Photo via Flickr user my_southborough

This article was originally published by The Marshall Project.

When Molly Shattuck, a 48-year-old fitness writer and former Baltimore Colts cheerleader, walked out of a Delaware courtroom last week, several observers were left scratching their heads. Shattuck, who pleaded guilty to raping her son's 15-year-old friend, was sentenced to 48 alternating weekends at the Sussex Violation of Probation Center, in Georgetown, Delaware. The seemingly light sentence received heavy criticism from victims' rights groups, including Lisae C. Jordan, executive director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, who called it "totally inappropriate." Shattuck's punishment also raised more general questions about weekend sentences, when they're used, and what types of crimes merit them.

Related: We Asked Prison Inmates How Jared Fogle Will Get Treated Behind Bars

DUIs and Speeding Tickets

Instead of a traditional imprisonment, "weekend jail" is typically given to people convicted of nonviolent crimes, such as DUIs, chronic speeding, petty thefts, and failure to pay child support. Defense attorneys and prosecutors can both request this option, and judges usually have latitude in deciding the terms. The hope, says Paul Howard, District Attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, is to "allow defendants to maintain their family and career lifestyle" while ensuring accountability for crimes.

With weekend punishments, for example, the tipsy college student discovered during a late-night traffic stop could serve time and still attend classes, all without significantly adding to already cramped jail space. What happens during these stints varies. Some jails require the offender to pick up trash or perform other manual tasks. Others don't, and the offender spends the entire weekend in a holding cell.

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Insider's Perspective

Herb Hoelter, co-founder of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, says that while weekend jail does prevent people from losing their jobs while serving time, the sentences do take an emotional toll. "If you count every weekend in jail, that's 104 days," Hoelter says. "A lot of guys would rather do three months straight and get it over with."

What Everyone Gets Wrong

As the Shattuck case proves, the categories of offenders awarded such sentences also include more serious offenses (Shattuck's attorneys successfully persuaded the Delaware judge that a traditional sentence would be unfair and harmful to Shattuck's three children, who range from ages 12 to 16).

Some courts routinely include those convicted of dealing drugs, burglary, and child abuse. In May, a former Georgia police chief and his wife were sentenced to 25 weekends after pleading guilty to leaving their adopted children locked in a room for years with little food. The prosecutor said he agreed to the deal after hearing glowing accounts of the chief's reputation from members of the law enforcement community and because he wanted to spare the children from testifying in court.

Canada's Cap

Canada also uses weekend sentences for low-level crimes, but with important differences: Canadian law limits the option to offenders with sentences of 90 days or less. There's currently no US law that governs state and local usage or lengths of sentences. David Barnes, a former police officer convicted of molestation, received an 180-day weekend sentence from a Philadelphia-area judge. And a Columbia County court in New York ordered a 26-weekend sentence in 2014 for a local man convicted of tax evasion.

This article was originally published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

Photo via Brian Ledgard

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Young people who identify as goths are at an increased risk of suffering from depression and more likely to self harm, according to a study that seems less the product of scientific rigor, more just written on the strength of yer da's hunch. Yer da, sat at the kitchen table, swinging a sausage around on a fork—"Thing is, these gothics," yer da's saying, "These gothics, Lynn, with their big clunky boots: sad though, aren't they?"—and he looks at you, yer da it does, with your layers of eyeliner, and your backcombed hair, and wallet chain on top of wallet chain, mesh vest covering your sweet "JESUS IS A CUNT" T-shirt, and he says: shitshow.

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Anyway, the Lancet Psychiatry report studied 3,694 15-year-olds based around Bristol, and found that—of those who identified as being "part of the goth subculture," i.e. anyone who owned a set of diabolo sticks, or a custom-made gas mask that they saved up their pocket money to order from America, or anything made out of leather with spikes on it—anyone who identified as being into those things were more likely to suffer from depression and to self harm. Researchers weren't "fully able to explain" the link, although apparently a tendency for goths to isolate themselves from society might be a factor. I didn't write it but you just heard an extremely loud 'UH, YEAH DOI?' sort of springing sound in your head, didn't you? Sometimes science is useless.

Researchers also shockingly revealed that teenagers were more likely to lean toward showing signs of depression at the age of 15 if they'd been bullied in the past, but the goth-depression link remains even if you factor that out.

"The extent to which young people self-identify with goth subculture may represent the extent to which at-risk young people feel isolated, ostracized, or stigmatized, by society," the University of Bristol's Dr. Rebecca Pearson said.

Watch our latest documentary, Searching for Spitman:

Remember goths, though? Pale-faced observers in the early 00s war between chavs and grebos. In provincial town centers up and down the country, chavs—in Burberry caps, the chavs, flicking cheap lighters and spitting on the ground, kissing with full tongues their Jodie Marsh calendar every night before they went to sleep—would line up opposite grebos—in their dark unwashed hoodies and wide jeans, grebos desperately begging their mums to subscribe to Sky so they could get Kerrang!, grebos in their own grimy little pubs, all of them, the grebo pubs, called The Hobgoblin, with substandard door policies and a playlist made up of six Green Day songs and that one by Papa Roach—and the goths would look on, eerily, from above a hill. And then the death cry would rattle out—"GREEEEEEEEEEEE–BOOOOOOOOO!"—and the chavs would march, cans of off-brand energy drink and Special Brew clouding out the sun, and the grebos would run, and then one of them would be caught, and ceremonially kicked and knuckled and spat on and laughed at. And then, at the end of the ritualistic shame, tears streaming down their little grebo face, one of the chavs—a lower chav, in the hierarchy, squeaky voiced and yet to steal their own car—one of the chavs would go up to the wounded grebo and hock one final loogy and say the immortal words: dirty grebo. And the goths would look on, like Switzerland, neutral and unbending, tutting, and thinking about absinthe.

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Ah, those were the days. Back in the early '00s, before we figured out how to make jeans fit. Back in the early '00s, where mankind could be cleaved neatly into three tribes, always warring, never overlapping. The early '00s, where Fred Durst singing about attacking someone with a chainsaw briefly masqueraded as the zeitgeist. Do I miss those days? Sometimes I do. Bring back goths, I say. Bring back fighting in town centers. Bring back playing with lighters, and noogying, and fake IDs.

Yeah, sorry, got a bit off topic there. Anyway, to review: Goths more likely to be sad, due to the implicit nature of being a goth. Next week, in science news: water—quite damp, sometimes, isn't it?

Follow Golby on Twitter.

VirJiny Provost, probably thinking about those chips and dick. Photo via Facebook

A number of young Canadian voters are pretty much fucked when it comes to being able to cast a ballot in the upcoming election. Fewer still have any chance of winning a seat in parliament.

So you can't help but then admire the handful of fledgling politicians who toss their hat into the ring. Bright-eyed and bushy tailed, they make bold proclamations about lower tuitions and conservation.

And then the dream abruptly ends. Inevitably, some pesky social media post from those racist/homophobic/generally asinine adolescent years makes its way into the public sphere. Cue the shamefaced apology and, depending on the severity, prompt resignation.

Let's look at a few recent examples:

There was Deborah Drever, the Alberta MLA who was booted from the NDP shortly after the May election because of an Instagram post in which she referred to former PC party leaders Jim Prentice and Ric McIver as "gay boyz." (Note to Drever: step your burn game up, girl.)

More recently, Conservative Toronto Centre candidate Julian Di Battista had some 'splainin to do when, in a cached blog entry titled "Guns don't kill people," he's seen gleefully toting a handgun next to a bullet-riddled Saddam Hussein "target." He also called Ontarians "idiots" for voting Liberal and lamented the impact of affirmative action on white men.

