At 10 percent of Canada's land surface, BC's landmass is immense, containing a large stretch of temperate rain forest along its Pacific coast. Some of the wettest places in North America are within the provinceearning BC the nickname the "wet coast."

For the past decade, the province, including the rainforest, has been affected by the mild winters and drought-like conditions, which culminate in uncharacteristically long lasting fire seasons. This year has been the driest since 1893, when records started, which has lead to more and longer lasting wildfires. Experts are calling the province as a whole the canary in the coal mine.

During the peak wildfire season, hundreds of new fires were being reported every day, and the province struggled to get both the human and financial resources to keep up.

VICE heads to Oliver in the BC's interior to embed with fire crews and Boulder Creek in the coastal BC to look at how the wildfires have affected the fragile BC ecosystemeverything from air quality to the salmon migration have been touched. We talk to firefighters on the ground and in the air, trek through charred forests with environmental scientists, and discuss connections to the climate change with BC's climate experts and hear from activist David Suzuki who tells us "we don't even know enough to know if it's too late."

The Giant Bomb logo, as seen on the website

In July of 2013, Giant Bomb, the world's best video game website in this writer's opinion, seemed like it was doomed. Ryan Davis, the site's founding editor and an everlasting presence in the world of video game journalism, died suddenly in his sleep at the age of 34, leaving behind a devastated staff and a broken community.

"Many of you know that Ryan was recently married. In the face of this awfulness, many of us will at least always remember him as we last saw him: outrageously, uproariously happy, looking forward to his next adventure with the biggest grin his face could hold," wrote product manager Matthew Rorie in the obituary published to the site. "The consolation we can feel from that is minuscule compared to the hole that Ryan's absence will leave in our lives. That's not a hole that is possible to fill; it's just something that we'll just have to get used to walking around with, and that will not happen for a long, long time."

Giant Bomb is not like other video game websites. It was founded in 2008 by ex-Gamespot employees Jeff Gerstmann, Davis, Brad Shoemaker, and Vinny Caravella, after Gerstmann was controversially fired during a rupture between his review scores and Gamespot's marketing staff. In the years since the site's mastered a very distinct brand of personality-driven journalism. Giant Bomb was perhaps the first professional publication to narrate hours of a game at a time, bucking the traditional pre-release preview cycle long before the rise of PewDiePie and Twitch. Their marathon-length "Bombcast" became legendary, a consistent dose of both spot-on commentary and random asides. The serialized special features, endurance runs of Persona 4 and the Metal Gear series, are comfort food for late night lonely souls in front of computer monitors everywhere. At Giant Bomb's best it doesn't feel like a website. It's just you and your friends. Enjoying the joke, playing some video games.

Davis's death didn't just put a gap in Giant Bomb's editorial, it fundamentally changed the identity of the website. He was our host, our conduit; the giggling oddball force behind the site's delectably skewed point of view. He was loud, profane, and very, very happy. Personally I'd been listening to Davis talk about video games for my entire adult life. Suddenly I wasn't anymore.

A photo of Ryan Davis, via Giant Bomb

"I remember where I was exactly: I was riding a bus from Ontario to New York, and the news just devastated me, I was gutted," says Austin Walker, senior news editor at Giant Bomb, who was hired earlier this year. "I felt very weird about it. I didn't know Ryan, so why should I feel this personal loss? I've seen celebrities die before, and felt a twinge of sadness, but with Ryan Davis it was just a gut punch. When I got off the bus in New York I was crashing with some friends and I tried to convey why I was so messed up, and how strange it was that someone I had never met could affect me like this. It's not like I lost my favorite uncle."

Austin's story is similar to thousands of Giant Bomb readers and listeners. It speaks to the power of internet publishing and Davis's own warm-hearted ethos that his death could shake lives all over the world. This wasn't a news story, it wasn't a curiosity; it was our buddy. It's hard to think of a website that's fostered a more intimate connection between staff and community.

New on Motherboard: The UK Wants Gamers to Fix Its Cybersecurity

"It was a crazy time for us internally," says Gerstmann, Giant Bomb's editor-in-chief. "There's no blueprint for that, like, 'When do you come back to work?' Most other publications, even ones that I've been with, you'd never think about how a death would affect a readership. You wouldn't even assume that they'd know the bylines."

It seems weird to say, but mechanically speaking, Davis's death couldn't have come at a worse time. Senior news editor at the time, Patrick Klepek, who's no longer with the company, was relocating to Chicago. Senior editor Alex Navarro had just moved to New York, with longtime video producer Caravella joining him less than a year later. This left Giant Bomb, a site that's always relied on impeccable rapport, spread very thin.

A fairly old photo of Vinny Caravella, via Giant Bomb

"We had talked about siloing off content into different offices that had different personalities so we could put stuff up at the same time without necessarily competing. When I moved back to New York it was an opportunity to test that idea out," says Caravella, one of the core personalities of Giant Bomb. "Of course, when Ryan passed it was a shock for all of us. For that year... I don't want to say we went on autopilot, but we'd been doing this for so long that we took comfort in doing the podcasts, and quick looks, and all the stuff we knew. It was a sense of normalcy for us. It's almost like comfort food."

That desire for normalcy is echoed by Gerstmann. He and Davis had known each other since they were teenagers. They hung out together, played in bands together, long before they worked together.

"I wanted to get back to work," says Gerstmann. "I was the sort of thing where if I just sat there I would actually go insane. So I needed to keep things moving."

"We built something here that I'm proud of. There are moments after 20 years of death threats and forum wars where you lose sight, but I really enjoy doing what we do." Jeff Gerstmann

The year and change after Ryan Davis's death was marked by a lot of emptiness. Between all the moves, the mourning, and the new gap in editorial, there just wasn't much content going up on the site. It was sad, but you could never blame them. Classic Giant BombRyan, Vinny, Jeff, and Bradsimply could not exist anymore. For both the people on the inside and the outside, that requires an adjustment.

"I'm amazed every day that Giant Bomb still exists," says Caravella. "For us it feels like we just started. There's been so many hurdles, so much 'weirdness' for the lack of a better term. We're always talking about how we were able to make it through that period of time. When Ryan passed away a lot of us were wondering if this was the natural end of things, that our hand was being forced. I remember talking to Jeff at the end of that year, exhausted, like, 'I can't believe we made it.' That initial combination of people, Ryan, Jeff, Brad... there was just something there. Now we've got Dan , Austin, and Alex who are all great guys. But that initial core group was special."

Gerstmann has mentioned on his Tumblr that there were certain moments where he did consider quitting the site he built. But he always managed to find the light at the end of the tunnel.

"We built something here that I'm proud of, I like the people we've got, I like the community," says Gerstmann. "There are moments after 20 years of death threats and forum wars where you lose sight, but I really enjoy doing what we do."

Article continues after the video below

Watch VICE's five-part documentary on competitive gaming, eSports

A not entirely recent photo of Jeff Gertsmann, via Giant Bomb

By all accounts Giant Bomb is in a very good place right now. The hiring of Dan Ryckert and Austin Walker has brought an energy that the site needed after a year of unimaginable transition. Ryckert's enthusiasm is relentless. Walker's criticism is erudite and thoughtful. Together they're ensuring that Giant Bomb has a future.

"Hiring for us is almost like casting call," says Gerstmann. "We have to ask for headshots and what your on-camera work is like. We need someone to sit in with us and mesh together in a podcast. It's a tremendous challenge. We want someone who brings something new while also making sure that they're not out on an island and not fitting in. It's crazy how hard it is to hire for this thing."

Whether he deserves it or not, Ryckert will always be tied to the post-Ryan version of Giant Bomb. He was the site's first major hire after Davis's passing, inheriting his Senior Editor title. A brand new voice in creative, in the podcast, in what Giant Bomb is.

"I'm nostalgic, I miss Ryan dearly, and they were great times... But I wouldn't want to go back. I look to the future by building on the past." Vinny Caravella

"I wish I could've known Ryan better," says Ryckert. "Whenever I spoke with him he was just the nicest, funniest guy in the world, I never considered myself a replacement and it was never presented to me as such. I'm just the new guy. I'm pretty public about my issues with anxiety so doing these panels and being in front of camera is certainly nerve-racking, but I've really enjoyed getting my personality out there. I love pro wrestling, and I've always loved the idea of these big personalities, but I never could be a wrestler because I'm tiny and weak. When I first came to Giant Bomb I could finally be that. It was a release for me."

Walker is a longtime fan of Giant Bomb, and now he's a member of the team. He's responsible for creating the same exalted relationship between community and personality that he fell in love with all those years ago.

"I do have surreal moments where I'm leaving the office and saying, 'Have a good weekend Vinny' to a guy I used to watch everyday," he says. "I was very aware that I had to draw a specific line between presenting myself honestly and passionately and not trying too hard to fit in, or appearing to be trying too hard to fit in. Walking that line is important."

Related: Podcasts Aren't Dead, They're Just Getting Started

Giant Bomb will never be the site it was, but they've still moved on. They've patched the holes, they're making jokes, they're still recording that podcast every Tuesday. Ryan's death will always hang over the site. It's something you can never permanently escape, but time keeps moving.

"It's just life to me. I've seen companies go down the drain because they chase nostalgia, they're trying to recapture something stuck in a time and place," says Caravella. "I'm nostalgic, I miss Ryan dearly, and they were great times. But it's informed everything I've done since. Everything Ryan was able to pass on to me I hold onto very closely. I was so lucky to be around him, but I wouldn't want to go back. I look to the future by building on the past."

Giant Bomb mourned, they cried, they suffered, and they figured out if this was something they still wanted to do. It was. So they must live.

Follow Luke on Twitter.

In 2013, a cow wandered off a North Dakota man's farm. While preparing to search for the wayward animal, the man and his female companion decided to have some fun, so they hopped in a pickup truck with a kit that contained a small amount of meth and a pipe.

