In 2001, Hans Boas was eating lunch in a diner deep in Central Texas. A couple of tables over, he heard a group of elderly men speaking a very distinct version of German. Boas has a doctorate in linguistics and was working at the University of Texas; he's dedicated his life to the German language and the people who speak it. Naturally, it came as a bit of a shock when he couldn't place this dialect.

"I walked over and asked where they were from, and they said 'What do you mean? We've been here for generations,'" recalls Boas. "They told me about their language and how their ancestors came over long ago, which is something I didn't know about. I was floored by the whole thing. Here I was in the middle of the Texas hill country, learning about a new German dialect."

Boas had stumbled upon Texas German, one of the most incidental developments in American history. In the mid-19th century, thousands of German immigrants settled in the freshly annexed Lone Star State, congregating in small towns like New Braunfels, Boerne, and Fredericksburg. In those days German was Texas's dominant secondary language, with German newspapers, German radio broadcasts, German printing presses, and German church services popping up all over the state. When you separate a language from its source for over a century, it tends to take on a shape of its own. According to Boas, Texas German sounds like a strange combination of 19th century German with a dash of anglicization. For instance, the Texas German settlers of antiquity didn't have a word for the skunks they encountered in the South, so they had to come up with their own: "stinkkatze," literally "stink cat."

But in the beginning of the 20th century, Texas passed national mandates that enforced the teaching of English in public schools. As the world grew more globalized and the national reputation of Germany suffered in the wake of World War II, few parents passed down the traditional dialect to their children. There are no new native Texas German speakers being born, and the few that still exist are all in their 70s and 80s. Within a couple of decades, the dialect will be completely extinct.

There's nothing anyone can do to stop this. You can't keep a language alive if nobody intends to speak it. But Hans Boas and his team at the Texas German Dialect Project are doing the next best thing. For the past 14 years, they've been preserving this odd little corner of Americana as best they can before it disappears forever.

"If we're optimistic we'll get 30 more years," says Boas. "If we're pessimistic, maybe 15 or 20 years."

Boas stumbled upon Texas German, one of the most incidental developments in American history.

Boas's practice is pretty simple. He locates Texas German speakers, who exist all over the state, and together they schedule a meeting. Sometimes this means an hour-long trip to New Braunfels, sometimes it's a much longer multiple-day journey to Corpus Christi or far east Texas. Once he arrives, the speaker fills out a consent form and they do several different interviews. The first one is a questionnaire, which has the speaker doing simple things like translating English sentences and words into their Texas German. This allows Boas's team to compare their answers with the other Texas German speakers they've interviewed, as well as the research on the dialect that was done in the 60s and 70s.

One of the most interesting things Boas noticed was the vast inconsistencies across the dialect. He uses the example of Boston. If someone lives in the north side of Boston and you know their age, their ethnicity, and their gender, you can almost certainly know how they'll say certain things. But in Texas German, that's not possible.

They're talking about what it was like back in school, and they fall into this nostalgia that they can't do in English. We get a unique perspective on the history of the community through the language. David Huenlich

"We've not been able to find any real regularities in Texas German. We can take 25 speakers who are the same age, the same gender, and from the same place, and they all say things slightly differently," Boas told VICE. "On one hand, it's extremely fascinating because I've never seen or heard of this degree of variation, but on the other hand it's completely frustrating because we can't come up with any models. All we can do is describe the patterns of individual speakers. We've interviewed families of ten kids, they're born over a period of 15 or 20 years, and they all sound almost entirely differently."

From there, Boas is forced to rely on unprovable explanations. Some of them may have never fully acquired the dialect, some of them may have purely forgotten some of their German, in the same way you and I might pause for a few seconds when we try to remember a word. Needless to say, these are difficult things to rely on in academia..

"I guess the key word would be 'highly multisectoral,' if you want to get really geeky," Boas said with a laugh.

However, the art of preserving Texas German extends beyond the mechanical nuts and bolts. Hans and his team's primary goal is to make sure the dialect isn't forgotten, but they're also protecting the culture. Boas says that they've spoken to 500 speakers, with goals of reaching 500 more in the next few years. Eventually there will be a library of over 1000 examples of the dialect, a trove for any linguistics expert, but also a comprehensive document on the humans that spoke it. What their lives were like, who their parents and grandparents were, what it meant to be a Texas German.

Boas says the most important part of his process is the "oral history," where subjects are encouraged to speak about their personal past in their native tongue.

New Braufels, Texas. Photo via Flickr user texasbackroads

"We ask about their families, about their town, their job, recipes, prayers, anything they want to talk about. We pose questions that we hope will get them going," Boas explained. "It's challenging but it works out very well."

"Sometimes you have to be careful not to overwhelm certain speakers. This is a chapter of their life that's almost closed. The majority of speakers rarely have an opportunity to speak German, and suddenly we come in and they're speaking German for one and a half hours or even longer," David Huenlich, one of the people working with Boas on the Texas German Dialect Project, told VICE. "Sometimes I think it's easier for them to talk about their childhood in the dialect than it is in English. It's more authentic in a way. They're talking about what it was like back in school, and they fall into this nostalgia that they can't do in English. We get a unique perspective on the history of the community through the language."

You'd never guess Rodney Koenig spoke fluent German. The 75-year old has a dry Texan rasp, the same voice you hear in the barbeques and general stores that rest on the outskirts of Austin and San Antonio. He told me that this was by design.

"My little one-room country schoolhouse shut down in the 3rd grade, and after that they sent out busses to pick us up and take us to the 'town school,'" Koenig said in an interview with VICE. "Our teacher would always have us stand up in front of the class and talk about what we did over the weekend. I grew up on a farm, so the first couple times, I said 'I vent to shurch, I ved the shickens.' I couldn't differentiate the ch from the s sound. People would chuckle about my German pronunciation, so I quickly changed to 'I went to sunday school, and I fed the poultry.' I realized there was something a little different about my accent and I was determined to get rid of it."

Years later, Koenig would come to rediscover and cherish his German heritage. He goes to Germany about once a year and is involved in many things surrounding his tribe. These memories are important to him, and you can feel his sadness that this community's days are numbered.

We are in the unique position as a researcher to be able to do this work. To meet these people, to hear their stories. Other Americans around here can't understand what they're saying. David Huenlich

"I'm on the tail end of this. My parents spoke German primarily, and my grandparents spoke it exclusively," said Koenig. "I've been involved with many ethnic groups, I've been president of the German Texan Heritage Society, I just finished being president of the Houston Saengerbund, and I've talked my aunts and many of my neighbors into being interviewed by Hans ."

A tone of melancholy pervades Boas's project. Hans Boas has dedicated the last 15 years of his life to Texas German, and over the last 14 years, he's grown close to a number of the speakers. He calls them two or three times a year, maybe he sends a Christmas card, but he knows that someday he won't be able to do this anymore. Eventually there will be no more interviews to give, no more stories to hear. He'll have to move on and find something else.

"It's a strange thing because on the one hand it's a natural process, it's the way the universe works. It's something you have to live with, otherwise you go crazy," says Boas. "But on the other hand, it's the realization that things always change. Culture changes, language changes, German used to be the dominant second language in Texas and now it's Spanish. Who knows what will happen in 100 years? Maybe there will be five million Syrian refugees at Texas borders and Arabic will the dominant language. It is kind of disappointing to see this go because it's been around for so long."

Huenlich grew up in bi-dialectical. His family is from Bavaria, and his family background is from East Germany. The East German dialect that he grew up hearing is very similar to what he heard in Giddings, Texas, a microscopic town just east of Austin.

"Here I am thousands of miles away from home and I'm hearing a dialect I grew up with, I'm hearing things I grew up with, stuff you couldn't even hear in certain parts of Germany," he told VICE.

"You could get depressed if you think about it as part of a timeline, but this whole project is an exercise in living in the moment," Huenlich continued. "You don't want to look at the dark side too often, because you want to enjoy the time you have with these people now. You enjoy every moment of it. We are in the unique position as a researcher to be able to do this work. To meet these people, to hear their stories. Other Americans around here can't understand what they're saying."

There is no money in Texas German. There is no fame and prestige. It is an accident of linguistics, a moment of geographic curiosity. There are a few thousand speakers left, and when they move on, the world will hardly notice.

Rodney Koenig told me a story about an old card game he used to play with his parents and family, how every suit had its own dialectical spin them. "We have eckstein in Texas for diamonds, and in Germany that'd be pik. I think herz is the same for both, but we use schippen for spades, while they use karo in Germany." He knows that the language won't last, and that those old words will be lost someday in the not-too-distant future.

Texas German is just a blip in the grand scheme of things. But for now, it's still here, and Hans Boas and the Texas German Dialect Project are working hard to ensure that this language receives the preservation it deserves.

If you want to make a film with mass appeal, Ma is probably not the one you're going to make. It's a silent, modern retelling of the Virgin Mary's biblical pilgrimage that replaces dialogue with dance. Director Celia Rowlson-Hall stars in the lead role as a sun-kissed and freckled Mary who inexplicably emerges from the New Mexico desert, as if conceived miraculously by the sand dunes, and meets her contemporary Joseph on an asphalt road.

In a motel room bathtub, Mary experiences her immaculate pregnancy, which Hall narrates not with words but with painstakingly choreographed movements of her body. The scene ends when the walls of her room fall away, and she find herself on a bed in the middle of the desert, surrounded by men dressed in Wild West costumes. The conception sets the tone for the rest of the film, a surreal, metaphor-laden journey to Las Vegas, where she finds refuge among showgirls and prostitutes.

It's a weird, wonderful film, and one that will certainly polarize audiences. Hall initially had trouble getting funding for the project, but eventually found an audience for it on Kickstarter. After its debut at the Venice Film Festival this month, Ma is generating praise from the industry's critical ranks. Variety called it one of the year's "most original debuts."

When I was little, I really wanted to be Jesus when I grew up, because I really wanted the ability to heal people. Then I had this moment when I was a kid, where I was like, Wait, I can't be Jesus because I'm not a boy.

VICE: What was the reception like at the Venice Film Festival?
Celia Rowlson-Hall: I would say about 15 percent of my audience left. Riel told me, "Every seat I heard flip up empty, I felt like it was an even greater testament to the strength of the film, because if you're not making something that either makes people feel one way or the other, then why are you doing it?" I was dying inside. I think it's going to be a challenge to moviegoers no matter where we go with the film.

What does dancing convey to you that dialogue would be incapable of getting across?
I'm first and foremost a dancer. Choreography is the language I've been working in and crafting. I set out to tell a story without dialogue and I wanted to see if I could do it. It was an experiment and an exploration. But I feel comfortable in the language of movement and metaphor. It was an incredible challenge and maybe my next challenge is going to be using dialogue. I've never really done that.

This is a silent film, but you do use a lot of sound throughout the film, even if you don't employ dialogue. How did you craft the sound design for the film?
With the sound design, I wanted to make sure we heard each room or atmosphere as another character. I wanted it to feel alive. The clicking of the fan, or the bathroom lightwe made everything sound a little bit broken. I used the breath of the two characters as the soundtrack to the film. I wanted to make a quiet film, something that is so quiet that their breath feels loud. I think you can learn a lot about where your characters are at emotionally by the way they're breathing. Is it a shallow breath? Is it a deep breath? Is it quick? If you watch it again, you'll probably only pay attention to that.

Then I really wanted to employ the sounds of the gong, because the gong is one of the first instruments ever made. What's cool is that it doesn't have a decay, like a piano key does or a guitar string. It decays into silence at an even ratio. It almost loops back on itself and it sort of recycles the sound. What it does is trick the mind because you can't follow the decay. That's why the gong is one of the only instruments that gets you past that common sense part of your brain. It takes you into a more subconscious state. The reason the film has 30 seconds of gong at the beginningyou're about to go on a journey that's not your common sense, linear, practical world. Wash that part away and go into a world where the expectations are different.

The woman's body, to me, is the most powerful thing on Earth and the most powerless thing on Earth.

A lot of the images you use to build the world inside Ma evoke some biblical iconography, like the shot of you wearing the white towel on your head, but also iconography of the American southwest, like the shots of the motel. What's your relationship to New Mexico and Las Vegas?
I grew up in the woods on the water, so the desert was not really what I grew up in or with. But, you know, I thought of this as the journey story of a lonesome cowboy or cowgirl. I wanted it to feel super Americana. When I think of American filmmaking, I think of Westerns and I think of mafia and mob movies. It's the same reason I use the Mother Mary as a departure point for her character. You know the location. You know the character. And then I get to blow the lid on it a little bit. However, I wanted to start with something very accessible.

The desert is harsh. It's this harsh landscape where it's almost impossible to survive. How long has she been here? How has she been living? The beauty of the desert is that it's teeming with life, but it really does feel dead and unforgiving.

Which came first: the journey story or the Mother Mary story?
What I set out to do was to create a female hero's journey. I wanted to see a women go on a journey. I knew that was going to be very important for me. I also can't help being influenced by my past. When I was little, I really wanted to be Jesus when I grew up, because I really wanted the ability to heal people and to help people out of pain. Then I had this moment, probably when I was a kid, where I was like, wait, I can't be Jesus because I'm not a boy. I have to be the Virgin Mary and I'm going to have to bring into the world the child that can save us all. But I can't save anybody because I'm a woman.

