Look at Stephen Maurice Graham's website, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

In this episode of VICE Talks Film, we caught up with British director Shane Meadows, creator of such movies as A Room for Romeo Brass, Dead Man's Shoes, the iconic film This Is England, and the subsequent TV series of the same name.

Shane is now back with his third televised series, This England '90, which picks up the characters' stories at the dawn of rave culture. We talked to the filmmaker about the challenge of transitioning from film to TV, the portrayal of drugs on screen, the death of subculture, and his secret hand in Disney's Herbie reboot.

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Photographer Doug Rickard is probably most famous for his series A New American Picture, in which he recreated images from Google Street View, resulting in a startlingly portrayal of the overlooked, often bleak, backroads of our American landscape.

His latest project, N.A., follows a similar themeRickard spent hours trawling amateur videos in the depths of YouTube and recreated the most striking moments he found. The fruits of his labor will be showcased at LA's Little Big Man Gallery from September 19 to October 31, with an opening reception this Saturday from 7 to 9 PM. I spoke to the artist recently about how the project came together.

VICE: What moments are you looking for specifically when going through all that YouTube footage?
Doug Rickard: I had initially started N.A. back in 2009, at about the same time that I started A New American Picture but I decided to focus on the Street View project first (from 2009 to 2011) and then N.A. behind it (from 2011 to 2014). In both projects, I started with American city names and then went increasingly more granular "Not Applicable" on forms. The audio in my video piece that will be installed in exhibition form is the national anthem, a version that the US Army recorded, slowed down to a point of almost non-recognition. In the book, the voices in the videos from YouTube become a sort of poem.

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What made you jump from relying on city tags to darker subjects to searches like "Passed Out White Girl" and "Police Brutality"?
With N.A., I started finding that certain "silos" of content would emerge on YouTube related to the city searches and I looked for a visual aesthetic to emerge. In my work, a visual aesthetic is core, a thread to unify disparate pieceslight, shadow, color, mood. I soon started seeing that keyword searches were yielding larger groups of results (these results being limited to only amateur video). For example, "Memphis crackhead," "Dallas police harassment," "Oakland sideshow," "Miami hood tours," or "Cleveland hood fights" would yield thousands and thousands of videos. This dynamic shaped N.A., as it seemed that a darker element of social media itself emerged. The uploaded videos were often predatory and meant to elicit "likes," "subscribes," and "comments." People might be paying people on the street to dance for a buck or allow them to knock them out cold with their fistor people were filming drunk girls being drawn on with sharpies, or illegal street races, or police beat-downs, or if a fight occurred, everyone would have their phone pulled out and filming. I looked for images then to emerge from these thousands of clipimages and and snippets of video that could tell talestales that deal with culture, politics, race, class, economics, gender, lack of powerand also technology, surveillance, and even photography itself as a medium, playing a part in the conversation.

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What role does race play in this project and A New American Picture?
I think that in both projects, the notion of race in America, is there and playing a significant rolealong with class and socioeconomics. We're a nation of extremeseconomically we are radically divided in terms of wealth dispersion; racially we are shockingly separatedespecially when looking at white and African-American communities; politically we're at a stand still and locked into a sort of quagmire of opposition, socially we are stratified, based on economic, racial and other criteria. Both N.A. and A New American Picture are dealing with this brutal machinery, and the implications that are baked into the fabric of the nation. The projects are art, not a document (if such a thing exists in a photograph) so the takeaways (if takeaways exist in art), are imprecise and at time opaque but the subject matter is there. Race is inseparable from this conversation.

Scroll down for more photos from N.A.

Doug Rickard (American, born 1968) is a photographer, curator, and founder of American Suburb X.

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Rue McClanahan, Estelle Getty, Bea Arthur, and Betty White. Photo by ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images

Set in the Miami home of relocated Southern belle BlancheDevereaux (Rue McClanahan), The GoldenGirlswhich premiered 30 years ago this weekpresented Blanche's caperswith her best friends, New Yorker Dorothy Zbornak (Bea Arthur) and Minnesota-bredRose Nylund (Betty White). The final roommate in the foursome was Dorothy'sItalian mother, Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty), as each woman found herselfpast middle age and unexpectedly single. An immediate hit, the show ran forseven seasons, lives on in syndication, and might soon be the subject of itsown mass-produced LEGO set, of all things. Female archetypes portrayed by the characters (thelibertine, the brain, the innocent, the wise-ass) paved the way for programslike Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives (whose creator,Marc Cherry, wrote for The Golden Girls).

Fordham University bioethicist Dr. Elizabeth Yuko will commemorate the anniversaryFriday night at the Astoria venue Q.E.D. with a lecture called, "Everything IKnow About Bioethics I Learned from TheGolden Girls." Since June, 32-year-old Yuko has brought the sold-out presentationfrom Queens to Cleveland and back, introducing audiences to the previouslyunexamined intersection of her personal and professional passions.

Last week Yuko gave VICE a preview of the lecture over drinks at Grey Dog in the East Village.

VICE: First off, whatis bioethics?
Dr. Elizabeth Yuko:Bioethics is the study of challenging issues related to medicine and thingsdealing with the human body and science and technology. Like stem-cellresearch, artificial reproduction, end-of-life issues. Anytime there's a challenging ethical issue in medicine, that's bioethics.

Why should youngpeople care about bioethics?
Whether it's making a medical decision for yourself or for aloved one, everyone encounters it at some stage. Frequently, especially in moredifficult illnesses, there are a few different options the doctor can give you.You can have this experimental treatment or you can have this outside the show, too.

Follow Jenna on Twitter.

"Everything I Learned About Bioethics I Learned from 'The Golden Girls'" takes place Friday, September 18 at 7:30 PM at Q.E.D. in Astoria, New York. Tickets are $6 and available here.

Stuart Horner on the roof on HMP Manchester, AKA Strangeways. Photo by Mof Gimmers

Last night, Stuart Horner, the convicted murderer who's been perching on top of his prison for the last three nights, finally came down from the roof of HMP Manchester in a cherry picker. In handcuffs, arms aloft, the pizza and fizzy pop he'd requested sitting next to him, he shouted to those gathered in the street: "I've done what I wantedI've had a mad one."

But what did he really want? No one climbs onto the roof of a prison for 60-odd hours just for a can of soda. Largely, the press has focused on Horner's conviction for murder, without much notice given to his motivation: the supposedly dire conditions within the prison. In the comments on these articles, as well as on social media, the tone has been frequently unsympathetic: shoot him down; to hell with him.

Outside Strangeways prison yesterday, however, while Horner was still up on the roof, there was plenty of support on the ground. A crowd had gathered for what was part-rave, part-protest rally, organized by Party Protest Manchester (PPM), which received national attention after chasing members of fascist groups Combat 18 and Far Right Infidels out of Manchester city center with house music and sarcastic chants. Emma Leyla Mohareb, one of the organizers of PPM's Strangeways protest, was outside, drumming up support for prisoners' rights and for Horner himself.

"Stuart Horner was falsely imprisoned," she claimed. "All they've got on him are two statements. No DNA. No gun. And this is all because of cuts in legal aid. These cuts meant Stuart couldn't afford a barrister, which means he's in there, and he's had enough."

She added: "We've heard that the prison haven't fed the inmates for two days, and prisoners. They concentrated on sounding tough and, as a result, forced themselves into a dead-end where they couldn't do the reforms they might otherwise have wanted to do."

While Horner's guilt was being debated outside the prison, one thing is for sure: there's a real need for a conversation about the state of British prisons. While on the roof, Horner shouted: "I'm doing this on behalf of everyone here. Sort the jail out. I'm sick of it here. I want to change prison history."

This was met with prisoners loudly cheering and calling from their cells, which you could hear from the barred-up windows. At the rally outside, there were calls for prisoners around the UK to join in the protest.

