LA's Olympic Stadium, the Coliseum. Photo via Wikimedia Commons / Los Angeles

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti really wants his city—which is now the United States Olympic Committee's official Olympic bidder for 2024—to host the Olympic Games.

"We know how to do Olympics, we know how to do them well, we know how to do them economically," he boasted on Tuesday. Los Angeles mayors can only serve two four-year terms, so whatever happens he'll be out of office during the games, but he's working hard to make this thing happen.

The City Council backed Garcetti's bid, but some council members seemed slightly less enthusiastic than their mayor. "All public fund commitments would require express, advance authorization of the council and the mayor. And as of this moment, we've made none," City Councilman Paul Krekorian, who voted in favor of the bid, told VICE.

The need for caution when it comes to Olympic bids is pretty obvious by now: Though the Olympics bring unrivaled publicity to a metro area, the event can cause some pretty serious civic damage. Athens is perhaps the most notorious case: The 2004 Olympics left the taxpayers of Greece with a debt of 7 billion euros (not including the money sunk into a new airport and transportation system), and the mess is regarded by some as a major contributor to Greece's ongoing economic crisis. When the Olympics came to Beijing in 2008, China used it as an opportunity to showcase its status as an economic powerhouse, but wound up with massive bills and headaches, along with a bunch of depressing abandoned stadiums and crumbling infrastructure. Today, some Chinese academics regard hosting the Olympics as a mistake.

Like international athletic competitions? Check out our documentary about eating hot dogs with Kobayashi:

The 2012 London games were regarded as a rip-roaring success by London politicians, but in reality it went $15 billion over budget, and the benefits to the local economy that are supposed to come with the Olympics didn't materialize during the games. (Neale Coleman, an advisor to the mayor of London credits the games for a spike in tourism afterward).

The Winter Olympics aren't much better, as anyone who can remember the morass of corruption that was the 2014 incarnation in Sochi, Russia, can attest.

Still, when the announcement came in 2013 that Tokyo had won the 2020 Olympics, beating out somewhat limp competition from Istanbul and Madrid, there were celebratory shouts of "Banzai!" As if on schedule, problems have begun to crop up in Tokyo. The centerpiece stadium has hit delays and suffered from massive cost overruns earlier this summer. The plans were scrapped in July, and, surprise surprise, costs went up again.

So why all the enthusiasm, when these games are clearly a bad investment most of the time? Is there something only the local Olympic committees can see, or is Garcetti banking on LA being immune to the Olympic curse?

One city that seems to have been inoculated against Olympic fever is Boston. In January, the Massachusetts city won the chance to bid on the Olympics away from Los Angeles, but anti-Olympic protesters quickly came out in force. By spring, only 36 percent of Bostonians even wanted the games to come to their town. In July, Boston's mayor announced that the city didn't want the stupid Olympics anymore.

Christopher Dempsey, an activist involved with No Boston Olympics, one of the groups that led the charge to shoot down the city's Olympic ambitions, says the three weeks of the games are a distraction from the larger impact of spending taxpayer money on a giant international party that benefits no one quite so much as the International Olympic Committee.

"It's essentially an auction," Dempsey told VICE. "They're trying to get cities around the world to bid on this thing that's very shiny and very sexy, but it's hard to really value it in any quantitative way." After it's over, he added, "economists haven't really found that cities are better off."

When the bidding process was finished, Dempsey claims, the city of Boston would have written itself into a very bad deal. He explained the IOC's offer this way: "We're going to basically promise you we're going to do all this stuff, and if there are cost overruns, the city of Boston is the payer of last resort."

But Los Angeles isn't like Boston, according to Krekorian. "We don't have to start from scratch, building big stadiums, doing multibillion-dollar projects that a lot of other cities have to do. If Rio pulled out of the Olympics next year, we could probably host with what we've got," he said.

LA hosted the 1932 games—set against the backdrop of the Great Depression—and they were profitable. According to the Guardian, the next Olympics that made money for the host city was 1984, when LA hosted once more. (In fact, the games were so profitable, some officials felt duped by the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee's alleged tightfistedness.)

"I remember the atmosphere in Los Angeles at that time. I think that that history does inform our conclusion now that Los Angeles is a great Olympic city," Krekorian said. "The 1984 games produced such a fiscally positive result that we created a foundation that continues to benefit the people of Los Angeles today." He's referring to the LA84 Foundation, a youth sports nonprofit founded with money from the 1984 surplus.

But the Olympics are a gamble, and no one can guarantee that Los Angeles won't lose. "Our job is to look at this in a cold-eyed, analytical, data-driven way, to make sure we protect the taxpayers of Los Angeles," Krekorian said, adding, "We're not going to write a check just for the joy of having the Olympics here."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

An average Canadian mourns the loss of ChAvril. Photo credit Mish Way.

Dearest Josiah,

Can you believe the news? It feels like just yesterday your wife and I were watching MuchMusic in your living room, singing along to Avril's hit song "Smile" while Kenny iced his foot. Now, ChAvril are divorcing? There have been some horrifically sad losses for Canada recently: Rita MacNeil's death, that stupid do-gooder, tree hugging new Neil Young song, cancer and now this?

Remember the day we found out two of our great nation's biggest rock stars were getting married? Avril Lavigne and Chad Kroeger. How many times did we flip through that copy of Hello! to see Avril's grinning fangs hovering just below her new husband's goatee? I think I was so excited I barfed a bit in my mouth (but I swallowed it because every good Canadian knows you NEVER waste a mouth full of Cool Ranch Doritos and Pilsner).

I really had high hopes. I thought that they were going to have little ChAvril babies. They would turn those babies into musicians and they would start their own Partridge Family. They never even got close. I mean, there were the pregnancy rumors when Avril showed up at the Nylon party in that hideous jacket and the nasty, mean press assumed she was pregnant. She didn't even look fat! She's just short and boxy. I bloat when I'm wasted on Crown Royal too. Then, she did that awesome cover of Nickelback's greatest hit and we knew things had to be going smooth. Maybe more songs were on the horizon? Then, boom! The duet they wrote and performed together. It was gorgeous. I think it was my ringtone for six whole months. That song should have been made into the national anthem. Why did no one sign our petition at parliament? That still makes me devastated. At least we tried.

TEARS. TEARS ARE BEING SHED. Screenshot from Avril Lavigne's Instagram.

Then, the break-up rumors started. We refused to believe such filth. I mean, they were so happy and in love when they did that excellent interview with Howard Stern. They talked about how many times they had sex on Canadian Thanksgiving and how they were going to measure Chad's penis when they had some time between press interviews. Everything was perfect!

Chad didn't attend Avril's birthday party in Vegas and she was seen without her wedding ring. I think he was too, but he had the perfect excuse! "Wedding rings come on and off," he told a reporter. "See!" Then he cleverly showed the world how to take a ring of one's finger. God, I mean, that was basically science. Besides, every time a break-up rumour would arise, Avril would quell it by posting a cute selfie of her and Chad. They fooled us all. She did, really.

I blame her. She's obviously a controlling femi-nazi! I mean, she made her ex-husband from Sum 41 take her last name when they got married years ago. What kind of loyal wife does that? Who does she think she is? She should be so grateful that the frontman of Nickelback (Hello!) wanted to bang her, let alone marry her. He is one of the most highly respected musicians in the world. Every guy I know who sodomized me in high school loved Nickelback. She makes me so mad. Forget the Lyme Disease. I mean, what is that anyway? It's like a mosquito bite, right? Big deal.

I saw that Dean Murdoch tweeted at Avril propositioning her for a date. If she was smart, she'd hitch her dying star to that wagon. He's a totally hot Canadian legend! Selfishly, I don't want her to stomp the hearts of all Canada's greatest men. Especially not Dean. (Swoon!)

Who am I kidding? We knew ChAvril were bound to divorce. They got married on Canada Day... in fucking

France. Traitors.

Sincerely destroyed,

Your friend,
Mrs. Barber

What happens when you don't stand together?

My sweet Mish,

Your words have moved me greatly. There's nothing a human being needs more in these times of mourning than community. As Chad himself so poignantly put it in his song "When We Stand Together," "Hand in hand together, that's when we all win." And the drumbeat carries on.

I don't doubt that you're also reeling from the news of Chad and Avril's dissolved marriage, but you're currently in Los Angeles, where I can only assume all relationships are polyamorous by law. The loss of Chad and Avril, while still painful, is probably a lot easier in California than it is up here in Western Canada.

We don't really have too many celebrity couples around these parts. Sure, Dallas Green is married to that lady that used to be on MuchMusic. Tom Thacker from Gob got his wedding in the New York Times. The singer from Hedley used to be married to a girl from my elementary school. But ChAvril was different. Though they look and act like a godawful Surrey, BC couple who got rich off of lucky scratch-and-win tickets at a local billiards hall, ChAvril got us international headlines. And let's be clear. Chad Kroeger is a person just as much as Avril Lavigne is a person, but ChAvril was a larger than life entity.

ChAvril was with me from the very beginning. August 21, 2012 was my 27th birthday. I woke up feeling chuffed, hopped on my bike and rode to work. On the way, however, I suffered a nasty spill and fractured my elbow in three places. I went to the hospital and, writhing in pain while I awaited surgery, took solace in my Twitter feed: Chad and Avril, on that mixed-up and painful day, had announced that they were in love. No amount of percocets could match the divine comfort I found in that simple token of true love.