In Calgary, federal Liberal candidate Ala Buzreba, 21, a self-described "passionate community organizer," dropped out of the race when rage-fuelled tweets from her past surfaced.

"Go blow your brains out you waste of sperm," she advised one follower, while telling a staunch Israel supporter, "your mother should have used that coat hanger."

Although I have a modicum of empathy for these three—who hasn't busted out the abortion card during a heated debate?—they spewed some pretty hateful shit and ultimately deserved the respective shitstorms they created.

That brings us to Bloc Quebecois hopeful VirJiny (formerly Virginia) Provost.

Just 18, Provost is catching some heat for her answer to a question she was asked on an online forum last year: In the event of a nuclear disaster, what three items would you need to survive?

Her response? My cellphone, a penis, and lots of chips.

After the news broke, a spokesman for the Bloc said the party would talk to Provost and her campaign team, but that she will not be reprimanded.

Why would anyone consider reprimanding her? The woman deserves a slow clap. "Cellphone, a penis and lots of chips" is an objectively perfect answer.

Think about it: The world has been nuked. After all the fires die down, there's nothing but barren wasteland and a surplus of radiation that leaves literally everything on earth with some form of cancer.

It's tragic, sure, but once the shock wears off you find yourself... kinda bored. Maybe a little peckish. And eventually, let's face it, you're gonna wanna get laid.

Frankly, at a time like that, I can't think of anything more comforting than playing Candy Crush while stuffing my face with BBQ flavoured Doritos and occasionally jerking off. For a lot of us, this is probably an ideal Sunday.

A more seasoned politician might have said something about wanting medical supplies and a Bible. Play it safe; toe the party line. But who can relate to that?

VirJiny Provost keeps it real. She keeps it so real she opted for a "penis" instead of a "dildo" the arguably more sanitary, but synthetic choice. And note that she didn't say "man with a penis"—she wants a rogue penis, sans dude, which is a pretty clear sign she's a feminist.

VirJiny if you're reading this, don't feel bad about the way you answered this question. Maybe feel bad about changing your name to include an arbitrary intercap and wanting it to rhyme with Ginny Weasley of Harry Potter. Maybe you should rethink that one at some point. But on the cellphone, penis, chips front, you fucking nailed it. If I lived in Quebec and wanted to separate from the rest of Canada, you would have my vote.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Ken Mayer

At 11 years old, I sat in the pew of a chapel listening to "Every Breath You Take" by The Police. I didn't know that it would haunt me for years to come.

After my brother's death I would hear the song constantly at the store and on the radio, reminding me of him—and the worst part was that the words were ill fitting. My brother had killed himself because of mental illness, and my mother had chosen a song about a possessive lost lover. What she perceived to mean a person peering down on their loved ones from heaven was in reality an irrelevant, if not offensive, song choice for my brother's funeral. Even though she meant well by using his music collection, it makes me cringe when I think back to my parents organizing his funeral arrangements and getting them wrong.

Now that I'm 25, I'm about to pass the age my brother was when he died—and it's causing me to think a lot about my future. Sharing his struggles with mental illness and an abusive family, I'd curled up inside myself and lost my voice years ago from hot-headed insults and cold neglect. As I work on recovering that voice, I think about how my doctor told me that I was at high risk for suicide because mental illness runs in my family, and how, if I were to die before my parents, they would be the ones planning my funeral.

I distinctly remember the day I told my father I was depressed. Although historically he hadn't shown himself to be a very warm person, I thought that having a child who'd already committed suicide would prompt him to take my cries for help seriously. It took every bit of myself to get out of bed, climb the stairs, and tell the truth about how I was feeling. His response? "Oh well, everyone's depressed."

While I certainly don't blame my parents for my brother's fate, my poisonous relationship with them has forced me to cut them out completely. Considering my mother and father weren't supportive in many aspects of my life such as recognizing my own mental illness or generally being emotionally available, the last thing I want is for them to have the power to make decisions regarding my death.

So I decided to write my will at 25. Even though I have zero financial assets and no children, I felt this was the perfect time for me to make such a critical decision. I don't plan on dying anytime soon—I've just come to the realization that death is a possibility at any point, and that I want to be properly represented when that circumstance arises.

Thanks to the internet, I found a few options for how to go about putting a will together. The first involved getting all the legal paperwork completed. This would involve consulting a lawyer, which would cost anywhere from $200 to $2,000. The second was a do-it-yourself will kit. At only $15 to $40, it was a cheaper and more convenient option—but it was still unnecessary, given that I have no financial assets. So I went with the third option: A piece of paper and a pen. This is called a holographic will, and it's both completely free and legal. All I had to do was hand-write my end-of-life wishes and sign my name to make it a legal document.

When it came time for me to put my last words to ink, I sat there for a few minutes thinking about what I wanted to say. Suddenly I realized how overwhelming it was to contemplate your own mortality in such specifics. Questions that came to mind varied from deadly serious to surprisingly fun. It was like event planning for the most personalized party you'd never get to attend.

Putting the most difficult decisions first, I confidently wrote that I wouldn't want to remain on life support or in a vegetative state. This was tough to think about but an easy decision since I've always felt it wouldn't be a life worth living and would only prolong the pain of my loved ones. I also confirmed that my family would have zero say in regards to my end-of-life choices, including medical options or funeral arrangements. Finally, I stayed true to my tree-hugging ways by opting for a Bio Urn so I could return back to the earth and become a living grave.

Then there came the big event: A mindful get-together by the ocean where loved ones could scatter my ashes in the waves. I've always felt most alive near salt water, making this an essential last wish for me. I wrote that, just like me, my funeral would be minimalistic and peaceful. And of course, I specified what song would be played: "Compass" by Zella Day, a gorgeous love song about the musician's hometown that fit as the perfect message towards those attending from my own.

The most important part of my will, however, was stating what would happen to my career online. Since I don't plan on getting married or having children, I've always felt that my work was my kin. And because my parents outwardly disapproved of my honesty, whether it was about sex or disability or mental illness, I wanted to ensure that all my published writing would remain online. I also left a message to be sent to my social media profiles before they closed, emphasizing my wish for FLURT—my dream for a socially conscious women's magazine on mainstream stands—to be continued by those involved.

Although writing my will was an eerie and emotional experience, it felt incredibly powerful to have a say in the end of my life and what happens after it. Making these kinds of decisions became an important addition to my adulthood because my legacy is all I plan on leaving behind. I don't currently speak to my parents and haven't informed them that I cut their ties to my will, but should my relationship with them improve I feel confident knowing that even in death I'll hold onto my voice.

While I'm taking measures to manage my mental illness, having made these end-of-life decisions at a time my brother couldn't make his own is comforting. Although he decided to end his journey, I know my brother would be proud that I'm working to improve my own.

Find Amanda Van Slyke on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Dancehall has never really had its day in the British sun. There are club nights; Seani B's got his 1Xtra show; and student union DJs occasionally blast a "Rum & Red Bull" chorus. But it's rare you'll see a mention of the genre in the UK's mainstream music press, unless it's to do with Vybz Kartel serving a multi-decade jail sentence or Drake pouting briefly in a Popcaan video.

To me, that makes no sense. For a start: dancehall often charts in the top 20. Secondly: so much UK club music owes a great debt to the genre (jungle, dubstep, funky, and grime, that is; not necessarily the stuff beloved of people who wear Huaraches to nightclubs). Thirdly: every summer for at least the past decade and a half, a dancehall tune has become the go-to good-time jam, whether it's being played in a festival dance tent or off an iPhone on the back of the bus. Even my mom knows the melody to "Hold Yuh," because it was impossible not to get it stuck in your head if you walked anywhere near a car radio in 2010.