While Horner's protest may well be too brief to carry any real weight across the country (and ended on something of a damp squib, with a bit of junk food), it has again raised conversation about the state of British prisons and the cuts to legal aid. When both inmates and guards agree on the matter, it's clear that British prisons are failing everyone involved.

Follow Mof Gimmers on Twitter.

Screenshot via doctorcrocodildo.com

"I call myself a digital pimp," says Peter Karanja, speaking to me in Kenya's capital city, Nairobi. The gregarious, 30-something man doesn't look much like a pimpbut he does have an unusual relationship to sex. To his friends and the rest of the country, he's known as Dr. Crocodilio, the same name of the site that he started with his uncle in 2009, which is among the few websites in East Africa providing and promoting sex toys.

Like many countries in Africa, Kenya is conservative about sex. Pornography is illegal, listed among the "Offenses Against Morality" in the penal code. Producing or possessing "obscene writings, drawings, prints, paintings, printed matter, pictures, posters, emblems, photographs, cinematograph films, or any other obscene objects, or any other object tending to corrupt morals" is punishable by up to two years jail time and a $70 fine. Around Valentine's Day, Kenya banned the 50 Shades of Grey movie for its "prolonged and explicit sexual scenes" and in June, the parents of five police recruits were called in to answer for the vibrators found in their adult children's bedrooms.

Even still, the law describes "obscenity" broadly enough that sex toys are technically legal. Because of this, Karanja saw an opportunity: He could build the sex toy industry in Kenya.

Karanja had first seen glimpses of sex toys in the UK, where he had earned a master's degree in business. There, female students talked about owning dildos and high street shop windows displayed fluffy handcuffs and sex dice.

It was nothing like the shoddy, under-the-counter merchandise sold in Nairobi's rundown malls, or the downtown areas also known for selling illegal bleaching creams, weapons, and stolen electronics.

"It was very dingy. You're almost made to feel ashamed by the person selling it," says Karanja. "They made you seem desperate."

Read: Rich Kenyans Are Injecting Themselves with Black Market Creams to Become White

He created doctorcrocodilio.com, a website "to help people, to change people's minds, and make a difference." The sex toy emporium offers "discreet packages" with free delivery within Nairobi's Central Business District filled with vibrators, dildos, lubricants, handcuffs, candy brasyou name it, and Dr. Crocodilio sells it.

The toys themselves are imported from Asia, and Karanja tries to keep a wide variety of toys in stock because, he says, "people are curious about everything."

"We African women are coming into our own in terms of our belongings and bodies." Valentine Njoroge

That's in part because, until now, the presence of sex toys has been invisible in Kenya. It's telling that, on his website, Karanja includes a section explaining: What's a Sex Toy?

"We African women are coming into our own in terms of our belongings and bodies," says Valentine Njoroge, who writes a weekly sex column for Kenya's The Star newspaper. She says that women in Africa are "habitually treated like commodities and discussed by elders, whether it's to do with dowries or what to pay after a girl has been raped."

Njoroge says older people frequently object to the sexual nature of her column, since "most Kenyans take the view that sex is private and should be kept that way."

Watch: VICE goes behind the scenes of The Miss Africa Greece Beauty Pageant, a pageant focused on celebrating the identity of African women living in Athens.

Traditionally, Kenyan women have not been encouraged to explore their sexuality. Around a quarter of women in Kenya have undergone some form of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), an illegal practice that involves cutting off the clitoris, labia, or worse. (Notably, the rate of FGM in Kenya dropped 10 percent between 1998 and 2008). FGM is motivated in part by the desire to curb women's libido, to keep their premarital virginity intact, and prevent infidelity later on.

With the advent and availability of toys, some women are challenging "the general take in Kenya" that their sexuality belongs to men, Njoroge says. "That if you arouse him, his desire is now your responsibility."

Read: Kenya's Slum Abortions Pit God Against Death

This is especially important in a country where rape is a quarter of women's first sexual experience. One Australian expatriate, who was brutally gang-raped in Kenya, only managed to sentence her rapists after seven and a half years and on charges of robbery. She was reportedly told by the police that "no one won rape cases in Kenya." Earlier this year, a Nairobi woman was stripped and beaten because she was wearing an "indecent" outfit. "It's really women's sexuality being criminalized, not men's," says Njoroge.

It's in this climate that Karanja's sex toy business is not just new, but also empowering.

"Everything sells, because it's a new thing and everyone wants to experiment." Peter Karanja

After the advent of Dr. Crocodilio, other sex toy businesses have emerged. Rival sites like Raha Toys ("best cheapest sex toys in Kenya") and Pazuri Place ("Kenya's best online shop for adult products") have both grown tremendously since 2009. Pazuri Place says they are now quadrupling its product range, and Raha Toys promises both a 24-hour helpline and same day deliveryno small feat in a city rated fourth-worst worldwide for traffic. Dr. Crocodildo, for its part, pledges to process orders within two hours for those who can't wait for their toys to arrive.

"They're used to things coming easily, coming to your door," says Karanja of an industry that should be "like pizza": It arrives packaged so that strangers "don't know what toppings you like" and before things get cold.

Karanja says men and women buy his sex toys equally, and so far, there is no product frontrunner.

"Everything sells," he says, "because it's a new thing and everyone wants to experiment."

Follow Hannah McNeish on Twitter.

Read: How to Enjoy Pop Culture When You're Black

On Monday, a 14-year-old student in Texas named Ahmed brought a homemade clock he built to school. His teachers had apparently been watching too much 24, because they looked at the blinking digital clock and mess of wires and assumed it was a bomb. They called the police, the police grabbed Ahmed, and Ahmed was arrested, reports the Dallas Morning News.

The device itself was just a circuit board attached to a digital clock display, all packed together inside a shiny tiger pencil case. If that doesn't sound like a bomb, it's because it isn't. It's a clock, which Ahmed repeatedly tried to explain to teachers and the police.

Ahmed's father, who is originally from Sudan, was understandably pissed off about his son's arrest. "He just wants to make good things," he told the Morning News.

Ahmed builds all sorts of stuffhe was in robotics club in middle school, he's put together homemade radios, and even fixes up his own go-kart. But Ahmed wanted to share his skills with the folks in high school, so he whipped up the fateful timepiece in 20 minutes last Sunday, hoping to impress. He didn't get the response he was looking for.

" was like, 'That's really nice,'" Ahmed said. "'I would advise you not to show any other teachers.'"

Unfortunately, the clock beeped later in the day, causing a different teacher to go off on him, claiming the clock was a disruption and that it looked suspiciously like a bomb. Ahmed disagreed, but the teacher still confiscated it. Ahmed was questioned by five police officers a few hours later.

Ahmed was suspended for three days for bringing the clock to school, but police said on Wednesday that no charges will be filed against him. Ahmed's story has received a great swelling of support on social media, including from Hillary Clinton, who tweeted, "Ahmed, stay curious and keep building."

Follow Scott on Twitter.

Photos courtesy of Stike! Magazine

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

You may or may not have noticed, on your trip to and from work this morning or the day before, some unusual posters in the advertising space usually reserved for city break deals, West End theater, and sexist currency exchange companies.

Across the tube network and at bus shelters too, artists from Banksy's satirical theme park Dismaland have been hijacking ad space for an anti-militarist poster campaign criticizing the biannual Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) fairthe world's largest arms exhibitionwhich opened yesterday morning at the ExCel Centre in London Docklands.

This year's fairwidely criticized by campaignersfeatures delegates from all the usual authoritarian regimes as well as states currently engaged in brutal wars, like Saudi Arabia, who is now leading a bloody aerial campaign in Yemen. It's not just tanks and fighter jets being shipped off to repress dissent and arm child soldiers. In the past, weapons that violate UK law have been discovered by Amnesty International, such as cluster bombs, electric stun batons, and shock irons. Oh and the best part? It's part-funded by the taxpayer.