One thing that bothered me as a kid was that we have an entire New Testament on Jesus, but we have a paragraph on Mary. We don't know anything about Mary. Here is the single-most important woman in the Western world and we know nothing about her. The next question is: Do we care? Is she basically just the vessel for this man, this carrier? A big question I'm really asking in this film is, what is this concept of virgin and virginity as your highest self, before you're touched? The idea of immaculate conception is huge. So God touches you and you have no control? You're just waiting for this power to infuse you with child and you have no say in the game? The woman's body, to me, is the most powerful thing on Earth and the most powerless thing on Earth. I think it is a lifelong journey to keep settling, sinking, and grounding into that power and taking that back. That was a lot of what I had to learn in this movie myself.

I can see this film being taught in a gender studies class. You're clearly offering a gendered critique of the Biblical story. Were you trying to make a statement at all?
No. I never really try to make statements. I'm asking questions. I really am. I'm pushing back against everything that's been pushed on me societally, especially when it comes to gender normatives and binaries, and what it is to be a woman in this society, your roles, your expectations. It's honestly just me trying to make sense of the world that I live in. If I had my answers, then what I would be giving to the audience is something that felt dead. I want to be questioning a lot with my audience. I want the movies I create to be just as challenging for the audience as they are for me, because I think we have to work to get to the other side, to find an answer. I'm not here to numb you, to placate you, or to help you forget your current life. I want to remind you and attempt to go a little deeper. Hence, 15 percent walkout.

Follow Tasbeeh on Twitter.

If, like 25 million other Americans, you've practiced yoga recently, you probably did it in a studio. Perhaps you entered through a softly-lit lobby with a soothing fountain gurgling away next to the reception desk. Chinese bamboo flute music played. You perused the new selection of floral-print mat bags and No-Slip towels available in the merchandise section. Perhaps you purchased a coconut water. Or maybe you prefer "power yoga," where you can listen to all your favorite top 40 hits while lifting and tightening. Or maybe you've been there, done that, and now you're courting the extra challenge of doing yoga on a paddleboard floating in the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean.

Or maybe it was just you and your body in your windowless 8-by-10-foot cell in a supermax prison. Founded in 2002 at San Quentin Prison in California, the Prison Yoga Project now sources equipment and trains hundred of teachers each year to serve in correctional facilities across the countryand demand is on the rise. They've even been invited to collaborate with prison officials to bring their innovative programs to incarcerated populations in Norway, Guatemala, and India, the birthplace of yoga. VICE recently spoke with James Fox, the founder of the Prison Yoga Project, to find out why Americans in orange jumpsuits might need yoga even more than Americans in Lululemon do.

VICE: Where did the idea for the Prison Yoga Project come from?
James Fox: I became a teacher in 2000 after practicing for years and finding that while there were physical benefits, the greatest benefits that I was personally experiencing were emotional and psychological benefits. But I didn't want to teach in a yoga studio. I wanted to bring yoga to people who wouldn't otherwise be exposed to it, who could really benefit from it. So I started working with at-risk youth at a residential treatment facility for boys in Bolinas on medication, a real mess. That was where I got it. I realized that working with their bodies was so much more effective than just working cognitively. I started to see yoga as complementary therapy. For healing to take place, the body has to be involved. The counselors were saying, "Wow, the boys are feeling more self-confidence and self-esteem after having done yoga for two or three months." They were actually seeing changes in them.

I get feedback along the lines of, 'I was in the cell block, and this guy's been sweatin' me for a while. All of a sudden we're getting into itand then I remembered to breathe. I remembered how to disengage.'

Then in 2002, I was asked to set up this program at San Quentin with the Insight Prison Project. They were putting together a rehabilitation program for prisoners grounded in the understanding that in order to change negative behavioral patterns it was important to do cognitive work, emotional work, to address issues of violenceanybody who's incarcerated, whether or not they've been physically violent themselves, they've been in a violent worldand then there was this mind-body integration piece, which they had asked me to address.

How does a yoga class in prison differ from one in an ordinary studio?
There's more focus on mindfulness as the foundation for the practice. We're working in an environment where people are massively impacted by trauma. The three major components that contribute to trauma are a lack of safety, predictability, and control. Well, think about prison. Life in prison can be terribly unpredictable. I don't think public classes really even consider engaging the parasympathetic nervous system, engaging the body's relaxation response. We want to be able to give the prisoners tools that they can use to calm themselves down when they need to. I get feedback along the lines of, "I was in the cell block, and this guy's been sweatin' me for a while. All of a sudden we're getting into itand then I remembered to breathe. I remembered how to disengage." When these guys get into a situation like that or a guard confronts them, what are they going to do, bust out into Warrior II? No, they're going to bring in the most important part of their practice, which is learning how to disengage, learning how to interrupt that reactive behavior.

You have to address the body when you're working with any kind of trauma.

How do yoga and mindfulness help prisoners in working through trauma?
Complex trauma comes from a person's "original pain"the original trauma in your life. It could be abandonment by a parent, death of a parent, sexual abuse, physical abuse. If you're not able to effectively address that original pain, it will come to shape your entire life. This is true for all of us. You're carrying this wound, and because the pain is not being addressed, you've created all the secondary pain in your life. So a young person starts acting out, maybe using substances, then maybe they start getting involved in criminal behavior and it just starts piling up. We'd be working with men in their thirties, and they'd be looking back at their life saying, "Oh my God. The whole trajectory of my life, committing all of these offenses was all because of that original pain. I see it now." There's a cognitive aspect to it, but then as the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk has shown, the body keeps the score. The mind might get it, but the mind is tricky, and the mind has all these ways of dissociating out of protection. This field of research has been motivated by work with returning combat veterans, but you have to address the body when you're working with any kind of trauma. And the most insidious kind of trauma is this complex trauma, early life trauma.

Mindfulness means self-awareness. But you're not just engaged with the thoughts in your mind. Mindfulness is about understanding that you also live in your body. The asana practices then offer the opportunity to discharge the trauma that's held in the body. You're working with the body's wisdom. You don't have to conjure up, "Oh, there was that time I got in a gun battle on the streets of South L.A. and I didn't realize the amount of trauma that I was holding as a result of that." No, you don't have to go into that. The body will release. It'll discharge with a regular yoga practice. I think that's one of the reasons why people really get hooked on yoga. Even if they think that they're just doing it for the physical benefits of the practice. People feel so much better because they're releasing so much of that anxiety that the body holds.

Is it difficult to interest prisoners in doing this kind of work?
It was in the beginning. It is no longer difficult. Becauseand I'd like to think that we had something to do with thisyoga has become more widely accepted. And in a sense yoga is perfect for a prison environment because you don't need a lot of space. So even if you're confined to a cell, even if you're in solitary, you can have a regular practice and get the benefits of a regular practice. I've sent a lot of books to Pelican Bay, to guys who are in the SHU. I get these letters back from prisoners after they've gotten a book, and it's like I sent him a thousand bucks or something. We now have teachers around the country who are teaching in over a hundred jails and prisons and things are really starting to accelerate.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?
I like to say that I've got a lot of good friends in low places. Because of the prison industrial complex in this country and the years of the war on drugs, the media portrays prisoners as though they're subhuman. Well, they're like all of us. They screwed up, but they're human beings. We're spending billions of dollars keeping people in prison, but it can be hard to raise money for this work, because people think, "Prisoners? Forget about it. They deserve to be in prison." But 93 percent of them are returning to society. They're coming back. How would you like them to be when they return? We haven't done a good job of rehabilitating people over the last 30 years. It all changed with the war on drugs and mandatory sentencing. Now the focus is on punishment. We've got two and a quarter million people who are incarcerated and a 60 percent recidivism rate. That's a dismal failure. So while we've got them, I think we should be allocating resources to give them the tools so that they don't come back to prison. That's where I come in.

On tonight's special episode of VICE on HBO, founder Shane Smith went deep into the American prison system with President Barack Obama and former attorney general Eric Holder. With unprecedented access during a historical presidential visit, VICE spoke to the prisoners who are most affected by the state of America's drug laws. If you'd like to learn more, below are links to some of the organizations we spoke to in Fixing the System, as well as others who are working to enact reform. We urge you to get involved.

Center for Employment Opportunities
"CEO offers comprehensive employment services exclusively for people with criminal records."

Equal Justice Initiative
"The Justice Center a national nonprofit organization that serves policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels from all branches of government."

Correctional Association of New York
"The Correctional Association of New York is an independent non-profit organization that advocates for a more humane and effective criminal justice system and a more just and equitable society."

Ban the Box
"The Ban the Box campaign challenges the stereotypes of people with conviction histories by asking employers to choose their best candidates based on job skills and qualifications, not past convictions."

National Reentry Resource Center
"The National Reentry Resource Center provides education, training, and technical assistance to states, tribes, territories, local governments, service providers, non-profit organizations, and corrections institutions working on prisoner reentry."

Anti-Recidivism Coalition
"The mission of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) is to change lives and create safe, healthy communities by providing a support and advocacy network for, and comprised of, formerly incarcerated men and women."

Criminal Law Reform Project
"The Criminal Law Reform Project seeks to end harsh policies and racial inequities in the criminal justice system."

The Legal Aid Society
"The Legal Aid Society is dedicated to one simple but powerful belief: that no New Yorker should be denied access to justice because of poverty."

Coalition for Public Safety
"The Coalition for Public Safety, together with its partners, is the largest national effort working to make our criminal justice system smarter, fairer and more cost effective at the federal, state and local level."

Right on Crime
"Right On Crime is the one-stop source for conservative ideas on criminal justice."

JustLeadershipUSA
"JustLeadershipUSA is dedicated to cutting the US correctional population in half by 2030, while reducing crime."

FAMM - Families Against Mandatory Minimums
"FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization fighting for smart sentencing laws that protect public safety."

To read more about the state of the American prison system, check out VICE's series, America Incarcerated.

Sean Harrington faces second-degree murder charges for allegedly providing the drugs that killed Elisif Bruun. Photo courtesy Tryon Daily Bulletin

Sean Harrington has been in jail for more than 16 months. He was extradited from Philadelphia to Polk County, North Carolina, to face a second-degree murder charge. But he didn't shoot or stab anyone. Instead, he allegedly mailed heroin and cocaine to a friend and fellow addict named Elisif Bruun. She ingested them, probably as a speedball, and was found dead on February 11, 2014, lying face-down in her room at the CooperRiis Healing Community in Western North Carolina.

She was 24, her latest go at recovery her last.

Like Bruun, Harrington, now 26, is, a white kid from a middle-class family. He faces a possible 15 years in prison, according to the local prosecutor.

"My philosophy is if you're going to be out peddling the drugs, you're going to have be accountable to what happens on the receiving end of those narcotics," says Greg Newman, the North Carolina district attorney prosecuting the case. "If you give the narcotics to someone, or you sell them to someone, and they end up dead... well, you got to be responsible for that too."

But the victim's father, Peter Bruun, is an outspoken opponent of the prosecution.

"They're the predators, who are after victims like Sean," Bruun, an artist in Towson, Maryland, outside of Baltimore, tells VICE. "Sean is the victim of an illness... He's not the predator. He's the prey."

It can be tough to find a true villain among the legions using and selling opioids, two groups that often overlap. This is especially true given that for many, heroin use was preceded by the abuse of widely-prescribed opioids like OxyContin, which as of 2013, was responsible for more deaths than heroin. That includes Bruun who, according to her father, got started on opioids thanks to a friend selling OxyContin taken from his grandmother's medicine cabinet.

But prosecutors across America are dusting off old statutes to pursue full-fledged murder charges against dealers and even fellow users and friends who pass or sell heroin to a person who then dies of an overdose. Possible sentences include life without parole. The law-and-order crackdown is taking place at a moment when prominent figures in both major parties are, for the first time in decades, seriously considering reducing a jail and prison population that has grown to well more than 2 millionand curbing a war on drugs that has persistently failed to dampen the appetite for the stuff.

The Bruun case is a sobering reminder that even if reform is in the air, punishment remains America's favorite antidote.

"This is a reflection of a broader tendency of prosecutors in all capacities to identify what they perceive as a serious crime problem, and come up with creative ways that go beyond their basic standard approach," says Douglas A. Berman, an expert on criminal law and sentencing at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.

So far, the number of such charges that have been filed, and the criteria by which prosecutors are deciding to use them, remain murky. The phenomenon has received little attention from legal scholars and activists, and the charges have surprised defense lawyers who end up handling the cases.

"Has this become just a new tool, and one that they'll use every time they can link a death to a particular dealer?" Berman wonders. "Or is this something that prosecutors will calibrate with some culpability metric? Are they unlikely to bring this to bear when we're just looking at a small-time dealer?"

So far, it seems like plenty of smalltime hook-ups are getting caught in the fray. In September 2013, Joseph L. Robinson, an Illinois man living near near St. Louis, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for selling a man who later died two-tenths of a gram of heroinfor $30. Jim Porter, a spokesperson for Southern District of Illinois US Attorney Stephen Wigginton, says there was nothing else that made the crime particularly heinous. If there had been, he says, the sentence could have been even longer.

