This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Would you fuck robot? I would fuck robot. I just think, I mean, I don't want to die, dragged screaming into hell, without just once putting my dick in a robot. Just seems like, well, we have all this technology, right? We were all resistant to iPads when they first announced them, and now we use them all the time. People thought horses would never be eclipsed by cars, and now look at us. Scientists right now in labs around the world are making robots with dicks and tits, and one day we are all going to bite the bullet and fuck them. Just get over it. Open your mind up to that idea. Just get over the fact that, one day, you are going to up and fuck a robot.

But 85 percent of people, it says here, would not fuck robot, even if they had the chance. This is the result of a Sky News poll (science) that said only 15 percent of people would fuck robot. Obvious caveat: that's only 15 percent of the type of people who would vote in a Sky News poll speaking here, so not exactly the most representative sample. However, it does offer a little peek into the freaky mind of a certain subset of Brit. Among this group, 85 percent of the population would not fuck a robot. But why not?

To get a better gauge of the situation, I asked some people I know to draw their ideal fuck robots and then talk me through the various orifices and gizmos. "Really?" a lot of them said. "Do I... I mean, do I have to do this?" Yes. "Do I have to draw a robot I would like to have sex with?" Yes. "Do I have to put my name to it, ruining my SEO credibility possibly forever, so that every time you google my name a thin biro drawing of a sex robot comes up just a little before my actual face?" No, you do not have to put your name to it.

And so, here are various anonymous people's ideal sex robots.

ROBOT #1: JETPACK DICK

VICE: I get the vibe you're not really sure whether you want to have sex with a robot or not.
Anonymous sex robot artist 1: I'm not sure how much I want to have sex with a robot. I'm not sure I'm ready for that. It's more about personality.

I guess that means you don't really crave sex, and actually what you want is stability, support, emotional maturity, a high IQ, kind of all combined with a scooter and a detachable dick.
More of a jet pack than a scooter.

So, on the whole, would you rather A) have sex with a robot, or B) just have a jetpack and a jerk?
It would be cool to jerk while you're using the jetpack.

Importantly, would you have sex with robot?
No.

ROBOT #2: BANGDROID

Can I ask you about your sex robot a bit?
Anonymous sex robot artist 2: Absolutely.

Quite a lot going on here. Where to start... why does it have wheels?
The wheels are based on the "swegway" or "hoverboard" wheels we've been seeing in the trap videos recently; I think they add a bit of streetwise flare to proceedings.

I'm guessing the tits go all the way around the robot, kind of like the rings around Saturn, but more erotic?
Yes, there are tits going around the bangdroid. There is also another face that you can't see.

What I am getting from this is: you are a man who likes variety.
Variety, they say, is the spice of life.

Sort of how you might watch porn based on your mood.
Exactly.

Also, finally: quite jerk-centric, the bangdroid. Really is basically just designed to jerk you off.
Yeah. Why bother doing the work yourself when you have BangDroid™, whose hands have several fingers with a lube-releasing porous latex dermis.

You've really thought about this.
We all have dreams.

This isn't your first sex robot, is it?
This is not my first rodeo, as they say, no.

Would you have sex with robot?
Yes.

ROBOT #3: SUPER CUMPUTER

What are the caterpillar tracks for?
Anonymous sex robot artist 3: Mobility. Also, it's loosely based on Sir Killalot from Robot Wars.

Are you planning to fuck it on rough terrain, like a quarry?
Who knows where I'll need [to be] fucked. I'd like to know that I can just send out a signal and he will arrive. He/she.

Yeah, I noticed it's a very gender fluid sex robot. I also noticed you've drawn a sort of target for the "hole." Why's that?
Yeah, I wanted to make sure the hole was obviously a hole, and not some sort of button. Plus, we're talking about fucking on a whole new level here. There are no instructions; your dad never told you how to fuck a robot. So the arrows were the least I could do.

I understand the iPad—so you can choose a projection of someone or something to pretend to fuck—but the shaking hand. Please explain the shaking hand. Are you an advocate of extremely polite foreplay?
I do want to state that the iPad is to provide visual prompts for those struggling to straight up fuck a robot the first time around. The idea is that, after time, you won't need that. As for the hand...

[LONG PAUSE]

So, I feared that giving my robot speech or sound would get annoying over time, and increase its chance of learning and interacting and generally getting a bit above its station. That said, I wouldn't want to bang this thing and then come away with a guilt complex. Like it wasn't into it, or something. So I gave it the hand, so we could shake hands afterward and I could walk away knowing it's all gravy.

That's almost sweet.
Thank you.

Would you fuck robot?
[Extremely politely] Yes.

Watch our film 'Digital Love Industry', about the people making sexbots come to life.

ROBOT #4: PRACTICAL FUCKBOT 1.0

Your robot looks like an insect.
Anonymous sex robot artist 4: Yeah, I don't want a sexy robot. I'm not having sex with a robot to be aroused; I'm having sex with it to say I did it. That said, I have just remembered I forgot to put tits on it.

There also don't appear to be any holes for the penis.
They are underneath, beneath the LCD pubes. I didn't want to draw a robot fanny, to be perfectly honest with you.

It's called a "practical fuckbot," yet the practicality of shagging a robot through a trestle table, unable to see the porn on display on the front or the eyes, seems impractical to me. Care to explain yourself in more depth?
There's a hinge or something, on the trestle table bit to tilt it back so you can see the porn and the eyes and still fuck it. Fundamentally, I wanted to be able to tuck this monstrous thing away in a cupboard when I'm not using it. That felt necessary.

Do you think the dehumanization of sex could be a positive thing? There is nothing remotely personable about your sex droid.
If I wanted to have sex with a human, I'd have sex with a human. I think it's more troubling to make a robot in the shape of a human and fuck it than my solution; that's more dehumanizing. Also, I don't really, truly, want to fuck a robot more than once.

I'm starting to think you don't want to fuck this robot at all.
Maybe you're right. Maybe I don't want to have sex with a robot.

Would you fuck robot?
Probably not, no.