Like the plastic flames adorning the side of a souped-up Honda Civic cruising down the Coquihalla, theirs was a love that shone ever so brightly. And yet a fiery passion that intense simply cannot last. Maybe she had a change of heart. Maybe their love simply died down. Maybe he cheated with a waitress in a Red Robin bathroom. Whatever the case, our golden years are behind us, and I'm beginning to question the validity of my own marriage in the wake of this incredibly gutting news.

Put simply, love is dead. The human spirit is crushed. Canada, as we once knew it, is over. As such, I've decided to vote for Stephen Harper in the next election.

In sadness and in love,
Josiah

Follow Mish Way on Twitter.

So inviting

Teenagers in Saint John, New Brunswick—a small, blue-collar port city with a median age of 41—pretty much only have a skatepark and occasional DIY house shows when it comes to places they can call their own. Maybe that's why the lighthouse on Partridge Island is a beacon for Saint John's hoodlum counterculture. Since Partridge Island was abandoned in mid-'80s, exploring its creepy underground tunnels, wartime ruins, and unmarked mass graves has become a local rite of initiation.

Every kid in West Saint John grows up hearing rumours about Partridge Island. Thousands of immigrants died there of typhus and cholera between 1785-1850—so many that the soil could scarcely contain the bodies—and it also housed a provincial lab to identify pathogens. Harder to verify: that it's haunted by a soldier that committed suicide and people who got trapped in the tunnels. The mythos only further entices trespassers, even though going there is probably stupid as well as illegal. When the Bay of Fundy is choppy, the highest tides in the world are high, and particularly when you, too, are high, the path of jagged boulders that connects the island with the mainland is pretty terrifying. It's located at the farthest tip of Bayshore Beach, a wild expanse of pebbles framed by eroded cliffs and abandoned WWII gun positions. After jumping from granite slab to concrete chunk for about 45 minutes, you can finally scale the rope maintained by generations of trespassers on the cliffside, and set foot on the island.

There's a Spirited Away-style twist in the sense that you're pretty much fucked if you get stuck on the breakwater after dark. Several people have broken limbs making their way across it, and kids regularly have to be rescued by the Coast Guard. First-timers are almost always goaded by more experienced friends, who get to a) act annoyingly smug and b) scare-prank the novitiates and make 'em jump like wittle bunnies.

Saint Johner Joe Hooley, 28, visited over 65 times before a 2008 injury ended his breakwater-scaling days. I asked what drove him to keep making the trek.

"Finding new things each time. I hit the usual spots: the radio tower, the cemetery, the dock. But then I went down in the tunnels with a flashlight. I found a random staircase to nothing in the woods, and the foundations to even older buildings, years after I had already been a 'regular' there. It gave me a sense of accomplishment."

Tackling the tunnels, once used to store ammo for naval guns, requires the illusion of total invincibility that fades after puberty. When you're 15, however, garbage-strewn, dripping hallways 30 feet under an abandoned island seem like great place to have sex and do mushrooms.

The Birdhouse, a rust-stained, crow-covered concrete shell of a WWII-era radio tower, is a fave hangout for spraypaint-happy teens and pyros. Andrew Hodge, now in his 20s, recalls a particularly enjoyable night of wanton vandalism.

"We spent hours tossing plywood, two-by-fours, cable spools, pallets, furniture, insulation, and old boots into the building, then lit up one of the biggest, hottest fires of my life," says Hodge, a hobby welder and glassblower. "Flames licked out the windows. The moss on the top of the concrete roof steamed. We kept praying that the ferry would float by and we'd really freak the folks out."

But the island's days as a post-apocalyptic, punk playground could soon be numbered. The results of a $200K feasibility study on making it a tourist site are expected to be released in the coming months. Politicians and community leaders were recently invited on a tour of the island, suggesting plans to clear trails and install 24/7 surveillance may be moving slowly forward. Or maybe not. Several attempts to revitalize the site have foundered over the past few decades, due in part to the fierceness of the geography. One retired Fundy Baykeeper described revamping the breakwater as a plan "border[ing] almost on lunacy." For now, at least, there's a certain poetry to the fact that it's inaccessible to all but the weird few.

While walking trails and plaques might attract tourist dollars, a squeaky-clean revamp of the neglected National Historic Site would mean the end of its B-horror, Maritime Gothic vibe. In small-town New Brunswick, where life tends to be achingly predictable, Partridge Island offers a rare, true adventure—the sort that bonds people with a place. "Partridge," as Hodge puts it, "gives the youth a place to blow off steam, to take risks, and that gives it a certain gravity."

Follow Julia Wright on Twitter.

Nilüfer Demir. Photo: DHA

This past Wednesday, 12 people drowned while trying to reach a Greek island from Turkey on a rubber raft. One of the casualties was three-year-old Alan Kurdi, who had fled Kobane with his family.

The picture of the Syrian boy lying face down on the shores of Bodrum spread like wildfire through Turkish social media and was soon shared by people all over the world. Since then, it has become a symbol for the suffering of refugees in Europe. At the same time, the controversial photo has sparked a debate around the question of whether such a picture should or should not be published.

Some media outlets declined to publish the picture in order to protect the boy's dignity as well as sparing his remaining family the grief. Others decided on the opposite course of action and published the photo, arguing that the image should be used to raise awareness of the refugee crisis precisely because it is so shocking. If this is the result of our immigration policy, people need to see it.

Whichever side of the debate you find yourself on, it is clear that the image of Alan Kurdi's dead body has already burned itself into the collective memory of Europeans; it is already a part of history. The photograph was taken by Nilüfer Demir, a photographer working for the Turkish agency DHA. We spoke to her about how the picture came into being.

VICE: Did you just stumble upon that scene? How did this photograph happen?
Nilüfer Demir: No, as a press photographer I often work from the beaches of Bodrum. My agency, DHA, and I regularly report on the refugees' situation. On that day, I was on the beach to document a group of Pakistani refugees that were just taking off in a rubber dinghy. That's how the bodies of the Syrian refugees were discovered.

Photo: Nilüfer Demir/DHA

What did you feel when you saw the boy?
I almost felt paralysed when I saw the child's corpse. Later, I learned that he was just three years old. At the same time, as a photographer I have a task that does not allow time for second guessing, for freezing. So, I took the pictures.

Has this sort of thing happened before – are drowned refugees a common sight in Bodrum?
Yes. In the last 12 years, I have taken pictures of many refugees getting into rubber boats to cross from Bodrum's beaches to the Greek island of Kos. The crossing is not without dangers and Alan Kurdi was sadly not the first casualty. The photographers who work in the area have grown used to the sight of boat remains unfortunately.

Moreover, it's not only Syrians who try to cross. At the moment, we also see a lot of Afghani and Pakistani refugees in the area. Every war in the surrounding region drives refugees to the beaches of Bodrum and Kos. Turkey and Greece are a stepping stone to the European Union for many.

How do you feel about the picture having travelled around the world so quickly?
On the one hand, I wish I hadn't had to take that picture. I would have much preferred to have taken one of Alan playing on the beach than photographing his corpse. What I saw has left a terrible impression that keeps me awake at night.

Then again, I am happy that the word finally cares and is mourning the dead children. I hope that my picture can contribute to changing the way we look at immigration in Europe, and that no more people have to die on their way out of a war.

There's been a lot of debate about whether those pictures should be published. What is your take on that?
If the picture makes Europe change its attitudes towards refugees, then it was right to publish it. I have taken many photographs of the refugee drama and none had such an effect on the public consciousness . But I certainly don't wish for more of those pictures.

Thanks, Nilüfer.

When I was first approached by Greenpeace to join them on an action, I imagined cruising through the Arctic on a speedboat for some piracy, or scaling a skyscraper to hang banners off the walls.

So, when I find myself with one shoe stuck in some sludge on a campsite just outside the M25, I would be lying if I didn't say my inner child wasn't slightly disappointed.

The plan was pretty simple: move a giant polar bear puppet, named Aurora, to Shell's central London HQ, and keep it there until Shell stopped drilling for oil in the Arctic—or, failing that, until everyone ended up in prison.

Greenpeace believes Arctic oil drilling is disastrous for the planet; researchers this year concluded that it's incompatible to drill if we want to hit the target of limiting global warming to no more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels. Shell—well, they disagree.

As I made my way through the mud, on the eve of the action, the field looked more scout camp than mission control. But the 60-plus people milling around canvas tents on the grass weren't singing "Kumbaya" as they piled into a muddy gazebo for the final meeting before the following day's protest would commence.

The camp, in a muddy field somewhere near the M25

An Australian bloke called Pete stood at the front of the assembly, responding to questions about how to deal with the cops.

"We're not going to get ourselves arrested just to protect the lair pieces," Pete was explaining, as he referenced some secondary structures that would be accompanying the bear.

"We're going to be OK at the start, they're pretty big, and the police won't know what to do with us. At some point they'll act, but we have to play it by ear and go from there."

The protest itself was going to be far from legal, so getting a rise from the police would be just a matter of time.

Sitting in the middle of the road outside Shell HQ, the protesters would be obstructing the highway, which has a maximum penalty of a £1,000 [$1,500] fine. If they ventured too close to Shell's private property, aggravated trespass might be thrown at them too, and a conviction for this could see them spending up to three months behind bars.

Conversation soon turned to Shell's ongoing injunction, which bans Greenpeace UK staff and activists from crossing a line drawn around Shell's offices. The plan was to breach this—a fuck you to the British legal system—which could see everyone nicked there and then.