The prosecutions also run counter to the widespread adoption of harm-reduction policies like equipping first responders with the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, as well as "good Samaritan" laws, which offer limited legal protection to people who call 9-1-1 to report a drug-related medical emergency. But those laws typically offer immunity from low-level possession charges and not for drug dealing, according to the National Conference of State Legislatureslet alone for drug-related murder charges. Prosecutors hope that harsh charges will deter dealers and keep drugs away from users, but they could also convince drug addicts to flee the scene and leave someone dying on the floor.

The charges could even encourage violence on the part of dealers determined to silence informants.

"To bring punitive criminal justice responses to these situations will not prevent the underlying concern and will likely only exacerbate the situation due to those involved not speaking to police or emergency personnel, or even becoming violent to avoid such charges," Art Way, Colorado director for the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization critical of the drug war, writes in an email. "Much of the violence involved in and around the drug trade involves the intimidating or killing of informants or those considered to be informants."

Watch: Sisa: Cocaine of the Poor

In February 2014, beloved actor Philip Seymour Hoffman became the public face of the heroin crisis after he died from an overdose involving heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, and benzodiazepines. The New York Police Department was eager to find a culprit other than the actor's long-term addiction, and quickly settled on Robert Aaronlegal name Robert Aaron Vineberga musician and addict who said he sometimes sold heroin to friends. But it was never proved that Aaron's heroin was involved in Hoffman's death, and charges were later downgraded from serious distribution to possession, to which he pleaded guilty.

"At some level it's like the Salem witch trials," Aaron, who did not respond to an interview request, told the New York Times last year. "You can't have a witch hunt without a witch. I'm just unlucky enough to be the guy. You gotta have a human sacrifice, and that's what I am."

We have, of course, seen this movie before.

It was in the late 1980s that some states and the federal government enacted laws specifically intended to punish dealers for drug-related deaths. Basketball star Len Bias's high-profile death from a cocaine overdose in 1986 helped mobilize political sentiment in favor of a crackdown just as the crack epidemic began to dominate headlines. Today, met with a new drug crisis, putting people behind bars remains the US government's default approach.

In the Cleveland and Toledo area, Steven Dettelbach, the US Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, is charging dealers under a federal law that potentially carries a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence for a drug-dealing offense resulting in death or serious injuryand mandatory life for someone with a prior felony drug conviction. In Cuyahoga County, there were 198 heroin-related deaths in 2014, according to the Northeast Ohio Media Group.

"Federal penalties are extremely serious, and the people who are out there dealing what amounts to poison need to get the message that this is going to be treated like a homicide," Dettelbach tells VICE in an interview.

Though former Attorney General Eric Holder instructed federal prosecutors to pursue harsh mandatory minimums more judiciously in 2013, that doesn't mean they won't seek long sentences for drug crimes, according to Dettelbach. Rather, he says his office is focusing such charges on the most serious of offenders, particularly those dealing heroin mixed with the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, which has been linked to many overdose deaths.

"The fentanyl issue is actually now becoming more acute than the straight heroin issue," Dettelbach says. "In my mind, I will just tell you it's hard to be a dealer in fentanyl and claim that you don't know its going to kill some people."

Federal prosecutors in states around the country, including Oregon, Texas, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, are filing these kinds of charges in response to opioid deaths. In Southern Illinois, Porter says that their office began to file such charges after Wigginton's 2010 appointment, and that he has so far won 11 convictions. In July, a federal judge in Kentucky sentenced a man to life without parole for dealing oxycodone to a user who died; that district's US Attorney's Office said it was "the first time in Kentucky that a life sentence was imposed in an overdose death case involving prescription drugs." (There is no parole in the federal system for crimes committed on or after November 1, 1987.)

Some law enforcement officials are no doubt embracing a bluntly indiscriminate approachin July, David J. Hickton, US attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, announced that "it is the policy of this office that if we can establish that a seller of heroin caused a death, we are going to charge it. This heroin crisis requires that response."

That would add up to a hell of a lot of federal murder charges. Heroin contributed to at least 799 overdose deaths in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, between 2008 and July 1 of this year, according to OverdoseFreePA.

Elisif Bruun around age 22. Photo courtesy her family

State prosecutors also appear to be pursuing harsh charges with growing frequency. In Wisconsin, prosecutors charged 71 people with first-degree reckless homicide by drug delivery in 2013, an increase from 47 in 2012, according to USA Today.

In New Jersey, Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato has made these sorts of charges a focus, and his office is training police around the state on how to investigate heroin-related deaths.

"We kind of call it our checkmate charge," says Al Della Fave, a spokesperson.

Coronato's office first secured a conviction under the state's strict liability for drug-induced deaths statute soon after his 2013 appointment, according to Della Fave. So far, he says, they have secured more than 20 such convictions, and each defendant has pleaded guilty and received a sentence of about eight years.

State and federal laws don't limit these charges to major dealers, or to those who act with malicious intent. In New Orleans, Chelcie Schleben and her reported ex-boyfriend Joshua Lore currently face life without parole for the February 2014 fatal overdose "murder" of 23-year-old Kody Woods.

The charges are severe "even by extreme Louisiana standards," says Stephen Singer, a professor at Loyola Law School and Schleben's lawyer.

Louisiana already has the highest number of nonviolent offenders serving life without parole, according to a 2013 American Civil Liberties Union report, and state drug sentences tend to be extraordinarily harsh. Last year, Governor Bobby Jindal signed legislation lengthening the possible sentence for repeat heroin dealers to 99 years.

Schleben had been in rehab before the charges were filed, and had been doing well, he says.

"Seems a bit much for somebody with no prior record and no intent," Singer tells me. "These are three friends sharing heroin."

In Charleston, West Virginia, prosecutors have charged Steven Craig Coleman with murder in connection with a February heroin-related death. Rico Moore, Coleman's lawyer, is mystified by the charges.

"He's a drug user," Moore says. "He's not as they allegehe's not a drug dealer... It makes absolutely no sense to punish someone who's an addict."

According to Moore, Coleman's opioid addiction stems from his abuse of lawfully-prescribed drugs. Coleman is poor, he says, his mother died from drug use, and his father is an addict. While the crack epidemic tore through poor urban black neighborhoods, the opioid crisis is hitting white communities from rural Appalachia to suburban Staten Island the hardest. The fact that addicts are often white may be encouraging a less punitive reaction to heroin users than it did for crack addicts. But by that same token, the pressure to put dealers behind bars might be just as great, if not greater.

In Ohio, prosecutors don't yet have the ability to seek the harshest penalties available under state law for these deathsbut they want them. Last September, Hamilton County Prosecutor County prosecutor Joseph T. Deters announced involuntary manslaughter charges for involvement in a fatal intoxication, the first time, according to their office, such charges had been filed in county history. Deters took the opportunity to complain that the the law should "be strengthened to allow us to charge these kinds of cases as murder... If the law is changed, drug dealers would then be facing the possibility of life in prison for selling the drugs that take too many lives."

Last year, legislation to that effect passed the state house in Ohio with Attorney General Mike DeWine's enthusiastic support. Republican State Rep. Jim Butler, who introduced the legislation, plans to reintroduce a bill altered to better ensure that mere users are not the ones prosecuted for deaths. But he wants to tack on an increase in sentences for drug trafficking as well.

"I think what we need to do is be tougher on drug traffickers and be more compassionate to drug users," he says.

But it's not always easy to tell the difference.

Explore the underbelly of America's rehab industry with 'Dying for Treatment':

During the summer of 2013, Elisif Bruun lived around Bar Harbor, Maine, with a young man named Gordon Falt, whom she had met at the Spring Lake Ranch Therapeutic Community, a treatment center in Vermont.

According to Falt, Bruun had a dealer from back home in Maryland mail heroin to her while they were in rehab, which the two used together. They soon checked out, and moved to Maine, where they met Sean Harrington. Harrington, a rock musician who grew up in South Philadelphia, would sell small amounts of heroin to supply his own habit, Falt says. Harrington went to Maine, according to his father, in an effort to keep stay away from Philly's thriving heroin market.

But addicts are resourceful. And heroin is now plentiful almost everywhere in America.

"They shared artistic tendencies and, unfortunately, drug issues," emails Michael Harrington, Sean's dad, referring to his son's friendship with Bruun. "Sean had a difficult summer, he was homeless and jobless for awhile. Elisif was one of the few bright spots for him. He always spoke well of her, I think he looked up to her."

The summer quickly unraveled. Bruun would get fired from jobs, and kicked out of apartments; Falt was arrested for burglary. Bruun agreed to give rehab another try. Once in North Carolina, Bruun apparently requested that Harrington send her heroin. Peter Bruun, Michael Harrington, and Falt all agree that Sean had no idea that Elisif was in rehab at that time. "People who use drugs help other people who use drugs out by providing the drugs," her father says. "People who use drugs, if they don't use drugs and they're not in treatment, they're ill. They're literally sick."

In February, Elisif Bruun was found dead in her room.

"Sean was a mess, crying, suicidal, but he still couldn't quit the drugs," writes his father.

That May, Michael Harrington found his son on the street, and tried to convince him to come home and clean up. Sean refused rehab. But to his father's surprise he did agree to get a psychiatric evaluation at Friends Hospital, a psychiatric facility not far from Philadelphia's busiest drug corners. Sean quickly checked himself out, crossed the street, and was arrested for shoplifting at a Home Depot, his father says. When police ran his name, the North Carolina warrant for his arrest showed up.

"When a Philly homicide detective called the next morning, I assumed Sean was dead," Harrington writes. "What he told me was maybe more shocking."

The local media greeted Sean Harrington's August 2014 extradition to North Carolina triumphantly. It was, Polk County Sheriff's Detective BJ Bayne told reporters, vindication for Elisif's family.

"They don't want this to happen to any one else's daughter," Detective Bayne said, according to a September 2014 article in the Tryon Daily Bulletin.

That was misleading. In May 2014, Peter Bruun had written to Bayne, informing her that he did not want to see Sean Harrington prosecuted, according to an e-mail he provided to VICE.

"I hold this young man as little to blame for Elisif's death as I hold Elisif: in each case, an evil disease is at play; in each case, a young person is more victim than perpetrator," wrote Bruun, who has since become close to the Harrington family. "I feel nothing but compassion for this young man in jail, and I personally hold him unaccountable for Elisif's passing. I do not want him punishedI want him to receive treatment, or at least the option of treatment. He deserves the chance to get well."

Bayne never responded, Bruun says.

Sean Harrington. Photo courtesy of his family

"When I saw those stories, really, I was both horrified and angry and sort of shocked. Everything about it was wrong. Everything," he says.

Asked why she misrepresented the family's view, Detective Bayne told VICE that the family had supported her approach "at that time... and I was later notified that they did not."

But it's unclear how that could be true, since Peter Bruun had written her months prior. Bayne demurred, insisting should couldn't recall "the dates," and suddenly adding that she couldn't have further discussions while the case was being prosecuted.

As for Newman, the local prosecutor, he has not spoken to the Bruun family at all. And he won't let their opposition sway him.

"Well, my job is not to base the decision to prosecute on people's opinions, including the victims' opinions," he says. "I received correspondence from them. And I will speak to them when I get ready to try the case. I will."

Sean Harrington's lawyer declined an interview request on his behalf.

It's unclear where the cocaine came from. Peter Bruun says his daughter must have gotten it in North Carolina. Gordon Falt agrees, as Sean Harrington has admitted sending the heroin but denied having anything to do with the cocaine.

"We talked about it," Falt says, recalling a conversation soon after Bruun's death. "Because he felt so awful. He was beside himself."

The fact that Bruun took cocaine might present Harrington a chance at beating the charge. In 2014, in the little-discussed case Burrage v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that under federal law, a prosecutor must prove that a dealer provided a drug that decisively caused a user's death rather than having merely contributed to it. Elisif Bruun's preference for speedballs may have doomed her, but it might help save Sean Harrington.

Though Burrage decided a question of federal sentencing law, it could have impact on local courts' interpretation of state statutes, according to attorney Angela Campbell, who argued the case before the Supreme Court. In North Carolina, the murder statute may require proving not only that a supplied drug definitely caused a death but also that the dealer acted with malice. Unfortunately for Harrington, the state Supreme Court has interpreted the mere provision of drugs to potentially imply malice.

Peter Bruun believes that ending the stigmatization of drug users, and not prosecution, is the best way to fight addiction, and he has launched the arts-based New Day Campaign to spread that message. But the criminal justice reform project remains, it seems, one drug crisis or a spate of urban shootings away from a major setback at the hands of prosecutors, a hammer that sees almost any social problem as a nail.

Asked whether he had ever reviewed any sort of social scientific evidence that might suggest murder prosecutions for providing drugs that kill would do anything to reduce substance abuse, Newman, the prosecutor, came up short.

"I can't, no," he tells VICE. "The only thing that I can say is that in our community here we routinely are rated as a top place in the country to come live. And that's not by accident. That means you have a low crime rate, and the low crime rate does not occur by accident."

Follow Daniel Denvir on Twitter.