At the same time, local police were executing a search warrant on the man's homehe apparently was more than just a casual meth user, something the woman riding in his truck would soon find out. While she did cop to the small amount of meth on her, she had no idea that a coffee can at her feet contained a pound and a half of ice.

For her proximity to the container, the woman was charged as being part of a criminal conspiracy to produce and distribute meth. She faced life in state prison.

"The conspiracy charges, they will use as a threat to get people to comply and turn over people up the food chain," said Blair Nelson, the Minnesota attorney who took the woman's case and ultimately helped her dodge the conspiracy charge. (Nelson did not wish to name his client in order to protect her identity.) "The likelihood of being charged with a conspiracy is directly proportionate to how much information the government thinks you're able to give them."

Nelson was eventually able to convince the court his client had no knowledge of the meth in the coffee can. Having stared down life behind bars essentially for getting high and looking for a cow, she was grateful to settle for time served and three years probation.

"She was just a low-level user who happened to be in the vicinity," Nelson told VICE.

When many Americans think of drug conspiracies, images of Mexican Sinaloa cartel members buying off DEA agents might come to mind. But the reality is very different. At the federal level, mandatory minimums were applied to trafficking conspiracies at the height of the drug panic in 1988, and courts were soon crowded with suspects accused of playing some roleno matter how trivial, incidental or arbitraryin delivering drugs to the public. Many states have their own conspiracy laws, and even today, friends and acquaintances of actual traffickers can get sentenced to life in prison because of some vague connection to the legit players running the drug trade.

On VICE News: Indian Drug Plants Are Freaking Out the FDA

Eric Sterling, who served as legal counsel for the US House Committee on the Judiciary that drafted the federal conspiracy law, helpfully described the system at the time.

"If a defendant is simply the doorman at a crack house, he is liable for all the crack ever sold from that crack houseindeed, he is liable for all of the crack ever sold by the organization that runs the crack house," Sterling wrote for Frontline.

Or, in the case of the North Dakota womanwho was charged at the state levelshe is responsible for the can of meth she didn't know was sitting at her feet.

"Basing penalties on the weight of drugs that somebody's caught withI don't think anybody in the field thinks that makes any sense," said Harold Pollack, a University of Chicago professor who co-directs the school's crime lab. "The weight that people carry doesn't really have anything to do with where people rank in the (drug organization's) hierarchy."

In fact, those carrying large quantities of drugs are often far down the totem pole of a specific drug organizationmules who inevitably take the fall should they get caught trucking a semi trailer of weed into Chicago, for instance.

State and federal prosecutors handling conspiracy cases have a much lower threshold for proving guilt than they do for violent crimes, according to Pollack. Prosecutors have access to physical product that can be weighed and entered into a table; if you have five kilos or more of ready-to-snort coke, for instance, your first offense requires a sentence of between 20 years and life. That's according to the DEA, which also says that a second offense of having more than 500 grams of meth means an automatic life sentence and a fine of $20 million.

Watch the VICE HBO documentary on America's incarceration system, featuring President Barack Obama's first-ever visit to a federal prison:

Prosecutors charge users and dealers and makers and cooks with what's called a "minimum threshold." This gets them into federal court, where judges are required to hand down lengthy mandatory minimum sentences. When I worked as a reporter for the newspaper in my hometown of Peoria, Illinois, I watched dozens of meth heads and low-level cooks enter the gleaming federal courthouse in jumpsuits and shackles and leave with fresh life sentences to serve.

There were so many of them it wasn't even newsy anymore. With family and friends crying in disbelief that drugs had led to their loved ones going away forever, their lives were reduced to two-inch briefs in the paper.

"Violence-oriented drug enforcement is what a lot of communities are asking for, not arresting every person who's involved in the drug economy," added Pollack, the University of Chicago professor. "The thing that you really want to base sentencing on is, did this person do violence? Did this person negatively affect the community?"

Pollack and others have argued for this approach. Especially in Chicago, where violence should be the priority for law enforcementthe city is approaching 400 murders and more than 2,000 people shot this yearPollack said the efforts of police and prosecutors should be more focused on reducing the number of gunshot victims. Not increasing the prison population by picking up people for drugs.

"There's no real evidence that we're going to change the amount drugs that are consumed in America by going after these Mexican cartels," Pollack said, citing a popular target of federal and local law enforcement. (Chicago police again named Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman the city's "public enemy number one" when he escaped from prison in July.) "So instead of focusing on the Mexican cartel who has the largest market share, you go after the one that's killing the most members of Mexican law enforcement, or that's causing the most violence here."

Drug-related violence remains a subject of debate in Chicago, where it has been studied by more than a few of Pollack's colleagues at the University of Chicago, and among journalists who track violence.

In a 2013 expose on the Sinaloa cartel's operation in the city, Chicago Magazine pressed officials for evidence of a connection between the drug trade and street violence. Andrew Bryant of the Cook County state's attorney's office admitted to the magazine that the "connections between a cartel and street gangs" are "very loose."

Even during the crack booman era that former Chicago Police Commander Lorenzo Davis told me was responsible for a massive number of drug-related murdersresearchers "found that just 3 percent of the gang-motivated homicides were drug related," Chicago Magazine reported.

If picking up drug dealers large and small isn't having a significant effect on stemming street violence, what's the point?

Davis, who is now a whistleblower accusing his former department of covering up questionable police shootings, recalls many shootings and homicides being fueled by the drug trade. But according to the study cited by Chicago Magazine, his memory may be a bit off.

"The connection between street gangs, drugs, and homicides was weak," the authors wrote of their findings.

So if picking up drug dealers large and small isn't having a significant effect on stemming street violence, what's the point? According to Nelson, the Minnesota attorney who kept his client out of prison for the rest of her life over a meth conspiracy charge, the answer is simple: cash.

"Like any other racket, you follow the money," Nelson told me. "The money comes from law enforcement getting grants for doing particular work, and they are paid based upon their success in taking down a certain area of offenses." (The Drug Policy Institute notes that drug task force funding is frequently tied to arrests made and property seized.)

Not every police department has the ability to take down the weight man bringing truckloads of drugs into their community, let alone top dogs like El Chapo.

"They pad their statistics by filling their net with little fish," Nelson said of police.

And those little fish are filling the pond. In the first six years after being enacted in 1988, the percentage of federal inmates doing time for drug offenses increased by 300 percent, according to Eric Sterling's Frontline report. As of August, nearly half of the more than 190,000 inmates incarcerated in federal prison were there for drug offenseswhich of course doesn't take into account their counterparts in state, county, and city prisons and jails.

Even more frustratingly for Nelsonwho represents many of the poorest residents in his coverage area of northern Minnesota, including many Native Americansto be convicted of a drug conspiracy, you don't even have to necessarily move any drugs.

"All you need is the agreement to do something in furtherance of a criminal objective, you don't even need to accomplish it," Nelson said. "So the War on Drugs is funneling public money to police units that rely on it for their budgets.

"It's like putting a bounty on the American people," he added.

And it's a bounty we're all still paying for.

Follow Justin Glawe on Twitter.

The Royal Oak, Columbia Road

Britain's pubs are fucked. Why spend 12 on a round of pints when you can get 18 cans for the same price? Why spend your Thursdays jostling for a small wooden booth when you can just have your own sofa all to yourself, with Netflix on the computer instead of 4Music playing on mute on a wall-mounted TV? Why bother forming any sense of attachment to a place if a load of evil developer bastards are just going to roll in and bulldoze it without permission?

Well, because pubs have been centers of community for centuries. And because convening somewhere with even one solitary man propping himself up with a pint of Greene King is less depressing than drinking alone. Problem is, the UK's pubs are genuinely under threat, with 29 reportedly closing down every week. Occasionally these are reopened under new management, or they become another Spoons, but more often than not they're lost forever, redeveloped as luxury housing or office space.

Next month, Polish photographer Jan Klos opens his exhibition The Photographic Guide to the Pubs of East London at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. The series, which is made up of family portrait-style snaps of various pubs' employees, aims to celebrate the cultures and communities that form around local boozers. I recently caught up with him in his local pub for a chat.

VICE: Hi Jan. How was this project first spawned?
Jan Klos: When I first moved to London from the Midlands I suffered from an intense creative block. New to the city, the more I saw, the more I became frustrated with how London is sold to tourists. So much of the city's living and breathing history is often lost to only a handful of landmarks. Around the same time there was also a lot of buzz in the press over gentrification, particularly about pubs struggling against new developments that were causing them to lose their licenses and, in some cases, shut down. I decided I wanted to concentrate on celebrating these spaces and their social importance. Nowhere else in Europe has these homes away from home.

Why East London over any other inner city area or traditional rural pubs?
I think it's the most interesting and diverse area of London. I don't find the city particularly excitingI think it's a bit soulless. When you go near Liverpool Street, for example, you can visit a really nice pub, but it doesn't have much of a vibe because the crowd of businessmen and city workers around there kills it. On the other hand, throughout the project, it's actually been difficult to get the real old school pubs featured, because they don't seem to want the exposure.

The "old man boozers" don't seem to be too interested in attracting a new crowd; they have their loyal customers, who rarely change. The more trendy pubs "get" my project immediately, while the old boozers are slightly suspicious: "Why does this guy want us to pose for a photo?" It seems a bit odd to them, but I'm going to keep trying to get them on board. I'd like to add more old-school pubs to the series.

Stylistically, why did you choose the family portrait? Is this a dying ritual in itself?
I saw Family Life, a series by German photographer Thomas Struth, which is a collection of loosely put-together photographs of families he encountered on his travels. Because pubs are like second homes where you go to relax in a familiar setting with familiar faces, it kind of made sense for me to photograph these close-knit teams as families. Struth's project was done in the 1980s, when there was no digital around, so with film you would take more time and care to set up the shot. People don't really sit to have family portraits taken any more because they're constantly taking photos of each other on their camera phones, so it was nice to go through the ritual of gathering people together and posing them properly for a group portrait shot entirely on film.