Anti-militarist groups have spent the past week doing as much as they can to disrupt the event by blocking the entrance and forcing armored vehicles to turn back. Dismaland artists are hoping to raise awareness even more by fly-posting the London transport network. We managed to track down one of the artists behind the campaign, Darren Cullen, and asked him what the group is hoping to achieve.

VICE: Hi Darren. So who exactly is behind this campaign?
Darren: There's a few artists and designers resident at Banky's current exhibitionDismalandwho wanted to do something about the DSEI arms fair. I'm working there with my Pocket Money Loans installation, which is a payday loan shop for kids. But I took a break from giving children advances on their pocket money at 5,000 percent APR to help. Strike! magazine have a stall here and they've been distributing these bus stop adshell hack packs with the Special Patrol Groupa sort of shadowy militant wing of Strike! magazinewhich give demonstrations to the public on how to break into advertising space. Along with the Museum of Cruel Designsan arms-trade exhibition at Dismalandthey thought it was a good idea to put the two things together. So we designed the posters and the SPG and their small army of volunteers took them to London.

Can you tell us about some of the different poster designs and the criticisms they are making?
A lot of the posters are pointing out very under-reported or ignored facts about the UK's hypocrisy when it comes the arms trade and what we supposedly believe about democracy and not murdering people all the time. It's completely perverse that our government wrings their hands and bleats half-convincingly about all the terrible conflicts which kill and displace millions around the world, but then simultaneously signs off on weapons and ammunition sales to those exact same regions, often arming both sides in the same conflict.

Darren's piece

My own poster is one about the UK government's planned renewal of our Trident nuclear weapons program. It points out all the potential benefits of a nuclear war, which I think are often over-looked when politicians are talking about the practicalities or costs of arming our country with the most appalling weapon mankind has ever created. When we're deciding whether to blow 100 billion on a weapons system that could lead to the destruction of life on this planet it's a good idea to spend a little time contemplating just what the consequences of that decision could be.

Why did you decide to target the tube and bus network? I guess the arms trade isn't something your average commuter tends to think about on their way to work?
I think there's a lot to be said about disrupting the monotony of the daily commute for its own sake, even better if you can do it about something worthwhile. The arms dealers who are currently slithering through London would much prefer their horrible conference to pass by without any real scrutiny. By doing something like this, we're able to draw commuters attention to the fact that some of the world's worst dictatorships have come to London to pick out their preferred instruments of torture and murder.

Watch our doc on Mr. Cherry, Japan's leading world record holder:

My rationale is that anything that annoys terrible people is probably worth doing. The organizers of the DSEI are among some the worst type of awful bastard, so if we're able to send any annoyance or bad publicity their way then we can count it as a job well done.

Ad-space hacking seems to be growing in popularity at the moment. There was the anti-Metropolitan Police ad campaign and the "bullshit jobs" thing recently. Do you see this as a useful form of protest?
Anything that takes corporate advertising off the streets is a good thing. Our public spaces have been privatized so that only institutions or individuals with large advertising budgets are allowed to have truly free speech. The ad space hack packs are a great way of democratizing these places where we spend large parts of our day.

Advertising tries to shape culture and tell us the types of things we should be concerned about as individuals and as a society. By removing them and replacing them with our own messages we can subvert that relationship, we can put forward the issues that we think we really should be concerned about, which in this case is the fact that it is possible to make large amounts of money from the brutalization and murder of innocent people.

The TFL has called the poster campaign an "act of vandalism"? What do you make of that?
Adverts are pollution, visually and psychologically. Replacing them with art is an act of tidying up.

Thanks Darren.

Visit Darren's website: Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives.

Follow Philip on Twitter.

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Richard Glossip just got a stay of execution. Photo via Change.org

There are two versions of what happened on January 7, 1997, at a Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City, but both end up with Barry Von Treese getting beaten to death with a baseball bat. Each account centers on his former employees. In the first, Justin Sneed, a 19-year-old maintenance man with a meth problem, kills the motel owner in a robbery attempt gone wrong. In another, a 33-year-old manager named Richard Glossip hires Sneed to do the job out of fear of losing both his job and the housing that came with it.

Sneed confessed to the brutal bludgeoning, and received a life sentence. But in two separate trials, a jury bought the murder-for-hire story, and sentenced Glossip to death by lethal injection.

The problem is there's no physical evidence linking Glossip to the crime. And on Monday, the death row inmate's legal team released a new affidavit they say bolsters the case for Glossip's innocence. That didn't sway Governor Mary Fallin, though, and Oklahoma City District Attorney David Prater has called the announcement "a bullshit PR campaign."

The last-minute gambit seems to have paid off anyway: Glossip's execution was scheduled for 3 PM local time Wednesday, but a two-week stay was just issued by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.

Besides the short-term respite, Glossip's case is especially important because it's been at the heart of a debate that almost abolished the death penalty in Oklahoma.

As the New Republic reported, last year saw a major shortage of the drugs typically used to execute inmates in America. Some states, including Oklahoma, started using new ones, including midazolam, which is supposed to knock people out so they die without pain. The switch wasn't without incident: Last April, Oklahoma officials tried to kill Clayton D. Lockett by pushing a catheter through a vein near his groin. He appeared to be in pain, and the sight was so gruesome that executioners closed the curtains as he struggled. He eventually died of a heart attack.

In January, the US Supreme Court ordered that the executions of Glossip and three others be held while the justices decided if drugs like midazolam would cause them an inhumane amount of suffering. But on June 29, the high court upheld the death penalty method.

In his opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia made fun of his peers and their "plea for judicial abolition of the death penalty," referring to them as "a vocal minority of the Court, waving over their heads a ream of the most recent abolitionist studies (a superabundant genre) as though they have discovered the lost folios of Shakespeare, insist that now, at long last, the death penalty must be abolished for good."

On Monday, Gossip's new lead attorney Don Knight held a press conference in which he unveiled a sworn affidavit from someone who once was in jail with Sneed, the maintenance man. In it, a man named Michael Scott swears that Sneed used to brag about setting Glossip up.

But Oklahoma City District Attorney David Prater echoed Justice Scalia's opinion in his response to the new evidence. "This is not about a legal process, this is a PR campaign," he said. "All they are trying to do is abolish the death penalty in the state of Oklahoma and this country by spreading a bunch of garbage."

Robert Blecker, a professor at New York law school and an advocate for capital punishment in America, says this case is proof that we need a more refined system when it comes to meting out death.

"I've long maintained that the burden of persuasion in capital cases should be higher at the penalty phase than the guilt phase," Blecker said. "From what I know of this case... there was at least a residual doubt of his guilt and a moral doubt that he deserves to die for it, if he did it. I would reserve the death penalty for other situationswhere the crime more clearly warrants it, and the proof more certainly establishes it."

On Tuesday, Glossip's defense team said there's even more evidence that could prove their client innocent, and asked for 60 days to pursue it.

"Since we began investigating this case, and once publicly highlighting it, we have received tip after tiptelephone messages at 1:00 AM, and emails at all hours," they wrote the governor. "Such information is still pouring in, but we have not been able to investigate all of it."

Now they've been given 14 days.

"At first I was angry at Justin, but now I feel sorry for him," Glossip told CNN back in January. "He's afraid of how Oklahoma will kill him if he owns up to what really happened, just like I am afraid of how they'll kill me."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

A now common sight throughout Canada and the US. Photo via Flickr user Seattle Municipal Archives

Given the euphoria that swept across America's LGBTQ communityand throughout the worldafter the US Supreme Court effectively legalized same-sex marriage from coast to coast last June, you'd think every queer person in the universe couldn't wait to prance down the aisle and tie the knot. And in Canada, the entire issue seems a bit, well, passe, given that we've had legal same-sex marriages for over a decade.