ROBOT #5: FUK M–8

Talk me through the multi-hole™. It says it can adapt to replicate any orifice, but at the best I can recall, there are only three orifices on offer in humans. What can the multi-hole™ do?
Anonymous sex robot artist 5: OK, basically I'm imaging it on a swivel hinge like those weird camera phones that can spin round, and the hole itself is kind of an amorphous orifice, soft inside, with motors, or whatever, that can make it tighter, looser... various massage functions, maybe some kind of retractable rubbery tongue.

What is the touchscreen on the genderless torso for?
Oh yeah, forgot to label that. It's basically an iPad, for checking Twitter/work emails/Netflix.

In case you get bored of fucking your robot.
Yeah, or just have other stuff you could be doing.

The main insight I am getting about you from FUK M–8 is that you are bang into love handles.
Love handles get a bad rap. Obviously they're not sexy, but they're incredibly functional.

Why would you need eight lovehandle-shaped contact points on a fuckbot that can already hover and fly?
Sometimes you'd want to take the reins a bit.

I'm not sure you've thought this through. Also, you're the only person who designed a fuckbot that can also hug them—you OK, hun?
That's a pretty key part of sex, tbh. The face on the top would change to something soothing, and the four arms could hug away the pain and loneliness that inevitably comes with fucking a robot.

But would you fuck robot?
If it hugged you afterwards, yeah.

TRENDING ON MOTHERBOARD: Hackers Killed a Simulated Human By Turning Off Its Pacemaker

FUCKBOT #6: TIFFANY, THE FUCKBOT

I kind of want to be friends with your sex robot.
Anonymous sex robot artist 6: I know. Now I feel like she's my best friend. I think she should have a name, like Tiffany, or something awful and American. Or maybe something more intellectual.

Remember she is a robot. She has a trampoline instead of a crotch. Also, talk me through the trampoline crotch.
Yes, the crotcholine. It's just so things aren't too serious—you can limber up for the sex beforehand by bouncing on her.

She also has a tickling stump and a teddybear full of sweets.
Yes she does.

I mean, tits aside, she'd be quite good for children's parties.
And she can educate the kids because she's so clever, and read them stories from her book. She's currently reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Why do you need a robot to be smart before you fuck it?
So that it knows what to do. So that it doesn't accidentally fist you.

I can't imagine being fisted with a tickling stump is much fun.
No, it's just not what you want.

Would you fuck robot?
No.

ROBOT #7: ROSIE

Your robot is less a fuckbot and more a sort of chair that you sit in and have an orgasm delivered onto you. Are you an incredibly lazy lay? This is a very passive fuckbot.
Anonymous sex robot artist 7: Yes, it is an orgasm-delivering device. Is that not what we long for? A robot is a soulless machine regardless of if I bestow it with human-like qualities, so I decided to forego that whole charade and cut to the chase. It is a strictly utilitarian fucktoy.

There seems to be a pincer coming out of the bottom? And two out the sides? Are you OK, dude?
The top two pinchers are for nipple tweaking, if you desire it, and the lower one is the testicular masher, if you are brave. They are designed to look like the hands of the Jetsons' robo-nanny, Rosie. It is for her that the chair is named.

Would you fuck robot?
Oh good god damn and HELL, yes!

@joelgolby is very sorry about all this.

A Native American tribe called the Mandan first practiced suspension as a tradition marking the transition from boyhood to manhood. Tribe elders used handmade hooks to pierce the skin, then lifted the boys into the air using ropes. They'd hang like this, often for days. Those who could survive the ritual officially became men.

Today, suspension is a spiritual and subcultural phenomenon practiced all over the world. Galeb Nikačević from VICE Serbia decided to experience the practice firsthand in Rijeka, Croatia.

Cecil the lion. Image via Wikipedia

Read: We Talked to the Woman Who Says She's Spoken to Cecil the Lion from Beyond the Grave

After six weeks in hiding, Walter Palmer—the dentist who allegedly shot, killed, skinned, and decapitated Cecil the lion—returned to work at his dental practice on Tuesday morning. He was greeted by protestors, both online and off.

A video of Palmer's arrival posted by Fox showed demonstrators, journalists, and camera crews circling the dentist as he entered the building. He was said to have left several hours later in different clothes to pick up lunch for his employees before returning to finish out the day.

Meanwhile people continued to flood his practice's Yelp page today, pummeling the business with one-star ratings. Many of the reviews describe the doctor as basically the scourge of the earth, calling the guy an "animal murderer," "douchebag," "sadistic dentist," and "soulless monster."

Yelp has placed a statement on the dental practice's page to notify people in need of dental work that "this business recently made waves in the news, which often means that people come to this page to post their views on the news" and that administrators would clean up the reviews starting this week.

Palmer reportedly spent up to $55,000 to hunt and kill Cecil in July, claiming he did not realize the 13-year-old lion was protected and lived on a national park.

A screenshot from 'BioShock'

Playing Irrational Games' System Shock 2 back in 1999 was a revelation. It felt distinctly different from other games of the time. Here was a first-person shooter that had you exploring a world rather than simply mastering a set of disjointed levels. Despite the dated graphics and archaic interface, play System Shock 2 today and you'll find that it still has one of the most immersive and atmospheric settings in any video game.

The events of the game take place light-years away from Earth on the star ship Von Braun. It's classic science-fiction horror, only I actually experienced it years before I got around to watching Ridley Scott's Alien. A lot about System Shock 2 sounds familiar. You're lost somewhere in deep space on a ship in complete disarray, your crew has been all but wiped out by a strange alien infection, and you can never, ever, trust the robot/computer.

'System Shock 2.' Screenshot modded

While a lot about its narrative is borrowed from elsewhere, System Shock 2 was unique in allowing you to directly partake in the cosmic horror. It gave you an entire ship to explore. It was a virtual tour that had you rummaging through Medical and Science labs, getting lost in Engineering and wandering the Recreational deck. There was nothing arbitrary about these levels. Every segment of the Von Braun was believably structured, creating a really fascinating sense of place. There were no ellipses between levels for you to catch your breath, and there was no escaping the star ship or the corrupting forces on board. You were stuck on the Von Braun—a great hulk of metal aimlessly drifting in the void with neither a captain nor a pilot.