So why the lack of appreciation? Because there's not much of a homegrown scene, bar the likes of Stylo G, Gappy Ranks, and Lady Chann? Perhaps—but that theory doesn't really hold up: plenty of coverage is awarded to trap, and you don't get a lot of that coming out of Bournemouth or Bicester.

"In the UK, dancehall has always been bubbling as a foundation—a reference for other sounds," says Ben, an MC and one half of The Heatwave, the London bashment party crew behind the dancehall club night Hot Wuk. "Dancehall's always been a touchpoint that British producers would draw ideas and samples from, but because of being that constant foundation, it's never had the novelty of being a new scene to cover."

"The difference with the UK stuff is that it changes its name every few years, so there's a buzz," adds Gabriel, a DJ and the other Heatwave half. "Dancehall doesn't do that. It changes its sound, and the artists change, but it never changes name, so you can never be like, 'Oh, what's this new sound coming out of Jamaica?' It's still dancehall."

He's right: the dancehall of today is as distinct as grime was from garage compared to the records that came out of Jamaica in 2003, the year The Heatwave put their first night on.

"Sean Paul was big around that time, so you'd hear dancehall in clubs for, like, five minutes in the middle of a hip-hop set, but we wanted to do something where you could hear it all night," says Gabriel. "Obviously there were Jamaican dancehall parties in Hackney, Brixton, Lewisham—but the Jamaican style is more presentational. It's like: play a tune, stop it; play another tune, stop it. We do some of that too, but we mainly play it as dance music, where you're dancing solidly all night. The British clubbing culture coming in."

The early nights were organized by Gabriel and a few of his friends, one of whom is still involved, mixing and mastering the remixes The Heatwave duo produce. It wasn't until about a year in, after the parties had moved to The Rhythm Factory, a larger club nearby, that Ben got involved. "My first official role in Heatwave was just billing spliffs in the DJ booth, trying to be low-key," he laughs. "I was just tagging along, and then I started doing a bit of DJing, and then a bit of MCing."

WATCH: 'Noisey Jamaica,' a series of documentaries on artists from the Jamaican music scene.

By this point, the audience was there. Problem was, getting hold of records for Gabriel to play to that audience wasn't as simple as waiting until payday to drop most of your rent money on a Juno order.

"Back then, dancehall was treated as a bit of a novelty by the mainstream," says Ben. "People were into it almost ironically, so you didn't get any of the majors backing it, or big stores stocking the records."

"This was before YouTube—this was like the LimeWire sort of era," adds Gabriel, referring to the file-sharing site that took quite literally an entire day to download a three-minute song, which—depending on luck and fate and your singular place in the universe—may or may not have turned out to be a low-quality audio ad for an online mattress shop. "So yeah, you had to go on a mission to get the pre-releases. A lot of the stuff I bought direct from Jamaica through mail order, and then we'd go to Dub Vendor, Blacker Dread in Brixton, a couple of places in the West End—a lot of places that don't exist any more."

MCs at the Rhythm Factory—clockwise from top left: Gappy Ranks, Lady Chann, Lante, Warrior Queen, and Quality Diamond

It was also a little tricky to book live acts for the club nights, mostly because all the dancehall artists lived in Jamaica, not London. "We'd predominantly book jungle, grime, and hip-hop artists who either had Jamaican roots or did a lot of stuff with a dancehall influence—so, like, Rodney P, Klashnekoff, Blak Twang; people like that," says Gabriel. "We were trying to do two things: show how much exciting music was coming out of Jamaica, and also celebrate the fact that so much UK music has its roots in Jamaican music."

A year or so into their Rhythm Factory residency, YouTube came along and gave the scene a boost; dancehall suddenly became widely accessible in the UK. "When we started Hot Wuk—which was in 2009—it had gone from people coming and only really hearing the tunes at our raves, to people coming and knowing them in advance, and seeing the videos and knowing dances that went with certain songs," says Gabriel.

Hot Wuk began as a weekly night in King's Cross and quickly built a dedicated following. "There was a real community around the night there, because it became a kind of focal point for bashment in London. And King's Cross was perfect, because it's central, so people can come from north, south, east, west—and out of town as well," says Ben. "There were some girls who used to come in from Essex. They were legends, those girls."

It was also around this time that Sticky—as in the legendary UK garage DJ—got involved in the night. "He started coming to the raves, then became a resident [DJ], which was mad, because Sticky had always been this big name for me," says Ben. "He was also really helpful in developing the night. When we started, dancehall was so ignored and uncelebrated, but he helped us see that it could be huge. We were playing around England and abroad, and running a blog with a national following, but it still felt really small. He helped us to see that there was this growing audience for it."

That growing audience propelled Hot Wuk from its weekly London spot into a regular monthly night in various cities around the UK. If you've ever been, you'll know how ecstatic an experience it can be; there's no pretension or chin-stroking or lull in the party—just hundreds of people throwing themselves around from start to finish. "Nottingham loves it—there's a big bashment scene up there," says Ben. "It goes off most in the cities where people already go out to all those other UK rave sounds—because you can't help it; if you're into garage or jungle, it clicks when you hear those dancehall vocals and melodies."

In the past five or so years, a bunch of other regular dancehall club nights have sprung up in London and throughout the UK. The proliferation of dancehall parties run like raves is, in part, undoubtedly due to the success of The Heatwave, their nights exposing people to the sound and their Rinse FM show (Monday nights from 11PM to 1AM) keeping you locked in.

While raising the profile of dancehall in the UK is presumably something they're both proud of, I wonder if Ben and Gabriel miss the days when their parties were the only regular, reliable bashment nights outside of London's Jamaican dancehall scene.

"No, it's a good thing," says Ben. "It just means more people are going to hear these tunes, and fundamentally that's what we've always wanted to do. It's not like there are only 500 people wanting to go out to this music now, like it was when we first started; there are thousands of people who are up for coming out and raving in that way."

Wiley and Riko Dan at Showtime, an event The Heatwave put on in 2011, celebrating the history of UK sound system culture, featuring dancehall, grime, and drum 'n' bass MCs.

The next target in Gabriel and Ben's sights is production. While they've been pressing bashment refixes to vinyl pretty much since they started putting on club nights, they're now in the early stages of making their own music. "We used to take a big, say, hip-hop or funky tune, and turn it into bashment—put some vocals on there, or whatever," says Ben. "But then we got to the point where we wanted to put our own spin on the production side of things. In the 80s, there was a real thriving UK dancehall scene that was rated in Jamaica, and we want to bring some of that back—dancehall with a London twist."

The Heatwave's aim is to give dancehall the recognition it deserves in the UK. That doesn't mean trying to court major labels, or diluting the sound to make it radio-friendly, but instead building on the infrastructure they've helped to create, making room for more artists to find their footing and establish a nationwide movement around the music. There are, of course, already pockets of passion up and down the UK—walk around any major city on a sunny Saturday and you'll probably hear dancehall pulsating over concrete and brick somewhere—but nothing on the scale of the various British genres directly influenced by the sound.

One of The Heatwave's recent Rinse FM podcasts (Gabriel, left, and Ben, right)

Notting Hill Carnival this weekend is about the best place in the country to hear a selection of all the various dancehall sounds in one place. While The Heatwave have thrown after-parties and DJ'd on the floats before, this year is the first time they'll be playing at a fixed sound-system, Different Strokes, which you'll find at St. Luke's Road on Sunday.