But some queers have expressed ambivalence, and even some irritation, about quite so much political and financial energy being channelled into the long, drawn-out fight to legalize such unions. Marriage, they point out, has a long and problematic legal history, one that includes the notion of a wife being akin to property, not to mention the exclusion of interracial marriages.

And as we're seeing with the arrest and subsequent release of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and to the ongoing fight for legal recognition of same-sex marriages in Australia (not to mention much of the rest of the world), the issue is far from over.

Ryan Conrad is an activist, author and doctoral student at Montreal's Concordia University, who has written and lectured extensively on the topic, expressing his philosophical and practical reasons for sober second thoughts about that rush to the altar. As he points out, the benefits many are looking for as a result of getting wed are ones that should simply be universal rights. Along with his cohorts at the Against Equality Collective, Conrad has published a number of books challenging libleft gay orthodoxy, including the 2011 volume Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage. Conrad spoke to VICE from his Montreal Plateau apartment.

VICE: There's been a lot of euphoria about the US Supreme Court decision of the summer regarding same-sex marriage. Is the issue behind us?
Ryan Conrad: Well I guess that depends on what you think the issue is. Is the issue making sure that all people regardless of what configuration their family takes have the legal protections necessary to maintain their safety and well-being? Then no, certainly not. If the issue is simply giving same-sex couples access to a deeply inequitable institution that gives benefits to some conjugal couples, primarily those with some form of wealth or property, and penalizes single people and other conjugal couples, particularly those who are disabled and/or on some sort of state benefits (what little still exists in the US), then yes. That has been achieved. But to be clear, while gay marriage activists have been claiming to be fighting for "ALL FAMILIES" they have in fact only been fighting for families that look exactly like the ideal of straight familyan intimate, couple-led household with a few kids. Everyone else can basically go fuck themselves under the current family law regime in the US.

You have argued these extensive legal struggles have actually hurt progress for LGBTQ people...
Again, this all depends on what you consider progress and the LGBT marriage maniacs are not all that interested in thinking critically about what "progress" or "equality" actually means. With gay marriage now the law of the land it has only reinforced the logic that all people should be meeting their needs through the family unit. One need look no further than the outpouring of conservative and corporate support of gay marriage in the pages of Bloomberg, The New York Times, or The Wall Street Journal, where corporate analysts touted gay marriage as a way to get more people off welfare and into so-called "stable" and "respectable" families, all of which is good for business. So this newly retrenched ideology of family throws non-traditional families under the busfrom single parents to polyamourous folks, from adult children who have a live-in elderly parent to blended family households. Not to mention the psychological effect of the monolithic gay marriage campaigns on young queer people who are now subjected to the expectation and pressure to marry. The campaigns for gay marriage have essentially put forth the image that getting married is theway to have a healthy relationship and to be successful and respectable. Let's be real, that isn't going to work out for most people, gay or straight, if divorce rates are any indicationand I'm waiting to see what the fallout will be in the coming years.

You also make the argument that tons of money has been pumped into these legal struggles.
A lot of money has been squandered on these gay marriage campaigns and I think there are growing numbers of people that are sympathetic to this critique. The Human Rights Campaign being the largest and most well-funded non-profit (quite the misnomer at this point) is hand in hand with big business, with their current president making nearly a half million dollars a year in salary. But I worry that focusing just on the disproportionate amount of money spent on gay marriage campaigns and the budgets of these so-called non-profits that are circulating all this money gets marriage itself as a political goal off the hook. It seems more and more people are able to see gay marriage as maybe not the best priority at this moment, which I generally agree with, but marriage in itself is still a bad goal. Most of us on the queer left want to see an end to marriage privilege and fight for a world where marital status does not impact one's ability to protect their family, access social safety nets, cross national borders, access health insurance, etc. None of these things should be tied to marriage, they should come with our existence as people on this earth much like Chrys Ingraham was arguing well before gay marriage was legalized. And I'm not just some crazy wingnut saying this, so did the Law Commission of Canada and queer feminist family law scholars like Nancy Polikoff and Nicola Barker amongst many others.

Do you understand how some gay people see this as gaining full acceptance from a society?
Sure, but if society is garbage, then full acceptance doesn't mean much right? As activist and writer Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore asks, "When did our dreams get so small?"

When you lecture about these issues, do people get angry with you? Some people feel very strongly about these battles and victories.
Yasmin Nair and I received death threats on social media because of our work with Against Equality in 2010. Funnily enough, it's not homophobic right-wing Christians that want us dead, but liberal LGBTs. A lot of people take our critique of marriage very personally, as if any of us from the AE collective actually has the time or energy to care about what people do on a personal level. None of us really care about people's personal decisions regarding marriage and love. What we care about is the structural dimension of how these decisions give people access to certain cultural institutions and with that, access to things like economic benefits, healthcare, and immigration. Simply telling people to not get gay married if they don't like it is idiotic when marriage is the only way to access family law that provides economic and emotional well-being for a family. So no, this isn't about you and your sweatshop-made wedding dresses and blood diamond engagement rings, but about the political and economic context in which your marriage exists. It's why I collaborated with my friend Alexandra Silverthorne on the satirical photo series where I smash up a fictitious gay wedding People take this critique so personally so I thought I would poke fun at this assumption by giving myself a gay marriage terrorist makeover.

You are in some cases aligned with people who oppose same-sex marriage basically out of homophobia. Does that make you squirm?
The either/or-ness of your question sounds a bit like George W. Bush's "you're either with us or with the terrorists." This kind of comment, which we've heard often, works to disarm any criticism from the left and put a chill on dissent. But this accusation is actually quite humorous to me as well. Against Equality and myself are the religious right's worst nightmares as we do indeed wish to destroy the ideology of family and the State as we know it. So to put us in the same boat with right-wingers, or to suggest that we have internalized homophobia to deal with as some have suggested, doesn't really make sense. Unlike radical feminists of yesteryear who opposed pornography and worked hand in hand with the religious right to criminalize it and present day abolitionist feminists who work with religious fundamentalists to ruin the lives of sex workers, we make no such opportunistic alliances.

Don't you ever want to settle down with a sweet guy, eat crow about what you've said, and exchange rings, then spend your weekends at IKEA and the fruit and vegetable market in between gardening your perfectly-manicured yard?
What I want for my personal life is rather irrelevant. I've been trying to make it clear that my critique and the critiques that many others on the queer left make are about structural inequity rather than personal choices. Plus, if I was ever going to get legally married I'd used it to support a non-status refugee to get their papers, nothing else.

Even if the guy proposing to you is Zac Efron?
What homo doesn't want to pound that fuzzy lil muscle butt? But marriage? No thanks!

Photo courtesy of Elysium Space

When US Army Infantry Soldier Steven Jenks was deployed in Iraq, he used to get letters from his mother signed like this: "No matter how lonely you feel and how far you are, always look at the moon and know I am with you. I love you to the moon and back."

So when his mother died of lung cancer, Jenks thought it befitting to send her remains to the moon. "I will know that she is looking down on my family and maybe they won't feel so alone," he said in a statement.

Jenks is the first client of Elysium Space, a company that offers "celestial services to honor and celebrate the life of someone you love." (In other words, they launch small amounts of cremated remains into space.) In a press release, Elysium said: "The time to change the vision of death from the underground to the celestial is now."

Read: One Company's Plan to Build a Space Elevator to the Moon

Elysium isn't the only company vying to make lunar memorials a reality. Another company, Celestis, worked with NASA before announcing in 2008 that they were planning a service that would send a one-gram capsule filled with cremated remains into space for $12,500. Elysium charges $11,950 for an equally tiny capsule (the average cremated adult weighs four to six pounds, so one gram is extremely small), although they've announced that the first 50 reservations for the lunar memorial service can pay a discounted price of $9,950. Elysium would send remains to the Lacus Mortis region of the moon, which fittingly translates to "Lake of Death."