The idea of outer space—a lifeless vacuum where humans don't naturally belong—is a pretty unsettling one. System Shock 2 wouldn't be the same without its great, inky backdrop. It's a vital part of its horror. Two scenes come to mind when I think about how it effectively establishes the game's setting. The tutorial takes place at a training center on Earth. It's important that the game begins planet-side, as although the sequence is brief, you catch a glimpse of both a cityscape and the open sky above. The second scene hits immediately after the tutorial and serves to contrast the two environments. As you awaken from your cryo-chamber aboard the Von Braun, a damaged radar dish careens into a window, causing the cabin to depressurize. It instantly sets things up as dangerous and unpredictable—after all, there's only a thin layer between you and a breathless vacuum. The colored sky you saw back on Earth couldn't feel further away.

'Alien: Isolation'

Surprisingly, instances where you can actually look out and see space in System Shock 2 are pretty few and far between. This is probably due to the technical limitations that the developers faced back in 1999. 2014's Alien: Isolation, unhindered by its hardware, is constantly reminding you of your place in the universe through large windows and skylights, and is all the more powerful for it. Nevertheless, System Shock 2 still does a great job of establishing its setting, and it's something easily enhanced by mods. The tutorial, radar dish crash, and subsequent race to the airlock are important. It not only reminded you that you're a long way from Earth, but it set the whole tone of the game—one of immense hostility, vulnerability, and isolation. You may well crap your pants at the sight of a mumbling brain-worm infested Hybrid, rusty pipe in hand, but that's a whole lot better than being out in space and having your bowels turned inside out.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film, The Mystical Universe of 'Magic: The Gathering'

It would be eight long years before a game would successfully emulate System Shock 2's dark, otherworldly atmosphere. Positioned as a spiritual sequel, Irrational Games' BioShock followed the Shock formula closely. Set in the disintegrating undersea city of Rapture, players explored a deeply oppressive dystopia fraught with danger. The layout of the city closely followed the decks of the Von Braun. There was the Medical Pavilion, the hydroponic Arcadia and BioShock's own recreational area, Fort Frolic. Like System Shock 2, its world felt lived-in, which made the emptiness feel all the more disconcerting. One of the most important things about Rapture was its isolated nature. Instead of being lost in space, the city was entombed under the ocean. Like a star ship, it was completely surrounded by a hostile, non-breathable medium. Just as in space, fathoms beneath Earth's surface, no one can hear you scream.

BioShock begins with a plane crash, and the scene, like System Shock 2's tutorial, allows you comforting glimpses of the surface world and sky above. After you descend to Rapture the game begins to establish the fragility of its world. With technology less of an issue, BioShock could afford to regularly feed you views of the abyss beyond. Glass windows crack and at every opportunity water forces itself into the environment. Early on, part of the plane smashes into a glass corridor causing the compartment to fill with water, and once again you must desperately race to an airlock.

New on Munchies: How to Make Damn Good Ribs

'BioShock'

The world of BioShock revolves around the substance ADAM and powerful plasmids that can rearrange the human genetic code, but the lifeless pressure that the sea exerts is just as important to its world. Just beyond the iron girders of Rapture and the socio-politics bound up with it lies a great hydrosphere just waiting to wash everything away. Degenerate gangs of Splicers lust and fight over ADAM, yet the sinful material named after the first human ultimately pales in significance to the greater substance that surrounds the city. As System Shock 2's great antagonist SHODAN once said: humanity is nothing but a footnote. Just as the great void lent a cold and tense chill to the halls of the Von Braun, the uncaring force of the ocean encapsulated the world of BioShock perfectly.

It's clear that BioShock and System Shock 2's environments closely mirror one another. What's more interesting however is the way outer space can be effectively replaced by space under the sea. Both environments are extensively unknown and unexplored. They're also both inhospitable. Exploring environments amongst the stars and beneath the depths is always going to feel strange and exotic, and these are themes that director James Cameron explored in his 1980s sci-fi films Aliens (out amongst the stars) and The Abyss (deep below the sea). This is also why, to my mind, the sun-soaked second sequel to BioShock, 2013's Infinite, loses much of the series' oppressive and claustrophobic mood by moving up into the clouds. If you want immersive and genuinely sinister sci-fi, having the environment contained by a dark substance is the perfect way to establish such an atmosphere.

Follow Ewan Wilson on Twitter.

Check out more from Julian Glander at his Twitter, Instagram, and blog.

Image via Ted Dawe

Portrait by Michael Marcelle

This article appears in the September Issue of VICE

In Salman Rushdie's novels, Mughal emperors have dreamed wives into existence, and men who survive falling to Earth out of airplanes have dreamed up scandalous alternate biographies of Muhammad. The latter dream, from The Satanic Verses, crossed the boundaries of fiction into the realm of reality in 1989, courtesy of the Ayatollah Khomeini, who pronounced it "against Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur'an" and issued the infamous fatwa calling for the author's death.

Rushdie's own dreams contain no such power. "Very boring," the author himself proclaimed them, sipping an iced coffee in the Russian Tea Room in New York. "I feel that I use up so much of that dream juice, you know, in my daily work, that my dreams are like: I wake up in the morning and read the Times, or I wake up, get up, and go for walk." He added: "I always sleep very well."

It was a little after 5:30 PM on a weekday in July, and Rushdie had been existing the past few months in that nether realm between finishing a book and having it published. He had given me two hours to talk, and we were spending it over drinks and snacks in one of the restaurant's iconic red-leather banquettes. The Russian Tea Room, long known as a place where an expensive smorgasbord of big shots could gather and look impressive near one another—Rushdie remembered being courted there by his agent, Andrew Wylie, back in the mid 80s—was, on the day we were there, virtually empty. The antique-samovar-bedecked café felt like a mausoleum of decadence and frippery. Chandeliers festooned with Christmas-tree ornaments hung over gilded phoenixes soaring from cornices.