"That's new for us, and it's exciting, playing on a system in the main part of Carnival, rather than on the outside," says Gabriel. "But the sound system way of doing things, in principle, is also kind of similar to how we do things. The sound system model is very much: you find the space, maybe you run the bar, you do the promotion—you create your own space. And that's what we've always done and are still trying to do—create a world and a scene that's outside of anything that already exists."

Follow Jamie on Twitter.

The protest at Flinders Street. Image via Eric Jong

The Australian Border Force (ABF), a controversial body set up by Australia's conservative government, was forced to cancel its plans to spend the weekend checking the visas of individuals walking around Melbourne's CBD.

The ABF announced Friday morning that its officers would be stopping people from the city's main train station at Flinders Street, right down Swanston Street, which is Melbourne's busiest thoroughfare. Dubbed "Operation Fortitude," this was to be a combined effort between ABP officers, employees with Metro Trains, Yarra Trams, the Sheriff's Office, and the Taxi Services Commission. Details on the operation were hazy—other than it was to begin 2 PM Friday and extend through to Saturday evening.

"You need to be aware of the conditions of your visa," wrote the ABF Regional Commander of Victoria and Tasmania, Don Smith, in a statement. "If you commit visa fraud you should know it's only a matter of time before you're caught out."

Predictably, the operation was immediately slammed across social media, and an impromptu rally was organized at Flinders Street Station.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, who recently backed harsher border protection policies, agreed the operation seemed mislead. "The border is not at the banks of the Yarra River or Swanston Street," he said. "I thought it was a joke but it was serious."

The Community and Public Sector Union also opposed the operation, citing public backlash as a potential threat to its members. "We have been contacted by Border Force members deeply concerned about the way their work has been politicized raising safety concerns about the public reaction," CPSU National Secretary Nadine Flood wrote in a statement. "While Border Force staff have been involved in these types of operations before, they have never been publicized in this way."

Concerns such as these saw the operation cancelled shortly before a ABF conference was scheduled at 3 PM. The Victoria Police police then released this statement on Facebook:

Victorian Police has made a decision not to go ahead with this weekend's Operation Fortitude. We understand there has been a high level of community interest and concern which has been taken into consideration when making this decision. Victoria Police's priority is the safety and wellbeing of the whole community and we will continue to work with our partner agencies to achieve this.

While the nature of the operation seemed to be the source of concern across Twitter, the ABF blamed the wording of the morning's media release for the backlash.

In a press conference held in Canberra, ABF Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg, described the release as "clumsily worded" and said it failed to communicate what they were trying to achieve. "It is an unfortunate incident," he said. "It shouldn't have occurred. Remediation will be put into place but it's not a fatal embarrassment."

This announcement was met with jubilance across social media, but it's still unclear what exactly the ABP were hoping to achieve.

The ABF was formed in July of this year, merging customs and immigration and giving its officers the power to carry guns, gather intelligence, and detain suspects. However, as reported in the Guardian, under the crimes act of 1958, police can't normally request to see identification unless they believe an individual has committed a crime. Unfortunately for Operation Fortitude, this extends to papers proving visa status.

All screenshots from 'Mega Man Legacy Collection' courtesy of Capcom

A few days ago, Capcom launched Mega Man Legacy Collection as a digital-only release for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam. It would be easy to underestimate the significance of this—on the face of things, it's just another retro compilation—and yet this compendium of the Blue Bomber's first six adventures is actually one of the most important game launches of the year.

It's not so much what it is as what it represents that makes it important. This is no ordinary compilation. It's the work of a company that prides itself on treating classic video games with great reverence and care, its mandate to both restore and preserve important titles from the medium's past for current and future generations. Digital Eclipse might not be a familiar name to some, but it was a pioneer for emulation before people were even aware of the word, founded in 1994 and therefore pre-dating MAME by three years. The company was recently reformed by original founder Andrew Ayre, who recruited Mike Mika as Head of Development and former games journalist Frank Cifaldi as its Head of Restoration.

There could hardly be a better choice for the latter role. Cifaldi has been a video game historian and archivist for many years now, and he runs a Tumblr blog called Game Preservation. "For me personally, the Digital Eclipse brand always stood for innovation in terms of bringing back classic games," he tells me. "I wanted to reinvent that, by focusing on what I consider the proper restoration and premium packaging, as if we were treating these old games as the art form that I believe they are."

Cifaldi has lofty aims for Digital Eclipse, hoping it can eventually become the game equivalent of The Criterion Collection. "That's the elevator pitch," he says. "I don't say that officially because it's so hard to make that comparison. As much as we've done here I think we're years away from [that level] because what they do far exceeds the scope of what we're able to do right now." That, he believes, says less about Digital Eclipse than the video game industry as a whole. "I don't think we've proven that there's a market for this yet, and I'm hoping that the Mega Man Legacy Collection will wake up the rest of the industry, in understanding that people do appreciate these [games] not just as commercial products but as culturally significant works that are worth encapsulating in a way that contextualizes them and treats them with respect."

"What we're trying to prove here is that at least for certain games people do want a premium package. I think Mega Man Legacy Collection is going to prove that out. As a company, we're banking on it."
–Frank Cifaldi

That's certainly the case for Legacy Collection, which assembles pristine recreations of the first six Mega Man games, originally released for the NES, packaging them together with a series of bonuses—think of it as the equivalent of a second disc crammed with Blu-ray extras. There are challenge modes complete with online leaderboards, and an extensive digital museum, which contains an array of Mega Man memorabilia, including dozens of pieces of previously unreleased artwork. "We got lucky because Capcom published a Mega Man art book a couple of years ago for the 25th anniversary," Cifaldi said, "and because of that project, they'd already done the hard part of digging through their archives and scanning everything."

The museum, then, was the easy part of the process. Before all that, Digital Eclipse had to build an engine. As important as the tech was the philosophy behind it. "We have this unique problem with our form of media where new platforms will not play old product," Cifaldi explained. "You don't have that with film. No matter what, you're not going to [build] an architecture that makes playing video hard. And it's the same with books. It's relatively easy to print a reprint, or to put it on your Kindle or whatever. But it's not like that with games at all. If you port a game to one platform, you're really just focused on making it work on that. If you want it to work on other platforms, essentially you're just going to have to start over—especially when you're talking about new platforms that emerge."

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Essentially, The Eclipse engine had to be future-proof. The idea the studio had was to build a platform that would, in layman's terms, take the strain of porting away from the games themselves so the tech could bear the load. So rather than starting again, now it has the six Mega Man games running on Eclipse, it should theoretically be a matter of ensuring the engine runs on other platforms. "So when PlayStation 5 inevitably happens and we port our engine over to it, the hope is that getting [the Legacy Collection] running is a fairly painless process, because our tech's already on there." It's a commercial consideration, too, of course. Making games is costly, and Digital Eclipse's method should make it less risky for rights holders like Capcom to consider future ports.

Cifaldi admits it's always difficult to discuss financial concerns without provoking accusations of only being in it for the money. Yet he recognizes that commercial feasibility is a vital factor in the preservation of classic games. He doesn't believe that the industry has little respect for its past so much as it hasn't yet been able to tackle the problem of how to make its past profitable. "Without the participation of the rights holders of these classic games, I don't think we're ever going to get to the point where the industry wakes up and understands that our past is valuable. Now I don't think there's commercial viability in everything. But I think that if any game from the NES era is going to prove that there's still a market for that content, it's going to be Mega Man."