Engraved capsules for cremated remains. Photo courtesy of Elysium Space

Space travel for the dead isn't actually new. The first set of cremated remains to fly into space belonged to Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry, which were sent aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1992. Five years later, Celestis made the first commercial memorial flight with a rocket carrying a capsule of ashes sent into Earth's orbit. Since then, orbital service has become a company staple, together with the more affordable suborbital missions that fly into areas with zero gravity before being returned back to the next of kin. Elysium also offers an orbital service at half the price of Celestis, with the first mission in late 2015 already sold out.

Indeed, cremated remains have already reached parts of the galaxy that living humans haven't. NASA's New Horizons probe, which went as far as Pluto, contains the cremated remains of Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, who died in 1997. For journeys even farther out, Deep Space memorial options are already being advertised for those wishing to send cremains outside the Earth's solar systemalthough neither Celestis nor Elysium has actual flights yet on the books.

Watch: Death in a Can

Although Elysium would be the first company to offer lunar burials commercially, they won't be the first to hold a successful lunar burial. In 1999, a vial with an ounce of the cremated remains of NASA geologist Eugene Shoemaker was attached to the space agency's Lunar Prospector science craft that crashed into a moon crater at 3,800 mph. Shoemaker had been involved with NASA for decades, though a health condition kept him from traveling to space himself. He died in a car crash in Australia while crater hunting in 1997, after which his wife and NASA colleague Carolyn Porco spearheaded the effort to send him into space. He became, in the words of Porco, "the very first human inhabitant of Earth to be laid to rest on another celestial body."

Read: You Can Now Buy Spaghetti that Went to the Moon

As it stands right now, the commercial lunar memorial services remain in preorder phase. That's because the transport flights for both providers still have dates that are up in the air. While governments in the past have sent probes to land on the moon, there aren't any state-funded missions coming up in the next few years. Instead, hopes for lunar burial services rest on the success of the Google Lunar XPRIZE, a competition that offers $30 million in prize money to teams from all over the world that are able to successfully launch a rover that can land on the moon with private funding of 90 percent or more. Elysium's spacecraft provider Astrobotic, which has contracts with both Elysium and Celestis, is among the contestants. So is Moon Express, which Celestis has an agreement with, but Elysium doesn't.

There's a certain coolness factor about looking at the moon and knowing a piece of your loved one is there, which is why Celestis's co-founder Charles Chafer sees huge potential for growth in the lunar funeral market. The biggest obstacle, he says, is pricing (the median cost of a funeral, including embalming, a casket, and funeral home fees, is around $7,000; both Celestis and Elysium's services cost over $10,000). "The lunar option currently is priced in excess of the average cost of a US funeral, somewhat limiting the popularity of the service," he said. He believes the "global addressable market" is currently about 1,000 per year, though he says that could grow hugely as "the ability to reach the moon grows more routine."

Follow Simon Davis on Twitter.

Read: Talking Sci-Fi, VHS, and Hollywood with Wim Wenders, King of the Road Movie

Comedian Steve Rannazzisi is mostly known as Taco's less funny brother onThe League, a very popular TV show about man-children in a fantasy football league. When asked about his success, Rannazzisi has credited it with a life-altering wake up call he received after escaping from the south tower on September 11. On Tuesday, Rannazzisi came forward to admit that the whole 9/11 story was made up.

"I was there and then the first tower got hit and we were like jostled all over the place," he told Marc Maron in 2009. Rannazzisi claimed he was an account manager at Merrill Lynch back thena lieand said he'd fled the building slightly before the second plane hitanother lie.

It's not yet clear who first poked holes in Rannazzisi's story, but the Times reports that the comedian decided to come clean after "confronted with evidence that undermined his account."

Rannazzisi released a statement on Tuesday admitting that the 9/11 story was fabricated. "I don't know why I said this," his statement read. "I am truly, truly sorry." He continued his apologies and explanations on Twitter on Wednesday.

Buffalo Wild Wings, who had hired Rannazzisi as the face of a new ad campaign, is currently "re-evaluating relationship with Steve," and Deadline reports that Comedy Central may cancel Rannazzisi's special, Breaking Dad, which was scheduled to air on Saturday.

Follow Scott Pierce on Twitter.

Four inmates died over the weekend after a riot broke out at a privately-run Oklahoma prison. Though the precise cause of the chaos is stillunclear, tensions in the Cimarron Correctional Facility in the small city of Cushing, which sits between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, remain high. After all, this is the second publicly-reported incident of violence there just this summer; in June, 11 inmates were taken tothe hospital after a disturbance that reportedly involved between 200 and 300 inmates in three separate housing units. And the plannedbut now delayedexecution of a man widely believed to be innocent at a separate, public prison has the Oklahoma criminal justice system squarely in the national spotlight right now.

A Possibly Innocent Oklahoma Death Row Inmate Caught a Break Hours Before His Execution

Three inmates were declared dead on Saturday from stabbing wounds, or "multiplesharp force injuries," as the local medical examiner described them. The fourth later succumbed to a similar injury. Officials have not commented on the origin of the weapons, but we know the deceased inmates' names are Anthony Fulwilder, Michael Mayden, Kyle Tiffee andChristopher Tignor.

All of their deaths have been ruled homicides.

The Cimarron Correctional Facility is operated by thelargest private prison company in the country, Corrections Corporation ofAmerica (CCA). While the company's facilities have been plagued by disturbing incidents over the years, CCA has also been expanding its operations and increasing profits. The company,which was founded in 1983, currently has a capacity of approximately 85,000beds across the country, and in 2014 saw total revenue of over $1.6 billion. Still, this weekend's tragedy provides more fodder for prison reform advocates who argue private facilities are uniquely prone to violence that results in the death of inmates.

The 1,720-bed Cimarron facility houses both maximum and medium security prisoners and is run byCCA on a contract from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC). The Saturday melee reportedly erupted as inmates from the medium-security wing were being let into the exercise yard. A formerOklahoma state correctional officer, who spoke to VICE on condition of anonymity, said that "intel is that the fight was between academy. They quit a week later because they can't handle the pressure of when that door locks behind you," the officer told News 9. The formerOklahoma correctional officer who spoke to VICE described Cimarron as "probably one of the mostviolent facilities in the United States."

Supporters of private prisons argue that they run more efficiently and save states money. But ACLU staff attorney Carl Takei says that"the evidence of cost savings is mixed" and insists there is "heightened level ofviolence against inmates."

Civil liberties advocates like Takei can't help but wonder that when it comes to for-profit incarceration, "What is the ultimate societal price?"

John Washington is a novelist and translator currently living in Arizona. Follow him on Twitter.

Screengrab from the BBC

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Jeremy Corbyn has been in Parliament for over three decadeslonger than the Prime Minister has been able to voteand he thinks it'stime that some dignity was brought back to its proceedings. He wants to build adifferent kind of Prime Minister's Questions. Less braying, less sniping, lessnews bulletin-friendly soundbites, less "yah-boo sucks theatrical politics," less of the atmosphere of a circus temporarily taken over by the animals:instead, a respectful and rational democratic institution, where those in powercan be held to account by the people they rule over. Anyone expecting theirflat-capped messiah to spit proletarian venom at the massed ranks of Torypricks will have to be disappointed. Politics is getting serious.

Given that the Mother of All Parliaments is and always hasbeen a slightly pongy sixth-form common room for public school boys who nevergrew up, this would always be a pretty hefty task. But how are you meant tohave a sane and rational discussion when standing opposite you, in the placereserved for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is some vile apparitionwith a head like a giant floating lollipop?

The end result of Corbyn's first big parliamentary combat isa grim and strange spectacle: less a surging Titanomachy, more an ordinary manwith the demeanor of a disappointed schoolteacher trying to reason against acreature out of the weirdest forgotten corners of ancient mythology. DavidCameron, spray-tanned, floppy-haired ,and hooting, the posh thuds of hisflattened vowels echoing in ripples of condescension across the chamber, looksproperly monstrous, something made of sand or puttyand, like any monster, hedoesn't seem to exist in the real world.