How does the British pub compare to the pubs in Poland?
There isn't really such a thing as a pub in Poland. I haven't lived there for eight years now, but growing up in Krakow, it was mainly underground bars, and they didn't open until early evening, unlike the pubs in Britain, which are open from lunchtime. There was no distinctive smell in Poland's bars either, like the smell you get of old beer and cider in the pubs here. We don't even really sell ciderno one drinks it. My parents told me when they were younger there weren't many places to go to apart from student union bars. There are many more places now, but still nothing like a British pub.

READ ON MUNCHIES: Things Might Finally Be Looking Up for Britain's Pub Landlords

Do you think evolution goes hand in hand with destruction? Is it possible to innovate and consider tradition?
It's a tricky one. It can be difficult to evolve and not destroy what went before, but you can innovate and progress without losing too much. I think in the case of pubs there'll always be a need for them, and wherever the pub is there will be a community around it. There are some pubs that have reopened under new management that have done really well. Yes, they've been modernized and kitted out with new furniture, but they still welcome the old customers who have always used that pub. So I think you can innovate to keep up with the times but still be a traditional boozer. In the last ten to 20 years, things have changed so quickly. For example, you can now live your life in front of a box and a keyboard, and the recession has forced people to stay in and socialize at home. Obviously, the pubs struggled and had to make some changes to get people back in.

What's your stance on the contribution of artists, like yourself, to the gentrification of pubs with design and branding?
I can't really wake up in the mornings with a clear conscience and believe that I'm not a part of it. I think everyone is. We're talking about progressyou can't just stop it. I go to trendy places and I enjoy diversity, but public houses are still an important part of the balance in London. On one hand, it's great to see new microbreweries opening up with great interior design selling craft beer. Yet, on the other, this should not stand as a threat to the original pubs. As with fashion, something comes in, fades, and then comes back. However, I think with pubs it would be difficult for them to come back again once gone.

The Old Blue Last, Great Eastern Street

With some of the pubs featured having already shut down, some of your photos stand almost as obituaries. Do you think the meaning of the project is going to change over time?
Feeling like somewhat of an outsider, having only lived here eight years, I can instantly recognize something that is not in my blood or seems a little bit foreign to me. I think this sense has helped me recognize more strongly the huge importance of these establishments in British culture. For me, the project is about showing and underlining this importance. The future of pubs is a difficult subject to navigate, and people have lots of different opinions on it. This is why I keep calling it a "celebration." I'm not fighting, I'm not grieving; change is always happening. I just thought it would be nice to have a record.

Jan Klos's The Photographic Guide to the Pubs of East Londonis being exhibited at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club from October 8-14, from 12PM to 6PM daily.

The launch night is next Wednesday, October 7, from 6.30PM, and is free to attend.

See a few more photos from the series below

The Nelson's Head, Horatio Street (now closed)

Pub on the Park, Martello Street

The George Tavern, Commercial Street

A true patriot or lover of autumn. Via Flickr user Lars Plougmann

On the inside of my left forearm is a signature of a West LA battle rapper named Dumbfoundead. After seeing him live in Toronto and shooting the shit with him for a few minutes after the show, I asked him to sign his signature which he writes as "DUMB" in a graffiti-esque style for shorton the appendage I stretched out before him. After telling him I was going to have it tattooed, he was a little bit apprehensive but obliged anyway after I assured him I wouldn't regret it. The next day, I showed up to a local tattoo parlour with half-faded marker on my arm.

Today, it's real black ink, and I only kind of regret it. It doesn't look particularly bad and I still genuinely believe Dumbfoundead's music is excellent, but in some strange way, I can't help but look at it and think I jumped the gun a bit. I mean, I do have the word "dumb" forever etched into me. With that said, it's what got me into tattoos and I can say with confidence that I'm truly satisfied with all of my other pieces since.

This is not the case for everybody, however, and there are a lot of straight-up shit tattoos out there. In fact, I'd go as far as saying there are entire cities I'd avoid for getting tattoos done. Some places just shouldn't be touched. From a poorly-drawn pink octopus on the neck of a high school friend, to the words "KUSH KING" on the forearm of a passerby in Hamilton, garbageman tattoos exist all across Canada. Curious about what kind of crazy-ass stuff tattoo artists must have seen during their careers, I asked five of the best artists I know from across Canada about their experiences tattooing anything people ask them to for a living.

Editor's note: The following photos are these artists' good shit. Not surprisingly, artists don't want dumpsterfire-worthy tattoos to be shared with the world.

Robin Labreche - Dahlia Professional Piercing and Tattoo Studio - Montreal, QC

VICE: You specialize in black and grey realism, right? What's your favourite kind of piece to do on somebody?

Robin: I love tattooing women's faces. Portraiture, I mean. Not on women's faces. Something about the imagery is very beautiful by itself. I think what's more powerful to me is the reason people get them. Celebrities as inspirations are pretty popular, or even just for sentimentality is one way of looking at it. Another way is when people get stuff done for a relative or a friend who's in memory. It's an honour to work on that kind of idea. Not into gory stuff, though.

I'm guessing portraiture isn't a regular thing for most people. What do people generally come in to get? Anything trendy?
Oh yeah, lot's of people bring in the same reference images over and over again. Aside from basic stuff like infinity signs or one-word quoteswhich I think all artists get incessantlypeople are constantly bringing in pictures of the same sleeve that's been floating around social media for the past few weeks.

There's, like, five images that will blow up on Instagram or Tumblr Not exactly. I think it was a little neater than that. She was just trying to display her love for art in a strange way, I guess.

Saga Anderson - Boss Tattoos - Calgary, AB

If you had to pick something to tattooand I mean an image, not something to tattoo onwhat would it be?
Any kind of portraitthe human face is highly interesting to me and there's a lot you can do with it. I'm into any sort of face that can deliver emotion.

Is there anything you wouldn't tattoo, something totally off-limits?
I try not to place myself in a box like that but I have definitely become more self-aware when it comes to different cultural and societal meanings of tattoos. Like, some tattoos may be inherently offensive even though they have been appropriated into a tattooing norm. Native headdresses, for example, I'd be very wary of. As an artist, you have to be mindful of what images mean to other people.

Anything else?
Some are just a bad idea. A girl once asked me to tattoo a smiley face on the bottom of her foot because she was afraid of the pain and wanted to have a hidden tattoo before she decided on more. The bottom of the foot is incredibly painful and doesn't accurately represent the actual experience. I also think it's important for people to be sure of themselves before delving into any kind of permanency.

I do clown around though. My friends and I do a thing call the "sack challenge" that is pretty ridiculous.

The sack challenge?
Yeah, so it's basically like tag but we tattoo ballsacks on each other instead. The person who starts gets to choose what colour, the style in which the sack will be done, and then the person who gets the tattoo passes it onto the next person by carrying on the process. We're all tattooers, so we all get to play around with different types of ballsacks.

That's the best fucking thing I've heard all day.
Hopefully it blows up into a trend!

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Images of Pope Francis and Kim Davis via WikiCommons

Read: Kim Davis Is Still Dicking Around with Marriage Licenses, in Case You Were Wondering

In a better world, the anti-gay marriage Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis would have slipped mercifully from the public spotlight like Rachel Dolezal or that pop-punk loving teenager who tried to "protect" the Ferguson police. Instead, Davis has soldiered on, braving jail and mocking billboards and parody Twitter accounts in a holy quest to serve her God and uphold the sanctity of marriage.

The County Clerk's crusade has now reached new heights, after she apparently met with Pope Francis during his recent tour of the US.

The New York Times reports that Vatican officials confirmed the meeting, which took place at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, DC, last Thursday, according to Davis's lawyer. The lawyer also said that Pope Francis told Davis to "stay strong" and gifted her with some rosary beads.

"I put my hand out and he reached and he grabbed it, and I hugged him and he hugged me," Davis told ABC News. "And he said, 'Thank you for your courage.'"

Richard Glossip is slated to die at 3 PM Wednesday. Photo via Change.org

When Richard Glossip's execution was stayed on September 16, it was the third time the 52-year-old escaped lethal injection. On Monday, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals decided there shouldn't be a fourth: In a 3-2 decision, judges denied Glossip's requests for a new hearing and a further stay.

He is scheduled to die at 3 PM this afternoon barring a last-minute intervention by the US Supreme Court.

"We're disappointed by the decision," Don Knight, one of Glossip's attorneys, told VICE Tuesday. "But we are heartened by having two judges come along with us. Hopefully, testifies that he took meth two days prior to the murder, and admits that the effects lasted for days," Glossip's attorneys wrote. "Unprompted, he says the police give him lithium but he doesn't know why. Then six years later testifies that he didn't do any drugs after Christmas, 1996."

Last year, Sneed's daughter wrote Oklahoma parole officials indicating she believes he lied about Glossip being involved to avoid being executed himself.

But Judge David Lewis sees Sneed as credible, and in his majority ruling for the court on Monday, he wrote that Glossip "merely wants more time so he can develop evidence." He also argued that the new evidence presented to the court only "expands on theories raised on direct appeal and in the original application for post-conviction relief."

Glossip, who has always maintained his innocence, made international headlines two weeks ago when the court granted him a stay hours before he was set to die. Since then, the rhetorical combat between Glossip's team and Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater has heated up. Defense attorneys accuse Prater of intimidating new witnesses, while Prater has called Glossip's team and their witnesses liars.

Michael Scott is one of those witnesses. He served time with Sneed at the Joseph Harp Correctional Center, a medium security prison, and after watching an episode of Dr. Phil dedicated to the case, he reached out to Glossip's team and signed an affidavit stating that he heard Sneed brag about setting up Glossip.

"I specifically remember Justin on the top run with a couple of other inmates, fixing some food, and laughing with them about setting Richard Glossip up for a crime Richard didn't do," Scott says in the affidavit. "It was almost like Justin was bragging about what he had done to this other guyRichard Glossip. Justin was happy and proud of himself for selling Richard Glossip out."