On the canvas walls of the mucky gazebo were lists of names and responsibilities; "paw prints," "Aurora's head," "lock on minders," and "traffic" included.

Another Greenpeace staffer, Abby, explained how they'd be shutting down the road from the get-go. "There'll be a lot of press when Emma Thompson turns up, and the press like running into the road; it's not your responsibility to stop them getting hit," said Abby. Solidarity, eh?

By 10 PM, most of the teams had been sent to bed, with the 4 AM start edging closer. I hung back, with the six who planned to "lock on"—a technique used at protests that sees activists physically attach themselves to a site, to ensure the police are forced to physically remove them and cause as big a disturbance as they can.

"I'd like to make sure we have at least one person on outside duty at all times," Pete was telling them, as they discussed the best way to hold their ground. "The door has a lock, although it's not particularly strong.

"These aren't the strongest locks in the world," he continued, "our plan isn't to keep you there forever, we want to force a response from the police, so you get arrested."

I couldn't help feeling that the lock-on guys had the most at stake, so we grabbed a cup of tea, as the rest of the troops hit the hay, so I could find out what had driven them to agree to get nicked for the cause.

Janet Barker, 36, studied environmental science, but became disillusioned with her work. "I ended up going to teach energy saving in schools, but it ended up being sponsored by N-Power, it just made no sense."

Barker doesn't seem like a hardened criminal, but she was planning to break the law in no time at all. "I'm going into this aware I'll be arrested," she told me, "but your gut instinct overrides any fear of arrest."

"They need common sense drilling into them," she proudly quipped, "they don't need to drill in the Arctic. Write that down!"

I ask if she thinks it's OK to break the law.

"It's all scale, right? A massive oil slick in the Arctic—that is legal, apparently. But us messing about in front of Shell HQ isn't?!"

Related: We hung out with communists and anarchists of every conceivable stripe at this year's May Day protest

Barker was to be joined by Barry Broadly, a 48-year-old ex-army geezer, not your stereotypical eco-activist.

"A cop once said to me, 'Is it worth it getting a criminal record?' I said, 'What, saving the planet? I think so.'"

Mark Crutchley, now in his late 50s, would be shackling himself down too, alongside 64-year-old Irene Statham, and Dorset-based Len Herbert, 59.

The first five I spoke to are veterans when it comes to Greenpeace actions, so for them getting arrested is now something of a norm. Herbert proudly recalled the time he mounted the roof of Parliament to demand action on climate change before ending up in the back of a meat wagon.

But for Hannah Boustred, 31, this would be a first-time cuffing.

"I'm confident that if there was ever any reason to go through the trauma of arrest and courts, then this it," she told me, as the others headed off to their sleeping bags.

"I'm humbled to be a part of it, how many opportunities in life do you get to be the person standing in front of the big machines, saying 'No'? Not many."

At 4AM the campsite drearily reawakened, as the activists filed onto coaches to take them to site. "I've never been awake in a field at this time not fucked off my tits," someone chuckled, as we made our way quietly through the muck.

An hour or so later, we pulled up to a parking lot round the corner from Shell HQ. There was a crowd of people already milling about, including Emma Thompson, the Oscar-winning actress, who'd be the media pull for the day.

Protesters looking jolly on a very early coach ride into London

"It's not that bold to do this, and risk arrest," said Thompson, as the bear started to move behind us in the dark.

"The law is only as sensible as the people who've made it. It's man made, sometimes good and sometimes bad. This time it's bad, because the law is in fact upholding the rights of a company who have no right to be in the Arctic, threatening our habitat in the way that they are."

The puppet made its way through the quiet South Bank roads, moving serenely as it edged closer to Shell. A fully functioning marionette, those involved had gone through days of training, as the bear's legs and head stirred into action. A team of impromptu, self-appointed traffic wardens—fully equipped with stolen road closure signs—held back the traffic as they went.

As the bear pulled up into position, in the shadow of the London Eye, I caught up with Iris, who'd been stationed on one of the bear's legs.

A close shave with the RV1 as the bear as pulled through the city

"I've just helped puppeteer a polar bear the size of a double-decker bus through the streets of London," she said, breathing heavily as she went. "We've got plenty of things planned to make our presence felt, and we'll be staying here as long as we can."

At this point, I put a call into Shell's press office; an Australian woman answered the phone. I asked her straight-up, "Is Shell going to stop drilling because of this?"

"You mean to say, will we stop drilling, because there's a puppet outside my office... What do you think?" she drily replied.

By half six the lock-ons were in place. Two guys were stationed on high seats poking out of the top of the structure, with another two chained to the railings inside, while down below the final pair were sat on platforms at the bottom of the staircase. A police car showed up, but disappeared pretty quickly to leave the bear be.

Every good Greenpeace protest needs a cellist

I tracked down the youngest looking protester, 15-year-old Gaia, who turned out to be Emma Thompson's daughter.

"I've not been dragged here by my mum," she assured me, as we leant against the security barriers. "Global warming is the biggest problem facing my generation; if we don't open our eyes to the catastrophe that's happening, we're basically all fucked... I don't think Shell want to accept the fact that what they are doing is actually killing our species."

It was 2 PM when it all kicked off again, when Emma T and a band of the activists regrouped in front of a media throng. After reading a poem that she'd penned for the occasion, Thompson turned to the imposing office block.

"Listen up you guys, it's your children and grandchildren. This is an act of monumental greed and selfishness, and it has to stop," snarled Thompson, as the bear roared alongside.

Suddenly she was sticking some paper to the windows of the building, as other activists joined in to give her a hand. Shell security watched on, bemused, as a copper took out his pocket camera to film the affair.

Elena Polisano, an Arctic campaigner, explained what was going down. "Activists are placing giant polar bear paw prints onto Shell's building, and in doing so are breaking the injunction. They're made up of thousands of names of the over seven million people who've signed the Arctic petition.

"Shell are up in the Arctic now, with all their permits from President Obama, but we want a line in the ice, and a ban on Arctic oil drilling."

Obama is currently on a visit to the Alaskan Arctic to highlight climate change, although there's no mention of Shell or Arctic drilling in pieces he's posted, it's a confusing message from a President in his legacy stage.

With the stickers temporarily covering Shell's windows, Emma Thompson was whisked away, the UK's media suddenly interested in talking about global warming for a time. "See you later everyone," she waved, as the team headed off to do Newsnight. As she left, I caught up with her a final time.

"I was slightly disappointed not to be arrested," she said. "I was all ready for the cuffs and the police."

It began to settle down for the evening now, as slowly the press and supporters headed home. As dark drew in, the bear was illuminated with floodlights, so I went to chat to those locked-on who would be bedding down for the night.

"I'm feeling triumphant," Barry Broadly told me, as he sat in the drizzle atop the bear in the dark. "I'm wired and pumped up full of excitement, we're doing something right."

I couldn't help feeling that it was now a waiting game for the cops to come, as the A-list celebs exited, taking the media frenzy with them. "Not at all, it's like having one mosquito inside your mosquito net. That constant niggling that never lets up. We're a thorn in their side and we'll carry on."

There's something quite heroic about watching people lock themselves to a fucking giant polar bear on a rainy London night, fueled by their passion to stop the planet flooding and warming and generally going awry. It'll be interesting when the Met try to move them, too.

Follow Michael Segalov on Twitter.

Image via Flickr user Day Donaldson

There's a new wonder drug in town. Addyi has been hailed as the "female Viagra," a wonder drug that could do for unsatisfied women what Viagra did for their horny middle-aged boyfriends. For several years, its makers have fought a long and controversial campaign to get FDA approval for the drug, and the FDA has rejected it on the grounds that it doesn't do enough to justify accepting the side effects. Then a PR campaign was launched, the FDA was put under intense pressure by feminist activists accusing them of patronizing sexism, and the drug was finally approved. It goes on sale in October; but the trouble is, it probably shouldn't.

On Broadly: What It Feels Like to Take the Newly Approved 'Female Viagra'

Let's get past this "female Viagra" bullshit before we go any further. Addyi isn't any kind of Viagra. It couldn't be less like Viagra if it were trying to evade an email spam filter, and comparing them is doubly confusing because most people don't actually know much about Viagra to begin with.

When you take Viagra nothing actually happens; or at least nothing noticeable. Contrary to popular myth it doesn't suddenly increase your sex drive or make you instantly horny. It's not for increasing your libido. What it does is make it easier to get and maintain an erection once you're aroused, something that can be achieved pretty simply with a single dose. It's basically just hydraulics—a penis is a big dangling sack of blood, swinging around like an uncooked black pudding, and Viagra helps keep that sack pumped up.

Addyi—or flibanserin, to use its non-commercial name—is radically different. It started out in the 1990s as an experimental antidepressant, and works on the brain rather than the body, altering the balance of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin in an effort to trigger parts of the brain involved in "sexual desire."

The effects are subtle—so subtle that you'd be forgiven for asking whether they really exist. In the trials the FDA looked at, the average woman started out reporting 2.8 "satisfying sexual events" per month. For women given a placebo, that went up to 3.7, and for women on Addyi it was 4.5 times per month. In other words, women who took Addyi had an average of 0.8 more "satisfying sexual events" in a month than women who just took a sugar pill. That's not much better than a rounding error.