"I think we can all recognize that video games are culturally significant. We're finally at that point. But I don't think the commercial video game industry has properly reflected that." – Frank Cifaldi

Currently, part of the problem lies in the industry's prior treatment of older games. Many retro compilations have merely slapped several old ROMs onto a disc, and Cifaldi believes that rather than bringing the value of these games to light, they've done quite the opposite: They've cheapened them.

"It's like getting one of those ten-dollar boxes that have ten cowboy movie DVDs in them. Whereas we're doing the [equivalent of] the Criterion Collection [release] of Unforgiven. And I don't think video games have really tried that yet." He cites Nintendo's Virtual Console service as an example—though the quality of the emulation is generally good, the focus of each new release isn't about treating them as premium products so much as making them run and selling them relatively cheaply. "I think we're hurting the value of classic games if we continue doing that. We identified as a studio that classic games weren't being valued by [the industry's] traditional practices, and what we're trying to prove here is that at least for certain games people do want a premium package. I think Mega Man Legacy Collection is going to prove that out." He pauses briefly. "As a company, we're banking on it."

Mega Man is a particular labor of love for Cifaldi, though not simply because it's one of his childhood favorites; he thinks it's one of the most important games of the 8bit era. "This was, at least in the console world, one of the first games that I would argue was primarily art-driven in how we remember it," he explains. "I think the character designs and the pixel art in the first Mega Man, especially if you look at it in comparison to any other Famicom (NES) game that was released in 1987, those artists were really the first to adapt to those limitations. Before that, the best art on the NES was [aiming] for 'convincing,' whereas I feel Mega Man was one of the first games that really made a style out of pixel art."

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Whether there's enough of an audience that cares enough about such considerate and careful recreations remains to be seen—and, indeed, this is what Digital Eclipse is hoping to prove. For his part, Cifaldi is optimistic that not only is there a market out there for high-quality ports of classic games, but it's larger than many would think.

"Do I think we're going to prove it? I absolutely do. I mean, you can go to the mall today and probably buy a shirt with Super Mario pixel art. It's commercially proven that at bare minimum there is a nostalgia market. And I think there are people like me who want access to important works of video game art presented with loving care."

His excitement for the collection is clearly evident, and not just from the perspective of his role as its curator. "I'm making this for me, too, as a consumer. I want to be able to launch this thing and know that it works and it's right. All the stupid little details, like the NTSC color grading, the scan line approximation, the aspect ratio correction, the color palettes, the way that the sound chip is handled—I want to know that obsessive weirdoes like me have gone through this game with a fine-tooth comb and it's the absolute best it could be. And I don't think I'm the only person who appreciates that."

While Cifaldi knows the importance of appealing to those who would scrutinize the technical minutiae of the collection, he's keen that Digital Eclipse's work is part of a wider understanding of the form. Indeed, the recent rise of mainstream acceptance of games as art is what prompted him to consider the meaning behind the cultural preservation of the medium. With exhibits at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the MOMA, and films ranging from Wreck-It Ralph to the forthcoming BBC made-for-tv movie Game Changer, which traces the meteoric rise of the Grand Theft Auto series, it's increasingly clear to all that games are a growing part of the wider cultural landscape.

That's something, says Cifaldi, of which the industry should be proud. "I think we can all recognize that video games are culturally significant. We're finally at that point. But I don't think the commercial video game industry has properly reflected that. And that's why it's important that something like Digital Eclipse exists. So we can start waking up the industry into treating these works of art as works of art, which is something that the rest of the world already knows."

Mega Man Legacy Collection is out now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons user David Shankbone

There's this idea floating around the internet that if you're having a hard time ejaculating during sex, you might have something called "Death Grip Syndrome" (DGS). The phenomenon has its own Urban Dictionary page and everything. A user named The Jizz Wiz wrote it.

Death Grip Syndrome

A condition in which frequent masturbation by hand desensitizes the nerves in the cock, thus lessening the pleasure of jerking off.

The best cure for Death Grip Syndrome is a Fleshlight!

It also has its own website. Curedeathgrip.com offers helpful tips, including the "Anti-Death Grip Plan," and its slightly more brand-friendly cousin "The Fleshlight Plan." The idea with both of Curedeathgrip.com's plans is to deny your penis some of the hard sensations it's grown used to. Taking a softer, more moderate approach to self-gratification, the plans imply, will eventually bring sensation back to your numb and battered penis.

But there's a caveat to all this internet help: None if it is based on science. "'Death Grip Syndrome' is not a recognized medical condition and the ideas presented here are not meant to be and do not constitute medical advice," reads a disclaimer at Curedeathgrip.com. "It is only based on personal experience. Results may vary. Problems enjoying sexual pleasure may have many causes," it goes on.

Indeed, the term "Death Grip Syndrome" wasn't coined in medical literature. Like almost every 21st Century sex term in the English language, this one comes from noted sex advice columnist, podcaster, journalist, and activist Dan Savage. Most likely the first instance of "death grip" as a bad masturbatory habit was a Savage Love column from way back in 2003.

It's come up again and again since. "I get this question from at least one man a week, and sometimes from the panicked girlfriend," Savage told VICE.

But 2003 was far from the first time Savage used the term. That, he claimed, was about 35 years ago. "One of my first boyfriends could not come unless he pulled it out and masturbated in this insanely violent way that sometimes left him bloodied," he said.

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So, long before he had a column, he dispensed some of his first sex advice: He instructed his boyfriend to quit masturbating like that, or risk never being able to come with another person around. After several months, Savage said, his partner "started coming in a different way—the same intensity, the same pleasure, but not the same style."

Does Savage think he's dispensing scientifically accurate information? Not so much. "It's anecdote, personal experience, and folk wisdom. Because that seems to work for some people," he said.

Dr. Richard Santucci, Chief of Urology at Detroit Receiving's Center for Urologic Reconstruction told VICE the death grip diagnosis misses too many potential causes. "The idea of too strong masturbation rewiring you to expect really strong feelings during sex? I just don't believe it's that common."

Santucci pointed out that he has certainly encountered patients with ejaculation problems, but while the death grip theory "may be true for the individual person," it nonetheless "wouldn't be in the first ten things I'd worry about." Instead, the patient should "look into diabetes, medications, low testosterone, anxiety, all that other stuff."

The Mayo Clinic provides a list of possible causes for the medical condition known as delayed ejaculation. There are the obvious ones Santucci mentioned, along with alcoholism and drug use, birth defects, pelvic injuries, and nerve damage caused by diabetes.

And while the potential causes vary wildly, the reported symptoms of Death Grip Syndrome aren't consistent either. Some last forever in bed, always chasing the elusive nut, while others claim their inability to achieve or maintain an erection is thanks to DGS. The latter is highly curable with the help of pharmaceuticals, according to Santucci.

"There's a certain point where it doesn't really matter why people have erectile dysfunction because the treatment's all the same," he said, referring to Viagra and Cialis. Regular doses of Cialis, which isn't meant to be taken on a per-boner basis like viagra, is particularly useful in cases like these, he said. "The dose might be five milligrams, but if somebody has a really minor problem, we might just give them 2.5 milligrams a day." That does the trick, he said. "If you pretty much get good erections, you'll get even better—or even more normal—erections."