Corbyn's big innovation has been to outsource his questionsfor the Prime Minister to the population at large. He's received 40,000 emailsfrom across the country, suggesting various problems he could raise, and in hishands PMQs turns into a kind of grandiloquent phone-in radio show: here'sMarie, with a question about the housing crisis and extortionate rents, nextthere's Paul, who's upset about the removal of tax credits from the poorestfamilies.

On the face of it, it's a clever strategy: It limits Cameron'sability to deliver some snarky debating-chamber put-down to the usual simianhoots from the Tory benches; instead, he has to treat Corbyn's questions withthe same nodding deference that all politicians must now display, even whenfaced with the absolute worst idiots of the British public. For someone whose everymove is picked over by a frenzied and spittle-flecked media class (JeremyCorbyn picked up some sandwiches! Traitor! Jeremy Corbyn didn't match his jacket with his trousers! Bolshevik!),whose first PMQs were bound to be the subject of intense and bizarre scrutiny,it's a very good damage limitation strategy. But it's not much more.

To give the man his due, Cameron answered every questioncapably and confidently. In fact, he made a decent stab at out-socialisting thearch-socialist across from him. Housing crisis? In fact, the Tories delivered260,000 affordable housing units over the last Parliament. (Never mind that thecost of an "affordable" home in London is roughly the same as you'd need tofund the overthrow of a small Third World democracy.) Concerns about mentalhealth provision? His government is putting an extra 8 billion into the NHS.(Adroitly tiptoeing over the fact that mental health services have been cut by8 percent since 2010.) With hisselective statistics, Cameron seems to be living in a very different world tothe real one, where people are actually suffering, but like all fantasy worlds,it has a lot more coherence than reality.

Read on Noisey: Why Do Most British Musicians Not Give a Shit About the Politics That Affect Their Fans?

But Corbyn never presses him on any of this: he asks aquestion, Cameron smugly disgorges a little glob of distortions andhalf-truths, and then Corbyn asks another. It's all very admirably restrainedand serious, even statesmanlike, but it's not really doing anything. Is he really trying to convince the Tories to do more about housing and mental health, asif their assaults on these services were an unexpected cockup rather than thefruition of an ideological agenda?

A mature, sensible PMQs is a fine idea, butit misses the point of what PMQsand Parliament itselfis really about. Asa good Marxist, Corbyn should know that the organs of our representativedemocracy are really just a vast sideshow to the real exercise of politicalpower, which comes from our financial overlords, and, sometimes, an empoweredworking class. It's just a vehicle for propaganda, and treating it as anythingelse doesn't do anyone any favors. There's no point trying to make PMQs intoless of a circus: however you arrange the props, however seriously you talk tothe audience, it's all still taking place in a big stripy tent, and the cagedelephants are still shitting all over the sawdust.

Once Corbyn sits back down, the theatrical farce clanks backinto gear. Andrew Turner, the Tory MP for the Isle of Wight, has a veryimportant question about a tiger that the island's zoo is trying to import froma circus in Belgium. The chamber, which had been unusually hushed, breaks outinto a low, buzzing drone of chatting and coughing: our highest democraticinstitution suddenly sounds like a swarm of flies. Someone shouts that theywant to hear more about the tiger. MPs bleat goatishly from slack, grinninglips. This is what they came here for; this is why they're in politics. Theywant to hear more about the tiger, and then they want a glass of milk, andsomeone to tuck them into bed. "I too want to hear about the tiger," says DavidCameron. He goes on to mention that there's a rhino at Cotswolds Wildlife Parknamed after his daughter. None of these animals will ever escape their circus.

And on it goes. There's some old-fashioned sparring betweenthe Prime Minister and the SNP, and then Tom Pursglove, a wilting beansproutthat has somehow managed to become the Conservative MP for Corby, remarks that "thePrime Minister has a lot to be pleased with Corby forand that's Corby, notCorbyn." There's a ripple of forced laughter, as if this were actually a jokerather than a total indictment of an education system that can no longer evenproduce a minimum level of wit among its insufferable poshos. Apparently, theworld has Corby to thank for inventing the DVD case. Not the DVD itself, thebox it comes in. Cameron replies that he is indeed "feeling a bit of Corby-mania."A recent poll in America revealed that almost a third of the country wouldsupport a military coup. Maybe they're on to something.

Follow Sam Kriss on Twitter.

A woman is getting three years of back pay after being fired for drinking off the job. Photo via Flickr user Dave Newman.

A woman who was fired after being drunk both on and off the job has successfully argued that she was discriminated against for being an alcoholic.

Linda Horrocks, a former health-care aide in Flin Flon, Manitoba, recently won a human rights complaint that claimed she was wrongfully dismissed for imbibing while off the clocka violation of her terms of employment.

Horrocks, who is now set to receive three years' worth of pay and an additional $10,000 for loss of dignity, was first disciplined in 2011, after a colleague reported her as being drunk on the job. Going forward, Horrocks' employer, the Northern Regional Health Authority, made her agree to stay sober during and outside of work, and to seek counselling.

She was eventually let go because her bosses believed she'd been intoxicated at a grocery market and while speaking to a manager on the phone, according to evidence presented at the hearing. Horrocks filed a complaint with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission in 2012, claiming her alcoholism is a disability.

"I find that the special needs associated with her disability," wrote adjudicator Sherri Walsh in her decision released Tuesday.

This isn't the first time a Manitoba employee has come out on top in a discrimination case involving booze. A former staffer for the Canadian Mental Health Association was awarded $6,000 by a human rights adjudicator in 2013 after she was fired for perceived alcoholism.

Horrocks told CBC she hoped to work for her former employer again.

"The people who know me, won't judge. They will still be there for me," she said.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission considers drug and alcohol dependence a disability. The legislation, however, doesn't protect recreational drug and alcohol users, so maybe save the shots until after 5 p.m.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

This article appears in the September Issue of VICE.

These photos are from Jim Mangan's upcoming book, Magic Rocks, which will be released at the New York Art Book Fair as a continuation of his book Bastard Child this September.

Screengrab via CNN

Want more on the second Republican debate? Read these:

Donald Trump Is Still a Rambling Weirdo

The Most Surprising Moment from Wednesday's Republican Debate

Ben Carson Is V. Chill

Campaigns for president are always essentially long TV shows, but the Republican 2016 campaign has resembled a giant crossover event, with an entire network's worth of protagonists thrown together with no regard to whether their disparate genres will jibe. Thus, we have HBO-esque antiheroes (Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul) jostling for screen time with the main characters of Christian made-for-TV movies (Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson), mean-spirited satires (Donald Trump), and USA Network shows about slick dudes in suits (Marco Rubio).

Unsurprisingly, mashing them all together on the same stage does not make for exactly compelling television, unless you enjoy shows about ten men and one woman passive-aggressively sniping at each other over hypotheticals involving Iraq. No one really "wins" debates like thesenot the viewers, certainly, but not the candidates either. Most are simply trying to avoid making campaign-torpedoing gaffes while restating their talking points and trying to squeeze in a couple of good burns on Trump. Here's how each of the candidates did:

Donald Trump

What he needed to do: The reality television star had been dominating the field with his combination of boasting, vicious insults, nativism, and promising to enact bizarre and probably unfeasible policies, so... just keep it up, I guess?

What he did: Trump didn't dominate the proceedings the way he did in the first debate but he was, as usual, the center of attention. He got into squabbles with Jeb! Bush and Carly Fiorina over the times his companies have filed bankruptcies, refused to apologize to Bush for saying he had a "soft spot" for Mexicans because he was married to one, and, in the night's most bizarre moment, claimed that vaccines caused autism. (Amazingly, he wasn't challenged by Carson or Paul, both medical doctors.) According to the backwards-ass logic of the 2016 race, that embracing of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories probably means he'll get a ten-point bump in the polls.