Getting your extra eight-tenths of an orgasm takes a lot of work, too. Unlike Viagra, this isn't a question of just popping a pill, the lying back and thinking of England—you have to take Addyi for a month, during which time you can't drink alcohol. Amazingly, the research that looked at what happens when you mix alcohol and Addyi—bad things—was done almost entirely on men. Ironically, the drug can also react badly with some hormonal contraceptives, and like many medications it has a raft of side effects—fainting, low blood pressure, nausea, sedation, and in rare cases potential liver damage.

Related: Watch Broadly's documentary 'Is It Worth Your Time and Money to Freeze Your Eggs?'

Is it really worth it? Seeking a woman's opinion, I turned to my friend Jennifer. A veritable expert on the ins and outs of orgasms, she gave me the following assessment: "If I'm taking a tablet every day that means I can't drink, in favor of orgasms, I want at least one or two orgasms a day. If it comes with risks of liver damage and syncope, I want five or six. And if I can't take the contraceptive pill, I want it to come with free condoms."

These benefits weren't compared with other interventions, either. Addyi might—just—work better than a placebo, but there are many other ways for women to improve their sexual experiences without resorting to a pill that's loaded with side effects: sex toys, a better partner, addressing any health or psychological issues, or just installing a new shower head.

This drug isn't for just any woman, though. It's aimed at women suffering from a newly described condition known as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). HSDD is diagnosed when you have very low sexual desire that causes serious distress and/or relationship problems, but isn't accounted for by some other medical problem.

HSDD is a controversial disorder, with a whole bunch of problems that lead some people to question whether it's really a "disorder" at all. The first is what you mean by "low sexual desire." If you tell someone her sexuality is abnormal, you're making some kind of judgment about what "normal" is supposed to be, and really that's a cultural thing. It's the same issue psychologists had with homosexuality when it was still classified as a medical disorder illness—society has a long and bad history of saying anything that doesn't fit a very narrow definition of sexuality is a mental illness.

Even if you believe it's a real disorder, the chances are many women will be misdiagnosed, or coerced into getting the drugs by pushy partners.

In the best-case scenario, you're empowering women struggling with a legitimate condition to have more sexual pleasure. In the worst case, you're taking healthy women who don't meet society's expectations—or more likely the expectations of their men—and drugging them to be more compliant.

Which is it? Well maybe a bit of both, but the problem here is that now the FDA have approved it, doctors (from October) can use the drug pretty much however they want. The FDA can't say "only use Addyi for HSDD." Having approved it, all they can do is ask for prominent warnings of the side effects. The manufacturers have promised to hold off marketing it for the first 18 months, but after that it's fair game, and given America's obsession with prescription drugs, millions of women across America will be popping them like candy.

What happens to them after that? Who knows.

Follow Martin Robbins on Twitter.

Image via gags9999

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The only thing more inevitable than death is that we will all be dragged by the reaper kicking and screaming into the yawning magma abyss of hell. Weird, then, that a new study by YouGov has found that just 10 percent of the population think they are going there. The ego on 90 percent of you lot. The ego on you, thinking you're not going to hell. The sheer hubris of you, thinking you're a good person, thinking you're destined for heaven.

A survey of 1,770 adults found that—if heaven or hell is real, and that we don't just close our eyes to inky darkness and utter silence and nothing, just a soft zzvt sound and then oblivion—if hell is real, then 14 percent of men think they are going there compared to just 6 percent of women. Hell is a really sweaty sausage party.

On VICE Sports: Whatever Happened to Wrestling's Finishing Move?

Of those who think they are going to hell, more come from Scotland than anywhere else (14 percent of Scottish hell believers believe they are condemned), while those who voted Labour are slightly more likely to think they are going there (12 percent, compared to 10 percent Tory, 7 percent Lib Dem and 10 percent UKIP). A frankly absurd 48 percent of people thinking they are going to heaven—honestly, who in the fuck do you think you are?—and 68 percent said they feared death. Twenty percent—presumably old people, or people with children or responsibilities, people whose deaths would actually have an impact on the world—feared death a lot. A cheery YouGov survey, then.

Someone who is pretty much definitely going to hell: Spitman

More death findings: 27 percent of people want to live forever (with the greatest of respect: why), the median age people wanted to live to was 90, and 40 percent said they would die happy if they died right now compared to 32 percent who wouldn't.

We all like to think that we're good, don't we? We all think we're generally on a moral level. We all pretend to think that benevolent powers unseen are smiling down on us knowingly whenever we drop a $1 in a busker's hat or eat a vegetable, etching us one mark closer to heaven. But we're not. We're all bad.

For a vision of hell, watch Jamie Oliver and Alex James dance to Wonderwall, over on NOISEY

Am I going to hell, you ask? Oh, for fucking sure. I once watched a man in a mobility scooter tip sideways off a particularly high pavement and all I could really do was laugh—laughing that hard laugh, the one you have to squat down into, the one where you think you might straight up crack a rib—while his little wheels trundled uselessly in the air, while cars screeched to a halt around him to ease him back onto the pavement. "Funny, is it?" he said, afterwards, furiously. "Laughing, are you?" So I'm definitely going to hell, and on the whole I am a good person. You think you're a good person, too, but then if you flick through the archives of your horrible life then you've probably done something indecent and disrespectful to an extremely angry and disabled man, too. See you in hell, VICE readers. See you all in hell.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

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

Cry-Baby #1: Zaneta Hucikova

Screencaps via Facebook and Google Maps

The incident: A woman was told she wasn't allowed to have her cat in her purse on a plane.

The appropriate response: I have no idea. This is not a situation you should be in to begin with.

The actual response: She had an inflight meltdown and attacked a flight attendant.

Last Friday, 34-year-old Zaneta Hucikova was on a flight from Las Vegas to Frankfurt.

As first reported by CBS, Zaneta was traveling with a cat in her purse. She allegedly claimed the cat was a support animal.

She was reportedly told that, as the animal was not in a carrier or crate, it would have to be locked in one of the plane's bathrooms until landing. Speaking to CBS, one of the other passengers on the plane said that Zaneta was not happy about this and began "screaming and shouting" at airline staff.

She then reportedly slapped one flight attendant, and threw a paper cup at another.

A passenger named Dashenka Giraldo told ABC News: "She said that she was part of the mafia and that the mafia follows her around the world and that she was able to bring the plane down if that needed to be the case if she couldn't see her cat."

Flight staff apparently took this threat seriously, and decided to divert the plane to Denver and dispatched two F-16 jets to escort it to the airport. Zaneta was removed from the plane after it landed, and the other passengers had to wait 24 hours to complete their journey.

It should be noted that, though Zaneta is described as a model in all of the news stories about this, I am unable to find any evidence to support this claim.

Zaneta will not be charged for her behavior on the flight, but, as she does not have a valid US visa, she is currently being detained in an immigration detention facility.

According to the Daily Mail, the cat, which they say "is possibly named Victoria," remains in federal custody. #freevictoria

Cry-Baby #2: Some students at Hillsboro High School

Screencaps via Google Maps and KMOV

The incident: A transgender girl wanted to use the girl's locker room.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: A bunch of students staged a walkout.

17-year-old Lila Perry is a student at Hilsboro High School in Hillsboro, Missouri. She came out as transgender last year, but has identified as female since the age of 13.

Earlier this year, Lila expressed an interest in using the girls' locker room to change for gym class. The school offered her her own single-occupancy restroom to change in, but she rejected it. "I am a girl. I shouldn't have to be pushed away off to another bathroom," she told local news station KMOV.

"There is a lot of ignorance," she added. "They are claiming they're uncomfortable. I don't think they are. I think this is pure and simple bigotry."

More than 150 students took part in the two-hour walkout. Pictures of the event show a mix of male and females. According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Lila was locked in the principal's office for the duration of the walkout for her own safety.

KMOV spoke to two men who were staging a protest outside the school. One of the men, Jeff Childs, who was holding a sign that read "GIRL'S RIGHT'S MATTER" (sic), told the network, "Boys need to have their own locker room, girls need to have their own locker room, if somebody... has... mixed feelings where they are, they need to have their own also." As of press time, it was not entirely clear what the fuck his sign was supposed to mean.

KMOV also reported that "some parents have asked if all this is an act by Lila to get in the girl's locker room."

Lila has reportedly since dropped gym class "out of concerns for her safety."

:(

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this little poll down here:

Previously: A woman who allegedly faked a kidnapping to get out of work vs. some students who boycotted a book because it had drawings of naked people in it.

Winner: The students!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

VICE's Amsterdam office co-produced Prince, the debut feature film by Dutch writer and director Sam de Jong. This stylish, coming-of-age tale follows a Dutch-Moroccan teen as he cares for his junkie father and falls in with criminals in order to impress the neighborhood girl.

The movie is equal parts authentic and surreal, and uses a cast of non-professional actors to portray life in the streets in contemporary Amsterdam. There's also a killer 80s-style soundtrack. For this five-part VICE Special, we take a behind-the-scenes look at the film's production.

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

Dalhousie campus. Photo via Facebook/Dalhousie University

Google "Dalhousie University" and you won't, currently at least, see much about the school's revered medicine program or its beautiful East Coast campuses.

Instead, you'll be directed to headlines about student-on-student murder and foiled massacre plots. Scroll a little further, and you'll uncover a litany of reports on the dentistry scandal, a perfect storm of sexism, homophobia, and racism that sparked national outrage.

The latest incident, dogpiling on what's turned out to be a grim year for Dal, involves the arrest of 30-year-old medical student Stephen Tynes, who allegedly threatened to kill a dean at the school, her daughter, up to 20 other students, and himself.