Harry Finley posing next to artifacts in his Museum of Menstruation, circa 1997. All photos courtesy of Harry Finley

There's a story about a couple trying to visit the Museum of Menstruation that Harry Finley likes to tell. They were English, on vacation to Washington, DC, and arranged to visit Finley's museum during their trip, probably sometime between the obligatory stop at The Smithsonian and gawking at the National Mall. But the couple never made it to the Museum of Menstruation. They later told Finley over the phone that they'd taken a taxi to the address he provided in New Carrollton, Maryland, on the fringes of Washington, DC, down the suburban, tree-lined streetbut there was no museum, just a house.

Finley assured them they were in the right place: The Museum of Menstruation was his house. But they were too frightened to visit a house inside a stranger's museum, particularly when the stranger was a 50-year-old bachelor and the subject of the museum was menstruation.

Had they mustered the courage to go inside, though, Finley would have led them into his ranch home, down a narrow staircase, into the roughly 400-square-foot basement, brimming with tampons and mannequins, which had now transformed into the "only museum in the world devoted exclusively to the culture of menstruation."

The museum itself, which opened in 1994 and closed abruptly in 1998, was filled with all manner of menstrual artifacts: the very first Kotex advertisement from January 1921; a collection of Tampax products dating back to the 1930s; a pink dress made almost entirely out of menstrual cups. There were female mannequin torsos strung from the ceiling, clothed in menstrual underwear and sanitary napkins. Wandering through the exhibit would be Finley's cat, Mack C. Padd.

It was the kind of place that made people squeamish, but also allowed people to open upthe kind of place that, were it to reopen, should probably not exist in an old man's basement.

A sanitary apron, displayed in the Museum of Menstruation

Harry Finley is not who you would expect to run a museum about menstruation. He was born in 1942 in Long Branch, New Jersey, to the kind of normal, all-American family where menstruation was simply not a topic of discussion. His father served in the Army, his mother stayed at home to raise him along with two brothers.

While his older brother followed in their father's footsteps by attending West Point, Finley studied philosophy at Johns Hopkins, then moved to Germany to begin a career as an artist. He got a job as the art director for a German magazine, where he got into the habit of flipping through other magazines for design inspiration. It was through this exercise that he happened upon a series of advertisements for a menstrual products, which struck him as different than those in the United States. When he saw an interesting ad for menstrual products, he'd tear the page out and tuck it away somewhere.

Read: How to Steam-Clean Your Vagina

By the time he moved back to the United States after a decade in Germany, his collection included menstrual products advertisements from around the world. But it was still just a hobbysomething he kept secret from his friends and family, and especially his colleagues at the National Defense University, Washington DC's institution for high-level national security training, where he was now working as a graphic designer. It was a boring job, one of those punch-in, punch-out, retire-and-collect-your-pension kind of gigswhich only gave him more time to work on his advertisement collection. He started visiting the Library of Congress to do research on the history of menstruation, and soon enough, his collection had ballooned to include historical information, cultural analysis, even menstrual products.

Finley didn't mean for it to become anything at firstit was just a hobby, the way some people collect Beanie Babies or Pokmon cards. But eventually, the collection became so large that he thought to himself, I've got all of this stuff. Why shouldn't there be a museum to show it off?

And so he made one. He was 51 years old.

A pair of truncated female mannequins, displaying a variety of menstrual underwear, in the Museum of Menstruation

The grand opening of the Museum of Menstruation was July 31, 1994. It was one of those characteristically hot, muggy summer weekends in Washington, DC, where even clothes feel uncomfortable, and Finley was busy dressing store-bought mannequins in menstrual underwear.

Since Finley was operating out of his own home, you had to make an appointment, and since he was still working a full-time job at the National Defense University, visits were usually restricted to the weekends. On a popular weekend, there might be 15 people down in the basement, all nervously shuffling around and nodding at the mannequins in their menstrual underwear the way people visit the MoMA and nod at art.

There were some big-name visitors (at least, big in the realm of menstrual research): The lab of the Johns Hopkins Department of Biophysics, which developed the Instead menstrual cup, paid him a visit. So did Dr. Iris Prager, the head of American education at Tambrands; Dr. Alice Dan, then-president of The Society for Menstrual Cycle Research; and a group of Smithsonian fellows who stopped by on a Saturday morning excursion (they brought a set of unusual menstrual patents, as a gift). Among the group of fellows was Dr. Katherine Ott, who would later go on to be the curator of the medical division at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, which houses the museum's collection of menstrual products.

A collection of Kotex advertisements, on display in the Museum of Menstruation

And then there were the visitors who had no affiliation to menstrual research, but who stopped by anyway, often guardedly, to see what the museum was all about. It was these visitors that Finley liked most: The ones who had never heard of a sanitary apron before, who had never considered how women bled in other parts of the world, who had sometimes never even spoken about their period with anyone.

More than once, Finley says a woman would tell him, "This is the first time I've ever talked to anyone else about menstruation." That, to him, was both moving and astonishing. He thought women talked about their periods all the timeI mean, what else filled the conversation during all those women's-only brunches or teenage girls' sleepovers? And to think that heHarry Finley, this clueless guy, who didn't even have a sister or a wife or really any experience with real, live, bleeding woman in the flesh, let alone an advanced degreewas provoking that conversation? It blew his mind.

Read: Bloody Hell: Does Religion Punish Women for Menstruating?

Elissa Stein, who would later go on to write Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation, remembers visiting the museum with her husband. When they realized the museum was inside Finley's house, she remembers telling her husband, "I don't know if I feel comfortable about this." But before they could turn around, there was Finley, standing outside of the house and ushering them inside. So Stein and her husband parked the car and followed Harry through a door near the side of the house, down the stairs, and into the basement.

It was dark, and Stein remembers the female torsos hanging like a scene from a horror film. "I will never forget walking down the stairs and thinking, Oh my god, I'm going to die here."

When she got closer, though, Stein watched the museum unfold. The display was a little like a high school project, with sheets of paper tacked to the walls and low-budget displays, but the collection itself was incredible: Tambrands, the company that made Tampax, had donated over 1,000 different items from their archives, which included the most world's expansive collection of Tampax products, ranging from 1936 to the present day. A guy in Holland who had been collecting relics from World War II mailed Finley copies of 1940s government-produced booklets about menstruation, in Dutch and in German. A costume designer for the Folger Shakespeare Theater had created a replica menstrual apron for the museum. A man in the Midwest, who had a fetish for watching his girlfriend dress up in menstrual underwear, donated about 30 pairs when he married someone else (she didn't share his fetish, and needed to get rid of them).

"It was a treasure trove of menstrual memorabilia," Stein remembers. "He knew the chronology and the history, and he had such a wealth of material. But it was curious, because he's a man, and why is it that a man is hosting a museum of menstruation?"

The first-ever Kotex advertisement, from January 1921

Finley, of course, was no stranger to this question. The now-defunctSassy magazine wrote a blurb about the museum, advising Finley to "stick to jock itch products, buddy." He was called a pervert on the radio, during a segment about his museum. A woman wrote him a letter which said, "May God close your horable .' He said he wasn't interested."

This stumped her. Finley had always talked about how he wanted more people to see his collection, and here she was offering him a chance for the world to see itand he said no?

"I got the sense that he was almost offended that I had the opportunity to talk about menstruation and not him," she says. "It was like it had to be all about him."

(Finley denies this. "As I recall, Elissa did not ask if I wanted to be co-author or 'feature the collection.' She asked if she could rummageher wordthrough the archives to look for illustrations for her book. That turned me off.")

A self-portrait by Harry Finley, shown holding a menstrual cup and with artifacts from his museum in the background

In August of 1998, the Museum of Menstruation closed. The visits every weekend had become overwhelming; Finley suffered a coronary angioplasty and had to have a stent implanted. His family had practically disowned him because of this, and he'd been hurt by the rejection from the people who studied menstruation. It all just became too much, and so finally, he said Enough. When people asked him if they could visit, he politely declined.

The collection remained down there for four years, mostly untouched. But then his basement started to leak, and many of the advertisements and photographs grew soggy, and he was forced to put all of them into boxes and into a storage locker.

"It broke my heart when I did it," Finley says. "I spent I don't know how many hours and how much money doing this, I took everything and I destroyed it."

It's difficult to understand why the collection meant so much to Finley, especially because he can't quite articulate it himself. He was fascinated by the topic, sure, and he devoted many years to collecting these thingsbut it's clear that the museum represented something beyond a pure, academic fascination. On the website, he justifies his passion by saying he wanted "to do something worthwhile" and that he liked the subject. But that doesn't feel like the whole story.

To this day, he still occasionally updates the website, but even that is laid out in a way that doesn't seem entirely aware of the vieweras if it's something he created not for the enjoyment and education of others, but mostly for himself. The website has a wealth of information, laid out in labyrinth of over 3,000 pages, each with an incomprehensible number of links per page. Some of the pages can only be accessed by clicking on other pages in a specific sequence, and it's easy to find something fascinating buried in the website, and then never be able to find it again.

Some parts of the website are deeply, uncomfortably personal. On one page, called "Cutting to the chase: Another reason I started the museum," Finley describes his younger brother, Jim, who tragically died at age 21 from muscular dystrophy (his mother died five years later, "from grief"). He details his own adolescent depression, including photos of the criss-crossed scars on his arms from cutting himself. He writes about being detained in a psychiatric ward; about the time when someone poisoned and killed his cat; his own suspicion that he might have borderline personality disorder; his deep, extreme loneliness.

The page has nothing to do with menstruation. And yet it's there, almost casually, as part of the package. When he was interviewed by the Washington Post in 1995, a year after the museum opened, Finley told a reporter that his mother and brother's deaths made him "wary of marrying or having children." And so maybe, in the absence of those intimate life experiences, Finley instead turned to this deeply intimate subject, and poured his whole heart into it as a way to keep it from shattering from loneliness.

An except from one of Harry Finley's cartoons, describing the future of the museum. If he can't find a permanent space for his collection before he dies, he has willed the collection to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia. View the full cartoon strip here

If Finley could, he would reopen the museum. He knows that he's still up against the menstrual taboo, but a lot has changed since 1994. People want to talk about toxic shock syndrome and free bleeding and Barbies who have periods and portraits of Donald Trump painted in menstrual blood. A congresswoman is trying to change the tampon industry. This is practically the era of the period.

And so what if the museum makes people a little uncomfortable? Finley likes to compare it to the Holocaust Museum in DC, where visitors can walk through the box cars that carried Jews to their deaths in concentration camps. There's nothing comfortable about that. Finley went there once and said he would never go back againit was too harrowingbut he's glad he went there, grateful for the discomfort. It was important for him to go, just like it's important for people to learn about menstruation.

On The Creators Project: An Artists Explore the Raw Beauty of Menstrual Blood

But he doesn't want to give the collection to just anyone. He has requirements: The exhibit has to be permanent. It can't be a temporary collection, or a traveling collection, or something stored in archival drawers that visitors can view "on request." It should be publica place where men, women, and children can come, free of charge, to see the collection. Preferably, it should be a freestanding building with its own caf and gift shop, and ideally, space for a menstrual hut in the backyard. It's not that there haven't been offers. Harvard University's Schlesinger Library asked Harry for his collection; so did The Smithsonian. Finley said thanks, but no thanks. "I know where it's going to wind up," he says. "I know the room where their stuff sits. It's all in a drawer."

In his heart, Finleywho is now 73knows that if the Museum of Menstruation will rise again, it'll be after he's gone. He's too old, and doesn't have the money, to spearhead a project like this on his own. Someone younger has to do it. He prays that someone does, and his legacy will live on, and it all will have meant something in the end.

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars (Photo courtesy of NASA via)

Welcome to the first installment of the VICE Morning Bulletin. Here you'll find a roundup of the day's most important stories from around the world, all in one handy blog post, like a multivitamin of interesting stuff to start your day. With contributions from our global offices, the VICE Morning Bulletin will feature the biggest headlines in the US as well as internationally, and offer a hand-picked crop of culture stories, long reads, weird news, and a VICE documentary each morning.