Ben Carson

What he needed to do: Portray himself as the more genuinely Christian, less bombastic choice for conservatives who loathe career politicians, while simultaneously convincing big-money donors he's a serious candidate.

What he did: Carson's speaking style is very, very mellow and he managed to look downright tired for most of the debate, and his soothing voice didn't help the impression that he was lethargic in comparison to other candidates. Oh, he also said that the Marines aren't ready to deploy.

Carly Fiorina

What she needed to do: Respond to Trump's attack on her looks, make the debate a two-person show, and stake a claim to the female vote as the only woman on stage.

What she did: She managed to come off as the most forceful, and one of the most prepared, figures onstage. While others seemed tired (like Carson) or sweaty (Scott Walker), Carly Fiorina remained steely as she advocated expanding America's already-massive military and refusing to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin while escalating tensions between the US and Russia. Other applause lines included her attack on Hillary Clinton, her denouncing of Planned Parenthood, and her (likely pre-written line) that women "heard very clearly" what Trump said when he made snide comments about her face. A lot of what she said may horrify you, and you might note that some of it was flat-out wrongbut confidence and stage presence can go a long way in this environment. Oh, and NBA legend Phil Jackson likes her:

Watch our interview with Senator Chuck Schumer:

Marco Rubio

What he needed to do: Act like the grownup on stage, and hope that the Republican Party comes around to the idea that a young, attractive, Hispanic candidate from a swing state might be a viable presidential candidate.

What he did: Rubio didn't get as much time to talk as some of the other candidates, but when he did speak he demonstrated plenty of knowledge of foreign policy and enough gravitas to stay out of the squabbling that characterized this debate, especially early on. His views didn't stand out among the field, but his performance likely satisfied conservatives.

Jeb! Bush

What he needed to do: Definitively win a round against Trump while reassuring voters that he's got good people skills.

What he did: As expected, Bush got into it more with Trump than any other candidate, but managed to come off as less dignified than Fiorina in those exchanges, at one point doing a yes-you-did-no-I-didn't with Trump over the businessman's alleged attempt to legalize casino gambling in Florida. He also seemed stumbling at times, and delivered wandering answers about Kim Davis and his speaking Spanish. His admission that he smoked marijuana was obviously calculated but whether it was supposed to make him seem hip or worldly or contrite or honest was pretty unclear. He'd probably like to have those three hours back.

Ted Cruz

What he needed to do: Remind conservatives that he, not Trump, was supposed to be their hard-charging ideologue Tea Party insurgent.

What he did: He did his usual routine when comparing himself to other Republicanscrowing over his accomplishments as a lawyer before the Supreme Court and his record, bragging about his purity, and promising to shut down the federal government over funding Planned Parenthood and rip up the Iran deal if he gets elected. He's a smarmy nightmare for liberals as well as moderate conservatives, but his base will likely be nodding in approval.

Mike Huckabee

What he needed to do: Get the Evangelicals in the audience excited for his next book, TV show, or speaking tour.

What he did: Huckabee didn't talk much, as befits a candidate who no one thinks has a chance. When he did talk, he compared Kim Davis to Gitmo detainees.

Rand Paul

What he needed to do: Travel back in time to the short-lived era when his critiques of America's interventionist foreign policies made him seem like an exciting 2016 candidate.

What he did: As expected, he staked out positions as an isolationist when it came to foreign policy and a supporter of states rights when it came to the legalization of marijuana. People who back those stances will have cheeredbut it's becoming apparent from the polls that there aren't enough of them in the GOP to get him anywhere near the nomination.

Scott Walker

What he needed to do: Reverse his sudden and nightmarish plunge in the polls and make people think of him as a serious candidate once againpossibly by making even more aggressively anti-union remarks, his bread and butter.

What he did: At one point when moderator Jake Tapper asked him a question, Walker looked noticeably weary and sweaty, to the point I worried he would fall down. That's not good. His unfamiliarity when it came to foreign policy didn't help matters much.

John Kasich

What he needed to do: Get more New Hampshire voters on his side, emphasize his work with GOP saint Ronald Reagan, then hope against hope that he can turn a strong finish in that primary into an argument that he should be an establishment favorite on par with Bush.

What he did: He decidedly separated himself from the field by pledging to work with America's alliesand even the Democrats!and saying that he would abide by the Iran deal unless Iran broke the agreement first. That's not likely to make him popular among the base.

Chris Christie

What he needed to do: Become a completely different candidate, someone who people like.

What he did: Christie did seem forceful and maybe even likable this time out, cracking jokes about his status as a Republican governor in blue-state New Jersey and, in one early moment, admonishing Fiorina and Trump to "stop this childish back and forth!" If the GOP is looking for a new slogan, they may have found it.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

All screens via Xbox Wire.

Love it or hate it, the release of a new entry in the Gran Turismo series always feels like an event. In contrast, and try as it may, developer Turn 10's Forza Motorsport franchise for Xbox consoles has never garnered the same level of attention.

I think part of that hype stems from series heritage: Gran Turismo is almost 20 years old, and has been an esteemed notch in Sony's exclusive first party line-up since the days of the original PlayStation, whereas the first Forza came out in 2005. Saturation is a factor, toosince 2005, only three Gran Turismo games have been released, while there have now been eight entries in the Forza series, including its Horizon spinoffs. Gran Turismo games have arrived with expectations whetted by "Prologue" versions, which undeniably increases the hype for the full release. And then there's the cultural factor to consider: Gran Turismo producer Kazunori Yamauchi is highly secretive, his Polyphony Digital studio shrouded in a sense of mystery that the American team at Turn 10 simply can't match.

However, Forza's approachability has become its defining feature. Where Gran Turismo is a dense, focused simulation that can alienate those wanting a real feeling of arcade speed, Forza embraces the liveliness of a race and aims to provide those instant thrills as well as an overall impression of authenticity.

It's in the just-released Forza Motorsport 6 that Turn 10 rectifies past mistakes, rebalances the quantity of its content, refines the quality of it too, and finally makes its flagship racing series better than Gran Turismo, definitively so. Having essentially screwed the petrol-headed pooch with Forza Motorsport 5an Xbox One launch title that asked too much of players while giving nothing back, even going so far as to pack a ridiculous amount of pay-to-win content the Washington State studio has got itself back on track, not only hitting the series highs that they achieved with 2011's Forza 4, but accelerating beyond them.

Turn 10 has proved its love, knowledge, and intrinsic understanding of motorsport time and time again over the last decade, and here it's packaged in close to perfect fashion. Which is not to say that Polyphony doesn't know its stuffGran Turismo is consistently an exercise in automotive know-how, but the execution can come across as sterile. In Forza 6, quantity and quality come together without compromise, delivering a roster of over 450 of the world's fastest, quirkiest, and most iconic sets of wheels. And not one of them feels like an afterthought, an inclusion the game's makers felt they had to make, but did so by cutting corners. There's an attention to detail here that is without parallel.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film, 'Boy Racer'

All of this stuff is expertly conveyed into an updated handling model that adds even more nuance to an already deep, varying drive, resulting in every single car that I raced with feeling unique. More impressively, the tech-specs presentation is so delightful that it makes every car appealing, even the crappy bangers that your nan wouldn't dare be seen in on her weekly trip to Budgens. Gran Turismo has never really succeeded in doing this, instead including "Premium" cars, which were basically the real-deal, while other vehicles in its garage were sub-par recreations without full-resolution textures. Pfft.

