, so I pulled on my big-boy pants and bought a copy of Gaming Journalism for Dummies, because if there's one thing I'm not, it's a journalist. But what I definitely am is a fan of Destiny, a day-one player who has lost thousands of hours to the game. In the words of Bungie, Destiny's developers, I am a vault raider, a sword bearer, a god slayer, or, as my friends would say: I am a nerd.

Anyway, Gaming Journalism for Dummies (or GJfD) advises that when starting an article about any given game you should provide a little background about it. Which immediately presents me with a problem: it isn't immediately clear what Destiny actually is. It's an FPS, but it has character progression closer to an RPG with a heavy focus on online co-op and competitive play. This should make it an MMO, but by only having a maximum of 16 people in any one social space and only six in an individual fireteam, it doesn't really suit the "massively multiplayer" moniker. Bungie calls its creation a "shared world shooter," which almost makes sense, but says more about the studio's unwillingness to classify their baby as an MMO than it does to explain their game's primary genre.

So that's that cleared up, then.

Now, the point of this article is to let a Destiny fan talk about the game rather than a jaded journalist. But knowing how the internet works, and in an attempt to get in before you think I'm riding blissfully on publisher Activision's bulbous, glistening, well-funded cock, let's first talk about its problems. For they are legion.

At the core of Destiny is loot. Loot makes the endgame easier. Cool! The problem currently is that the loot table for the game is limited, the RNG to get that loot is downright shitty, and due to the meta of the game both in PvP and PvE only a small amount of that limited loot table is really helpful come the game's climax. In PvE there are groups of people (dickbags) who won't play with players who don't own specific weapons (aka the Gjallarhorn), and in PvP if you don't play to the exotic hand cannon meta, you make the game harder for yourself.

A looter-shooter without loot would be fine if said looter-shooter had an engaging narrative to keep you engrossed in the game, but Destiny falls short spectacularly in this area. The story in both the vanilla game and its first DLC, The Dark Below, is minimal and disconnected, with the extremely deep lore behind all the shooting—and yes, there is a huge amount of lore—tucked away in a grimoire card system on the Bungie website. I don't know about you, but when I'm playing a game, I don't really want to stop and crawl the internet to find out about the plot.

So we've got no loot and no story, but the PvP must be good, right? Erm, yeah, kinda.

Related: Watch VICE's five-part documentary on the world of competitive gaming, eSports

PvP in Destiny is ridiculously fun, with just enough variety to cater for both the competitive and casual players. But over time Bungie has attempted to create weapon balance within the PvP modes that's somehow left it extremely unbalanced. If you're playing the Thorn/Last Word (these are More Guns, by the way) meta then all good, go have fun killing all the mans. But if you want to run around with an Auto-Rifle (somewhere between an assault rifle and SMG in Call of Duty terms) you'd better hope nobody is looking at you as your time-it-takes-to-kill-anyone has just gone through the roof.

Reading that back, Destiny sounds downright shitty. Yet the biggest complaint is still to come.

Although Destiny had both alpha and beta runs ahead of its commercial launch proper, the first year of the game—it came out in September 2014—has essentially been an extended beta playtest with a user base of millions. Bungie has tweaked weapons, fixed raid bugs, and reworked the player experience. They aren't there yet, and everything above proves that they are a long way from perfecting their game. But the fact that Bungie works constantly to improve Destiny for its community means that an already enjoyable and immensely playable game can only continue to get better. And if the PR machine around the upcoming The Taken King expansion is to be believed, we are coming out of beta! There isn't a single issue that isn't being addressed: Bungie is promising a longer story campaign, better in-game lore system, more loot with sensible RNG, like fuck loads more loot, weapon balancing, and just generally more ish to do.

'Destiny: The Taken King,' 'We Are Guardians' trailer

Several hundred words later and I've yet to get to the point. (I clearly didn't read the section on editing in GJfD.) So, why the fuck am I still playing this flawed first-person, shared-world, lootless shooter (with RPG elements)? Okay, let's get to that. It is beautiful, and the gameplay is smooth, tight, and enjoyable. It's difficult enough at times to be challenging, yet easy enough to be relaxing and cathartic when you need it to be.

Ultimately though it's the community, the social side, that keeps me playing Destiny. I play daily with real-world and electronic friends, I've met people I genuinely enjoy interacting with via sites like The100.io and the Twitch.tv community can be like a fluffy blanket (in the main). I admit that, like any gaming community, there are cuntrags playing Destiny, too, but the cuntrag-to-fluffy-kitten ratio for the game is low, and my PSN inbox only extremely rarely receives *insert adolescent insult relating to sexuality here* messages, which is quite unlike my CoD days where my mother was constantly, apparently, putting many penises in places I don't want to think about. In fact, I enjoy the Destiny community so much that I've even gotten to the point where I have my own Twitch channel, and streaming and chatting shit with literally tens of people is all sorts of enjoyable.

Meanwhile, on Motherboard: What 'Destiny' Tells Us About Sci-Fi Optimism

Twitch provides a good example of the community's acceptance and diversity, which perhaps isn't a sentence you'll often hear, granted. But look at great female streamers like MsTeamKK or LeahLovesChief: both live at the top of the directory, yet neither feels the need to use their gender (aka flash cleavage) to gain viewers. They just play the game really well and enjoy doing it. And I don't think that's something that can be said as readily outside the Destiny directory.

In short, for all its problems Destiny is good ol' fashioned fun, and things are looking good going into Year Two. The biggest problem facing it is the same one facing most major franchises: keeping the community happy while pleasing Activision's accounts department. If the studio can convince us that they are giving us value for money, which they very nearly failed to do with The Taken King given its full-game price tag, then hopefully we'll still be having this conversation and loving this whatever-box-it-goes-in social shooter come Year Ten.

The Taken King will be released on September 15 for PlayStation 3 and 4, Xbox One, and Xbox 360.

Follow Dan Le Sac on Twitter.

This child seems either a) extremely unimpressed with being forced into a photo op or b) completely awestruck by finally meeting a robot. Facebook photo.

It's not easy being a wealthy white man who is vying to run a multi-trillion dollar economy. But somehow, these guys are making it work.

As the intermediate march towards oblivion continues, the three main political party leaders—plus Elizabeth May and that guy who runs the Bloc Quebecois—are trying to convince people that they, and not the virtually-identical guy they're running against, are the best person to be hated by most of the country for two-to-five years.

Here are a few pointers on how to do so.

DO: Hold election meetings with children. When you are 10 points behind the NDP amongst youth, perhaps it's time to interact with more children.

DON'T: Walk around telling people that you want to grow the economy "from the heart outwards" unless you're promising a national cash-for-plasma program, where down-on-their-luck fleshbags can hawk their type O Negative for sweet, sweet blood money.

DON'T: Go to one of Thomas Mulcair's boat parties. There will be men in bowties. It will probably be a sex thing. (Possible name: The Bobbing Bear Booze Cruise)

DO: Wear whatever the fuck this is to a pride party hosted by your hippy dippy carbon-neutral airplane business friends. You look like a Keebler elf en route to prom. And that's great. You do you, Liz May. You do you.

DON'T: Wander through a Tim Hortons while being Gilles Duceppe, appearing genuinely surprised to see people there who remember who you are. They remember you, Gilles, but they're still not going to vote for you.

Photo credits (top to bottom):
Harper touches baby with one finger. Facebook photo.
Who can hold this position the longest? Photo via Twitter user Justin Trudeau.
O Captain O Captain. Facebook Photo.
Festive. Photo via Twitter user Salt Spring Air.
Oh Em GEE. Facebook photo.

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.