US News

• NASA Has Some Major News
  The space agency claims to have solved a "Mars mystery", promising to reveal all at a press conference this morning. Aliens? Probably not; photos suggests scientists may have discovered periodically flowing water on the planet. - CNN
• Trump: Soak the Rich
  The GOP frontrunner says he wants to raise taxes on the "very wealthy" and halt "unfair deductions" favoring the richest. Trump outlines his tax plans in more detail today. - The Wall Street Journal
• More Asian Immigrants Than Hispanics by 2065
  New projections indicate foreign-born residents will make up 18 percent of the U.S. population in 50 years time (when the total number of people hits 441 million). The Pew Research Center report also predicts Asians will become the largest immigrant group by then. - The Washington Post
• Shell Quits Alaska
  Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell will halt drilling operations in the Arctic waters off Alaska. Environment campaigners are delighted, as the company announced it has failed to find sufficient quantities of oil or gas. - Bloomberg

International

• Syria Showdown at UN
  Vladimir Putin renews his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and calls for a "co-ordinating structure" against the Islamic State. It comes ahead of talks between the Russian leader and President Obama on Syria at the UN General Assembly today. - BBC
• Separatists Claim Victory
  Political parties who want independence from Spain have won control of Catalonia's parliament. The separatist parties did not get 50 percent support of the vote, however, and also look unlikely to win the number of seats needed to declare independence. - VICE News
• Umbrella Movement Marks Anniversary
  Hong Kong police are patrolling government buildings ahead of pro-democracy rallies. Monday marks the one-year anniversary of the start of protests, which became known as the Umbrella Movement after student activists used umbrellas to shield against police tear gas. - Reuters
• Typhoon Dujuan Nears
  Thousands of people have been evacuated from Taiwan's outlying islands ahead of Typhoon Dujuan's arrival today. The "super typhoon" is expected to make landfall around 11PM local time. - Al Jazeera

President Barack Obama meeting inmates in our HBO special report, 'Fixing the System'

Everything Else

• Supermoon Stuns, Even on Instagram
  The world shares some glorious images of the supermoon coinciding with a total lunar eclipse, the first joint event in 33 years. Even Instagrammers got some pretty good shots. - TIME
• Changing the System: How to Get Involved
  If you watched last night's HBO premiere of the VICE special on fixing America's prison system, you might want to get more involved. Here are some others working for reform. - VICE
• Riot Police Defend Cereal Store
  Hundreds of anti-gentrification protestors attacked a London cafe selling international cereals. The "Fuck Parade" protestors decided the cafe, which sells bowls of cereal for up to $6.70, was a symbol of rising prices in the UK capital. - The Guardian
• Silk Road Architect Turns Himself In
  Variety Jones, the man thought to be the architect of the deep web marketplace Silk Road, has made some remarkable accusations against someone he believes is a "bent" FBI agent. He explains why he fears for his life. - Motherboard

Done with reading for today? Here, watch this episode of VICE Meets, in which we talk to Harry Leslie Smith, a 92-year-old anti-austerity activist who's currently touring Canada in an attempt to get "young people to get off their asses and vote".

Les Stroud. All stills courtesy OLN

Les Stroud, known on the Internet as Canada's version of a lumberjack MacGyver, has historically been the guy credited for kickstarting the survival genre of reality TV. Filming shows for networks like the Discovery Channel and OLN for well over a decade, Stroud has become a staple figure in the survivalist culture as a no-bullshit, no-nonsense explorer who sells everything from Les Stroud-branded pucks to Les Stroud-branded harmonicas on his website. He also sells DVDs of his band Les Stroud and the Campfire Kings.

With the new season of his hit show Survivorman coming out soon, Stroud has gained some notoriety after a video from the filming of an episode in Mongolia surfaced a few days ago, one that saw him being treated by paramedics after his crew's car skidded off the road 25 feet and rolled twice.

Stroud tore multiple muscles and broke a few ribs in the crash, which effectively ended all filming for the new season. Now, nine weeks later, he spoke to VICE about his past as a pot-smoking rocker, the creation of Survivorman, and his vision for the future.

VICE: Let's start from the beginning. According to the internet, you were born in TorontoMimico of all places. How did you go from the urban life to building fires in the wild?
Les Stroud: My upbringing was in a west-end suburb of Etobicoke. It was very whitebred. Just a flat-out boring existence. Y'know, I grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and Styx, smoking pot and drinking beer, the regular stuff back then. I think I always wanted to escape, but as I got older, I discovered how much I loved rock and roll and that's what I did for a long time. Because of that, I've been in and out of music since then, but back when I was a kid, I used to watch a lot of videos of Jacques Cousteau and I had this strong desire to one day be a National Geographic photographer. I just thought it was a coolest thing.

Eventually, at some point in my mid-20s, I decided that I really wanted to go for a wilderness adventure. I didn't even know what that meantI just came up with that phrase in my head, but I started looking around and I found a course on survivalism. Once I went through that, it was like a marriage made in heaven.

When did you first start filming your own treks into the wild?
Coming from a background of music and performing, I never lost that desire to be a performer and to entertain people. I used to work on music television for a while and that job gave me skills such as editing and camerawork, so it wasn't too long after I got into doing survivalism that I realized how there was virtually no film-work at all that showed real survivalism to its fullest. There were home videos, but they were pretty lame and pathetic. People either didn't know what they were doing or it was poorly shot, which are both death rattles for that anything people want to watch. I saw a needI saw a need to display survival skills on film and not only teach but entertain people through my experiences, so I started applying what I knew from the wilderness and my time as an entertainer.

You mentioned home videos and the lack of a market for survival videos, so I can't imagine you started off with a hit TV series. Did filming your survivalism always pay?
Surprisingly, it did. My plan originally was just to make a high-quality, DIY, home video-type series, but I eventually decided to try my hand at pitching it to a television network instead. They actually bit pretty quick, so once I was able to get it on television, it changed everything and ended up starting the entire genre of survival TV.

Tell me how Survivorman came to be.
I had made my own film called Snowshoes and Solitude which I filmed out in the bush, so in combination with that and my experience working at MuchMusic, I had a very focused pitch I brought to the producers. I told them, "Listen, I can go out into the wild for a week with no crew. I can bring you back footage with commentary, I can edit, I can do it all and have an episode to you." They saw a perfect combination in me, I guess, so they approved a pilot episode for a science show.

After that, I followed up with more episodes, along with a summer and winter version of a show called Stranded. I pretty much made it clear how easy this could become a seriesa guy stuck in different locations trying to survive and put on a good showand they loved it. The rest is history.

What's some of your favourite places you've been?
Well, I'm still a big, big fan of jungles, although it's not a fun place to survive. Same thing goes for the high Arctic or the Peruvian AndesI mean, these are places that really resonated with me, despite how difficult they were to actually navigate and thrive in.

What's the craziest situation you've ever been in?
(laughs) What do you mean by crazy? I've been in a lot that I'd call crazy.

Well, what's the most dangerous or memorable situation you've been in? One that really made you think, "Holy hell, this is something." Aside from the car crash, I mean, because I'm sure that ranks up there.
Yeah, that certainly ranks. I'd say the most dangerous thing I've done was a descent down a frigid mountain in Norway for a Survivorman episode. I almost became hypothermic because of how cold it was and I was in a serious bit of jeopardy during that show. The most memorable was definitely filming the series Survivorman: Beyond Survival where I went out and survived with a lot of Native and Indigenous groups that live very remotely and very close with the earth. Meeting those people and living with them was an incredibly profound experience.

What about back home? When you go out to shoot these episodes, aren't your friends and family concerned?
No, because everything I did and do is with a very calculated risk. I am not an adrenaline junkywhat I do with Survivorman is not to go out and show the craziest or most adrenaline-fuelled thing I can do. I go out there with the intention of showing people real survival and to teach them real survival skills that can applicable in real life. It's only been the shows that have came out and copied me that have wanted to up the drama by making it all action-based, but they have had to fake it all to make it work on television.

That's not to say I wasn't concerned on a number of occasions for my safety, but I always had my genuine survival in mind. I took care not to die, y'know? I would never put myself in a situation where I'd have to say to my friends or family, "Okay, well, I may never see you guys again."

I want to touch on the part about copycat survival shows that you brought up a bit later, but let's talk about your most recent episode in Mongolia. According to the video, you got into a pretty bad car accident while filming the new season of Survivorman. Can you walk me through what happened?
Basically, we had two more shows to film out in Mongolia and we were far out from the capital city when it happened. We really don't know exactly why the car flipped because it all happened so quick. Whether it was driver error, or whether something gave out in the steering, we don't really know. One minute, I was looking sleepy-headed out the window and the next minute, we had skidded out 25 feet and rolled twice. It was over like that.

So once it flipped, you checked on your crew, then, once the pain set in, you told your producer to film you. Where do you draw the line between putting a show on and actually focusing on your own survival?
Honestly, once we flipped and the car stopped, I knew the show was over. This was it. There was really no way I was going to finish the episode. So, being how my mind works, I told my producer Max to turn the camera on and document everything that was about to happen. I knew that this was going to be something that would turn out to be garbage and be dumped from the show, or would be one hell of a post on Facebook. It thankfully turned out to be the latter.

The video says that along the way back, because the helicopters couldn't pick you up, your shoulder reset itself back into place and that you wanted to continue with show but were flown back to Toronto anyway. Were you able to finish the Mongolia episode?
Unfortunately no, that ended the season. I had a punctured lung and that was only nine weeks ago. We might do something neat with in the editing process though.

You seem to be always thinking of the audience. Do you ever draw the line with some of the shows you're doing when you're not comfortable filming something?
It has happened in the past, sure, but because I mainly film everything myself or run with a small crew, it's not a major issue. There was a few moments when filming stuff for Shark Week that I said, "All right, this is a little much." We were in the middle of South Africa's Shark Alley and there were great whites all around me. I had almost no backup divers or anyone there to pull me out if I were to get bit. It was definitely something that made me uncomfortable and I raised my concerns to the crew. We still did the shoot, though.

Speaking of retreating: there are a lot of comparisons made between you and Bear Grylls, someone who has been called out in the past for possibly staging some of his shows. With his new show out now, what's your thoughts on that comparison?
I think, uh, I understand why the comparisons get made, but there really is no comparison. This is not me with pretentiousness or bravado or ego but I actually don't think there is overlap. I go out there to survive, to show people real life scenarios and to make my show informative and entertaining. What I created with Survivorman had never been done before. All of these other shows are produced, staged, faked, scripted, set up and done in way so that they can produce numerous episodes, some of which do it horribly and blatantly so.

What some forget about Bear Grylls back a few years ago is that they did try to hide .

I say it with this tone because I honestly think that most people who watch television need to wake up. These shows are bullshit. Reality TV is shitit's not real at all. If you watch these shows for entertainment, fine, but don't for a second think you're seeing anything that's real, true, or demonstrating genuine survival skills.

So you have never backed out of a situation or had your crew accommodate you with, say, a nice cot to sleep in?
Absolutely not. I am the only guy in charge, I am the only one who makes decisions. The only times we have been pulled out was in Utah once because I was extremely dehydrated and couldn't go on, along with one time in Labrador because my crew could not handle the conditions. I was OK, but I look out for my crew. When it comes to my own experience, I don't half-ass these things like a lot of the reality stars do.

Finally, in the wild, do you ever drink your own piss?
That's not something I do, no.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Not a bad tattoo; a good tattoo. It's just one of the photos sent to us by one of the people we interviewed. Photo courtesy of Tota Volpe-Landi

I almost got a really shitty tattoo once. I paid a guy $10 to design a barbed-wire wrap for my upper thigh, and thankfully backed out when I realized that I'd never be able to wear a swimming costume again without people relentlessly and aggressively side-eyeing me. Maybe you've found yourself in a similar situation and not backed out. Maybe you're reading this right now with a barbed-wire tattoo wrapped around your entire torso.

Whatever your circumstances, it's safe to say there are plenty of people out there with shit tattoos, because the British have spent the past 30-odd years turning terrible skin inkings into an art form. You'll have noticed the usual culpritsbulldogs, roses, soccer team logos, people who get their own names tattooed on their forearms in bad calligraphy being unveiled every time the sun comes out, but most of these are pretty dated at this point. Surely there are new contenders making themselves known, soon to be spotted on the thighs and necks of Brits in restaurants and parks up and down the country?

To find out which questionable tattoos are making the rounds at the moment, I thought I'd call the best tattoo artists from all around the UK and IrelandDublin, London, Manchester, Swansea, and Glasgowand ask them what's popular in their area. (QUICK DISCLAIMER HERE: We're not saying the photos used to illustrate this article are of bad tattoos; they're good tattoos done by the talented artists we interviewed, because it's weirdly impossible to get people who do shitty tattoos to send you photos of them when you're explicitly calling them shitty.)

Photo courtesy of Ryan Sean Kelly

Ryan Sean Kelly, The Ink Factory, Dublin

VICE: Hi Ryan. Tell me about your favorite tattoo.
Ryan Sean Kelly: My favorite tattoo was a very simple one. We recently ran an autism awareness day to raise money for Irish Autism Action, a really cool charity over here. I tattooed a jigsaw piecethe autism emblemon my sister as my little nephew, who has autism, watched on. He was super excited by the whole event, which was a real thrill for me.

What about the worst tattoo you were ever asked to do?
This guy who came in and got a collar rocker of the name Vanessa across his chest. About midway through I asked if Vanessa was his girlfriend or his mum, to which he replied it was his ex's name and he was getting it inked in an effort to woo her back. If I had known I wouldn't have started, and, suffice to say, when I saw the guy about six months later he was still depressingly single.

What are you getting a lot of requests for at the moment?
People seem to have developed a bit of an obsession with arrows over here at the minute; I'm seeing plenty of them around, and a massive amount of people are asking for them on a weekly basis.

Anything else?
Yeah, obviously working in Dublin means we're inundated with requests for shamrocks. I've probably drawn about a million by now. But the people who want them are usually foreign tourists and are always up for a bit of a laugh.

Photo courtesy of Tota Volpe-Landi

Tota Volpe-Landi, Happy Sailor Tattoo, London

What's the coolest thing you've done lately?
Tota Volpe-Landi: This cover-up for a friend of mine. It was dot-work, with masonry and Illuminati symbols and a huge moth in the middle. It was on the top of the arm in black and gray and I'm really into sacred geometry and alchemy, so I loved doing it. It took about seven hours, so a couple of sessions.

And the worst?
A woman who wanted a tiny angel with pink wings on the inside of her wrist. So tacky.