The 68-year-old, Indian-born novelist carried himself with what seemed a practiced restraint, the kind of protective measure you could imagine someone with his public profile uses to shield himself. But he seemed to also possess a certain delicateness that his hands—small and almost frail-looking—were emblematic of. I was hesitant to shake them. I was equally nervous to talk to him. The man has written some of my favorite novels. He is also someone you hear stories about. Three different people—none of whom had actually met him—had warned me that he was kind of a prick. Somebody else claimed to know someone who'd had an incident with him over email, or maybe it was text, that may or may not have involved emoticons unbecoming for a Booker-winning Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

As Rushdie finished his iced coffee, I asked him how it felt to be the subject of stories, often rather public stories, told by other people. "I truthfully do not give a damn," he replied. "I'm very fortunate that I've had a good ride as a writer. People have responded very well to my work, and it's given me a good life."

Even if he doesn't care about people's accounts of him, Rushdie—who was anything but a prick in the time we spent together—is preoccupied with humanity's enduring, instinctual hunger for the telling of tales. "It's always struck me," he said, "that stories are what children ask for the moment they feel loved and fed. If they have a roof over their head, one of the first needs is, 'Tell me a story.' They don't want you to say, 'Let me tell you about your grandmother when she was young.' 'Once upon a time' is what they want."

How we tell stories and why we need them so deeply are questions at the heart of Rushdie's most recent book, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. The novel, his 12th, traces a near-apocalyptic conflict that occurs in our time between humankind and jinn, mythic creatures that the Qur'an says are made "of smokeless fire" and who live in a world that is, Rushdie writes, "separated from ours by a veil." Two Years, as Rushdie shorthands it, was breathed to life by the great wonder tales of India and the Middle East—The Ocean of the Streams of Story, the Hamzanama, the Panchatantra, One Thousand and One Nights. His fascination with the books, which are prolific in their jinn lore, has persisted since childhood and saturated his writing since at least 1981's Midnight's Children. It is wound perhaps more tightly than ever into the DNA of Two Years, right down to the title, which equals 1,001 nights.

For more on incredible writers, watch our doc 'VICE Meets Karl Ove Knausgaard':

Rushdie began the novel after the 2012 publication of Joseph Anton, his memoir, written in a Henry Adams–esque third person. "I really had an emotional response to having finished [that]," he said. It impelled him to "get back to the fictionality of fiction."

Our waiter came by, and we ordered food—cold borscht for me and meat-stuffed crepes for Rushdie. I asked for a vodka, neat and cold—anything that Prince Vladimir, as my receipt later told me our waiter was named, might recommend. Rushdie followed suit and dropped the coffee and took his drink with tonic.

"Most of these stories were not written for children," he continued, "in the way that most of the Grimm tales were not written for children." In Joseph Anton he recalls his father reading them to him during his own childhood in Bombay (now Mumbai), where he was born in 1947, eight weeks before Indian independence.

"He wouldn't read them exactly," Rushdie clarified. Prince Vladimir returned with glasses of Jewel of Russia, the "drink of the czars." We clinked. "[My father] would just retell them in his own way."

Rushdie said he imagined how he might repurpose the stories into a "grown-up novel"—something that wasn't set in "ancient Baghdad with Harun al-Rashid, people in Harem pants." The intrusion into the present of a mythic folkloric past proved ideal, and the jinn were perfect for delivering it. With history and tradition that predates Islam, the supernatural beings—better known in the West as genies—are "oddly amoral," Rushdie said, "a tribe of people for whom ethics just doesn't signify, who are entirely capricious and whimsical."

Rushdie praised all the Indian and Middle Eastern tales for their level of amorality and secularism. They are about "human nature, about people being cunning, sly, deceitful, greedy—and sometimes well behaved and courageous. They're not full of saints and angels. There are goblins and dragons, which I much prefer."

On the subject of dragons, Rushdie said he "got very into" the Game of Thrones TV show but admitted to losing interest during the most recent season. "I like Peter Dinklage. I like the girl with the dragons. I kind of want them to win. I want them to get married and have the dragons," he said, picking at some frisée. "Because they've got an air force, which nobody else has. I want the air force to arrive and do terrible things to bad people."

So far in 2015 the public image of Rushdie has been not that of a great novelist but instead one of a cantankerous hardliner. This goes back to April, when six writers announced they wouldn't host tables at the PEN gala, in protest of the literary organization's decision to give its Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine whose office was attacked by terrorists in January on account of its cartoons of Muhammad. A disgusted Rushdie called the protesters "pussies" and "six authors in search of a bit of character."

"Free speech is really a yes-or-no question: 'Do you believe in it?' The moment you say 'but,' you've stopped believing in it."

I suggested that his past experience, of having lived under a fatwa, might have contributed to his spite. "What it made me feel," he replied, "is that people didn't learn a fucking thing. Or even worse than that is that people learned the wrong lesson. They learned the lesson of appeasement, as opposed to understanding that free speech is really a yes-or-no question: 'Do you believe in it?' The moment you say 'but,' you've stopped believing in it."

His calling the writers out like that "created quite deep rifts." A few among the six—Peter Carey, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, and Taiye Selasi—were old friends. Now, he said, "they don't want to talk to me anymore."

Rushdie, who served as president of PEN from 2004 to 2006, said that when he asked Cole what he was "playing at," Cole claimed that the difference between Rushdie's case and that of the Hebdo cartoonists was that Hebdo's people were killed for perceived racism. Rushdie categorically disagrees: "They were executed for perceived blasphemy. And it made me feel that—this is what I mean about learning the wrong lesson—had the attack on The Satanic Verses happened now, all these people would have been on the other side."

Whether you see him as a bitter crank, a treasure of world literature, or a Padma Lakshmi–marrying glitteratus, Rushdie remains focused on his work. Sipping a second vodka tonic, he talked about possible projects for television and having "a little thread to pull on" leading him toward his next novel. "But I don't know where."

The narrator of Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights says that stories are not the creation of a single mind; rather they descend from "experience retold by many tongues to which, sometimes, we give a single name." One Thousand and One Nights, for example—which has no single author—we remember not for any person who made it but for the tales inside.

I asked Rushdie whether that kind of disappearing act appealed to him. "Well," he said, "if the work of my contemporaries and myself lasts a few millennia, our texts may become authorless too. Which would be no bad thing. I do like the idea of books being famous and authors remaining anonymous."