Lo and behold, the inside of an ass or twat does not feel like a pillow covered with four years of jizz.
—Dan Savage

But there are also sufferers of delayed ejaculation who don't lose their boners, and that's part of the problem. "They'll get sore. They'll get tired. They just sorta know they're not gonna come that way," New York sex therapist Michael A. Perelman told VICE. Perelman is a clinical professor of psychology in psychiatry at Cornell University, and co-director of the Human Sexuality Program at The New York Presbyterian Hospital. Perelman has encountered delayed ejaculation in many, many incarnations, including the endless thrusting anecdotally associated with a "death grip."

Santucci has encountered the problem as well. "If you meet those people, I'd say 80 percent of them are on SSRIs," he said, referring to the family of antidepressants called "selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors"—common drugs like Prozac and Zoloft.

This came as a surprise to Dan Savage. "It never occurred to me to ask if people were on SSRIs," he said. He knew the more familiar indictment of such drugs: "They crater your libido." The idea that the situation could be helped with a change in medication, he said, "is going to be such welcome news to people who write me about this problem."

But when the cause of the problem isn't "organic" as Santucci put it, it's often psychological. And these are the cases where even professionals like Santucci and Perelman have, from time to time, encountered the dreaded too-tight grip. (Perelman, for the record, finds the term "death grip syndrome" inadequate, and "ridiculously provocative.")

In a "five year retrospective chart review," (meaning gathering data from his patients' charts) Perelman told us he looked at 80 men with delayed ejaculation, and 37 percent of them had a history of masturbating in a way that stimulated a "specific spot," or "with an idiosyncratic style." He estimates that in total, 40 percent of men who make it to his office after complaining about delayed ejaculation are "idiosyncratic" masturbators. But too tight of a masturbatory grip is just one variation in the wonderful world of idiosyncratic masturbation.

"There are a lot of variations on this," he said. In addition to a tight grip, "you've got speed—super rapid simulation. You've got a particular place, and if that place isn't touched, it doesn't work." Then there are the really idiosyncratic ones. "Someone else might always use the same sock," Perelman said.

The idea is to be able to be responsive to more than one kind of stimulation, so that you can enjoy a range of responses.
—Michael A. Perelman, PhD.

Savage hears about the same variety of problems all the time. "I've heard from so many people over the years who grew up humping a crusty, dirty pillow they hid in their closet, and then lo and behold the inside of an ass or twat does not feel like a pillow covered with four years of jizz."

With the jizzy-pillow variation, along with all the other kinds of weird masturbation Perelman calls "problematic," the problem isn't so much the grip, location, speed, nor the texture of the crusty sock. It's the specificity. "The idea is to be able to be responsive to more than one kind of stimulation, so that you can enjoy a range of responses," Perelman said.

As for the number of men whose idiosyncratic masturbation was grip-based, "It's not more than 50 percent," Perelman said. In short, the phenomenon is real, but the term "Death Grip" seems to be leading masturbators astray. It should really be called "monotonous masturbation syndrome."

Redditors are all over the place in terms of what they think their Death Grips are doing to them. Some of their theories are pretty much in line with what Perelman has documented. Others think a guy with a tight grip "develops callouses on his penis," and that "the penis callouses begin to numb the penis head and causes the penis to become less sensitive to touch via genitals, mouth or hand." That would certainly be a problem, but if you're really forming calluses on your penis, you'll know.

As for what to do about it, Savage was remarkably on point when he changed his boyfriend's habits. Perelman does something similar. "I'll have them suspend masturbation temporarily until they're able to ejaculate with whatever their preferred form of sexual activity is with their partner."

But what if you're diabetes-free with no birth defects, not on antidepressants, don't drink, and you quit masturbating? In that case medical science can't do much for your problem; only a sex columnist can. Savage told us exactly what he tells his callers and readers: "If your dick doesn't adapt after making a good faith, multi-month effort, maybe that's just the way your dick works." He said.

You'll just have to do what women do when they don't come during sex with a partner: Unabashedly combine masturbation with intercourse. Or in Savage's turn of phrase: "Fuck and fuck and fuck, and then jack it, and then shove it back in when you reach that point of no return."

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1947 Roswell, a new body of photographs by Syracuse-based artist Allison Beondé, is meant to undermine and challenge widespread perceptions of truth in photography. Currently on view at Aviary Gallery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts (a suburb of Boston), the pictures aim at a more poetic kind of truth, oscillating between images photographed in New Mexico by Beondé, historical images she researched in the Roswell town archives, and evocative photograms made without a camera in the darkroom. All of this mirrors the shifting narrative of James Ragsdale, a key witness to the famous alleged flying saucer crash, whose account of the events changed throughout his life.

"The incident of 1947 was not isolated, nor entirely unique, but the questions surrounding government coverup, secrecy, and conspiracy shook the nation," Beondé explains. "I'm not interested in recounting the story of James Ragsdale as a credible source, or as an exercise in documentary or historical photography, but simply as what it is—a story; one that is open-ended, unresolved, strangely beautiful, and for the most part, regarded as a lie."

Perhaps, then, this poetic way of recounting the story through imagery is actually closest to the truth. In the wake of the controversy surrounding this spring's announcement of the World Press Photo Awards, in which a photojournalist was accused of staging images, many in the photography world have been forced to question the reliability of the images that add to our collective histories every day. What kind of truth can pictures offer? What kind of truth can ever be attained where human subjectivity is concerned? 1947 Roswell doesn't offer any answers, it instead presents the suspenseful and unsettled reality of one of America's great mysteries.

1947 Roswell will remain on view at Aviary Gallery through September 26. It was made possible in part by a 2015 Traveling Fellowship through the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as well as a 2015 Light Work Grant.

See more photographs by Allison Beondé on her website.

Follow Matthew Leifheit on Twitter.

A selection of fan art

When I was 13, pretty much everything I knew about sex was from fan fiction. And from what I could tell, it was awesome. In my very sheltered, inexperienced mind, sex was something that happened between elves, wizards, vampires, and my favorite characters from movies and TV shows. My preferred stories always involved a lot of discussion about consent, followed by lots of whole-hearted experimentation. While my friends opened their minds to sex by debating whether this drunken teen put it in that drunken teen, I stayed focused on more intriguing questions—like what it would be like if Harry and Ron got it on.

The reality is most people born after 1980 probably got a bulk of their early sex education from the internet, but sex in the world of fan fiction was less intimidating (and less gross) than what you'd find googling, What is a rim job? Writer Isobel Beech, who like me gleaned much of her early sexual knowledge from the genre, described it as, "A bit like the teenage girl's version of porn, if you didn't watch porn. And I didn't watch porn. Because I didn't know where to find it and the little porn I did see I didn't really like."

For her, the way the stories' nuances and arcs incorporated the emotional and rational parts of sex was refreshing. It appealed because "it gave back the power to chicks in some ways. It felt like one of the few places that women or girls were in control of a sexually-based narrative."

During her teens, young adult author Danielle Binks was one of the people churning out the stories Isobelle and I were devouring. She estimates that over the years she was active, she wrote over 400,000 words of fanfic, involving characters from Buffy, One Tree Hill, Once and Again, Gilmore Girls, and Veronica Mars. Like me, she came to the genre as a young adolescent with an interest in sex and not a lot of information. For her, reading and later writing these stories was a way to engage with the shows she loved on a deeper level, connect with other fans, and navigate her own understanding of gender and sexuality.

She remembers feeling like she wasn't getting the information she needed about sex from school or her parents. When asked why she thought the movement is so fixated on sex she replied, simply, "Because there are a lot of teenagers reading and writing it." And for those kids, they're just creating the content they can't find elsewhere.