According to court documents, police seized two rifles—a Russian SKS and Golden Boy .22-calibre—and 1,834 rounds of ammunition from Tynes' home. He has since been suspended from school and is currently out on bail. This happened just weeks after another Dal medical student, William Sandeson, 22, was charged with first-degree murder in the death of fellow student and reported drug dealer Taylor Samson.

Suffice to say, 2015 has not been kind to Dal's reputation.

"It has been a good year for Dalhousie in many respects. It has also been a tough year. We've been through some very public challenges," Brian Leadbetter, director of communications for Dalhousie said in an email statement to VICE.

Citing a high volume of media inquiries, Dal would not agree to a phone interview with VICE. The school's student union also declined to comment for this story.

Founded in 1818, Dal is one of the country's oldest academic institutions, serving as both a community fixture in Halifax and one of its major employers. Like all universities, it relies heavily on its good name to boost enrollment and gain funding and sponsorship. But, within the span of a year, it's become best known for a series of scandals and, some say, its public mishandling of them.

The school's PR troubles date back to the dentistry scandal that erupted last December. A female student reported sexually explicit and misogynistic comments (eg. references to chloroform and "hate fucking") posted in a Facebook group called "Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen." It took about a month for the school to effectively suspend 13 students who participated in the commentary from clinic privileges. A task force led by a University of Ottawa professor later revealed a deeply-entrenched culture of sexism, homophobia, and racism within the Faculty of Dentistry at Dal.

The report also criticized Dal for being slow to address the controversy, both internally and externally. This, in spite of a reported $344,000 spent on handling communications.

"The phrase 'sweeping it under the rug' was heard repeatedly," the report stated. "This widespread perception generated suspicion and distrust, and it heightened criticism of every step the University administrators took."

Speaking to VICE, PR expert Greg Wilkinson said in times of crisis, you want to be fast and as forthcoming as possible. "If you wait until your information is perfect, that's way too long," he said, adding " If you screwed up, you say so."

Brad McRae is director of the Halifax-based Atlantic Leadership Development Institute, a firm that trains private- and public-sector leaders; he also taught a course at Dal. He says Dal missed an opportunity to host a national dialogue on sexism and homophobia. Specifically, he said, the school failed in not immediately condemning the actions of the dentistry Facebook group, and by punishing whistleblower and member Ryan Millet to the same degree as the others. (Millet was suspended and found guilty of misconduct through a disciplinary process.)

"Instead of doing that, most of the effort was on containing the scandal," McRae told VICE.

"They ended up trying to contain the uncontainable."

McRae, who has close ties with the business community in Halifax, said the scandal has left a "lasting legacy."

"I think there's at least a reluctance among some people to donate funding to Dal because of this," he said.

Yep, still Dal. Photo via Flickr user Duane Brown

Dal's image issues aren't limited to the public realm. Recent events have also left students reeling.

"The last few weeks have been kind of ridiculous from a news perspective," Kevin Wilson, a 29-year-old Community Health and Epidemiology student told VICE.

He said he was shocked when he came across a Facebook post relating to Tynes Wednesday morning.

"The optics of it seem like Dal med is going off the rails."

Though he explained that he's not concerned for his safety, "It's hard to open a news article and hear about a guy who made some level of threat and not say 'That's right across the street from where I work all day.'"

"Students are feeling pretty apprehensive, afraid, and simply shocked," added sociology major Asrar Haq, 19. But he thinks the dentistry scandal is what's really left a sour taste in people's mouths.

Tanya, a business student at the university who worried her full name might hurt her employment chances, said the misogyny demonstrated by her peers was "really upsetting. And it's scary because they have access to the chloroform and they stuff that they were joking about using."

The steady stream of negative press has been demoralizing for Dal students, she added.

"I can't even imagine what parents sending their kids to their first year at Dalhousie are thinking. They must be terrified."

Wilson and Arar said administration has been forthcoming in giving students updates, including advising them of beefed up security on campus.

Wilson predicted the recent turmoil won't leave a stain on the school's reputation.

"Five or ten years from now, an incoming med student will know very few of the details of what's going on this summer."

That's an optimistic point of view, but it doesn't always work out that way.

Columbia University and the University of Virginia are still dealing with the aftermath of their respective sex scandals. Toronto's York University is facing an ongoing public relations nightmare due to high profile sex assaults and shootings that have taken place on and around school grounds.

Leslie Armstrong, 23, a recent grad and former editor of the campus paper Excalibur, enrolled at the school in 2011. She told VICE there was a strong stigma associated with attending York.

"Sometimes I would tell people I went to York and they'd say 'It must be so terrible with all those crimes happening,'" she said. She also heard of international students being advised to live off campus for safety reasons.

Armstrong felt the characterizations were unfair, and even took on the mainstream media in an editorial titled "Twenty minutes from the truth."

"I begin to wonder if we've earned our abysmal reputation through the amount of crimes that happen here or through the media's portrayal of the university," she wrote.

Leadbetter told VICE Dal is facing its problems head on, although he did not get into specifics.

"Our university community has been deeply affected by the issues we've been addressing this year. But as a result, important conversation and debate is continuing on our campuses."

But for the moment, it seems likely that " important conversation" will stay more focused on sensational headlines than the underlying systemic issues. If that remains the case, any progress the school thinks it is making can easily be undone by the next bad headline.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

All screenshots from PlanetSide2.com

Most of the time, when I die in PlanetSide 2, I'm not sure who killed me. The battlefields are large and often chaotic, and the game makes no effort to point out where your killer was when they took that fateful shot. A stray sniper shot, or the splash damage of an explosion, or a volley of bullets from an infantryman I didn't know was there—and I'm dead.

It's possible I'm just terrible at PlanetSide 2, the large-scale, massively multiplayer online shooter from Daybreak Game Company (formerly Sony Online Entertainment). But I think this is a universal part of the experience. PlanetSide 2 can be a hazy game, so active and violent that it becomes alienating. I'm often at a loss for who or what killed me in the game, and if I stop to think about it, it's not the only thing I'm at a loss to explain. Even at its best, PlanetSide 2 as an experience is always a little indistinct.

The main draw of PlanetSide 2—the place where it really excels—is spectacle. When you download it, this is what you're signing up for. Set on the fictional planet of Auraxis, the game is about the never-ending tug of war between three factions battling for control over the geography: the evil empire of the Terran Republic, the plucky freedom fighters of the New Conglomerate, and the Vanu Sovereignty, who have lasers. As a player, you pick a faction, rocket down to one of the game's four continents (five on PlayStation 4, including a small tutorial one), and join the fray.

Each continent is designed to accommodate up to 2,000 players, with battles over the individual bases regularly including a hundred live participants from all three factions. They're chaotic, busy, loud, and beautiful. I've run alongside walls of tanks rolling over the icy tundra of Esamir, firing rockets at approaching lines outside of the walled stronghold of Mattherson's Triumph. Tracer rounds thunder to each side of me as drop-ships and enemy fighters engage in lazy dogfights above. I've ridden in small, stealthy convoys through the darkened rainforests of Amerish and engaged in blind infantry rushes in the wide, sun-soaked canyons of Indar.

It's striking, and occasionally when playing I find myself putting the controller down and just watching. From a distance, the battles look like splashes of fireworks, or an ant colony flowing back and forth, lines of tiny insects carrying their spoils back to the mound. I've never played anything quite like it. Modern Warfare has nothing on this. There's a rush here to go along with the scale, and I've never played anything that felt more like what I picture in my head when I think of the word war.

It's nearly as incomprehensible as it is beautiful, though. It's dense and layered, not friendly to new players, and some servers, particularly on the PS4, get sparse, leading to long moments of boredom as you roam and warp around continents, looking for a fight.

Even when you're fighting, PlanetSide 2 does little to fill in your motive. Goals are always of the "capture or defend this facility" variety, and the game delivers even less narrative than it does tutorial. It's not clear why you're fighting over Auraxis or where your orders are coming from. You simply run from place to place, popping at whatever moves and trying to figure out where you need to be. There's no "lore" or story segments, and objectives are delivered objectively, just appearing on your HUD as the goals shift. Undoubtedly, Daybreak has a story bible somewhere, or some short stories or manual text that explain what's going on and why everyone's fighting everyone, but none of it made it into the game itself.

Other multiplayer shooters don't have this problem. Counter-Strike, Battlefield, Call of Duty, they're all based on a match structure. They need a story as much as football does; the character you play is you, and your goal is to kill your friends. But PlanetSide 2 borrows an MMO structure, taking place in a persistent world, but offers the player little information within the game to contextualize that world. It exists bereft of meaning, which makes the experience somewhat discomfiting the moment you give it any distance. War in PlanetSide 2 is endless and senseless, and it fails to lend meaning to the spectacular carnage it engenders.

Article continues after the video below

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

As a citizen of the West, born and raised in the United States, nonstop war isn't exactly an unfamiliar premise to me. The war on terror began just as I was becoming conscious of my political surroundings, and it shows no signs of ending. A lot of ink has been spilled—on Mother Jones, at Foreign Policy, at any left-leaning publication you can find—on the never-ending war that seems to be the default foreign policy of the modern United States. It's an agenda that bleeds into the entire West, implicating the US's allies as well, if the UK's cooperation in our Middle Eastern wars and constant saber-rattling against the Islamic State is any indication. This is an unprecedented kind of war, fought by small sections of standing armies in distant lands, almost completely separated from the regular lives of the citizenry, and being fought every day. It's been fought for years.