As the Intercept reported, last week, Scott was arrested in Claremore, Oklahoma, for a probation violation stemming from a DUI and marijuana possession charge. He had failed to pay a fine and complete community service, but in court documents, he said he was taken to the Claremore Police Department, wherewhile still in handcuffsPrater and an investigator interrogated him about Glossip without letting him speak to a lawyer. Scott also alleged that he was questioned about his personal life, including prescription drugs his mother is taking, which Scott says they could not have known unless someone entered the home where he was arrested.

Prater did not return phone calls or reply to emails for this story. But he's previously accused Glossip's team of a "bullshit PR campaign" that was intended to "abolish the death penalty in this state and throughout the country."

Capital punishment abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean, who tried to spare Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and wrote the book Dead Man Walking, helped Glossip assemble his new legal team. The media frenzy surrounding the case seemed to peak on Thursday, when stories about Pope Francis's call for a "global abolition" to the death penalty while speaking to a joint meeting of Congress referenced Glossip, as well as two other inmates slated to die this week. (Virginia is planning to kill Alfredo Prieto on Thursday and Georgia executed Kelly Gissendaner early Wednesday morning.)

Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, was reminded of the Pontiff's words as she reacted to Glossip losing his latest bid for life.

"Pope Francis was very clear: The death penalty is inconsistent with our values," she told VICE. "We certainly have enough to care for the life of an individual and not go forward with a decision with so much doubt around it."

Those sentiments were echoed by the dissenting judges. Judge Carlene Smith wrote that she would grant a 60-day stay and allow for an evidentiary hearing. "While finality of judgment is important," she wrote, "the State has no interest in executing an actually innocent man." In her own dissent, Judge Arlene Johnson questioned the fairness of Glossip's trial.

Oklahoma law enforcement has its defenders. On Monday, the Oklahoman editorial board wrote that Glossip "not only failed it immediately tell police investigators he knew who killed Van Treese, but gave conflicting statements that impeded the investigation. In short, for a supposedly innocent man, Glossip did plenty to look guilty."

Of course, looking guilty and actually commissioning a hit are not the same thing. And even if you think Glossip should be put to death, one of the drugs Oklahoma will pump into his bodythe sedative Midazolamapparently doesn't result in pain-free deaths. An Oklahoma inmate executed with the drug in January said "My body is on fire." Clayton D. Lockett, another Oklahoma inmate killed with the drug in April 2014, regained consciousness during the provedure and seemed to be in immense pain. But the Supreme Court ruled in June that the drug is fair game after Glossip and other inmates tried to block it from being used on them, understandably terrified of its effects.

Whether the justices think Glossipwhose story they should remember from the Midazolam caseshould be exposed to the same risk of ugly death remains to be seen.

Follow Gavin Jenkins on Twitter.

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Alien: Isolation has been out for a year, but if you haven't played it yet and intend to, consider this a spoiler warning. Plot points will be examined.

I'm not concerned by gore or blood effects, or any of that kind of visual coarseness. What bothers me about video game violence is it's become something players don't even think about, a mere input, entered time and again, to produce an output. There are permutationsunlock a new item, gain XP, advance to the next levelbut you're always, in video games, killing to win.

The dynamic between player and game, most of the time, is an express exchange of violence for progress. And because killing is always bettering and improving of the player and their character, it's not something they have to worry about or consider. It's a blithe obligation, repeated out of an intrinsic desire to continueit's like drinking water to rehydrate.

Released in October 2014, Alien: Isolation treated violence differently. It's not like the largely critically celebrated Spec Ops: The Line, a didactic, so on-the-nose and hypocritical that it's impossible to take seriously. It doesn't rug-pull the player, rub their noses in what they do, and call them bad people. An official-canon tie-in with the film series, Alien: Isolation, by exacting huge penalties for any violence committed (you fire your gun and what you believe to be the single Alien on Sevastopol Station will hear and come and kill you) encourages players to think more about violence; to take responsibility for their actions, and not treat guns and killing indolently.

It's fitting that the first person killed on-screen by the Alien is the edgy Axel, one of the first station residents that the player, as Amanda Ripley, meets. During a scuffle with another survivor, Axel pulls his revolver and without hesitation kills the other guy. The next minute he's pulled into a vent by the Alien and killed himself, the implication being, right from the off, that if you mess around with guns and don't think about the violence you commit in this game, you won't get far.

"This was never going to be a game about trying to kill the Alien," explains Al Hope, Alien: Isolation's creative director. "It was only about surviving, and that does change the perspective of the player. I really wanted the player to be constantly evaluating the situation, running through a checklist of options down to the very basic, 'Should I stay or should I go?' If movement itself was a risk then everything else could be layered on top. It's a game about information and decisions. I wanted the player to be constantly reviewing the situation."

Article continues after the video below

Acid-for-blood Aliens might be the stuff of sci-fi fantasy, but what about vampires? Watch VICE's film on The Real 'True Blood.'

We're used to traveling nonchalantly through video games, and making decisionseven and especially ones about violenceoff the cuff. But you can't take anything lightly in Alien: Isolationsince you have to be careful of noise, visibility, and, not just the environment in front of you, but also the floors and the ceiling, even walking across a room feels like an enormous commitment. Everything you do in Alien: Isolation requires attention and thought. It's not a game markedly about violence, but whereas using a gun on someone in a game is normally a light decision, and killing is taken pretty much as read, when you pull a weapon in Alien: Isolation, you must consider the consequences.

The Alien itself plays a huge role in that. Meticulously reared by Hope and the team at British developers Creative Assembly, it's a constant threat, a policing presence on reckless video game behavior.

"We wanted the player to feel underpowered and unprepared, to never feel entirely safe or in control of the situation." Al Hope, Creative Assembly

"The Alien's behavior is at the core of the game," Hope continues. "We wanted the player to feel underpowered and unprepared, to never feel entirely safe or in control of the situation. For this to work we couldn't choreograph the Alien's behavior. If the player was able to tell what was going to happen, all tension would just evaporate. So we designed an Alien that would use senses to drive its behavior: It's constantly looking and listening for the player. In fact, one odd but practical step we took early on was to give the Alien a voice in order to telegraph its basic intentionswhilst playing the prototype, the player would hear in the distance 'I'm hunting you' or 'I can hear you' or 'I can see you' as their actions triggered the Alien's senses, all voiced by one of the A.I. programmers. It was creepy and funny, and also very useful.

"We made the Alien unpredictable, and that's where the tension really comes from. We found players were as scared when the Alien wasn't on the screen as when it was in their line of sightit doesn't need to be in the frame to continue to terrify. For me, this is the magic of Alien: Isolation. In every section of the game everybody starts and ends in the same place, but what happens in between is down to the players' actions. Their experience is created out of their own moment to moment decisions."

Related on Motherboard: These Could Be the First Things Aliens Hear from Earth

Alien: Isolation never segues into a treatise on video game violenceit doesn't reflect on, or directly address in terms of story and characters, the sometimes discussed problems with violence in games. But its various mechanical conceits, its central set-up of being constantly threatened by a sophisticated and frightening creature, that will likely attack if you use a gun, forces a different mental model, one where you must contemplate rather than simply perform violent acts.

One year on, after I and plenty of other writers have waxed lyrical about Alien: Isolation as a horror game, what I found most interestingand personally consider the game's enduring legacyis its subtle demurral against how video games treat killing. It isn't sanctimonious or stagy, and it doesn't retrogress, like Spec Ops and other games "about" violence, into player blaming, or post-modernism. Alien: Isolation, almost without you knowing, because you're so captivated by the images and the sounds and that bloody thing chasing you, pushes you to think about physical actionsand by extension violent onesin a way you probably never have in a video game before. You can't just do things. You can't just cruise. When games typically reduce even the most morally charged human behaviors to mere inputs, that's a vital distinction.

Follow Ed on Twitter.

Sex and the City, that much-maligned, much-beloved, HBO show about women, fashion, orgasms, dating, and New York City (not necessarily in that order), has been off the air for 11 years. If Carrie Bradshaw were a real person, she'd be 48. Even the second Sex and the City movie is five years old. The franchise is dead, and along with it its dreamlike world of late-90s Manhattan where people could smoke in restaurants and afford apartments big enough to house massive shoe collections by writing something like 500 words a week.

The show lives on, howeverin our hearts and minds, sure, but also in syndication, on HBO Go, and in the form of the Sex and the City Hotspots Tour, which promises to allow you to "Venture into the trendy neighborhood, MePa, where the girls frequent." Despite that grammar, and the made-up/hideous nickname for the Meatpacking District, the tour is so popular that when I tried to buy tickets (for about $50) on a recent Friday afternoon, both an 11 AM bus for that Sunday, and another one strictly for German speakers, had only already sold out.

On Broadly: Sex Hacks for People Who Can't Get Enough of Life Hacks

Why would Germans want to go on a Sex and the City tour? Why would anyone? Why would I? The short answer is that since I moved back to New York, my life has been decidedly lacking in female friendship. When I left the city, I was 22 and had been living with my best friend and getting into shenanigans that often bordered on the absurd. When I returned at 25, we moved back in together, but her boyfriend was there too, and our lifestyles had become so different that I mostly felt like a disruption to her newfound domesticity. I kept myself busy by hanging out with a group of friends that, perhaps alarmingly, consisted almost entirely of bros. For a while, the only interactions I was having outside of a sports bar revolved around making fun of Sex and the City with my friend at dinnertime. Over time, our watching it ironically turned into my watching it in earnest, alone. I couldn't articulate why I liked SATC, but maybe my fellow pilgrims on the tour would be able to explain it to me. At worst, I figured, I would at least be surrounded by estrogen.

On the 3 PM bus I ended up on, there were the expected number of middle-aged womenthe sort of people who say things like, "I am such a Samantha"but also a fair number of college girls, and even eight men (all husbands or boyfriends).

"Are you in the right place, gentlemen?" our perky tour guide teased. "This isn't a Sopranos tour."