What are the big tattoo trends in London at the moment?
Infinity symbols! Infinity symbols are the new stars. Also, the little arrows, usually on girls, and usually on their ribs. Lots of girls are coming in with a picture of the little arrow they wantalways from the same website. I normally get someone else to do those. I don't mind, but really, if you've got one tattoo that tells the world who you are, do you want an infinity symbol? Most scientists can't grasp the infinite, and the girls who come in to get these tattoos definitely can't. Waityou don't happen to have an infinity tattoo, do you?

Pocket watches: The most common guy's tattoo pretty much throughout the UK. Photo courtesy of Tota Volpe-Landi

I don't. What sort of girls are getting the infinity tattoos?
They come in big groups, all wanting the same thing. I say to them, "Why don't you get something different?" But they usually just look at me like I'm trying to sell them drugs or something.

What about the boys?
A big thing is the pocket watch with two roses on either side. A couple of years ago, everyone wanted owls.

Why does everyone want the same stuff?
It's celebrity culture. Everyone wanted an anchor like Kate Moss for a while. Or the time that Rihanna had the rosary beads with the cross on her footgenerally, someone famous gets it, and then it goes viral.

Craig Hicks, 72 Tattoo, Manchester

Tell me about your most meaningful piece of work.
Craig Hicks: I did a piece on a woman who had lost a baby. We didn't really talk about it that much; sometimes you don't need to know the details. But the tattoo was on her stomach, covering up scars, and was very much an important family piece for her. It was also extremely challenging tattooing soft, black-and-gray work on that area.

What about the most stupid thing you were ever asked to do?
One chap came in asking us to tattoo "666" on the back of his head for his first-ever tattoo. We refused, and then he asked for "some of those 'rosemary' beads instead." We weren't sure whether he wanted a religious tattoo or one of a herb. It shows the mentality of a lot of people who just want to get tattooed with something they don't really understand, for show.

Any other random requests?
We had someone come in with 20 .

What do you keep getting asked to do?
Pocket watches. Lots of people put their child's date of birth inside it, which is a nice idea, but it's just become so common now.

Any really offensive requests?
Yeah, there's one lad who keeps nagging me to do a portrait of Hitler. He's not racist; he's actually a really nice guy. He just likes the shock factor. I'm not doing it, though.

Photo courtesy of Gary Bunton

Gary Bunton, Eclectic Ink, Glasgow

Tell me about your favorite request.
Gary Bunton: Probably an anatomical heart that I did recentlyit was a challenge; lots of fine lines. I really enjoyed that.

What are the worst requests you get?
Being from Glasgow, you've got the whole Rangers/Celtic rivalry. Anything sectarian we tend to steer well clear of. Mostly it's the swastika people you want to be wary of.

Tell me about the swastika people.
Typically lads, a group of skinhead guys. They'll come in and ask, and then keep coming in every couple of months, thinking we've changed our minds and we'll do it for them.

What sort of stuff do you keep getting asked to do?
Loads of people are coming in asking for the mandala designs. Also, those watercolor tattoos are really popular at the moment.

Why do people keep getting the same tattoos?
It's literally Instagram and Pinterest. Everyone's getting Instagram tattoos. You go on Pinterest and everyone has the same tattoo; infinity symbols and those bloody semi-colons. It's almost like a joke now in the trade.

Charles Manson rarely communicates with the world outside of Corcoran State Prison, where he's been incarcerated since 1989. Locked away from not only regular citizens, but often other prisoners when he's in protective custody or solitary confinement, Manson's mind has become more unhinged. This was discovered when, using a smuggled cell phone, Manson reached out to Canadian author Marlin Marynick, who would later write the best-selling biography Charles Manson Now, about interviewing Manson for a film Manson had been imagining.

Still holding onto the 10 hours of phone conversations, that had become the basis for his book, Marynick was put in touch with animator Leah Shore following the 2010 Sundance Film Festival premiere of her short film Meatwaffle. The next month it was decided that Leah would make a "strange fine art/animated vision" out of Marynick's Manson recordings in an attempt to convey the man, the myth, and his madnessor as people called Manson in prison, the "old man." Marynick says, "Everyone in Manson's world ends up with a nickname."

Shore's film, also titled Old Man, is a dizzying, stream-of-consciousness exploration into, around, and through what makes Manson tick. Painstakingly edited down to five minutes, the short crunches as many thoughts together as it does animated mediums: from clay, colored pencil, ink, paint, digital, and more.

It doesn't feel insane, maybe just because it gets at something stranger. Manson's manic pontifications on our brainwashed society, air, God, mass suicide, and more have their moments of clarity and dare I say brilliance. All of this is enhanced and the thoughts exacerbated by Shore's non-stop, raw, and wild animation. When you're listening to someone so steeped in myth and legend, it's hard to parse what he really believes and what you believe he believes. And so when Manson unexpectedly gets up and walks away, you're left staring at your screen wondering what the hell just happened.

Watch the film, then check out the conversation I had with filmmaker Leah Shore and the interviewer himself, Marlin Marynick.

VICE: How did this interview with Charles even happen?
Marlin Marynick: The audio in the film is based on my phone conversations with Charles Manson. We had a mutual friend. When Manson found out I was involved in film, he called and asked if I would be interested in doing an interview. His vision was that I was to dress as a soldier, and he would be dressed as a general. He wanted to command all the armies in the world to stop fighting each other, and start fighting pollution. Of course, the prison system would never allow this, so that interview never happened.

Leah, were you familiar with Marlin's work before you came across his interview?
Leah Shore: To be honest, no, but I did immediately read Charles Manson Now. It is a wonderful biography about Marlin, his life, how hard and wonderful it has been and it leading up to him befriending Mr. Charles Manson. You should read it. It's a great read.

I was fortunate to have my undergrad thesis Meatwaffle compete at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010. There, I met producer/entrepreneur Chris Barrett. He came up to me and said, "I saw your film. It was awesome and psychedelic. I know someone who is friends with Charles Manson and I think you two should make a film." Then, I was introduced to Marlin. We hit it off as friends and collaborators. I was also introduced to my EP, Carl D'Andre, without whom I wouldn't have been able to make the film.

Once you heard it, did you know what you wanted to do with it?
Shore: I received the audio after talking to Grey Wolf, Manson's best friend and Marlin. Marlin trusted my strange fine art/animated vision and gave me everything I needed. I still have some amazing audio, some with Manson improvising a song on the toilet. It, unfortunately, did not go with the story. I knew I wanted to make a five-minute film. I knew it was going to be a mixed medium film. And I knew that I should probably edit the audio to make it seamless, as if I were listening to one absolute thought, as opposed to a bunch of different ones.

The audio you are listening to is my obsessively edited version. I was given access to hours of phone conversations between Marlin and Charles Manson. It took me about three months to edit it down to the five minute version you are listening to. So when I was done editing the audio, I knew I could start the picture aspect of the film, which took me two and a half years to finish.

And so I assume Charles and Marlin were cool with all this?
Marynick: Manson was cool with allowing Leah to use the audio. I love Leah's work, and could see what she wanted to do with it right away. I think the film turned out amazingly well.

Do you have any idea of what Charles thinks of this recording and the fact that it's one of the only documents let loose since his incarceration and the fact that there's now an animated film to that conversation that has traveled the world?
Shore: Well, I hear from a certain bird that Charles actually knows about the film and me and that he completely approves. So thank you, Old Man! I approve of it too! I think he is just happy that this recording is out and that people can hear him and his thoughts. He wants to be heard still and apparently prison will not stop the man.

Marynick: I wish Charlie could see it; he never got to see the film though.

Leah, are you like one of those people that are obsessed with Charles Manson, but in like an unhealthy way?
Shore: No. Not. At. All. In fact, I purposefully did not research him too much. I wanted to reflect on the audio alone and try not to judge him. I wanted to make something that was raw and wasn't like any other Manson-themed films.

Marlin, were you shocked that he talked to you over, what I assume to be, many other interested parties?
Marynick: Our relationship eventually became a book, Charles Manson Now. I think the fascinating thing with him is that he is very different from the public's perception. He is a media creation. Of course his voice is undeniable, you know who you are talking to immediately. He is timeless, and in a way it's like talking to history. I think the film gives a candid look into what he is really like, what you hear is Charlie talking about what is important to him. I'm still a little shocked that he calls. He doesn't care about celebrity, or fame, not at all. He has very different values than most people.

What was the most shocking part of your conversation with Charles?
Marynick: He is the most direct person I've ever talked to. That takes some getting use to. The most shocking thing would be what he has to deal with. On the 40th anniversary of the murders, he had over 2,500 media requests from all over the world. He gets more mail than any American inmate ever. There are always films, books, musiceverybody wants something from him.

He has spent most of his prison life in solitary confinement. I think he was forced to face his demonsthat level of isolation has to do something to a person. I have no idea how he does it. There is almost a curse that goes along with him, there is this seductive vortex of madness that surrounds him, people are attracted to this, and they are destroyed financially, or professionally. It happens all the time. I've been watching that happen for four or five years.

What are you two up to now?
Marynick: For the past 20 years, I've worked in psychiatry. I'm part of a crisis response team in my city. I do emergency, outreach stuff for our mental health clinic.

Shore: I am trying to produce four short films, three that are live action that focus on women going through menopause in a surreal way, a comedy, a character study, and one that is animated and is a comedy about a kid that learns how to read. I am also trying to pitch three comedic shows. Two animated dirty, comedic adult shows and one live action adult show. Someone should probably let me pitch to them. They are groovy and insane. I want to make a feature and start producing music videos in the near future as well.

That's great. Thanks for talking Leah and Marlin.

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as the senior curator for Vimeo's On Demandplatform. He has also programmed at Tribeca Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and the Hamptons International Film Festival.

Via twitter user Jamie Osman

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

At long last, it's time for humanity to come together andfight to eliminate that most ancient and pernicious prejudice, the hatred ofwindows. Who will speak for the voiceless? Who will stand up for those whocan't stand up themselves (at least, not without some kind of surroundingframe)? From the smashing of stained glass during the Reformation, toKristallnacht, to some anarchists throwing paint at the cereal caf inShoreditch, London: Why do people think it's OK to commit acts of violence againstwindows?

This is, apparently, the discussion we're having after members of a protest group called, bizarrely, "Fuck Parade"threw paint bombs and cereal at the Cereal Killer Caf on Brick Lane, East London, a disquieting outpostof our inevitable candy-colored future dystopia that only sells breakfast cereal. The caf's official Twitter accountdescribed it as a "#hatecrime"helpfully hashtagging the word in case youwanted to be one easy click away from more exciting #hatecrime news. Others, including Old Holborn (described by the Daily Mail as "one of Britain'svilest trolls"), appeared to seriously compare it to Kristallnacht, as if thereal victims in 1938 were all those innocent windows.

Across the countryor, at least, across the internet, which is by nowfunctionally the same thingthousands of people are trying to work out whatthe correct opinion on all this is. Was it wrong to attack a locally-ownedindependent business when there are plenty of big chain stores nearby? Is thislegitimate political violence or ultraleft deviationism? Aren't hipstergentrifiers also sometimes the victims of gentrification? Isn't vandalizing awindow appropriate when so much of London is being taken over by blank glassboxes, windows with nobody inside? But don't windows have human rights, too?

This is the first stage, next there are the thinkpieces. TheGuardian's Comment is Free, alwaysreliable for that sort of thing, has already got in on the act. Their's is a bold line: Apparently, if you're not too keen on establishedcommunities being taken over by a pair of creepily identical breakfast-peddlers,or a pop-up bar that only serves tap water, out of a single tap (which, againstall sense and reason, briefly existed),you may as well don a purple rosette and start goose-stepping with the Ukippers.It won't be the last: This stuff is what thinkpieces live on, the leakydrainpipe that nourishes their mossy, parasitical sprawl. The story is silly,sure, but doesn't it say something important about where we are as a society?And it does: It shows that it's now all but impossible for anything to happenwithout also having to mean something.

I visited the Cereal Killer Caf when it first opened; Ieven imagined a pitched battle taking place outside its doors. The place is weird and dark and strangely seedy, given that what it essentiallydoes is sell food for children. It's an innocence-deficit that the customerstry their best to close up, dressing in colorful onesies and bringing big-boyspoons to eat bowls of milk and sugar designed for people whose brains haven'tfully developed yet.

Related: Watch 'The Disturbing Truth Behind the 'Spitman' Urban Legend'

Tom Whyman has written persuasively on the generalcultural trend toward infantilization, the mass abandonment of the adult worldfor a snug and secure parody of childhood, where we can live off tap water andcereal and everything will be lovely. (There's an adult preschool in Brooklyn where grown men and women can dofinger-painting and have nap time, and this is in a country that has over seventhousand nuclear weapons.)But there's another kind of infantilization going on outside the caf, in whichpeople choose to perform social activism under the name "Fuck Parade," crowdfund the revolution on IndieGoGo, and scrawl the word scum on the kiddiecaf during a late-night brekkie break as a means of fighting against theunchecked expansion of finance capital.

This is the political struggle that briefly entranced anation: tots versus teens. Two groups of monstrously overgrown children had asquabble, and some paint got on a window. Sometimes windows get messy; ithappens. And national newspaper after national newspaper rushed to cover thestory.