I live in Texas, where the American military machine is as visible as it is anywhere else in the country. There are more American soldiers from Texas than there are from nearly any other state. I know many, and most everyone I know has an active serviceman or military veteran in their family. Even so, it's easy to just not notice war is happening. It settles easily away from view, obscure and quiet, with only the occasional flare-up as a reminder that people are killing and dying in the name of my country.

To be an American civilian, then, is to have war as a distant background hum, a known reality that's scarcely accessible and always shrouded in mystifying propaganda and unclear motives. War as background noise to daily life. That weird hum of emptiness in a quiet room. Most of the time, you can forget it's even there.

New on Motherboard: I Went to School in Virtual Reality

As I play PlanetSide 2, though, an unexpected thing is happening to me: I'm remembering. There's a nagging discomfort there, a splinter that I can't get out of my hand. I shoot other players, going back to alien battlefields again and again, caught up in small, almost mundane tasks: complete this directive, gain these experience points, trade in my currency for new gear and cosmetics. All the while, it feeds into a larger conflict that I don't understand, that I'm barely aware of. The map of Auraxis, as I can access it in the game, is just an abstracted bunch of colors and nodes, always shifting whether I participate or not. I can stop playing, never pick up the game again, and the fight will just go on without me. No one ever wins. It's not even clear what the win conditions would be, as the enemies can always regroup for a resurgence on the other side of the map. The war on Auraxis has a way of settling itself uncomfortably into the background of my play, and even into my life when I'm not playing. Which, in turn, reminds me of my real subject position, the actual politics that shape my personhood as a citizen of the West. It reminds me of the real war in the real background.

It may seem a stretch to compare The War on Terror to an MMO, but in this conceptual way they both traffic in the same phenomena. Both exist in an eternal, ambiguous middle. Sides change, specific threats shift, but the fighting continues with no sign of slowing. For too many people, the West's wars are real, bloody, and cruel. But for the typical American citizen, they're a background concern. The sci-fi bloodletting of PlanetSide 2 reflects this in its context-free, endless, and multi-fronted theater of war.

Like I said, the chaos of PlanetSide 2 often tempts me into the role of a spectator, pausing before a charge down some hill to watch the streams of fire and light crisscross around me. And even when I'm fighting, I suspect I'm still a spectator, one without the adequate information to even fully understand what's happening. Being a spectator, though, isn't the same thing as not being complicit in what you're seeing.

Follow Jake Muncy on Twitter.

Illustration by Tom Scotcher

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I was trying my best to drink off a hangover last weekend when I noticed the clientele of the local boozer had changed. The concept of the underage drinker is hardly foreign to the British Isles but the pub now is always full of kids, and unlike in the good old days when Victorian slumchildren pissed their lives away with endless pints of gin, none of them are even trying to get a round in. The pub, once an escape from the drudgery of family life, has become just the opposite.

It is time for action. It is time to ban children from the pub. Here's why.

Our World and Their World

A key and enduring vision from my youth is that of the archetypal gray huddled mess, sat on a park bench, sacrificing his sobriety to a bottle of Diamond White or Tennent's Super, whatever happened to be on deal. As a kid I looked on this sight with some intrigue as fundamentally his life was a concept I couldn't yet grasp. Kids are like that. What I could grasp was that the waste ground beyond the concrete footy pitch was his world, whereas the swings and roundabouts were mine. Any errant football would be met with the same sighs of inevitability as one of us was nominated to sidle over to the groaning mess, expectant of some choice words in a language none of us could understand. He was definitely out of our zone and Edinburgh City Council's parks and recreation department had never factored this guy into their vision for a child's play utopia.

This man didn't fit into our idyllic way of life, and that was fine because he scared the shit out of us and smelled bad. We were each of us happy—well, "happy" might be overstating it, but content at least—in our own little galaxies. However, the reverse of that situation is now deemed acceptable, as boozers are festooned with children. The worlds of the drinker and the infant were never meant to meet. Yet they have and the committed drinker is still the enemy, even on his home turf.

They Don't Buy Drinks

Boozing doesn't work on charity. All publicans would agree that if you can't buy a drink, then you must fuck off. There is no benefit to the presence of the penniless drinker. He simply doesn't contribute to the idea of drinking in a pub. So why the hell are children allowed in with such abandon? They don't get rounds in. They don't ask for change for the puggie. Obviously, it's their parents who're the ones supposedly contributing to the great economic plan of boozing, the grand project of exchanging labour for solace, but next time you are in a pub in East London or West Glasgow, watch a group of Fjällräven-clad parents sip their way through half-pints of speciality cider and tell me who exactly is contributing? Even the dole is enough to make a decent dent in an unworking man or woman's sobriety, but who is it that props up the bar these days? Children. Skint children.

Double Standards

Pub food used to be pork scratchings (not the trendy kind) and—if you were lucky—maybe a toastie. With the evolution of the boozer we supposedly should feel lucky that we can now part with $20 for fish and chips. Great. I saw a mother bring a baby into the pub the other day. While her other offspring played around, generally doing all the things you don't associate fondly with the experience of getting plastered on your own, this woman approached the bar with a small tin of baby food. She wanted it heating up and the bar staff did so obligingly. The situation seems reasonable enough. But what if I did it? Brought a can of ravioli in and said: "There you go darling, heat that up for me, eh?"

I didn't realize it was bring-your-own-canned-goods-to-the-pub day. I wish they'd told me before I bought the fish and chips. I could've gone to Best Buy for a Fray Bentos.

Illustration by Tom Scotcher

Parents Need to Take Responsibility

Marriage. I don't get it. But somewhere after the endless cycle of routine that plagues the modern relationship, something clearly inspires some sort of desire to trade pills and plastic for a shot at procreation. Perhaps it's boredom or the realisation that any life beyond 5AM has no meaning. What I will say is that the event of having a kid is life changing. I mean this in a very literal way. Parents need to take responsibility for their actions. The things you used to do before are finished now. A couple of brandies and a line on a Friday are no longer in your social repertoire as you have a sentient being to raise, hopefully into less of a selfish prick than yourself. This isn't easy in what is essentially a booze-soaked front room you have to pay to be in with literally no stimuli for children other than the blue hue of a Guinness tap. People used to talk about great things when they were pissed. Porn, fucking, drinking, fucking again, and football. It was ace. It was what the pub was built for. Now, ironically, those who bring children to the pub have nothing else to talk about except that which they painstakingly lugged here. I know what a child is. I know what it does and frankly I couldn't give a fuck.

The Smell

They stink. There was a guy in Bethnal Green who used to do the rounds of the boozers. Tell the truth, he was a mess; carried with him the general scent of neglect that accompanies everyone who treads the despair triangle of pawnshop, bookies, boozer. He didn't do much, just sat their slurping Guinness, stinking of piss and occasionally ranting about the IRA. Eventually the staff stopped serving him, and he moved on a little further down the Central Line, I guess. People said he was disgusting and foul and maybe they were right but how is this any different from a child? Children stink. One father recently commented that there was no soap left in the baby changing. When did that become a thing to say in a pub? Kids piss and shit themselves all the time. In pubs. I don't care what anyone says, that's a throwing out offence. Or at least it was when I did it.

WATCH: London council estate urban myth 'Searching for Spitman':

A Beacon of Intolerance

For all my hatred of them, kids seem to find me with an unerring sense of regularity. Of all the folk in the pub they can smell the intolerance coming off me. And so it goes that my glorious semi-inebriation is jolted back into the grim reality of day by some kid driving a tricycle into my table. Look through the work of the writers that history has chosen to remember, from Pepys to Roth, and you will not find this situation anywhere. Check the pages of Bede or Chaucer and you will find no mention of "changing facilities" or a "kid's portion." It is only now that the worlds of children and dedicated drinking have collided to create this hellish cocktail of unease. As I stare into the moronic eyes of generation bastard, he rams the trike a couple of times into the leg of the table and I lose the top of a pint. He giggles. I thought children were programmed to fear the ugly?

It is modern living. We always want the best of both worlds and in this consumer-driven day and age we have got it, in the worst possible form. The haven in which you could escape from the misery of life and the misery of life have now been joined, for better or for worse. Out with the old and in with the new, as reliable stalwarts who have propped up bars for years are pushed closer to the park benches and railway arches, while Barbie-doll-similar home counties mothers with their ability to breed slowly tear apart the last shred of what used to be the pub.

Next time you want to drink, go to the park. There are fewer kids there these days.

Follow Laurence on Twitter.

Image via Flickr user Marc Nozell

Read: Maybe Joe Biden Really Is Running for President in 2016

On Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech about the Iran Deal at a synagogue in Atlanta. During the talk, he also wound up making his first public remarks about whether he'll run for president in 2016.

"I'll be straightforward with you," said Biden, looking subdued and somber on CNN. "The most relevant factor in my decision is whether my family and I have the emotional energy to run."

Earlier this year, the Vice President's son, Beau Biden, passed away due to brain cancer.

"Unless I can go to my party and the American people," he said, "and say that I am able to devote my whole heart and my whole soul to this endeavor, it would not be appropriate."

Despite his trepidation, the VP did admit that if he and his family eventually feel strong enough to handle the election process, he "would not hesitate" to run.

"If I were to announce to run, I have to be able to commit to all of you that I would be able to give it my whole heart and my whole soul," Biden said earlier this week during a private call with the Democratic National Committee."Right now, both are pretty well banged up."