Watch: Actress Bel Powley on 'Diary of a Teenage Girl'

That's thing thing about Sex and the City: It's a popular show, even a cultural touchstone for multiple generations of women, but it's not exactly regarded as a good show. Nor is it mentioned in the same breath as often-violent, male-centric prestige dramas like The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Game of Thrones, or Mad Men. Not that it aims at the same targets as those programsSATC has its rough edges and moments of drama, but it's always threatening to veer into farce or schmaltz or some awful combination of the two. It also hasn't aged well, with it's shocking lack of diversity and its awkward insistence on gender tropes, among other offenses. It's very difficult to imagine a show today getting away with calling people "trannies," like Samantha did throughout season three, for instance, or with Carrie talking about her fondness for "ghetto gold," like she did in one episode when referring to her nameplate necklace.

The bus was like a bachelorette party where the women didn't know each other, weren't allowed to drink alcohol, and were constantly being told to have fun.

But for all it's problems, I fell for Sex and the City, like Carrie sucked in by her inescapable, gravity-like attraction to Big. Admitting you like the show generally comes attached to a certain kind of shame; it's too basic or trashy or too obviously girlyif you like The Sopranos, no one will accuse you of idolizing mob hit men, but if you like SATC everyone will imagine you have a fondness for cosmos and overpriced shoes. Or that's what it feels like anyway.

Not that anyone on the tour was wearing designer dressesit was a sweatshirt-and-jeans crowd, a collection of mostly tourists who had no interest in living in Manhattan, let alone participating in the mostly-consequence-free sexcapades of Carrie and the gang. The bus was like a bachelorette party where the women didn't know each other, weren't allowed to drink alcohol, and were constantly being told to have fun.

As the bus took off from near Columbus Circle in downtown Manhattan, the tour guide played us a clip on the LCD screens that hung from the ceiling. In it, diagnosable nymphomaniac and PR professional Samantha Jones has just had sex with a much older gentleman. As he walks to the "little boy's room," she becomes repulsed.

This scene was evidently shown as part of an icebreaking technique. "Repeat after me," the guide instructed. "Saggy ass. Saggy ass. Saggy ass." We all went along with the chant, sounding like a somehow more demented version of the "one of us" scene in Freaks.

Once we were good and comfortable discussing fictional fucking, the comedienne went on to lay down the day's agenda. As the website promised, we would venture into MePa, "visit the site of Carrie and Big's wedding rehearsal dinner," and "scout the bar owned by Steve and Aidan."

That bar is where we'd all stop and pose with cosmos, which are to SATC as motorcycles are to Sons of Anarchy. "And I know the idea of a pink drink might not appeal to you men," the guide teased again. "But just think: There's a nice cold beer awaiting you at the end of this. That can be your mantra: Beer, beer, beer."

At this point in her reductive comedy routine, I couldn't help but wonder: What was I doing here? I only wear jeans, can barely make rent, and think the idea of boys and girls kissing is grosswhich is to say, I am not a Carrie, a Miranda, a Samantha, or a Charlotte. I can't even really argue too much with the criticisms that have described the SATC ladies as vapid, obsessed with men, and not particularly nice to one another.

Cosmos are served at Onieal's during a 2008 tour. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty

To hear the tour tell it, though, Sex and the City is mostly an awesome and fun show about glamorous ladies who live in New York City, the most glamorous city on the planet! As we rolled into the West Village, we were told to keep our eyes peeled for celebrities. Our host told us that Suri Cruise frequented a playground we passed, and the rest of the tour would be littered with TMZ arcana, like where Richard Gere liked to eat. I've never run into a famous person while living here, but almost on command, a wild A-lister appeared in the form of Jesse Eisenberg, glowering on a street corner and tuning out the world with his Apple earbuds.

And then there were the detours. First we stopped at a sex shop in the West Village, where we had the "opportunity" of buying a Rabbit vibrator at something like a $1 discount, but no one on the bus actually made a purchase, perhaps because they didn't want to buy a sex toy in front of strangers then carry it with them to a bar. Then we went to the building that served Carrie's stoop and were told we could take pictures from really far away so as to not harass the people who lived in the building. Next was Michael Kors, where we'd get a 10 percent discount if if we spent $300 during the ten-minute pit stop.

The New York of the Sex and the City Hotspots Tour is the New York of the showin this version of NYC, the Lower East Side is still cool, the outer boroughs are still verboten, and public transportation is still for the lower classes. (In one SATC episode, Carrie's financial circumstances are so reduced, she has to take the bus, which is treated as a humiliating sacrifice.)

"Who here has ever taken the subway?" the host asked, as a few people raised their hands. "Who here would never take the subway?" The rhetorical questions turned into a warning to the gentlemen on board about guarding their wallets if they ever ventured into the tunnels.

"Now, in Manhattan, it's not uncommon to pay $20, $25, or even $30 for a cocktail," the host said, blatantly lying now.

The hyperbole about the BIG, BAD, EXPENSIVE city continued as we approached Onieal's, a bar in Little Italy that served as the set for Steve and Aiden's business in the series. "Now, in Manhattan, it's not uncommon to pay $20, $25, or even $30 for a cocktail," the host said, blatantly lying now. "But we've managed to get a special deal with the people over at Onieal's so that you can order a cosmo for only $10."

Despite the propagandaI get $2.50 well drinks right in my neighborhood, thanksthe stop at Onieal's actually provided me a chance to do something I'd been wanting to do the entire time. This was a chance to ask other people and find out why they were there and what they had gotten out of it.

Sipping my overpriced cosmo, I met Sebastian and Alex, a couple from France who were living in Australia but had come all the way to New York to take the tour as part of their honeymoon, such is the depths of their love for the show. There was also a group of college girls from Alaska, one of whom claimed her favorite character was "Melinda." There was also the fabulously chill couple Gene and Jeannine, who were from Philadelphia and just adored tours, which they traveled all over the country to take on a regular basis. "It's just a great way to get to know a city," Jeannine told me.

Why did all these people like Sex and the City in the first place? That was one thing they couldn't tell meall I got were shrug-y answers like "It's funny" or "I don't know, it's just good!" SATC tends to inspire fans, not fanatics. It's designed mostly to be a disposable show that wears its cheesiness on its sleeve and dramatizes some fairly obvious relationship advice. There's little ambiguity, few literary allusions, and the violence is emotional rather than physical, setting it apart from the most critically-acclaimed programs on TV today. But for all that talk about how television shows are the "new novels" or whatever, it's nice to take a trip back to the days when a show could just be an excuse to hang out with a group of female friendssomething that TV is still fairly terrible at depicting, incidentally.

For all of Sex and the City's surface glitz, it's ultimately about how hard it is for women to acquire the simple security of a healthy relationship with a partner, to settle down and find the sort of friend-filled happiness that can anchor you. It may seem fun to live the carefree "MePa" existence, spending $50 on cocktails and $40,000 on shoes, and never taking the subway because you got rich writing stories about your friends' sexual encounters. But Carrie's world is like New York City for touristsa nice place to visit for a half-hour at a time, but you'd never, ever want to live there.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"Hangry" is aportmanteau used to describe people when they're so hungry that they becomeindiscriminately angry. I wonder if there's a term to describe 60,000 ofBritain's most dejected individuals enduring nicotine withdrawal en-mass? Cold-turkgeddon?

Hang on, Iknow, I think the word is "riot."

Eighty percent ofthe prison population smokes compared to 20 percent of the free population, butthe government has just announced that it's going to completely ban smoking inour prisons.

Having grownup in a Golden Virginia pea-souper with my parents, aunties, and uncles allsmoking a pack a day, part of my teenage rebellion was to never take a puff ona cigarette. When I went to prison I askednot to bunk up with smokers but these reasonable requests fell on deaf ears.

My firstcellmate was a homeless guy from Vauxhall. He'd sit there smoking fags when he had money, and tea leaveswrapped in bible pages when he didn't, recounting intense personal stories oflegendary heroin addicts he'd seen on the streets over the years in London.

My second cellmatewas a grumpy old Kentish bank robber who'd sit on the bottom of our bunk bedpuffing away, cheering on CrimewatchUK escapees while I would be wheezing onthe top deck.

Smoking issuch an integral part of the prison experience. A school friend told me that he had coated his lungs with tar simply to pass time while waitingfor the bus. Well, inmates do the same on a grand scalesitting there twiddlingtheir thumbs rolling up "burn" for years, waiting for the prison gates to clankopen.

In prison, cigarettesare time-wasting, they're social, they're a kind of bookend to each uneventfulchapter of the day. They're also the currency of choice for a world withoutcasheveryone knows you're balling when you have a whole shoebox of baccyunder your bed. You can trade a couple fags with a kitchen worker for a bit ofblack pepper, maybe a pouch of Amber Leaf for a lump of hash, heroin, orwhatever tickles your fancy. After all it's "easier to get drugs than a bar ofsoap" in some jails, according to the HM Inspectorate of Prisons.

In terms ofthe prison economy, the imminent smoking ban is going to be about as tumultuousas a Grexit. Top shotterswill be rushing to rid their shoebox stash and everyone will be clammering forthe new Drachma: cans of tuna.

It'sinteresting that smoking hasn't yet been banned behind bars. In a cold, legalfashion it aptly illustrates the situational overlap that prison isaworkplace for the prison officers but also a home to the 80,000-plus demi-citizensimprisoned.

The PrisonOfficers' Association (POA) has long been pushing for the 2007 Health Act to beextended to prisonsone study found that prison staff have the same levels ofcotinine in their bloodstream as bar staff pre-ban.

The prisonservice's operating bodythe National Offender Management Service (NOMS)on the other hand, has been persisting with adubious interpretation of the act. It's been bouncing off the padded walls ofthe Ministry of Justice, freaking outthat banning smoking will be the final straw for an under-resourced, angry, overcrowded, and overwrought prison population. That's not surprising, having seen a topsecurity Australian prison go up in smoke after their government tried asimilar move.