Socrates is supposed to have said that the unexamined lifeis not worth living, but then Socrates never read the Huffington Post. To contemplate, first you need life. There's astrand of thought from Aristotle to Fichte to Marx that sees the act ofcontemplating something as potentially active and transformative. But, as thelatter noted, thought always has the potential to coil up on itself, to giveevery impression of fighting for some kind of change while actually doingnothing of the sort. "Philosophy and the study of the actual world," he wrote, "havethe same relation to one another as masturbation and sexual love." In thisschema, the average wanky thinkpiecewhat Lana Del Rey says about feminism,what the Siege of the Cereal Killer Caf says about gentrificationdoesn'tsuffer from being too shallow, but precisely from being too philosophical.

This is where we're all headed. Somewhere, in a grotty and undiscoveredcorner of the world, a bird will shit on someone's window. Within an hour,there'll be three trending hashtags, 20 reporters hammering on the doors andscreaming through keyholes, and thousands of essays about how #TheBirdrepresents nature's revenge for anthropogenic global warming, or how homeownersshould be properly armed to defend against intruding fauna, or how we'reneglecting guano as a sustainable alternative to chemical fertilizer. Wealready have the technology needed for every boring thing that ever happens tobriefly become the subject of a global debate, across hundreds of essays justlike this one. And you'll read them. And nothing will change.

Follow Sam Kriss on Twitter.

Anti-fracking protesters in Lancashire. Photo by Oscar Webb

David Cameron, speaking after the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague in 2014, said fracking "will be good for our country." The Prime Minister is determined the controversial technologywhich involves shooting chemicals and water at high-pressure down deeply-drilled wells to release shale oil and gaswill become a centerpiece of Britain's self-sustaining energy policies. Blaming a "lack of understanding" on fears over fracking's impact on the environment, Cameron said concerns will be allayed once more wells are up and running.

So news that the UK government has recently issued 159 fracking licenses that cover 293 sites of special scientific interest (SSSI), comprising 1,000 square miles of land home to rare wildlife, makes senseeven if it's a U-turn on pre-election promises to protect SSSIs. How better to prove fracking's environmentally friendly credentials than to open the door for industrial extraction within beloved nature reserves?

However, the conservation groups, experts, and activists I spoke to said the move threatens protected habitats and is part of a wider policy to loosen regulation and oversight for energy companies.

Nine RSPB nature reserves are included within the licensed areas, including Bempton Cliffs in East Yorkshire, which is home to one of Europe's largest seabird colonies. The charity is concerned that fracking could result in chemical pollution, disturbances, and habitat loss.

RSPB conservation director Martin Harper said: "In February, Amber Rudd, Energy and Climate Secretary, specifically promised to ban fracking within all SSSIs, but this promise seems to have been forgotten. We simply don't understand why SSSIs, some of the UK's best and most sensitive wildlife sites and landscapes, aren't being offered full protection from fracking, when National Parks, World Heritage Sites, and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty are being excluded from fracking completely."

The Wildlife Trusts are also questioning the issue of the licenses, after discovering that 185 of their nature reserves could potentially be fracked.

"As a matter of urgency, The Wildlife Trusts call on the government to clarify that nationally and locally protected areas for wildlife will not be subject to impacts from fracking in or around these special places, which are important for local communities and wildlife alike," said Wildlife Trusts' head of living landscape, Paul Wilkinson. "There are 185 Wildlife Trust nature reserves in the proposed new licensing areas including places like Attenborough near Nottingham, a wetland nature reserve with an award-winning visitor center which has welcomed more than two million visitors in the past ten years."

The conservationists' worries are not misplaced, explained biochemist Dr. Michael Warhurst. The executive director of the Chem Trust pointed out that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was just one part of a much larger process. The digging of the wells, the removal, and storage of waste water, chemicals and fuels and the longterm management of exhausted wells all present risks. While fracking can cause small earthquakes and noise and air pollution, the most serious risk is from the large amounts of oil, waste water, and chemicals involved, all of which can contaminate the local environment.

"Evidence from the US, where fracking is widespread, shows spillage can cause a huge amount of damage to water courses," said Dr. Warhurst. "The problem with fracking is that you need to dig a lot of wells, and there's evidence that shows that quite a percentage of those wells will fail and produce leakage. It's a very big problem because the wildlife that could be damaged is potentially nationally important. There's the chance of spillage from the lorries that have to take the water away, as well as from storage facilities. Then at the end of a fracking well's life what's going to happen to it? In Scotland we've already seen examples of funds to restore open cast mining sites running out. Sometimes the industry is quite clever in that they only answer to the fracking process, which is a specific period of time. I think the point is that this is an industrial process."

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: Human Activity Is Causing Significantly More Earthquakes

Although a spokesperson from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) insisted that "planning guidance is clear that fracking shouldn't be permitted if it affects SSSIs," Dr. Warhurst and others remain concerned. In August the government announced new "fast track" rules that allow ministers to intervene in fracking bids delayed by local councils, following frustrations over holdups. The rules prompted Greenpeace's head of campaigns, Daisy Sands, to accuse the Tories of "a clear affront to local democracy."

Last week the Guardian revealed the government is also backing oil and gas companiesincluding Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, and Chevronwho are lobbying EU leaders to drop proposals for increased fracking safety regulation. The measures would install provisions for "best available technologies and risk management procedures" (Brefs) to be used during fracking. UK government sources told the Guardian that Brefs would be "an unnecessary restriction on the UK oil and gas industry" and a cause of "unnecessary red tape."

Dr. Warhurst said that attempts to deregulate the fracking industry, coupled with the possibility of more austerity against an already depleted Environment Agency, will leave SSSIs under the threat of fracking even more at risk.

"The problem is that there is a very strong ideology at the moment, which says that regulation is something that's bad. Whereas it's regulation that protects the environment. It's regulation that reduces harm from pollution. But there's a very strong push against regulation. It's really problematic. It may lower some short term costs, but it's more likely to cause problems in the long run," he said.

Related: Watch 'The Bros of Fracking'

The Chem Trust recommends an EU-wide moratorium on fracking that will suspend all activity until a strong legislative framework to mitigate its worst effects is in place. Scotland imposed a moratorium in January, preventing any fracking activity in that country, but a similar attempt in England was overwhelmingly defeated in Parliament.

Though David Cameron is, in his own words, "going all out for shale," and has the political power to implement his plans in England, there remains an active and determined public movement to quash them. Anti-fracking activists have built protest camps at proposed fracking sites across the country, as well as holding regular demonstrations and community meetings. The movement reflects a widely held unease over the process's effects on the climate and local environments.

Misha Wayford is one of those involved in the umbrella campaign organization Frack Off, which links a number of local protest groups throughout Britain.

"The government's ideological pursuit of fracking ignores the fact that this is a new and unprecedented industry in the UK. Fracking has real impacts on real places where real people and animals live," she said. "This is the reality of 'fast track fracking': cut corners, the erosion of existing regulations, and a broad brush stroke approach to public 'tick box' consultations. It is communities that are standing up to a deranged energy policy that pins its hopes on shale gas wells."

While only one site has been fracked in the UK so far, it's probably safe to assume, as the news spreads that fracking has now been OK'd to take place within English nature reserves, that community backlash is only set to increase.

Follow Ryan Fletcher on Twitter.

On Friday, thousands came to see the Pope atthe 9/11 Memorial. A predominantlyLatin-American crowd gathered north of 1 World Trade Center on Vesey Street across from the Goldman Sachsbuilding, and by 10 AM, the scrum was six people deepin anticipation of the Pope's 11:30 visit.I asked a cop where His Holiness was expected to arrive from, and he told me, "Just south through the Battery ParkTunnel," something that couldn't be seenfrom our vantage point. An otherwise five-minute walk south took about 20 minutes due to police blockades and closedstreets.

On Albany and West streets, a smaller, butstill sizable, group awaited the leader of the Catholic Church. Thecrowds recited psalms and rubbed rosaries.Many carried small flags bearing a picture of the Pope along with the message"I <3 NY," or else wore Pope-adorned T-shirts or buttons proclaiming "LoveIs Our Mission" and "I <3 Francis." Some cried as the motorcade began toemerge. Slowly, motorcycles came blaring out of the tunnel, followed by the Pope's Fiat. There he was, the man himself, hanging out the car window smiling and waving at his shriekingfans.

Jackson Krule is a digital photo editor at the New Yorker. Follow him on Instagram.

Concealed this dude's identity because for all we know he could be on the run from the cops after a massive crime spree. Photo via Craig Cloutier

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

As a man who lives in constant fear of walking over the Millennium Bridge while an ITV news camera covertly records my waistline in HD close up to use as stock footage for a news report about obesity"And in breaking news," James Mates is saying, his caterpillar eyebrows jousting at one another for supremacy of his forehead, as my stomach and slightly-too-tight T-shirt combo oscillates enormously behind him, "British men are fatter than ever, dying in their droves, the men, just falling over hugely in the streets, their gigantic carcasses making a wet sort of slapping sound on the ground where they expire"I am buoyed today by the news that, according to science, overweight people are generally perceived as being "too fat" to commit crimes. I am going to use this knowledge to shoplift Kit Kats, which I will then greedily consume. I am going to use my fatcloak of invisibility to lift the heart medicine I will one day inevitably need out from the hands of pharmacists without paying the prescription fee.

A study by South Bank University has found that just 10 percent of overweight people were regarded as being likely or capable of committing a crime, while we assume muscular people are far more likely to beat us up with baseball bats or grift us on the street or whatever.

Researchers came to this conclusion by showing participants two videos of a reconstructed violent robbery and then asking them to look at a police line-up of possible subjectsan overweight one, a muscular one, some skinny fuckers, a real grab bagnone of whom were the actual video criminal. The face of the criminal was disguised in the video and the faces of the potential suspects were all randomly assigned, so all of the vague inklings of suspicion were based almost exclusively on body type.

And hey, guess what: 51 percent of participants accused the muscular criminals of being the perp, 37 percent said those in the normal weight range were the criminals, and just 10 percent finger the fatty. Finally, being hench is bad. Take that, Roy from my gym! You can't "beat me in an arm wrestle" your way out of prison, can you! You can't "bench press a gigantic weight using just the raw power of your fantastic, oiled arms" while you're doing 8 to 10 for aggravated assault, can you! Actually, being fat is good! Consuming protein instead of doughnuts is bad!

Watch MUNCHIES' latest FUEL documentary about John Joseph, vegan ironman:

Senior criminology lecturer Dr. Julia Shaw reckons these overweight people are messing with the fine and upstanding name of UK justiceoverweight people just barging their huge torsos through the windows of expensive cars and driving off in them scot-free, overweight people laboriously climbing up some stairs to do some PayPal fraud, overweight people taking three tries to throw a brick through the window of an estate agents because the upper arm strength just isn't happening todayand it's just not on. "Stereotypes about body type may be getting in the way of justice," she said. "Our findings suggest that if you are an innocent suspect of a crime but happen to be muscular, you may be at a significant disadvantage.

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"Body type is often overlooked as a basis for discrimination, and has rarely been examined in legal contexts. The present research is evidence that the body type of a suspect can impact the partiality of eye-witness accounts."

Anyway, in short: next time you need to rob a bank or something, forget the balaclava and just stick a pillow up your shirt. Yell something about how difficult it is to find jeans that fit you on the high street while you sprint to the getaway car. Eat a couple of eclairs really quickly while firing a spray of bullets into the air. The police will never find you.

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Being raised in a fairly strict Muslim household made a lot of things more difficult during my teenage years. I wasn't allowed out with friends until I was 16, having girls over or any sort of relationship was a bit of a tabooyet all my friends were out having fun and getting up to typical teenage debauchery, and I felt a little bit left out.

Growing up Muslim wasn't the issue in itselfit was the restrictions on going out that often limited me to chatting to friends over MSN or during school, where I'd get incessantly jealous of what everyone did at the weekend. My family hardly ever went on holiday aside from the odd trip to London for a weekend, meaning that during school holidays I was left bored out of my mind.

My only real tedium killer during summers holed up inside was to get stuck into a video game. Other years that'd prove to be Team Fortress 2 or Counter-Strike: Source, but one holiday I decided to pick up Atlus's Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. I'd always had a soft spot for Japanese role-playing games, JRPGs, but this looked a little more off kilter and certainly different from the standard fantasy romps of the Tales of... titles I adored.

In Persona 4, you assume the role of an exchange student coming to an old, idyllic Japanese town named Inaba. Investigating multiple murders and getting to know both the setting and intricate systems gave the game a great structure, but what made me really fall in love with Persona 4 was its large number of characters.

From the outset, some of the cast might seem a little one dimensionalI remember hating Yosuke, but as time goes on you learn things about what makes him tick, you both eventually bond and have the standard teenage boy chatsabout girls, getting accustomed to city life, and dealing with universal themes like loss and grief. This is made even more prevalent with the main cast when you face their "shadows"physical manifestations of their repressed feelings about themselves. Through a mechanic called Social Links, you strengthen your own powers by spending time with friends, encouraging the player, you, to actively interact with the vast and varied array of NPCs.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's new film, 'Meet Mr. Cherry, Japan's Leading World Record Holder'

But it's not the overarching story or dramatic character arcs that made me attached to the cast. The little events and conversations you have with them, the antics that you got up to outside of the wider plot is what gave this game its heart, and it also gave me an insight into what I thought I was missing out on in real life. To me, going on a camping trip with Yosuke, Chie, Yukiko, and Kanji gave me some sort of fulfillment that at least made me think that I was having the social life I figured my schoolmates were. In retrospect, getting attached to video game characters in that way was probably unhealthy, yet I was obsessed by the game and posted way too many Facebook updates about it.