From MELT, a collaboration with Bettina Yung

Kanghee Kim takes ordinary life, melts it down, looks at it cross-eyed, spins it around a few times, bakes it in a birthday cake, and puts it back together again. While her work carries a distinctive visual style—and is undeniably technically impressive—the Korean-born artist insists everything comes from a dedication to keeping things chill.

Speaking to VICE, she emphasizes that good art is about unselfconscious experimentation. And if it's not funny, it's probably not worth doing.

From MELT, a collaboration with Bettina Yung

VICE: Your work is pretty eclectic in terms of subjects, but fruit and reflections pop up again and again. What is it about those two things that appeal to you so much?
Kanghee Kim: I don't know. I think I'm pretty obsessed with watermelon and bananas. I guess they're already just so visually interesting and I like having them next to artificial fruits, too—channeling what fruits look like in our head. Also watermelon tastes amazing. As for mirrors, a few years ago I just started carrying them everywhere I went. I love the way they bring something into the scene that wouldn't have otherwise been in the image. A huge part of every photo is what gets left out so I like to bring a little of it back in.

Your work also has a pretty open focus on humor. Do you think that's is an underrated element in art?
Yes. Humor is what drives me, and keeps me engaged. Life is already so serious and complicated in the first place. Why add to that? To me being playful is really important, if my work feels serious, everything just feels tense. Obviously humor plays an important role in social interaction and I'm hoping it serves the same purpose in my work.

Exactly, creativity is just playing.
My work tends to suffer when I feel like I have to do something really polished and 'good.' I need that freedom to work.

The interesting thing about you is while your work is playful, it doesn't look loose. Is having a consistent visual style important?
A lot of people say it's really important to have a consistent visual style, but I just like experimenting. What excites me is making something new.

You make it all sound very incidental, but it just takes a glimpse of your Instagram to see how prolific you are.
That's from being very responsive to my surroundings. I always have this urge to document fleeting moments with my phone. I almost mindlessly do them to satisfy my urge, like keeping a visual journal and keeping momentum. Sharing things on Instagram is like grabbing your friends attention when you walk with them to see something worth seeing. Sharing is caring.

Do you consider yourself a photographer or a visual artist?
Both. I value my fine art background as a photographer. I like being in between those two. It's like asking me if I consider myself Korean-American or Korean.

Speaking of where you're from, I was interested to hear that although you live in Brooklyn now you really started out as an artist in Baltimore.
Yeah, the art scene in Baltimore is really emerging at the moment. New York can feel a bit intimidating sometimes.

Was it easier to work in a place with a smaller art scene?
It was easier for me to focus on my work. There is so much going on in New York that it's easy to get distracted. It's hard to describe but there's a really positive creative energy in Baltimore at the moment.

From MELT, a collaboration with Bettina Yung

How so?
The Baltimore scene is maybe more experimental and not so commercially driven. It's a very supportive environment and the sense of community is strong. There are a lot of great DIY galleries worth checking out, such as Bb, Platform Gallery, Springsteen Gallery, which are run by some of my good friends from MICA.

Speaking of collaboration, I dug your series MELT that you did with Bettina Yung. Can you tell me about that?
Bettina's one of my closest friends and I was really into what she was doing with beeswax and I thought they looked great compared to the normal candles you just see all the time. It's a really difficult material to work with, so we decided to make wearable candle accessories, a situation where they would both be functional yet futile. FYI, we will be selling a new edition of candles at this upcoming NYABF at the Open Space table, another artist-run gallery space in Baltimore, along with a multitude of amazing artists and friends.

Interview by Ben Thomson. Follow him on Instagram.

From now until the end of October Pornhub will be accepting applications for their first-ever $25,000 Pornhub Cares college scholarship . It's easy to assume (as many media outlets have in tongue-in-cheek coverage ) that this is just a content-generating gimmick, but looking over the requirements it's clear that Pornhub has taken great pains to make its new program as PG and sincere as possible, claiming it's a way to help registered college students with creativity and charisma achieve their dreams of making others happy—in any way.

There've been a few piddling adult industry scholarships in recent years, like the now-shuttered escort service Rentboy.com's $1,500 award for male sex workers' education, #Cash4Class, launched last month. But Pornhub's offering appears to be the first major, general-interest, and explicitly non-sexual program from an adult entertainment company. It's a big, weird philanthropic bid—and perhaps the sign of a new direction for Pornhub.

The Pornhub Cares Scholarship (which, it should be noted, just barely covers the minimum cost of one year at a cheaper American state school) is just the first project of the site's new Pornhub Cares venture, an umbrella for all the company's ostensibly many future charitable ventures. The portal and press release for Pornhub Cares give almost no information on how extensive this new endeavor will be, or what it will do in the future. The broadness of the scholarship's criteria (promoting happiness) is no real guide as to the site's philanthropic trajectory either.

It's not unheard of for makers and shakers in the adult industry, a $100 billion chunk of the annual global economy, to get involved in regular charitable ventures. Over the last 15 years, the media's had a recurrent but minor love affair with Phil Harvey , the dual president of profitable sexy toy and porno vendor Adam & Eve and DKT International, a family planning and HIV/AIDS awareness NGO with operations in over a dozen countries. Harvey is known for donating up to a quarter of the revenues from his multi-million dollar adult empire into DKT's coffers, funding their good deeds around the globe. And there are many more like him in the adult industry, like Michael King, a.k.a. Mike Wondercub , who set up the new high-class webcam site Benevidz with charity built into its business plan: 10 to 20 percent of performers' pooled tips are funneled to a different cooperating organization of their choice every month.

Yet despite this history of do goodery within the adult industry, Americans have a habit of pearl-clutching when it comes to charitable endeavors involving organizations that traffic in boobs and peens.

In 2010 , when activist sex worker Maggie Mayhem tried to raise funds for relief after the Haitian earthquake, PayPal shut down her account. In 2014 , when the webcam performer Eden Alexander tried to solicit aid to deal with unexpected medical bills, in a campaign unrelated to and with no mention of her career, WePay shut it down, saying it violated a site ban on fundraising associated with pornographic content. That same year the mainstream male porn performer James Deen's offer to donate 50 percent of the revenues from his site to breast cancer charities was rejected by a number of groups, forcing him to seek out minor organizations. This year, the new adult site Hump the Bundle has managed to find a few partners for its philanthropic ventures, but has been rejected as a donor by numerous large organizations.

Pornhub is no stranger to this dynamic. Although Pornhub Cares is meant to be their flagship philanthropic venture, they've been doing charity since 2012, when they sent the starlet Bree Olson to New York with the "Boob Bus" to teach people about home breast exams, then launched their "Save the Boobs" campaign offering one cent to breast cancer research per 30 videos viewed in their "big-tit" and "small-tit" categories in October. There were 74,146,928 views, for a total of $24,715, although Pornhub decided to more than triple their offer to $75,000 . But when they publicly offered those funds to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, they were viciously rejected (by an organization that has no problem taking money from fracking companies ). Their campaign was then ridiculed in niche outlets for, in its porny puns and allusions, objectifying and trivializing the women it was trying to help. The scandalous nature of pornography in modern society is apparently just too toxic for an NGO, a supposedly morally pristine entity, to be associated with.

Back in 2012, Pornhub was forced to give its funds to three smaller organizations—and to keep them anonymous . Then, when it got back into charity after one year's absence, offering to plant one tree per 100 videos watched in its "big dick" category, the company kept a tight lid on who their partner organization was. Because that's the name of the game: If you're in the porn business, your money is seen, in the non-profit world, as tainted, alienating, and dangerous. It must be hushed.

For more sexy stuff, watch our documentary on the digital love industry':

Given this history, it feels logical that the Pornhub Cares scholarship makes absolutely no mention of sex or sexuality. In its self-description on the scholarship page , Pornhub paints itself in neutered hues: "We work hard to make millions of people feel very happy every single day. In turn, we would like to help support the recipient of the first annual Pornhub Cares Scholarship to realize their goal of doing the same." It then asks for a 1,000- to 1,500-word essay on how people strive to make others happy, a two-to-five-minute video elaborating on that (which Pornhub execs say they expect to be entirely SFW ), proof of enrollment at a full-time, accredited post-secondary institution (including those pursuing undergraduate, masters, or doctoral programs), proof that a recipient is 18 or older, a resume, and a school transcript showing a 3.2 or higher grade point average. It's an utterly broad and unsexy set of criteria—one that will prove less problematic than past cheeky and explicitly pornographic campaigns.

Pornhub Vice President Corey Price admits that his team was taken aback by their 2012 experience, but denies that the scholarship, either as a program or in its language, is in any way a reaction to their past experiences.

"Our site is most visited by viewers in the 18 to 25 age demographic, which is about the same age as those attending colleges and graduate schools," Price wrote in an e-mail to VICE. "With this initiative, we are trying make [sic] a difference in the life of someone in this cohort."

Price thinks this program will succeed despite its very public porn association not because of its scholarship-specific subtlety, but because people are getting used to porn's public face.

"The adult entertainment industry has undertaken a significant evolution from its days as a 'seedy underworld,'" he writes. "There will be those who maintain that viewpoint, and that's perfectly acceptable. But the visibility the industry has been given, through some of our initiatives and other adult entertainment related stories, has provided the world an inside look at porn and the reception has been overwhelming. People are receptive to what we do nowadays as porn and sex positive are is [sic] penetrating the mainstream and garnering more interest than ever before."