But now asingle case brought by convicted pedophile and rapist Paul Black has set theciggy sundown in motion. Paul Black having brought a successful case aboutpassive smoke inhalation, the Royal Court of Appeals has told the governmentthat the stubbing hour is nigh.

The prisonerpopulation hates pedophiles almost as much as they love cigarettesI imaginethere's a reward of a whole ton of Golden Virginia for the first lag to give himthrow a kettle of boiling water mixed with sugar in his facea face-meltingtreatment that gets reserved for people the inmate population regards aspariahs.

The author hanging out in Wandsworth prison

Someprisoners argue that smoking is a human right in a world where they have very few,and I see where they're coming from. The right to fair trial is being takenfrom many people because of cuts to legal aid;I was denied access to books with a political tangent so I'm not sure what thatsays about free thought; innocent until proven guilty is a supposed foundationof our society but it's categorically not the case any morefriends of minehave been on bail for four years with restrictions such as not being able toleave the country, not being able to contact friends and family, having electronicankle bracelet curfewsand then they've been found not guilty after all.

But slowlykilling yourself at the expense of the NHS while funding some of the worstmultinationals in the world as a sanctified human right? I'm not sure it's upthere with the rest of them.

Either way this whole fags-or-no-fags thing is a bit of a distractionthere are so many more pressing issues about our destructive prison system and how its population has doubled under the direction of various "tough on crime" Thatcher tribute acts between 2002 and 2012. However, the smoking problem does serve to be emblematic of the wider problems with our system.

Watch Young Reoffenders: VICE's documentary about a group of young people stuck in a revolving prison door

Imagine youhave the worst people in society (and a whole lot more who are perfectly OK andjust shouldn't be in prison) as a captive audience. Now which of the followingwould you do?:

A) Stuff themwith education, help them sort out their behavioral issues, and get thejunkies clean.

B) Cut theeducation departments, lock them up 23 hours a day with a television and verylittle contact with their families, and have a system that's so awash withdrugs that even clean people come out with a heroin habit.

We've currentlygot the latter and it's a disaster. The government needs to give people who goto prison an MOT and encouraging quitting smoking is definitely a part of this.Like bad behavior, heroin addiction, and lack of education, prisoners need abenevolent hand to get back on their good foot and prepare for reentry to the straightand narrow.

The combo ofpatches, pills and hypnotism all sounds a bit Stonehenge, but it's softwithdrawal that prisoners need or it's all going to go up in flames.

Follow Carl on Twitter.

Carl Catermole is the author of a free, funny, short and highly recommended guide for British prisons HMP: A Survival Guide. "Essentialreading for both expectant inmates and law-abiding citizens" Will Self

VICE interviewed Carl on the publication of both the first and second editions of the guide.

Vote for me and let's kill all the bears! Screenshot via YouTube.

Forget everything you thought you knew about outlandish election ads.

Jesse Rauthe former Calgary Transit bus driver who refused on religious grounds to maybe have to drive the "rainbow bus" during Pride Parade and was later fired for making "false and misleading comments during various media interviews"has officially announced his entry as the Christian Heritage Party candidate in the riding of Calgary Signal Hill via an eight-minute video uploaded by YouTube user "EvangelisminAction1."

The short filmscored with a pleasant royalty-free trackfeatures Rau hiking part of a mountain, apparently in pursuit of black bears. Rau's gun strap is placed underneath his upper backpack strap which perhaps makes it difficult to shoot a bear in a hurry. In the course of eight minutes, Rau, who sports a "SAVED" tattoo on his right forearm, mentions "freedom" 13 times, "regulations" (or "rules" or "red tape") another 13 times, uses two mixed metaphors ("defend to the teeth" and "regulated to the teeth"), and drops a single slippery slope argument ("Today it's with hunting, tomorrow it's with family farms: where's the end?")

Rau's big beef appears to be with the recent increase in price for hunting licenses in Alberta; in April, the cost to kill a white-tail deer was bumped up from $36.95 to $39.95, an eight percent spike that Rau fears will turn hunting into "something only elites can do, only those that have money can do." Shooting a black bear, the animal that Rau appears to fancy in the video, requires a license that costs $20.65. The candidate argues that "those who wish to limit our freedoms and regulate us extensively with firearms and the freedom to hunt don't wish to just stop there, it's going to come into your own private property, of course, and your ability to be self-sufficient and independent."

Rau notes in the video that he has friends who know people who have been mauled by grizzly bears "that haven't made the news" (in contrast to the hunter who was recently attacked near Jasper), perhaps serving as a subtle shot at the so-called Media Party. Later in the video, Rau petitions for the proliferation of sidearms to protect against the "thousands of grizzlies running around in Alberta alone." Interestingly, there are fewer than 700 grizzly bears in the province, and using a handgun against bears has previously been called "absolutely stupid" by the OPP officer who oversaw the gun control system in northwest Ontario.

The official design and placement guide for the anti-drug and anti-corruption patches

Back in July, students across Indonesia kickstarted a fresh academic year. But in Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi, new teachers, classmates, and subjects weren't the only things students had to get used to. Starting this semester, the municipal government ordered new uniforms for middle school (SMP) and high school (SMA) students with patches that say "I hate drugs" and "I hate corruption" emblazoned on the chest.

All public school students in Indonesia are required to wear the national uniform of white-collared short-sleeved button-ups. These new features take the uniforms to a new level of government-prescribed conformity.

Related: Watch Noisey's documentary about 'Sharia Vs. Punk in Indonesia'

The initiative marks another effort by Indonesian officials to combat corruption and drugs, seen by the public as the nation's top scourges. Requiring teenagers to proclaim their hatred for such vices could help, at least according to Makassar education officials.

"No, it's not a silly idea. I think it's a good idea to make the kids aware of how dangerous drugs and how dirty corruption are," said Siti Norma Mustamir, who teaches biology at SMA 2. "It's not a solution, but at least it's a reminder for them. By putting it on their uniform they can see the signs every day, every time they meet each other, so we're hoping it could be planted somewhere in their subconscious or even conscious mind that they hate drugs and corruption."

Indonesia, a socially conservative country of about 250 million, is no stranger to using its public school system to push moral agendas. School subjects such as civics teach ethics through the lens of nationalism and religion. This initiative, though, has drawn ridicule from students and graduates. As soon as news of the uniform proposal broke, students came out on the internet against it.

"In my opinion, that idea is very ridiculous. I'm maybe one of many on the internet who share the same opinion: that it is not at all a good idea," said one 12th grader at SMA 5.

"If the intention of the government is to rally generations against corruption or drugs, the logic has no connection to the patches. Instead, my reaction and other students' is: 'Sorry, Sir, our shirts look like wall collages,'" the science student said.

Alumni are also weighing in. Randy Rusdy, who graduated from SMA 17 Makassar, also finds the new uniforms ludicrous, though he has a more nuanced perspective.

"The important thing actually is sowing those values at home, at school, and in society. But maybe the problem is that schools are confused about what kinds of programs can be taught, so the quick way out is slogans like this," he said.

Indonesia ranks 107 out of 175 countries on corruption according to a report by NGO Transparency International. In its 2013 Global Corruption Barometer poll, Transparency International found that a majority of Indonesians reported that corruption had "increased a lot" in that past year. And it's a problem seen as rampant at all levels of government, with respondents describing the police (91 percent), legislature (89 percent), judiciary (86 percent), political parties (86 percent), and public officials and civil servants (79 percent) as corrupt.

Indonesia has strengthened efforts to curb graft since the downfall of former dictator Suharto in 1998, most notably through the establishment of the Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK) in 2002. But as a Gallup analysis found, "Decentralization may have resulted in smaller-scale corruption compared with the type so prevalent during the days of Suharto's rule, but the number of officials at the local level with their hands out likely results in higher rates of corruption and graft."

On drugs, Indonesia is waging an even more aggressive war, as April's executions of eight people over drug-related charges showed. Indonesia's 2009 Law on Narcotics stipulates extremely harsh penalties for selling, transporting, possessing, and using drugs, with punishments ranging from fines to the death penalty.

In the face of such perceived grave problems, Makassar officials are targeting Indonesia's next generation.

At SMA 5, Mahardika said the new slogans are compulsory for incoming tenth graders, with plans to phase it in for all students. But he's highly skeptical.

"It's useless and many students don't care to put it on," he said.

While he sympathizes with the government's intention of curbing drugs and corruption, he doubts the uniforms will be effective.

"There are other ways to deal with that issue that are much better," he said. "The uniform has absolutely no effect."

"Instead," he said, "students will just hate their uniforms."

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With legalvictories in Utah and Missouri, it's shaping up to bea not-entirely-terrible week for Planned Parenthooda rarity for the embattled reproductivehealth giant after months of bad headlines and political attacks. It'sparticularly remarkable considering that Tuesday was also the day that PlannedParenthood's president, Cecile Richards, was interrogated by House Republicans,and forced to answer questions like, "Do you defend thesale of baby body parts?"

Her testimonywas the culmination of a political battle that's been raging since July, when apro-life activist group released hidden camera videos thatpurportedly showed a high-ranking PlannedParenthood doctor speaking cavalierly about fetal tissue donations.Pro-life activistsand virtually the entire Republican Partysaw the footage asevidence that Planned Parenthood was harvesting fetal tissue for profit, whichis illegal. The story turned into a sort of right-wingKony 2012, and House Republicans announced a formalinvestigation into the women's health organization.

Bythe time Richards finally met face-to-face with her congressional tormentersTuesday, though, the rhetoric about chopped up "baby body parts," had mostly transformedinto a debate about Planned Parenthood's money. Since the videos were released,conservatives have renewed calls to end federal funding for the group, with acadre of House Republicans threatening to shut down the government if PlannedParenthood isn't cut off.

At the hearing on Tuesday, Republicans honedin on the money issue, demanding Richards account for her organization's"lavish" spending on parties, travel, and, pointedly, political fundraising,and also to explain her own six-figure salary. Planned Parenthood receivesroughly $450 million in federal funding, almost all of which comes from Medicaidreimbursements.