Follow Aidan on Twitter.

Read: How to Sell an Indie Vampire Film

In what sounds like the summary of a sci-fi horror movie, scientists have discovered a super old "giant" virus frozen in the Siberian ice and they've decided to bring it back to life.

According to Phys.org, the virus—called Mollivirus sibericum—is 30,000 years old, making it the fourth prehistoric virus found in a little over a decade. Is reanimating a frozen zombie virus a bad idea? Everything we know from movies and Stephen King books seems to point towards yes, but scientists swear that they'll check and see if the virus's pathogens are harmful to humans and animals before bringing it back from the dead.

Jean-Michel Claverie, a lead researcher on the project, pointed out to Phys.org that climate change and industrialization may mean that scientists won't be the only people waking up extinct viruses trapped in the ice.

"If we are not careful, and we industrialize these areas without putting safeguards in place," Clavierie says, "we run the risk of one day waking up viruses such as small pox that we thought were eradicated."

That's reasonably terrifying, especially since the majority of these prehistoric viruses are larger and more complex than most modern-day contagions, but at least there is some precedent for what the scientists are doing: Last year, scientists resurrected the world's largest virus, and it has yet to transform anybody into an oozy, alien mess. So that's nice.

Image via Flickr user Ryan Somma

In the United States, intrauterine devices (IUD) are now as popular with teenagers as condoms. For those who haven't sat through a female health class, IUDs are tiny T-shaped contraceptives containing copper or a hormone called progesterone. When inserted into the uterus they prevent pregnancy 99 percent of the time, and for many women eliminate all period pain and often reduce or stop bleeding. They're cheap, safe, effective, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're probably Australian.

Two-thirds of Australian women of reproductive age (measured as 15 to 49 years old) regularly use contraception. But only 1.2 to 2.1 percent of them use IUDs, with the rest mostly favoring the pill or condoms. At a glance this isn't surprising; taking an afternoon off work to have something surgically inserted is less appealing than popping a pill or pulling out a condom. But to put that number in perspective, the rate of IUD use is lower than vasectomies (8.6 to 11 percent), and tubal ligation (4.8 to 8.6 percent)—both far more invasive and expensive procedures.

Speaking to VICE, Dr. Kathleen McNamee, Medical Director at Family Planning Victoria, explained that compared with the pill, IUDs are more reliable, longer-lasting, and often safer. While women using the copper version may experience heavier and more painful periods, the hormonal option (called Mirena) results in a much lighter flow, or no bleeding at all. She does note there may be initial hormonal side effects from Mirena—like breast tenderness and pimples—but they tend to subside soon after insertion.

So considering all the upsides of IUDs, why is Australia lagging so far behind American teens in embracing them?

McNamee says that although she has seen an increase in women using IUDs, our preference for the pill and condoms is cultural. "In Australia you become sexually active, you go on the pill," McNamee says, "You know, it's what everybody does."

Interestingly she adds that when training doctors and nurses, IUDs are taught as the first and best method of female contraception. But when teens are learning about birth control in high school the devices are left as a passing footnote.

Siobhan Luck, a 22-year-old law student from Melbourne, echoes McNamee's observation. Speaking to VICE she remembers that in her high school sex-ed classes the pill and condoms were the only methods discussed. And even later in life, alternatives were rarely talked about. "I don't know anyone else who has an IUD or even considered having them," she says.

It was only after a hormonal reaction to the pill and Implanon—a contraceptive rod implant—caused excessive bleeding that her GP suggested she try an IUD. On her 22nd birthday, she went to the Royal Women's Hospital to have the procedure done. While it was a success, she admits she was nervous going into it. "I had a few nurses and a gynecologist there and they pretty much said, 'This is gonna hurt, just hold onto my hand,'" she remembers, "She sort of instilled fear in me."

Although her experience was less painful than expected, it highlights the device's lingering reputation as a painful choice. For all the recommendations by doctors, IUDs have a murky reputation they've struggled to shake. Reddit is full of chains detailing horror stories about bleeding vaginas, blinding pain, dodgy doctors, and unplanned pregnancies.

Stephanie McLean is a 31-year-old communications student from Melbourne who has had a hormonal IUD for four and a half years. She learned about the device in her former job as a flight attendant. Surrounded by women who were open about their experiences with the IUD, she decided to try it for herself. Unlike Luck, her experience wasn't easy. She had a non-hormonal copper IUD inserted without a general anesthetic during a layover in Sydney, but after six months the pain and heavy periods were too much and she had it removed.

Not put off, she tried again with the hormonal IUD. This time she describes the insertion as "uncomfortable" rather than painful, and has had hardly any bleeding for the entire time she used the IUD.

Related: Is It Worth Your Time and Money to Freeze Your Eggs?

But the devices do have downsides beyond bleeding and requiring a small surgical procedure. While condoms break and the pill's effectiveness can be impacted by vomiting, antibiotics, and diarrhea, the user is often aware that their contraception has been compromised and can take other precautions. If an IUD isn't inserted properly, or slips out of place, the first sign of trouble may be a punctured uterus or an unplanned pregnancy.

Also, presently the copper form of the IUD—which is more popular with women concerned about manipulating their hormones—is not subsidized by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. As a result, it will cost about $120 [$84 US] outside a public hospital setting. Although the hormonal IUD is covered by the PBS and costs range from $6 to $37 [$4 to $26 USD]—making it cheaper than most brands of the pill.

But despite these detractions, McNamee reiterates that there has been a slow shift in our attitudes towards the device. Horror stories aside, she marks this up to increased reporting on complications related to the pill, such as hormonal side effects, blood clots, deep vein thrombosis, heart attacks, and strokes.

She also points out that while schools focus on other forms of birth control, women are speaking more openly about their reproductive health with their friends. "I think part of it is word of mouth. They hear that their friends had it and it was really good, all that sort of stuff comes into it too."

Stephanie heard about the device through friends, and was encouraged to try it again following her negative experience because of their positive ones. And although Luck was the first person she knew to have it inserted, she has encouraged others to try it.