Yet for all Price's faith in acceptance, there's a fair amount of clever strategy involved in starting the company's new Pornhub Cares venture with a wide, neutral scholarship.

If a college were to kick a student out for taking their funding, it would create a PR disaster for the university. Meanwhile Pornhub will only receive willing applicants, avoiding a Komen-style rejection or Arbor Day-style anonymity. They may think that they can slide into mainstream consciousness with this inoffensive and theoretically unassailable move, then work their way toward a public presence that will help bring them into the light of PR respectability alongside other major corporations.

Price's comments seem to prove the reality of at least part of this potential undergirding strategy:

"We are providing the scholarship directly to the student so as to avoid any rejection and/or conflict with charities," he writes. "The winner of our scholarship will be a future innovator and leader. For a college to shy away from him or her would be a travesty."

And Price's faith in the acceptance of porn seems a little overly optimistic, given just how hard even the mercenary commercial sector has bucked whenever Pornhub has tried to peek out into the wider world with utterly harmless projects. In 2013, CBS refused to air their SFW, innocuous 20-second commercial spot on Superbowl Sunday. In October 2014, the company tried to put up its first major billboard, a crowdsourced public-ready design of a hand heart reading " All You Need Is Hand," in Times Square, only to see it taken down within 48 hours when the hotel building it was (legally) put up on complained. Just last month, a distinctly mundane ad for their new premium service, comparing its quality to that of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, actually precipitated legal action by the Italian governmental agency regulating said dairy product. They claimed that the mere association of Pornhub with their farmers' product was not only obscene, but defaming and destructive to their brand to an extent that required recompense for damages.

Add to this the fact that porn stars have been known to have their bank accounts shut down for no apparent reason, and you can see how just dealing in money from Pornhub could be problematic for students and collegiate institutions, no matter the branding of the campaign.

"We understand some people may shy away from applying due to our affiliation with explicit material," concedes Price.

Even if the scholarship succeeds, it seems unlikely that this level of public stigma will fade quickly enough for the wider Pornhub Cares umbrella to become a large-scale corporate force for good. And industry stigma aside, there are a ton of other reasons for charitable organizations, students, and schools to want keep a distance from Pornhub, like their association with (mildly fair if legally unactionable) rampant copyright infringement allegations and malware-laden ads and links.

All cautions aside, given the desperation of students these days, people are going to apply for this program. And given the time and expense they're apparently sinking into it, Pornhub will move forward with their philanthropic wing. All that remains is for observers to wait and see if it does manage to erode stigmas about adult industry giving, or if they somehow manage to cock it up.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Hey Paul Studios

Lying across a turquoise rubber plinth, my legs in stirrups, a large blue sheet of paper draped across my pubes (for "modesty"), a doctor slowly pushes a clear plastic duck puppet up my vagina and, precisely at that moment, Total Eclipse of the Heart comes on over the radio and it's hard not to love the genitourinary medicine, or GUM, clinic.

I mean that most sincerely: I love the GUM clinic. It is wonderful beyond orgasm that in the UK anyone can walk into a sexual health clinic—without registering with a doctor, without an appointment, without any money, without a chaperone—and get seen within a few hours at most. It brings me to the point of climax just thinking about the doctors and health professionals who dedicate their life to the nation's ovaries, cervixes, vaginas, and wombs.

And yet, not all women are apparently so comfortable discussing their clitoral hall of fame with a doctor. According to a recent report commissioned by Ovarian Cancer Action, almost half of the women surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 said they feared "intimate examinations," while 44 percent are too embarrassed to talk about sexual health issues with a GP. What's more, two thirds of those women said they would be afraid to say the word "vagina" in front of their doctor. Their doctor. That is desperately, disappointingly, dangerously sad.

In 2001, I went to see a sexual health nurse called Ms. Cuthbert who kindly, patiently and sympathetically explained to me that I wasn't pregnant—in fact could not be pregnant—I was just doing my A-Levels. The reason I was feeling sick, light-headed, and had vaginal discharge that looked like a smear of cream cheese was because I was stressed about my simultaneous equations and whether I could remember the order of British prime ministers between 1902 to 1924. My body was simply doing its best to deal with an overload of adrenaline.

Back then, my GUM clinic was in a small health center opposite a deli that would sell Czechoslovakian beer to anyone old enough to stand unaided, and a nail bar that smelled of fast food. I have never felt more grown up than when I first walked out of that building, holding a striped paper bag of free condoms and enough packets of Microgynon to give a fish tits. My blood pressure, cervix, heartrate, and emotional landscape had all been gently and unobtrusively checked over by my new friend Ms. Cuthbert. I had been given the time and space to discuss my hopes and anxieties and was ready to launch myself, legs akimbo, into a world of love and lust—all without handing over a penny, having to tell my parents, pretending that I was married or worry that I was being judged.

My local sexual health clinic today is, if anything, even more wonderful. In a neighborhood as scratched, scored, and ripped apart by the twin fiends of poverty and gentrification as Hackney, the GUM clinic is the last great social leveler. It is one of our last few collective spaces. Sitting in reception, staring at the enormous pictures of sand dunes and tree canopies it is clear that, for once, we're all in this together. The man in a blue plastic moulded chair wishing his mum a happy birthday on the phone, the two girls in perfect parallel torn jeans scrolling through WhatsApp, the guy with the Nike logo tattoo on his neck getting a glass of water for his girlfriend, the red-headed hipster in Birkenstocks reading about witchcraft in the waiting room, the mother and daughter with matching vacuum-sized plastic handbags talking about sofas, the fake flowers, Magic FM playing on the wall-mounted TV, the little kids running around trying to say hello to everyone while the rest of us desperately avoided eye contact—the whole gang was there. And that's the point: you may be a working mum, you may be a teenager, you may be a social media intern at a digital startup, you may be a primary school teacher, you may be married, single, a sex worker, unemployed, wealthy, religious, terrified, or defiant but whatever your background, wherever you've come from and whoever you slept with last night, you'll end up down at the GUM clinic.

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Which is why it seems such a vulvic shame that so many women feel scared to discuss their own bodies with the person most dedicated to making sure that body is OK. "No doctor will judge you when you say you have had multiple sexual partners, or for anything that comes up in your sexual history," Dr. Tracie Miles, the President of the National Forum of Gynecological Oncology Nurses tells me on the phone. "We don't judge—we're real human beings ourselves. If we hadn't done it we probably wish we had and if we have done it then we will probably be celebrating that you have too."

Doctors are not horrified by women who have sex. Doctors are not grossed out by vaginas. So to shy away from discussing discharge, pain after sex, bloating, a change in color, odor, itching, and bleeding not only renders the doctor patient conversation unhelpful, it also puts doctors at a disadvantage, hinders them from being able to do their job properly, saves nobody's blushes and could result in putting you and your body at risk.

According to The Eve Appeal—a women's cancer charity that is campaigning this September to fight the stigma around women's health, one in five women associate gynecological cancer with promiscuity. That means one in five, somewhere in a damp and dusty corner of their minds, are worried that a doctor will open up her legs, look up at her cervix and think "well you deserve this, you slut." Which is awful, because they won't. They never, ever would. Not just because they're doctors and therefore have spent several years training to view the human body with a mix of human sympathy and professional dispassion, but more importantly, because being promiscuous doesn't give you cancer.

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"There is no causal link between promiscuity and cancer," says Dr. Miles. "The only sexually transmitted disease is the fear and embarrassment of talking about sex; that's what can stop us going. If you go to your GP and get checked out, then you're fine. And you don't have to know all the anatomical words—if you talk about a wee hole, a bum hole, the hole where you put your Tampax, then that is absolutely fine too."

Although there is some evidence of a causal link between certain gynecological cancers and High Risk Human Papilloma Virus (HRHPV), that particular virus is so common that, 'it can be considered a normal consequence of sexual activity' according to The Eve Appeal. Eighty percent of us will pick up some form of the HPV virus in our lifetime, even if we stick with a single, trustworthy, matching-socks-and-vest-takes-out-the-garbage-talks-to-your-mother-on-the-phone-can't-find-your-clitoris partner your entire life. In short, HRHPV may lead to cancer, but having different sexual partners doesn't. Of course, unprotected sex can lead to an orgy of other sexually transmitted infections, not to mention the occasional baby, but promiscuity and safe sex are not mutually exclusive. And medical professionals are unlikely to be shocked by either.

We are incredibly lucky in the UK that any woman can stroll into a sexual health clinic, throw her legs open like a cowboy and receive some of the best medical care the world has ever known. We can Wikipedia diagrams of our vaginas to learn the difference between our frenulum and prepuce (look it up, gals). We can receive free condoms any day of the (working week) from our doctor or friendly neighborhood GUM clinic. We can YouTube how to perform a self-examination, learn to spot the symptoms of STIs, read online accounts by women with various health conditions, and choose from a military-grade arsenal of different contraception methods, entirely free.

A third of women surveyed by The Eve Appeal said that they would feel more comfortable discussing their vaginas and wombs if the stigma around gynecological health and sex was reduced. But a large part of removing that stigma is up to us. We have to own that conversation and use it to our advantage. We need to bite the bullet and start talking about our pudenda. We have to learn to value and accept our genitals as much as any other part of our miraculous, hilarious bodies.

So come on, don't be a cunt. Open up about your vagina.

Follow Nell on Twitter.