"The question before us is: Does thisorganizationdoes Planned Parenthood really need a federal subsidy?" asked JasonChaffetz, the Utah Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee. "What Idon't like, what I don't want to tolerate, what I don't want to become numb tois wasting those taxpayer dollars."

John Duncan of Tennessee was a littlemore aggressive. "Do you think it's right in a free country to forcepeople to contribute to your organization?" he demanded. "Becausethat's what you're doing."

Richardsresponded in kind: "The outrageous accusations leveledagainst Planned Parenthood based on heavily doctored videos are offensive andcategorically untrue," she told the committee. "I realize, though, that the facts have never gotten inthe way of these campaigns to block women from health care they need anddeserve."

After more than four hours of this, it was easy to forget that Republicanshaven't actually done anything tolimit Planned Parenthood's funding, or to rein in its alleged wrongdoing on thewhole fetal tissue thing. Bills to defund the organization have gone nowhere inCongress, and with the shutdown threat off thetable as of this week, the abortion debate has been relegated to talk-radiograndstanding and show votesthe subject of endless hearings and "specialsubcommittee investigations" that aren't likely to amount to anything.

Watch the VICE News documentary about abortion rights in Ireland:

At the state-level, too, Republican attempts to investigate anddefund Planned Parenthood Republicans have also faced setbacks. On Tuesday, a judge sided with Planned Parenthood in a suit against Utah Governor GaryHerbert, who had responded to the release of the notorious video footage bytrying to unilaterally prohibit state agencies from paying the group's Utahbranch. A judge ruled that Herbert can't actually do that sort of thing, andgranted what amounts to a temporary restraining order that prevents the state from withholding funds, atleast until a more permanent measure is sorted out.

A federal judge in Arkansas issued a similar ruling earlier this month, ordering the state to keep payingPlanned Parenthood after the Republican governor abruptly terminated thegroup's Medicaid contract.

Planned Parenthood also notched a small legal victory this week inMissouri, where state officials had been conducting an investigation intothe fetal tissue allegations. The state Attorney General Chris Kosterannounced Monday that the probe, which had targeted Planned Parenthood'ssole Missouri location, did not find any evidence of wrongdoing, and that he won't be filing criminal charges against anyone at the clinic.

In a 47-page report, Koster and his staff detailed ameticulous investigation that included going over 3,500 pages of documents and interviewswith multiple medical and lab employees. In the end, though, theycame up with nothing. "As a result of our investigation, the Office of theMissouri Attorney General has found no evidence that PPSLR has engaged inunlawful disposal of fetal organs or tissue," the report reads.

Obviously, these victories aren't definitive, nor are they likelyto be the last battles that Planned Parenthood wages to protect its fundingandin many cases, its existencefrom Republican state legislatures. Lawmakers inboth Ohio and Wisconsin have introduced bills to strip Planned Parenthood ofboth state and local funding, both of which are expected to pass.

At this point, though, it looks like most of these laws will havea hard time standing up in court. The House voted Tuesday night to pass a bill that would make it easier for states todefund women's health groups, by amending a linein the SocialSecurity Act to remove the word "or," but like most bills in the House,this one is not expected to go anywhere.

In the meantime, Planned Parenthood remains stubbornly popular. Anew NBC/NBC/Wall Street Journal poll releasedthis week found that 47 percent of Americans feel positively about theorganization, and that a full 61 percent oppose efforts to cut funding for theorganization.

And after hours of mansplaining and interrupting Richards onTuesday, House Republicans set themselves up for another round of accusationsthat they don't like women. Naturally, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, didn't waste any time pointing this out:

"The condescending tone andconstant interruptions of Ms. Richards from Republicans on the panel weresimply inappropriate and unacceptable for anyone testifying before Congress,"she wrote in a statement following Richards testimony.

"Considering their poorunderstanding of this issue and what Planned Parenthood means to millions offamilies, House Republicans and their field of presidential candidates ought tostart listening to women, including Ms. Richards, instead of speaking overthem."

Follow Mike PearlonTwitter.

Video courtesy Daily VICE

Peaches, the unapologetically crass, gender-bending electro-rock queen from Toronto, is best known for spouting lyrics about dicks in the air and impeached bushes. But, despite having not lived in Canada for 15 years (she moved to Berlin in the early 2000s), she was all politics in a recent interview with Daily VICE while in Toronto promoting her new album Rub.

"Why the fuck aren't people talking about Harper and his inane system of letting refugees into the country?" she asked, pointing out that in a globalized world, we should be more willing to help out when faced with situations like the Syrian migrant crisis.

"Fuck nationality," she told Daily VICE. "It has nothing to do with protection of your own country. This is a dire situation."

Draped in an oversized shaggy white jacket, her fingers littered with gold rings that said things like "Hangry" and "Hotdog," the artist expressed an intense disdain for the Conservative government.

"Why the fuck are people talking about Harper at all?" she said, "why don't they like, crush him?" But she admitted even Harper's defeat wouldn't change her opinion that "political systems are all patriarchal fucked systems anyway."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Jeff Wilcox

Read: What's the Safest Way to Get Home When You're Sloshed?

In 1983, according to government data, one in every 80 drivers was arrested for drunk driving in the United States. Today, the number of drivers with alcohol in their bloodstream has declined substantially, thanks in large part to advocacy campaigns, transportation alternatives, stronger state laws, and some truly excellent PSAs.

But while incidents of drunk driving are decreasing, driving under the influence of drugs is becoming more common, according to a report released Wednesday by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA). Of drivers who are fatally injured in crashes, 40 percent of them test positive for at least one druga 29 percent increase since 2005. In a recent roadside survey mentioned in the GHSA report, 22 percent of all drivers tested positive for some kind of drug, most commonly marijuana.

"Drugged driving" is harder to police than drunk driving, since there are hundreds of types of drugs a driver could be tested for, compared to the simple breathalyzer test used to detect alcohol. The crash risk also varies by the type of drug, which can make it harder to create cohesive laws to prevent drugged driving.

The report points to the increase in prescription painkiller use and the legalization of marijuana as factors contributing to the rise of drug-impaired driving. While the public generally regards drunk driving as unacceptable, people tend to be more forgiving of driving while highto the point where some people even insist that they drive better when they're stoned. (Although studies have proven otherwise).

The association recommends bolstering laws against drugged driving, at both the national and the state level, and conducting more research on drug-impaired driving. Highway safety expert Jim Hedlund, who authored the report, noted that, "while this report summarizes the research and data available, it also highlights how much remains unknown."

Cable news is a frenetically paced beast in which seemingly random people get invited to speak on topics just because the network needs talking heads to comment on stuff. Often, these people are not properly vetted, which can lead to awkward exchanges between the hapless host and their guest. (To wit: I was once invited on TMZ's TV show to talk about black metal, despite knowing next to nothing on the subject, and ended up getting in an argument with host Harvey Levin just to fill dead air space.)

And even when guests are totally qualified to speak on a subject, there's really no accounting for what someone will do or say on live TV. Maybe they're participating in a segment on a subject that they find boring, or they're faced with a question they deem beneath them. Or they could just be total jokers and want to mess around on national television. This can lead to stuff like Andrew WK making a grotesque face on Fox News while talking about infidelity, 2 Chainz arguing with Nancy Grace about weed, or Cam'ron appearing on 60 Minutes to talk to Anderson Cooper about the "catchy hip-hop slogan 'Stop Snitchin'." (Or Cam'ron on Bill O'Reilly, which is 12 minutes of general amazingness).

That's the long way of explaining Jon Hendren's weird appearance on HLN's The Daily Share, where the Twitter jokester who goes by the handle @fart switched gears halfway through a conversation with Yasmin Vossoughian about Edward Snowden and began talking about Edward Scissorhands.

What makes this great is that for whatever reason the host doesn't acknowledge that Hendren is acting odd at all, even though he's saying stuff like, "To cast him out, making him invalid to society, simply because he had scissors for hands... people didn't get scared until he started sculpting shrubs into dinosaur shapes and whatnot," and "Edward Scissorhands is a complete hero to me."

I caught up with Hendren via email to get a behind-the-scenes report of his time on HLN, as well as discuss the moral relativity of the actions of Edwards Snowden and Scissorhands.

VICE: How did you end up on HLN?
Jon Hendren: No clue. I got an email last night asking me to Skype in and comment. I said yes immediately.

Did you come into the interview ready to talk about Edward Scissorhands or was that a "game-time decision"?
That idea came up pretty quickly after I got the email. I tend to get the two confused anyway.

One of the funniest parts of the clip is that the host doesn't seem to understand what's going on, she just sort of steamrolls over you as if you were still talking about Snowden. Do you think she realized what you were doing?
That's what I don't get. I expected to be cut off as soon as I mentioned scissors for hands or whatever, but she kept talking to me? I couldn't see anything on my end of the Skype call so I had no clue how it looked or what her reaction would be, so I just kept talking.

Edward Snowden helped expose that the government was spying on its citizens, Edward Scissorhands made an ice sculpture of an angel that looked like a girl he had a crush on. Who is the bigger hero and why?
This question is silly. Scissorhands.

It's arguable that though he was acting out of an inherent sense of patriotism, Snowden's leaks inadvertently endangered American citizens' lives, while Edward Scissorhands accidentally cut the hand of the woman he loved while making that ice sculpture. Who is the bigger monster and why?
Morality is relative. We all have to make those determinations for ourselves. Edward Scissorhands's heart was a cookie or something, but in the end, he was perhaps more human than us all.

Would you care to speak a bit more about the government's persecution of Edward Scissorhands?
Let him out of that castle, guys. C'mon.

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Marie Levin cannot wait to give her older brother a hug and a high-five for the first time in more than 31 years. Roughly three decades ago, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) deemed Ronnie Dewberry (who goes by the name Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa) to be a member of the Black Guerrilla Family gang and put him in solitary confinement in one of the state's security housing units, or SHUs. Since then, Levin has visited her brother in the Corcoran, Tehachapi, and Pelican Bay prisons, always speaking to him through a thick glass window.