It didn't feel as if I was playing a game. In Persona 4 I had a schedule; I had to go to school, hang out with friends, study, maybe pop into the drama club. All the while I was also leading an investigation team and attempting to solve a murder. I settled into the role pretty comfortably, and I was getting drawn into the game even further. That's when it started to present its romance options to me. And for my teenage self, this brought back painful memories.

I wasn't a complete stranger to the elusive world of teenage romance, as at 13 I'd had a secret girlfriend, who none of my family knew about. It didn't last long; she kissed me once when I helped her with a paper round and then we broke up a week later. I was distraught. With Persona 4 came new opportunity, I thought that maybe once a game showed me the way it was done, I'd be able to open up to girls for real. I decided that I should hook up with Yukiko, a demure, traditional Japanese girl who worked at her family's hotel.

New on Motherboard: Damn, That's a Lot of Weed

I made sure I kept her in my party at all times, and take her into dungeonsyou know, the usual. As the relationship progressed through the game, I found myself more attached to the character and even kept her as my romance option in subsequent playthroughs. As I came closer to the more intense moments nearing the end of the game, that attachment grew and started to influence the way I would act in real life.

As the summer ended, the new school year began and, after playing Persona 4, I decided to try to socialize more and attempt to convince my parents to let me hang out with friends. To my surprise, it worked. The game gave me the courage to try something new, talk to new people, and help me schedule activities to keep me occupied, and not just holed up at home playing games all day. Persona 4 was the catalyst of my teenage rebellion: it showed me a healthier way of living and helped me come out of my shell. I am still attached to the game, and it seems to have also resonated with many others who also played it. It has since been followed up by fighting games, a Golden remake, two anime seasons, and a rhythm action dancing game.

So there's clearly something about Persona 4 that makes it special for a lot of people. Personally, it helped me face my own "shadow" and overcome my social obstacles. Eventually, I had an investigation team of my own, and it was all thanks to Persona 4. There's a fifth game proper scheduled for release in the summer of 2016. I doubt that I'll have the same connection with the cast of Persona 5 as I did its predecessor, but I'll never forget what the series has done for me.

Follow Sayem Ahmed on Twitter.

Noah at Friday's press conference. Photo by James Yeh

Tonight, eight days after The Daily Show was named Outstanding Variety Talk Series at the Primetime Emmy Awards, Trevor Noah will officially succeed Jon Stewart as its host. Stewart vacated his cable swivel chair in early August after a 16-year-run that included a decade of consecutive Emmy wins, giving Noah a heartfelt endorsement in parting. Still, during a Friday morning Q&A with five dozen reporters, Noah left no doubt that he understands why viewers may be dubious to tune in: The 31-year-old South African received the anchorship after just three appearances as a Daily Show correspondent.

"These are all Emmy winners sitting next to me, so I know they know what they're doing," said Noah, flanked by executive producers Jen Flanz, Tim Greenberg, Adam Lowitt, Steve Bodow, and Jill Katz. "I'm the wildcard, so they're the ones that should be afraid."

Related: The Many Tongues of Trevor Noah

Noah, a self-described "citizen of the world" and the first non-American to host the original wing of the The Daily Show franchise, said he will embrace his outsider status as he covers well-tread domestic traditions such as the very lengthy presidential primary process (so far, he's a Rand Paul fan, but executive producer Steve Bodow has warned him those feelings will soon subside). As if on cue, the assembled reporters got to see Noah react to the breaking reports that Speaker of the House John Boehner will resign from Congress next month. "But that's sadI liked him," Noah said when the tittering studio quieted down. "He always cried. He was in touch with his emotions."

When pressed for further response, Noah said he needed time to process the news. "This would have broken in the ," Wood, Jr., said, citing the prank phone calls he used to employ as a radio host, his sitcom-acting on the former TBS series Sullivan & Son, and writing for the road. "This is a horrible analogy but it's like in The Karate Kid where Daniel didn't think Mr. Miyagi was teaching him anything, and then he looked and went, 'Oh my Godeverything I was doing was preparing me for this.'"

Which sounds like the way Noah feels. Having grown up biracial in a nation divided by Apartheid, he'll bring plenty of firsthand insight to a television institution tasked with providing humor in the face of a relentless news cycle and civil unrest.

"I look at The Daily Show as a beautiful house that I have inherited," Noah explained. "It's a landmark. And so what I'll do is try and create it into the home of my dreams using my new family. As time goes on, that might mean breaking down a wall here, changing a color there, moving a counter over there. But you will know that there's a new person living in the house because you'll be complaining about the noise."

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The Daily Show with Trevor Noah premieres tonight at 11 PM on Comedy Central.

Screenshots courtesy the author

I've never been on a Tinder date. When I tell people this, this get all judgey, like I'm the one doing something wrong. But just when a Tinder conversation is taking off, I'll get a ridiculous one-liner full of gross sexual favours, often with the assumption that I'm down for them because I'm black. This is a hard thing to explain to people, telling them that the guys I match with are so thirsty for a black woman that they're shrivelling up and acting foolish; but the truth is, being a black woman on Tinder is no easy task.

A few months ago, I received a message from Leon*, a tall, dark (by European standards), and handsome man in Toronto. When I opened it, I received my first ridiculous encounter of the day: "I love black women. They are fire in bed."

Now, aside from the racist, generalized comment just made to me, I was irked that this fool swiped right on the assumption that I would swing from chandeliers and be sexing all night like I'm straight out of an Usher music video. What if I wasn't fire in bed, but a slow burning flame that didn't put out? When speaking to a friend about this encounter, she laughed at me. This interaction with menmostly whitesaying ridiculous racist and sexist things to black women has been a thing on Tinder for a long (probably the entire) time.

Life is tough enough dating as a black woman and Tinder ain't helping. Even our UK sisters are running through Tinder with their woes and warning other black women new to Tinder about the the cesspool of comments that they are about to dive into. However, I wasn't expecting these interactions on Tinder in my hometown of Toronto, especially with its cheesy unofficial motto, "Diversity is our strength."

Obviously that slogan is not working, because it wasn't hard to find some fed-up ladies who were tired of being asked to spread their Nutella on some guy's white Wonderbread.

Black women are bottom-shelf carnival prizes on Tinder

One of these women was Marissa, a University of Toronto student, who was browsing Tinder when she got a message from Nick*.

"I need my black belt," was his opening line. Marissa thought it was quirky, a little bit random, but nonetheless an interesting introduction.

"Haha do you? I should probably start with learning how to fight first," Marissa replied.

They were off to a beautiful Tinder start.

"No..." Max replied back. "A black belt is when you fuck a black chick."

It was one of many racially fuelled messages that Marissa has gotten on Tinder. "My first thought is always, 'Why must you bring my race into this? And who told you that you deserve the right to be with me since I'm such a prize?'" she said in an email.

If black women on Tinder are considered a "prize," it's a pretty shitty one.

In a 2009 study done by Christian Rudder on OkCupid data, black women were the least likely to receive messages from any racial group of men, but most likely to respond back. When Rudder revisited the study in 2014, not much had changed, but had gotten worse: black women were seen as the least attractive women with their numbers plummeting into the negatives. There are no comparable studies done for Tinder, but if black women are barely receiving messages on dating apps, it seems the ones they do get suck major racist ass.

There is also no dating app data on racial preferences in Toronto, but with the city's large population of black people8.4 percent of the totalone of the largest multicultural cities in the world and the fastest-growing demographic of mixed-race unions in Canada, it's strange to think that Toronto's black women would be dealing with racist messages.

White men on Tinder want a trap queen

Sheba Birhanu has had just about enough of men on Tinder. She lives in London, Ontario, and has taken a long hiatus from the app because she just can't even anymore. After this message from Lucas*, I don't blame her: "When ya waan breed mi gyal beliefs," Choma said. "The costs for men who ask these sorts of questions are not as high compared to asking these questions in person."

Even though the guys trolling you are using their real name and the photos of them flexing at the gym or wearing sunglasses indoors are actually of themselves, they can ask you stupid things ("How big is your ass?" "Have you ever dated a white guy?" "How do you comb your 'fro?") without fear of being tracked down or bitched out in public. Essentially, this anonymity on Tinder makes you the black expertand the black target.

In a place like Toronto, our diversity could actually be the issue. Minelle Mahtani, a Professor in the Department of Human Geography and the Program in Journalism at the University of Toronto Scarborough says, "Toronto's diversity only serves as a smokescreen to divert us from the larger issues of systemic racism and inequality in the city." From this, we can also assume that as a city of multiculturalism, a large influx of Toronto's residents may be from countries or cities where black peopleor interracial relationshipsare scant or taboo. It could also be very possible that Toronto's Caribbean and urban influences are making men thirsty for a video girl, dutty winer, or bad bitchwith no apologies.

It's unfair to blame Tinder for men's cowardice or ignorance when approaching black women on dating sites. Shit, it's hard enough to get dudes to act like normal people when they're talking to women in general on dating apps. Instead, these men need to get their shit together and stop acting like dating a black woman is the point of entry to manhood or G status. Stop telling us that you love dark chocolate. Stop asking us if we like white meat. Stop calling us Nubian queens. Stop asking us if our name is Big Booty so you can call us Big Booty. Stop asking if we only like big dicks. Stop trying to disclaim that you've never dated or matched with a black girl before. Stop asking us if we fucking like Drake.

Just stop, and try to understand that if you can't handle the chocolate like a gentleman, then stop trying to swirl.

*All Tinder guys' names have been changed.

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Photo via the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter/University of Arizona/JPL/NASA

Read: How Does a 28-Year-Old Californian Prepare Himself for Life (and Death) on Mars?

The Mars of popular imagination is primarily dry, dusty, and secretly inhabited by benevolent aliens who spawned mankindbut NASA reported Monday that they have discovered signs of salty, liquid water on the Red Planet's surface.

Scientists have known for years that Mars has water frozen in the ice caps at its poles, and the planet is covered in clues pointing to the fact that it once housed an oceanbut this is the first time anyone has found current evidence of sweet, wet, liquid-y, life-giving water on the planet.

The signs of water don't point toward gushing geysers or previously-undiscovered alien lakes, but NASA is convinced that long, dark stains of waterlogged salt streaking down Martian mountains are the result of brackish water trickling down the planet's surface in the summer months.

Scientists aren't sure how much water there is or where it is originating (the water may be coming from Mars's atmosphere, or it could be seeping to the surface from melting patches of underground ice) but there is water, by God, and water means lifeboth for potential alien species and for humans if we want to colonize.

NASA hasn't actually seen water yetjust these streaks that are the result of water that has since dried up. But we know it exists, so there will at least be a little bit of water for an intrepid astronaut to salvage once we accidentally leave them behind during the inevitable Mars mission.

Shooting yourself in the penis: just don't do it. Photo via Flickr user Robert Couse-Baker

Read: Canada's Tinder Men Are Annoying Black Women with Their Racist and Sexist Bullshit

A convicted felon from South Dakota who didn't want to own up to shooting himself in the dick has been arrested for falsely blaming the incident on "a black guy."

Donald Watson, 43, was taken to a hospital in Sioux Falls at around 1:30 p.m. Sept. 6 for a gunshot wound to his penis, according to media reports. When asked how the cringe-inducing injury came to be, Watson replied that he'd been shot by a black man who tried to rob him while he was taking out the trash.

After finding zero evidence of a shooting near Watson's garbage bins, the cops spoke to a neighbour who reported hearing anguished screams coming from inside Watson's home earlier in the night.

Police later found traces of bullets and an empty gun case inside the apartment. They questioned Watson again, at which point he 'fessed up to accidentally firing the weapon himself while trying to purchase a gun. As a convicted felonWatson is not legally allowed to own a firearm.

After undergoing surgery to repair his penis, Watson was grilled by authorities a third time. He said the gun went off when he put it in his pocket but refused to reveal the location of the firearm or the identity of its dealer.

He is now facing charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of a firearm by a drug offender, false report of a crime to law enforcement, and false report of information to law enforcement.

Watson is likely embarrassed about the mishap, but he's certainly not alone. In fact, shooting yourself in the penis is such A Thing, there's a special tourniquet designed to stop groin wounds from bleeding out.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Pablo Escobar was the mastermind of drug trafficking and narco terrorism in Colombia during the 1980s. He transformed the city of Medellin into the cocaine capital of the world, and pioneered a model that almost every major criminal organization would later adopt.

Countries around the globe are still grappling with the aftermath of Escobar's reign 20 years after his death, from the hired killers he trained as his army of underage hitmen to the remote cocaine labs and clandestine air strips in the jungles of Peru helping feed the world's hunger for coke.

In part one of our three-part documentary, we meet two DEA agents who spent years on the trail of the elusive king of cocaine and became the basis for Netflix's show, Narcos.