"It should come as a surprise for no one that we have a diversity problem around gender and sexuality, in everything from books to TV to film," says Danielle. She suggests that when kids encounter sex for the first time in the mainstream media and find it lacking they turn inwards. Fan fiction is a welcoming avenue for self-exploration and working out what you like.

"It didn't weird me out, it didn't scare me—it enlightened me", she said. "I figured out more about the whos, whats, hows of what tantalized me from reading FF than I did from watching late-night SBS (public television in Australia) as a kid." For Danielle, these stories placed an emphasis on mutual attraction, respect, friendship, mutual pleasure, and counteracted the stereotypes that spread through porn.

Last year, Joseph Brennan from the University of Sydney completed his PhD in slash, a subgenre of fan fiction. Slash is the trend of taking heterosexual characters and placing them in gay or lesbian story lines. During his research he found most fan fiction writers tended to be women in their 20s, but the readership skewed younger, and was made up of largely teenage girls between 14 and 16.

During his PhD preparation Joseph also spent time thinking about what makes fan fiction unique in its ability to draw such a dedicated teen audience. "Fan fiction operates as a space where participants can experience sexuality and gender performance in the characters and in themselves," he said. "It's a way to explore the sexuality of the characters they're familiar with, but also explore their own sexuality."

Related: Interested in mega fans, check out our video on Magic: The Gathering:

It's this ability of fan fiction to push against broad presentations of sex and gender that makes it such a popular educational source. "The nature of it means there is then the opportunity to view sexuality as fluid, rather than static," says Joseph.

The influence the genre holds isn't exclusive to teenagers. And many of the young writers who got their start there carry parts of the experience into their adult lives. When asked how those early encounters echo in her life now, Danielle said: "It's a safe space to delve into your own imagination to see what appeals to you. Writing is largely about figuring yourself out—it's putting your heart on the page, and FF was definitely a ways and means to do that by writing about sex and sexuality."

For Isobelle it was also a practical resource when she started having sex, "I was pretty knowledgeable for someone who'd only ever pashed (kissed) a person. Because it's all so descriptive, it definitely did help with actual sex."

Years later, I often wonder how much of my own approach to sex was built on that online foundation. The ways you can educate yourself about sex are usually limited to porn or biology textbooks. But for me, fan fiction explored the emotions and nuances behind sexuality in a way that wasn't vulgar or patronizing. It showed that sex isn't always about making another person come, but it also wasn't a sacred act that had to be framed by true love.

When you're 13, it's hard to talk to friends and parents about what kind of sexual being you think you're becoming. But you can probably get Katniss Everdeen to act it out, post it online, and discuss it at length with a bunch of other teenagers you'll never meet. Credit should be paid to what a powerful resource erotica curated by teens is. Writing, fiction, and sex are all about freedom and exploration. And coming together in this strange part of the internet, they're doing a lot of good.

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Image courtesy DAILY VICE

The saddest spectacle in Canadian politics is the astroturf protest.

It works like this: Campaign staff get wind of a rival leader's campaign event, so they dispatch a team of flying monkeys to go mess with it. Those flying monkeys are usually decked out with crudely drawn signs, and heads full of catchy slogans.

The Conservatives did it to Justin Trudeau in 2013, when a mob of fresh-faced interns from the prime minister's office crashed the Liberal leader's policy announcement, waving around slogans scrawled on poster board.

And, recently, the Liberals did it to Thomas Mulcair. The NDP leader was holding an event in Toronto when a gaggle of sign-wielding maniacs cruised up to the nondescript office building where the bearded wonder was planning to give a stump speech, chanting things like "Tell the truth!" and brandishing slogans like "Budget cuts are: INEVITABLE."

INEVITABLE was in bright orange font.

"Are you staffers?" I asked.

"We're young Liberals. We are here because we want to be. We are here to oppose Thomas Mulcair's cuts," one told me. They all repeated it. It was like their mantra. I later saw them chanting it as one inquisitive fire chief walked by and asked them what their purpose was. Each took turns repeating their script.

The astroturf protest is a time-honoured tradition in Canadian politics. It's partisan monkey business. Political skullduggery. Campaign tomfuckery.

But seeing Liberals protest the NDP's austerity plan is like watching the league of women voters picket a convent. It just doesn't make any damn sense.

It's not say they're out-and-out wrong, though.

Running a typical third-party campaign, the Liberal Party is trying to flank to the left of the NDP by arguing for big, broad-based governing that would lavish money onto Canada's highways and bridges, cut cheques to its families and seniors, and commit cash for the country's under-resourced First Nations.

They're contrasting themselves with the penny-pinching small-thinkers in the NDP.

To give themselves maneuvering room to dig at the NDP leader, Trudeau has made the confounding commitment to spend into deficit right up until 2019,adding as much as $20 billion to the federal debt (that, for reference, would increase the federal debt by about 1.6 percent, which would still keep our total net debt-to-GDP ratio below that of Germany, and the lowest in the G7.)

Mulcair, meanwhile, has pledged to balance the budget.

The squabble is a fight devised entirely by Stephen Harper. And he's winning.

Despite the hokey fake protest, the Liberals are making a fair point against their opposition rivals: the NDP has, over the last several years, promised a lot of cash that they've not quite accounted for.

The NDP has committed to: repairing the country's infrastructure; upping health transfers to the provinces; returning the retirement age to 65; lowering small business taxes; creating education transfers in order to lower tuition fees; creating a million $15-a-day childcare spaces; increasing development aid; undoing cuts to the CBC; investing heavily in green energy technology; reinstating door-to-door mail delivery; doubling the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors; expanding infrastructure transfers to the cities; investing in public transport; and, well, a lot of other stuff.

All of those things cost a lot of money. And, at the moment, the NDP have only really explained how they'll pay for part of it. They said they'd hike the corporate tax rate, but don't know by how much. They'll close CEO tax loopholes, but can't say how much money that'd take in. They'll end some oil subsidies, but likely aren't accounting for the ensuing job losses that'll result. They'll abolish the senate, but can't really say when that will happen.

So the NDP faces a problem: What are they actually going to do? Most of that list of promises have evaporated in recent months.

Yesterday, we asked the NDP leader what in his platform would benefit wage workers, contract workers, students, and so on.

Mulcair cited NDP legislation that would afford more protections for interns and contract workers, and highlighted his plan to hike the minimum wage for the 80,000-or-so workers in the federal sector to $15 an hour.

In other words: expect the NDP platform to be sparse. Despite years of big-thinking national-minded programs, the modern party is more interested with small-scale tinkering.

The Liberals, on the flip side, have committed to a huge raft of infrastructure spending, vowing to give the Canadian economy a shot in the arm by paying to renovate Canada's infrastructure in the hope that things stop falling off Montreal bridges and onto people.

And, he says, deficit be damned!

Never mind that interest payments on our public debt is expected to cost us something like $18 billion over the next five years (not including the additional $20 billion, or more, Trudeau intends to add to the debt).

But can't we have a campaign where we don't have to choose between repairing our roads and balancing the budget? Can't we do both?

And while we're at it, neither leader is currently talking about wrestling down rising tuition fees or tackling the mountain of student debt. Neither leader is going near the idea of expanding welfare or Employment Insurance. Neither leader is talking facilitating first-time home-buying. (Even Stephen Harper is talking about that.) Neither leader is talking about culture spending, aside from slapping a band-aid over the CBC.

Truth is: no matter which of the three leaders becomes prime minister, it will likely have very little impact on your life.

Here we reach the problem: Stephen Harper has trapped his predecessor into continuing his agenda.