"The whole concept seems terrifying to have something inserted up inside you. I remember when I first went on the pill, my doctor said, 'There's all these other options, would you consider having something inserted inside you?' and I went, 'Nope' straight away," Luck remembers. But after having it for a year she reflects, "The concept just seems crazy and daunting. I think that's what really puts people off... but I think it is a good option for those who are willing to consider it."

Follow Alicia on Twitter.

Photo by Jake Lewis

Read: How Legalizing Weed Would Save Britain Billions

Next month, British MPs will debate the legalization of the production, sale, and use of cannabis after a public petition reached over 200,000 signatures. The debate has been proposed by Labour MP Paul Flynn, a longtime campaigner for cannabis reform, and will be held on October 12.

The movement to legalize cannabis in the UK is well established, but this is the first time since 2004 that MPs have specifically debated legalizing the drug.

James Owen, a Welsh university student, started the petition back in July, and spoke to us then about his ambitions. The economics student later told the Guardian that he hoped to be in London to watch the debate, but that he was not hopeful that it would change the government's position.

Clear UK, the pro-reform group, has urged the British public to contact their MPs to encourage them to attend next month's debate.

Photo via Flickr user Born1945

Looking for in-depth coverage of police racism? Read these:

Does the LAPD Deserve Its Reputation for Racism and Brutality?

Trying to Explain American Police to the British

Cops in Ferguson Are Extremely Racist, According to the Feds

The police chief of Clatskanie, Oregon, a town about an hour from Portland, has resigned over accusations of racism, as the Guardian reported. But these weren't accusations of the kind of structural racism alleged in places like Ferguson, where at least until recently cops targeted minorities for arrests in order to produce revenue. Instead, complaints came in about this particular chief imitating a monkey and comparing a black woman to an animal. (To be fair, they're dealing with pockets of that kind of old-school prejudice in cities like Baltimore, too.)

Most unusual about this incident is that fellow cops reported the alleged racism of their own boss, crossing the so-called "Blue Line" of loyalty. The chief's behavior was that fucking backward and awful.

One complaint, first obtained by local broadcast station KOIN, was filed by Officer D. Alex Stone. Stone claims he was in the middle of letting Chief Marvin Hoover know that there'd been some insinuations about departmental racism, and that a black woman Stone had recently arrested had said to him, "When you look at me, my black skin and my nappy hair, all you see is an animal." The woman was threatening a lawsuit.

Chief Hoover then apparently lost his shit. "That's what she is," he allegedly responded, adding "Hooo...hooo....hooo....hahahaha...hooo....haaah." After that, he started scratching his armpits and jumping around the room. Then he beat his fists on his chest "like Tarzan," according to the complaint, which is actually a generous guess as to Hoover's intention with that pantomime, because Tarzan is imitating the behavior of his ape pals when he does that.

Stone says he tried to finish telling the story about the arrest, but was again interrupted. This time the chief reportedly switched gears, and, from the sound of it, pretended to be a Southerner instead of an ape. He allegedly sang nostalgic slave ballad "Dixie" while punching the air, and then mimed grabbing someone by the collar. Then he did this weird thing:

In addition, while singing the words "look away" Chief Hoover moved his head back-and-forth to his left and right as if he was looking over his shoulder. After Chief Hoover finished singing, he laughed and then left the room.

Hoover had been a popular figure, having been decorated for valor after he apprehended the killer of a neighboring town's police chief. When he announced his early retirement after taking a leave of absence, Diane Pohl, the mayor of Clatskanie, bizarrely told a local newspaper in an effusive letter to the editor that she "must admit a sadness that the security this community has enjoyed under his watchful duty is at an end."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

A lump of ambergris. Photo via Flickr user Peter Kaminski

Just imagine: You're strolling down the beach when you happen upon a lump of some kind of brownish, waxy substance. It turns out to be a chunk of whale vomit washed ashore, and that chunk is worth some $10,000.

This is roughly what happened to one unnamed man in Anglesey, Wales, who is now selling the chunk of vomit at auction later this month, according to Wales Online.

The substance, called ambergris, is produced inside sperm whales' bile ducts to protect their digestive lining from things like seashells or squid beaks. (Or, if you prefer Melville's description in Moby Dick, "an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale.") It's also used as an ingredient in some perfumes to create a "musky" scent. Most perfumers these days use synthetic versions, but some high-end perfumes still use it and it's valuable to have the real deal. Ambergris sells for about $20 per gram. Gold, by comparison, sells for roughly $30 per gram.

It's valuable, in part, because the odds of stumbling onto one of these lumps is rare. First, it has to come from a sperm whale. The whale would have to vomit a sizable amount of it, and then the lump of vomit would have to float on the sea for several years, until it would eventually wash ashore. Then, of course, someone has to find it, recognize what it is, and decide to sell it.

The chunk of ambergris found in Wales weighed just over a kilogram, or about two and a half pounds. The auction is scheduled for September 25 if you're interested.

Mr. Cherry is a Japanese man who holds 12 Guinness World Records for feats ranging from crab walking to crushing walnuts with his butt. VICE followed him in the run-up to his biggest record-breaking challenge yet.

Photo by Psychonaught via

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

In December of 2012, UK Prime Minister David Cameron dismissed a detailed report calling for a fundamental review of our clapped-out drug laws. They were not humane and they were not helping, the study said. However, the prime minister decided to brush away this information; after all, it was only a year's worth of research conducted by experts and compiled into an exhaustive, compelling report. "We have a policy which actually is working in Britain: drug use is coming down," Cameron said in response.

Three years later, that boast has been shown up for the wafer-thin bit of chancery it was. Drug use is going up (the opposite of "coming down," as Cameron should remember from his days in PR). Far worse, drug deaths are reaching record levels.

Government figures released last week revealed there were 3,346 drug-related deaths recorded in England and Wales in 2014—around double the number of annual road traffic fatalities, and the highest since records began in 1983. This wasn't about the much-hyped deaths from legal highs and ecstasy, of which there were just over 100. The death toll was largely fueled by a rise in heroin overdoses.