One of Forza 5's main problems was its career mode, which felt like a complete slog from the start, handing out credits and car rewards so slowly that it essentially forced you into spending real money. Nice one, Microsoft. This is also a problem that GT faces, where progression feels sluggish, and sitting in menus for ages isn't quite what you expect when buying something on the promise of experiencing the world's most authentic driving game. Forza 6 is pleasingly generous in how it wants you to progressyou're quickly into faster cars and exploring its world of sculpted rubber and glossy metal mere minutes after the main menu's been navigated. Credits to buy new cars and upgrades get spat at you in decent chunks, while the level-up-marking lucky spin tombola represents the chance to win extra bonus credits, or brand new cars, like the illustrious Bugatti Veyron.

On Motherboard: Ten Games to Watch at E3

The sublime Xbox One pad, with its rumbling force feedback triggers, gives you a decent impression of exactly how your car is performing on the track. Having the left trigger buzz as you squeeze the brake at high speed is electrifying, and running wide through a fast turn not only sounds like bad news, as the tires scream and you hang on for dear life, but the controller relays that information directly into your hands in a way Gran Turismo has never really tried.

Not all of it works. Forza 6's scope is vast, but its new and breathtakingly beautiful wet weather conditions and night races are missing the dynamic weather and day/night cycles that would've made for much deeper and more environmentally appealing sessions. There aren't nearly enough fictional circuits, eitherI really wish Turn 10 would turn more of its time to creating more tracks like Camino Viejo, the Bernese Alps, and the new windy slink through the hills of Rio de Janeiro, as racing the same realistic circuits, year after year, gets a little tiresome.

But tiny issues aside, the end results here are impressively pure. Forza 6 is a clean, polished package that feels like it's been flown, first class, straight from the heart of its developers and into your console, but it's also passionate and characterful at heart. Gran Turismo lacks a certain human touch, I think, and that's its problem and Forza's gain, as this title understands the importance of creating a driving game without sacrificing speed. Gran Turismo looks like a racer, but it doesn't always feel like one. There's no doubt that Forza occasionally strays too far into humanizing what is, basically, a bunch of machines going in circles, with its portentous videos and pretentious voiceovers about kids being "born to race." But on the track, where it matters, it's got soul quite unlike its peers.

Forza Motorsport 6 is out now, exclusive to Xbox One

Follwo Sam Write on Twitter.

Photos by the author

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article about a depressing birthday party Corey Feldman threw for himself. Earlier this month, after almost two years, Corey announced in a press release that he will no longer be throwing parties as a result of the damage I caused to his brand.

The party I wrote about took place in 2013 in a rented McMansion in Sherman Oaks that Corey was allegedly not paying rent on. It cost $250 to get into if you were a guy, but was free for women to attend, as long as they first emailed photos of themselves in their underwear to Corey for approval, and were willing to wear lingerie for the duration of the party.

In attendance at the party were Corey's Angels, a group of women who belong to a company set up by Corey which is also called Corey's Angels. At the time, he was describing it as a "360 degree interactive experience." At the time, as now, it was not totally clear what that meant.

Dotted around Corey's sparsely furnished house were wonkily framed posters for the movies he'd starred in in his glory days. They were in the cheapest frames imaginable. The kind you get by selecting the "Add a frame to this order for $4.99" option when buying a poster on Amazon. They created a perfect representation of where Corey was at in his life.

The party was, unsurprisingly, bleak. I'd promised Corey a final edit on my coverage, so I did a writeup so positive that nobody but Corey could fail to realize I was joking. Corey signed off on the text, calling it a "great article!" Once he realized people were laughing at him, he got very mad at me, and started attempting to ruin my reputation online.

Despite this, Corey continued to do the parties. And, judging from the writeup of one of those parties a coworker of mine did on this site the following year, they continued to be exactly as depressing as the one I'd attended.

Corey and his angels seem to be having a bit of a rough time again lately. In July, a baseball team publicly apologized for the quality of a performance by a band made up of Corey and his angels during one of their games.

Then, last month, he and three of his angels appeared on an episode of Celebrity Wife Swap in which he swapped Courtney, his main angel, with the fianc of the comedian Tommy Davidson.

In the episode, Corey described what exactly the Corey's Angels company is. He explained that it began because he realized he had helped a lot of women in their careers, but hadn't gotten anything in return. "They went off to be successful, and what did I get out of it? Not much. That's why I developed my company," he said. So, to insure he would never again have to do a selfless thing, Corey launched Corey's Angels, a "management, production, and development business" aimed at young, beautiful women who want to break into the entertainment industry.

Part of the contract Corey has his angels sign. Screencap via YouTube

He explained that, when women agree to sign with Corey's Angels, they have to move into his house with him and sign a contract agreeing to live by a set of strict rules: No alcohol, no male visitors, mandatory exercise, dress codes (mostly lingerie), strict dietary regulations (Corey's main girlfriend eats nothing but fruit), mandatory housework, and the vague and ominous "Angels must be coachable and teachable."

It is a living situation that, arguably, ticks off more than one item on the National Human Trafficking Resource Center's guide to recognizing a victim of human trafficking.

The rest of the episode featured Corey being Corey. In one scene he told off his new wife for wearing jeans ("lingerie is always good"). In another he got annoyed because she told two of his angels that they should go to college ("right now they're in a college, and the college is called Corey's Angels"). He also critiqued her body ("If you cut out meat, it's going to give you the body you never even thought possible after having kids.").

People on Twitter, predictably, reacted to the episode negatively. Corey tweeted a few times defending himself, claiming that the producers of the show had used trick editing to make him look bad. But Corey is, by his own admission, a man who lives with a gaggle of women who have signed contracts promising to be subservient to him in the hopes that it might make them famous. There's not an editor alive who could take that material and make Corey look good.

This recent piling on of public scorn may go some way to explaining why, two years after I wrote about one of his parties, Corey has decided to send out a press release announcing their cancellation.

The author of the press release isn't specified, but, as it refers to Corey as both "one of the world's favorite actors and musicians" and "loved by all," one has to assume Corey was involved somehow.

In the release, the writer explains that Corey is eliminating the party-planning portion of the Corey's Angels company as my coverage of his 2013 party caused such damage to his brand that the parties became "lackluster." It should be noted that, this time, Corey's Angels are described as being "known for creating an environment where women who have endured abuse and torture throughout their lives, could live in an atmosphere free of judgement and criticism, while feeling appreciated and beautiful."

The full press release is below:

One of the world's favorite actors and musicians has been the victim of negativity from the press. Corey Feldman is loved by all for his iconic roles in blockbuster movies such as Gremlins, The Goonies, and Stand By Me but now Feldman is going public that he feels betrayed by a media outlet.

Feldman has received international exposure for his multi-tiered 360 management, development, and production entity called "Corey's Angels." The company is known for creating an environment where women who have endured abuse and torture throughout their lives, could live in an atmosphere free of judgement and criticism, while feeling appreciated and beautiful.

In 2011, Corey's Angels began hosting exclusive events at the Feldman mansion. The events sold out almost instantly and were packed with gorgeous women, VIP clients, and a wide range of celebrities. According to a statement posted by Corey on his website (CoreyFeldman.net) two years ago, he agreed to allow a member of the press to access to his very private world, and "it turned out that they were there for a secret mission to destroy the private world we created" and the "many brutal attacks in the media' caused the special world he created to be 'severely damaged.'

"The damage that was done has caused the events that followed to be "lackluster," and now Feldman has eliminated this portion of his company. Despite all of this, Feldman is excited for the recent successes of Corey's Angels, including the ratings spike on their episode of ABC's Celebrity Wife Swap; the national tour of the all Angel band; the new Corey's Angels TV series; and the upcoming double CD album "Angelic 2 the Core."

Corey is known for being an optimist and always doing his best to leave everything on a positive note, and because of that he wants everyone to remember his events by watching this video of his star studded birthday bash. For media inquiries, contact Kerry Knight of Nati Celebrity Services at KerryKnightPR(at)gmail.com.

RIP Corey's parties. They were fun* while they lasted.

*unintentionally

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.