If you've got kids, or a bunch of disposable income, you probably really like that agenda. If you have neither, it's probably not for you.

Harper's government promised to mail you cash for every baby you can create, then announced that it would be letting you squirrel away up to $10,000, tax free, in cash and stocks. Then there's income splitting for families and seniors, meaning they can reduce their tax burden by a pretty significant yearly amount. Add onto that the decision to increase defence spending, and you've suddenly got very little room to spend anything on anything.

Neither Mulcair nor Trudeau is talking about ending the procreation awards (that mail out something like $4.5 billion in cheques to parents annually) even though there's not a lot of evidence that mailing micro-payments to families is actually doing anything productive. Trudeau even wants to expand it, albeit re-aiming it at low-income families.

Then there's the wasteland of social engineering tax credits that have been haphazardly stacked in our tax code for decades. Maybe if we had a leader crazy enough to axe that thicket of absurd tax breaks—yeah, go ahead, show me how a $150 child fitness tax credit is really going to convince parents to put their kids in hockey—we'd have some extra cash left to, I dunno, send people to Mars, or whatever it is we feel like doing.

This is such a narrowly-fought election campaign, one that seems so intent on finding ways to buy the votes of minivan-driving families, that watching Liberal fake protesters wave their anti-austerity signs at the budget-balancing Dippers really felt like a hallucination. It felt like, maybe, federal elections are really just high school popularity contests that just cost a lot more.

Follow Justin Ling on Twitter.

Image via Flickr user Philip Schubert

On Wednesday night, the Western Australian town of Port Hedland announced it would endorse a Relationship Declaration Register to formally recognize the relationships of the town's same-sex couples. Seven out of eight council members voted in favor of the move, and they expect around 100 people will eventually join the Register. While not a legal equivalent to marriage, it will add another level of formality to a couple's relationship status. It will also make it easier for partners to have a say on legal issues like wills and medical treatment involving their significant others.

But beyond practical considerations, it's a gesture of inclusion from the town to its gay and lesbian residents. In 2012 the City of Vincent, also in Western Australia, established the state's first Relationship Declaration Register. Port Hedland's mayor, Kelly Howlett, believes that the sense of responsibility smaller towns harbor between residents can make them more active in taking practical steps to support same-sex couples. VICE spoke to Howlett about why the town decided it was time to take on marriage disparity.

VICE: Hey, Kelly. Congratulations on the register. What will it actually mean?
Kelly Howlett: While making a Relationship Declaration does not infer a legal right in the same way marriage does, it's important that it can be used in legal proceedings that involve interpretation or application of legislative provisions.

What does that actually mean?
It's another way evidence can be provided that there is a formal relationship. It's a way of providing evidence that two people—whether they be heterosexual or same sex—are in a committed loving relationship.

How did it come about?
The Port Hedland Gay and Lesbian Society approached the town and asked us to consider it. We put it out for public comment, and then based the policy on that. We were aware The City of St. Vincent has done it, so we mirrored them.

Does Port Hedland have a large gay and lesbian community?
We do. That being said, we are a modern vibrant town. We're on the cusp of being a city with 20,000 people. Any regional center with 20,000 people would have our makeup and composition.

Obviously it will have a practical impact, but how do you think publicly getting behind something like this will impact the town in a broader sense?
I think it will be very positive. It's certainly something everyone sees in terms of inclusiveness and equality. And whilst there has been emphasis on same-sex relationships, it's applicable for heterosexual relationships. There are people who aren't considering marriage, but are considering something along these lines. It's important in terms of wills, medical treatment, and even burials and cremation. If people aren't recognized as being a partner, their say in those things can be lost.

How much of this was practical, and how much a show of support?
In the end this is about recognizing love and being inclusive. Our council has a wide mix of different professionals and expertise—one of our members is a pastor—so it was also good for everyone to have that debate and discussion. This isn't changing marriage, but it's good that people are able to work through some of those issues and points. Love is love, and people saw it as that and not something that was threatening their definition of marriage.

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Was there much pushback?
No, not much. We had some people in opposition come and speak to the council, and even when I'm at the shopping center people approach me. The healthy discussion was interesting to see.

Did those discussions lead to any people changing their minds?
Yeah, I have seen that on a really close personal level. One of my good friends has pretty well gone full circle. It was interesting to see them discuss it, review it, and then change their mind. Rather than be caught up in the hype, when they un-peeled the issue and saw its raw elements they recognized this is just about people who love each other. And how can that be so bad?

It's interesting that we're seeing smaller cities leading the way in making these proactive efforts. Why do you think that is?
Maybe you're more connected in a smaller community? You know everyone, you know people's circumstances, you know what's happening, that connection is stronger. When you're 20,000 people in a remote city, you want to be inclusive of everyone, and recognize everyone.

So the smaller population makes the realities of the issues more visible?
I think so, and you can't help but know the challenges people are up against intimately. You do get more exposure to people's personal challenges. We're at that stage in the national discussion, where you're a smaller community and you're talking about it more and more, and you start thinking of the things we can do to make residents lives better.

Do you feel proud of the town tonight?
Yes. What surprised me was the people and radio commentary asking, why is Port Hedland doing this? I don't think Port Hedland is that different to any other regional center with 20,000 people. Everyone is having these discussions, but maybe they're not as bold in wanting to have a say and make a difference.

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Image via Flickr user MIKI Yoshihito

Read: Finding Love with Herpes, Thanks to STI-Positive Online Dating

STIs get a bad rap, what with the rashes and sores and threat of jail time, but a growing body of research suggests that swapping microbes during sex could make us healthier.

Although we know our bodies are chock-full of bacteria and viruses that can both benefit and hurt us—for example, naturally occurring yeast that can also cause yeast infections—Niki Wilson at the BBC reports that certain sexually-transmitted microbes (STMs) target and minimize the effects of other diseases.

Take GB virus C (CBV-C), an STI often found in patients with HIV. The thing with GBV-C is that, instead of further compromising HIV-positive patients' immune systems, the virus has been shown to reduce their mortality rate by 59 percent.

"Scientists think GBV-C does this by reducing HIV's ability to compromise our immune system cells," Wilson writes. "It may also stimulate other parts of the immune system to actively fight the infection."

That's just one example—more helpful STMs have been found in other species. Mosquitos pass along STMs that live in their testes, gut, and eggs. These nourish larvae and cause them to mature days faster than larvae without it. Similarly, STMs in fungi can accelerate growth, as well as make their hosts withstand warmer temperatures. The same may be true for humans.

"What if it just felt better to have sex when you had a particular bug?" Betsy Foxman, the director of the Center for Molecular and Clinical Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Michigan, asked the BBC. "That bug could increase mucus flow. It could be as simple as that."

All that aside, there are obviously a bunch of reasons why condoms are still a thing. Just because you might pick up STIs that don't put a tangle in your dangle doesn't mean you should actively put your junk at risk—it's still like Osmosis Jones out there.

Photo by Giles Moberly

As the last thirty years of Notting Hill Carnival have ticked by, so have the questionable haircuts, dance moves, and costumes amongst the crowds. While everyone else was busy drinking rum out of the bottle and looking for a place to take a leak, photographers Norman Craig and Giles Moberly were diligently documenting the party on camera.

From the Nation of Islam in their sharp suits to the girls dressed up as the "Soca Police Force," the photo opportunities were so good that Craig and Moberly kept going back year after year. The result is a slice of West London history. Here are their incredible photos from the last three decades of Carnival.

Our Carnival content is bought to you in partnership with Rinse. You can catch them at this year's Notting Hill Carnival. Click here to find out more.