Despite big falls in the number of heroin users since the epidemic of the 1990s, as well as the expanded use of anti-overdose drugs like naloxone, heroin was implicated in 952 deaths last year, a two-thirds jump from 579 in 2012. Deaths involving cocaine, speed, and prescription drugs also increased, although more than half of the cocaine deaths involved crack cocaine, a drug commonly used alongside heroin.

So what's behind this surprise surge in drug deaths? The view from the experts—the government researchers, the frontline drug workers, and the academics—is that there are several contributing factors at play here.

Only one in seven of those dying of a heroin overdose in 2014 were aged under 30. More than half were over 40. Heroin is cutting more people down simply because they are getting older, their bodies weaker. They are the longterm users, people who started taking the drug in their late teens or twenties during the upsurge in heroin use during the 1990s, and who have underlying health problems cased by years of addiction. As time goes on, inevitably, this aging cohort of heroin users grows more vulnerable to "going over" and never getting up again.

As the government itself suggests, increased purity of both heroin and cocaine due to falling wholesale prices over the last few years has also had a hand in the new wave of heroin and crack deaths. The purer and stronger a drug is, the more likely people will overdose, especially if their tolerance is lowered by heavily cut deals.

However, this does not account for the fact that deaths are now far more common than they were when cocaine and heroin were generally much more potent, throughout the 2000s. After plummeting to lows of 13 percent during the big UK heroin drought of 2010, heroin purity is now at an average of 36 percent. However, for most of the 2000s, purity—while also subject to potentially lethal fluctuations—averaged 56 percent.

READ ON VICE: The Truth About Britain's Looming 'Middle-Class Heroin Crisis'

Mixing heroin with other drugs—such as alcohol and black market prescription drugs like tramadol, diazepam, and gabapentin—can lead to respiratory depression, resulting in a high risk of overdose. This is now more common than ever, and coroners are increasingly finding an array of drugs present in the bodies of people who have died after taking heroin.

Questions have been raised about whether changes to the way people are medically treated for drug addiction—with an increased emphasis on getting patients off methadone and out of treatment—may have resulted in more deaths. But the evidence for this is not there to be seen.

These theories are fine, but there can be little doubt about what the root cause of these deaths is. There's an underlying factor that perhaps far outweighs any of those mentioned above. Something far more fundamental and far bleaker than fluctuating drug purity, treatment regimes, aging heroin users and poly drug use: it's about dead-end lives, abject social inequality and a social care system at breaking point.

In the North East—which has witnessed the sharpest rises in deaths in the last two years—in towns such as Redcar, people are more than twice as likely to die from drugs than in London. These are non-urban regions where government cuts to vital services have hit hardest. There is a similar picture in the North West, the region with the second highest rate of drug deaths, in towns such as Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, and Pendle. As one report found: "There is a clear relationship of greater cuts with greater deprivation across most classes of authority and most services."

WATCH: 'Swansea Love Story', our documentary about a group of young people in the Welsh city addicted to heroin:

Since the abolishment of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse in 2013, local authorities have been responsible for helping long-term heroin users. But financial pressures have meant that many drug services have struggled to maintain the help they can provide. Public Health England has admitted that most heroin deaths occur among people who have no contact with drug services.

An investigation by the charity DrugScope found that, since 2013, over-stretched drug services have been dealing with a damaging mix of austerity-driven reduced funding, bigger caseloads, less frontline staff, and wholesale reorganization.

It is no coincidence that the place with by far the highest drug death rate in the country is Blackpool. As with many seaside resorts—Brighton, Hastings, Bournemouth, Weymouth, and Great Yarmouth—it acts as a magnet for drifters and displaced people who arrive with existing drug addictions. All these places, even affluent Brighton, have higher levels of drug deaths than their profile would indicate.

But what makes Blackpool the capital of drug-related deaths in England is that, on top of its attraction for people wanting to escape their problems, it's also home to the country's most entrenched underclasses.

A study published this year called "Hard Edges: Mapping Severe and Multiple Disadvantage in England" found there are 58,000 people in England experiencing combined issues of homelessness, addiction to drugs and repeat offending. Most have longterm histories of economic, social marginalization, and childhood trauma. It is no coincidence that our drug death capital, Blackpool, is home to the largest proportion of this underclass.

A significant number of heroin overdoses are not accidental; they are suicides—deaths caused by people reaching the end of their tether, for whom society has failed. In 2011, between a third and a half of heroin-related deaths in people aged over 45 were suicides. Since then, the proportion of female suicides relating to drug misuse has overtaken men.

"Social inequality in the shape of poverty, poor housing, and lack of economic opportunity, alongside an aging group of heroin and crack users, is at the heart of why we are seeing this huge increase in drug-related deaths," says Andrew Brown, a former Director of Policy for DrugScope who continues to work in the field of drugs and mental health.

"But as local authorities have their spending power reduced—and that seems to be hitting areas with high rates of drug-related deaths hardest—it's difficult for commissioners and providers to keep up the levels of investment in treatment that has been saving lives in recent years."

Whichever part of the country you choose, the local newspaper cuttings are littered with tragic heroin deaths. The 36-year-old former soldier from Derbyshire with a history of heroin abuse; the 42-year-old Burnley man who got into glue then heroin after a football career was ruined by a knee injury; the busker in his forties from East Riding whose heavy drinking disguised a heroin and speed injecting habit; or the 37-year-old woman with a history of self-harm found dead at her Redcar flat from a combination of heroin, methadone, and diazepam.

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: What I've Learned as an Internet Drug Dealer

When David Cameron came out with his smug "our drug policy is working, drug use is falling" statement in 2012, he was not only ignoring the basic rules of social inequality, but of the drug trade. If people want drugs, whether to enhance a night out or escape pain, supply will follow demand. In the months after Cameron spoke, the supply of heroin, ecstasy, and cocaine was back to normal after a two-year blip, and drug use started to rise.

No matter what drugs are around, or that heroin has been shunned by a new generation, the fact remains: as long as people have shit lives, there will always be heroin, or similar coping mechanisms, such as crack, white cider, and valium. After rejecting the report, the government must have known that, as austerity took hold, the rules would change: poverty and social exclusion would increase its grip on places like Manfield, Corby, and Burnley. They must have known that more people would seek sanctuary in hard drugs, because it's what has happened for the last five decades. Social inequality breeds drug abuse, equalling a rise in drug deaths.

The tragedy here is that with the drug debate nulled and vital drug services strapped for cash, the people most in need of help will find it increasingly harder to get it.

Follow Max on Twitter.

Hard not to be happy when you have that much cocaine. Photo courtesy Netflix

Let's face it, the university experience is not really about the academics—at least not for most people. It's about learning who we are as individuals. What kind of things we like; what we want out of life; who we like to bone; what kind of drugs give us the best buzz and what kind leave us fidgeting in our chair while checking over our shoulder every 30 seconds.

The last question is especially crucial for anybody who's stepped foot onto the campus of a post-secondary institution, as the university years are usually the period where you try a cap of the "good shit" that your friend gives you at the party, only to end up in your dorm room at 3 AM, curled up in your office chair while crying to pictures of Prince in your boxers.

This is precisely why a student who's into that scene should have a solid dealer they can trust. Thankfully, I happen to know a very profitable (and nice) dope dealer who attends Ryerson University with me who was willing to chat about his experience of mixing business with academia.

The dealer himself, who likes to go by the name Robbie, is a smart guy: a science student who is well-spoken, humble and in a really good program. He spoke with me late last month to spill the details on his shadowy life.

VICE: Let's start at the beginning. How'd you get into drug dealing?
Robbie: Well, I'd just started Grade 10 when I got into smoking weed, which led to me dealing really small amounts. I kind of continued doing that through high school with bigger portions until I got to university. That's when I realized how much money I really could be making. Now, I always keep myself stocked. It's definitely paid off.

Paid off? How much are we talking here?
The way I do it is a little different from most people. My [supplier] gives it to me all on the spot—about five ounces of weed at a time—and I clear that in about two weeks. I keep about $500-$600, depending how much money I spend moving the stuff, and then I return the rest of the cut to him.

You talked about keeping stocked. Is weed your only product?
Mainly weed, but I deal other things. Coke sometimes, MDMA, prescriptions—stuff like that. They're just riskier to have on me and aren't as in demand all the time. If I get a request, I'll pull through.

What's your client base like? Being that they're mostly students, I assume.
I get all kinds of people, honestly. It's really cool because almost everybody buys drugs, they just do it for different reasons and in different amounts.

Care to elaborate?
Well, I think a lot of people think people just buy weed and coke and stuff like that to party, but there's more to it. Like, Vyvanse are big around exam time for kids to study or pass a class. It's not just fuckups, y'know? There's a lot of bookworms and really smart kids who just need to focus, I guess.

How much does dealing interfere with your school life?
It really doesn't at all. Drug dealing isn't all that hard for me. It takes maybe 15 minutes to put everything into dime bags for the week. The most difficult part is just working around people's schedules and making deliveries, but it's really not that much of an issue.

What's the biggest obstacle for you?
Not touching my own stuff. I like to smoke weed, but I try not to get into my own goods because it's a slippery slope. My grades have taken a hit because of my habits of slacking off already from smoking, so I don't do the other stuff too often.

Do you ever get hit on by girls/guys who try to use sex to pay for drugs?
Literally all the time. I just had a girl offer me head for some free weed. I honestly feel like a king.

Just now?
Right before this phone call, for real.

Do you use any of your drug money to pay for school stuff?
Yeah, I pay for, like, almost all of my expenses through dealing. I use it to feed myself, to go out, to buy clothing, books, supplies, leisure. Really anything that's not directly tuition. My parents pay for that.

Has being in university improved your profits compared to high school?
Definitely. I used to live in residence [last term] so it was easy access—people would literally come knock on my door for drugs, and there were parties in the building every night. I was always in demand. A lot of people buying weed through there, but prescriptions were pretty big too. I can sell a $60 bottle of pharmacy pills (Vyvanse, Adderall, Xanax, etc.) for, like, $300-$400.

What about now?
Well, things have slowed down. It's summer and most people are away from the city, and being out of residence definitely makes things a little tougher. I know I won't be making as much money this year, but I'm kind of trying to wind down anyway so it's probably for the best.

So you're trying to exit the game?
Yeah, man. I don't want to do this forever. I kind of feel shitty having to do this as my primary source of income, even when it does make me so much. I want to be able to show to my parents that I can actually go on to do something respectable. It just makes me feel really crummy sometimes to look and see that money is really all I have to show for it.

You don't regret dealing though, do you?
No way, man. My favourite part of this job is all the cool people I meet. Like, a couple weeks ago, I met this professional gamer and he's helping me with League of Legends because I want to get good at it. So I cut him a discount and he teaches me how to play. That kind of stuff happens all the time.

That's pretty cool. It's sort of like a back and forth relationship.
Totally, and that's just one of them. I've met so many great and interesting people doing this. It's so fucking cool, honestly. I don't think I'd have as many friends and acquaintances as I do now if it weren't for dealing. Definitely been the highlight of university for me.

You have close relationships with your customers. Aren't you ever worried about getting jacked?
Definitely, I am always worried about getting robbed—I've got robbed before—but I don't sell to people I don't know anymore. I would never sell to somebody I don't well enough anymore. Like, there's no way I'm busting out more than a third [of an ounce of weed] to a random.

Do you ever sell to first-timers? People that know nothing about what they're buying?
(laughs) That happened yesterday, actually. A friend of my friend didn't know how much weed he was getting for the price and I totally could have screwed him. I didn't, but the opportunity is always there, with first years especially.

Any stupid code words? I imagine you get a lot of "You got the stuff?" sorta lingo.
All the fucking time. It's actually hilarious. One guy always tells me he wants "the pasture."

Does he mean weed?
Yeah.

To finish off, what's the weirdest request you've ever got?
I've been asked for LSD a few times, but horse tranquilizers. That shit was crazy.

Why'd they want horse tranquilizer?
Didn't say. But why do most people want drugs? Horse tranquilizer would be pretty cool, I guess.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.