"He's been behind the window for a long time," shesays.

At the end of every visit, Levin watches herbrother put in shackles to be led back to his cell, where he will spend atleast 22 and a half hours alone each day. "Iremember the first time I saw him behind the glass, when I saw him with chainsaround his waist, his legs, and his ankles," Levin recalls. "It was hard for meto watch."

So Levin and Jamaa went to work. The brother and sister have been atthe forefront of the fight against solitary confinement that is gainingtraction across the country. Levin is an activist with the group California Families Against Solitary Confinement, and Jamaa was one of the named plaintiffs in Ashker v Brown, the successful class-action lawsuit poised to reduce the use ofsolitary in the state.

Jamaa is slated to come out from "behind the window" soon,Levin says. She expects her brother to be transferred from the Tehachapi SHU tothe general population at Salinas Valley State Prison, not far from her East Oaklandhome.

The profound changes taking place for Levin andDewberry are not exceptional; times are changing when it comes to solitary confinement in America. Though some advocates have been working for decades to reduce the brutal practice, a series of events thispast summer have brought the urgency of the matter into sharp relief.

In June, 22-year-old Kalief Browder, who spent three years without trial at New York City's Rikers Island jailand about two of those years insolitarycommitted suicide at his home in the Bronx. Later that month, SupremeCourt Justice Anthony Kennedy lamented the "human toll" of solitary confinement,and referred specifically to Browder in an official opinion. In a July speech to theNAACP conference, President Obama announced that he had requested aDepartment of Justice (DOJ) investigation into the overuse of solitary.

In August, the Association of StateCorrectional Administratorsnot exactly a soft-on-crime organizationreleased areport in conjunction with Yale LawSchool acknowledging that "prolonged isolation of individuals in jails and prisonsis a grave problem drawing national attention and concern." Even the administration at Rikers Island claims to be on board. A spokesperson there recentlydescribed the New York City jail as "leading the nation in safely reducingsolitary confinement," pointing out that "punitive segregation" for 16- and 17-year-oldswas ended in December of last year and that there are plans to further reducethe segregated population are on the horizon.

"I think we've reached a tipping point in theUnited States in our criminal justice system broadly, but also specificallyaround the practice of solitary confinement," says Amy Fettig, Senior StaffCounsel for the ACLU's National Prison Project and director of its StopSolitary campaign. "We have prisoners' rights advocates, ex-prisoners, familiesof prisoners, civil rights advocates, judges, lawyers, and correctionsofficials themselves saying we overuse and abuse solitary confinement and wehave to do things differently. Rarely in American life do we see so manydisparate actors coming together and reaching the same conclusion."

Now that solitary is on the national radar,systemic problems with "the hole" are being laid bare for all to see. Here's a breakdown of how it went completely off the rails in the first place.

Solitaryconfinement meets most definitions of torture

States don't use the term"solitary confinement" (the Rikers spokesperson quoted above is a surprisingdeparture). The long list of official terms"administrativesegregation," "security housing," "close management," to name just a fewvaries bystate and situation. Semantics aside, this is what solitary typically looks like: For 22 to 24hours a day, inmates are isolated in six-foot-by-nine-foot cells that may not havewindows, where the lights often never turn off, and where the din of voices and TV rarely quiets. Many cells have solid doors with asmall opening for meal trays rather than bars. For those fortunate enough tohave family able to visit, contact is prohibited. Like Marie Levin's conversationswith her brother, visits are generally conducted through thick plexiglass windows, often using a telephone.

Juan E. Mndez, UN Special Rapporteur ontorture, has stated that detention in solitaryover 15 days should be strictly prohibited. As of 2014, Amnesty International USAreported that the average stay insolitary confinement is 8.2 years. "Considering the severe mental pain orsuffering solitary confinement may cause, it can amount to torture or cruel,inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," Mndez told the UN GeneralAssembly in 2011.

Among the many experts who have spoken outagainst solitary is social psychologist Craig Haney, who testified last year before theCalifornia State Senate that long-term isolation results in "social death."

"These are people consigned to living insuspended animation, not really part of this world, not really removed from it,and not really part of any other world that is tangibly and fully human," hetold lawmakers.

TerryKupers, a forensic psychiatrist and prison mental health expert, remarked in a report on solitary conditions at Eastern MississippiCorrectional Facility last year, "It has been known for as long as solitary confinementhas been practiced that human beings suffer a great deal of pain and mental deteriorationwhen they remain in solitary confinement for a significant length of time." Hecited In re Medley, an 1890 US Supreme Court case finding that prisoners in prolongedisolation who did not commit suicide were generally unable to function insociety upon release.

Are there 80,000 men and women in state and federal prison who pose such a risk to the safety of others that they must be segregated from the general population?

Solitary confinement is not reserved for the "worst of the worst"

Although data on solitary confinement is limited, current estimates put thenumber of US prisoners in official administrative segregation between 80,000 and 100,000.That includes only federal and state prisoners, and doesn't account use of solitary in local jails,immigration detention centers,or juvenile facilities.

Are there 80,000 men and women in state andfederal prison who pose such a risk to the safety of others that they must besegregated from the general population? That depends how you define "risk." TyrrellMuhammad, who served close to 27 years in the New York State prison system, claimsthat he received several months in "the box" at different times throughout hissentence for, among other offenses, possessing more than his allotted number ofsocks, an extra blanket, more than ten books, and refusing a haircut due to hisRastafarian religious beliefs. The New York State Department of Correctionsdisputes Muhammad's version of events, but the ACLU's Amy Fettig says thatMuhammad's claims are consistent with those she's heard fromother New York prisoners. As Fettig put it, "I have frequently heard from prisoners that theofficial version of events in prison paperwork is not actually what happens onthe ground. And prisoners have virtually no control over what staff documentor fail to document."

Other examples of sentences in solitary forbehavior one would struggle to define as dangerous: A South Carolina inmate got37.5 years for posting on Facebook. PiperKerman, author of Orange is the New Blackand a former federal prison inmate, testified before the Senate JudiciaryCommittee that she saw inmates sent to solitary for having extra underwear,having "small amounts of cash," or simply because a bed wasn't available forthem in the general population.

Illustrations by Valentine Gallardo

Solitaryconfinement actually makes us less safe

A 2014 paper by legal scholar Shira E. Gordon found that not onlyhas solitary confinement not served its purpose in protecting guards and otherinmates from violent prisoners, but there is evidence that solitary confinementmay actually increase prison violence. And an increase in prison violence "comeshome with prisoners after they are released and with corrections officers atthe end of each day's shift. When people live and work in facilities that areunsafe, unhealthy, unproductive, or inhumane, they carry the effects home withthem," according to the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons.

What do those effects look like? In 2013, Tom Clements, executivedirector of Colorado prisonsand, in a bit of tragic irony, himself an advocate for reform ofsolitary confinementwas shot and killed in front of his home by a recent parolee who hadspent years in solitary. That same year, a man named Nikko Jenkins, who spent two years in solitary in Nebraska prisons andwas released directly from segregation without any "step-down" measures, murdered four people soon after his release.

Those events were spectacular and received plenty ofmedia attention. Less visible is the toll on corrections officials' mental health taken by working day in and day out in a culture of physicaland emotional violence. A Wayne State University study from 1997 found that the suiciderate for corrections officers is 39 percent higher than in any other profession.Recent numbers indicate that little has changed: a 2013 study from the US Department of Justice Office ofJustice Programs Diagnostic Center found a greatly elevated risk of suicide forcorrections officers, and noted their average life expectancy of less than 59 years old.A New Jersey State Police Task Force study in 2009 found that corrections officers' suicide ratewas twice as high as that of the general population.

Watch the VICE HBO documentary on America's incarceration system, featuring President Barack Obama's first-ever visit to a federal prison:

Solitary confinement punishesinmates' family members and the mentally ill

About one-third of solitary inmates suffer from mental illness. Inhis Eastern Mississippi Correctional Facility report, Terry Kupers noted that "isolated confinement is likely to causepsychiatric symptoms such as severe anxiety, depression and aggression inrelatively healthy prisoners, and cause psychotic breakdowns, severe affectivedisorders and suicide crises in prisoners who have histories of serious mentalillness or are prone to mental illness."

NikkoAlbanese is a 23-year-old inmate at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford,Florida. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age ten, according to his mother,Heather Chapman. When he turned 18, Albanese's Social Security disability checksstopped coming, and he was unable to complete his own paperwork to apply as an adult (Chapman handled the paperwork when Albanese was a kid). Themedications for his bipolar condition were expensive. Unable to afford themwithout his disability checks, Albanese began self-medicating with Oxycodoneanexpensive habit in its own right. In 2011, when Albanese was 19, he held up aPizza Hut in Boca Raton with a gun and got a sentence of ten years inprison.

Right away, Albanese begandeteriorating. Chapman said he's been in various forms of solitary for nearly the entireduration of his time in prison, and "they removed the visitsimmediately." After a while, Chapman stopped receiving letters fromAlbanese, and she "knew that things were notgoing well."

Afterenlisting the help of the National Alliance on Mental Illness' Ron Honberg and makingrepeated calls and written pleas to politicians, Chapman received a call fromAlbanese's doctor: He was in a "catatonic state, laying in some prisoncrisis unit being fed medicine through an IV, and they wouldn't tell meanything until Ron called them," she recalled.

"The state of Florida is not just punishing Nikko," Chapman said. "They're killing my family. They're killing my son. They're killing me."

A spokesman for the Florida Department ofCorrections wouldn't comment on Albanese's medical state, citing federal andstate privacy laws, but did say in an email that Albanese's currentstatus is "Close Management II," the medium level of restrictive cell housing. The spokesman added, "All inmates, including those housed in confinement areas,have appropriate access to necessary mental health care. A comprehensiveand systematic course of action for identifying inmates who are suffering frommental disorder is maintained."

In early2015, Chapman was allowed to resume weekly visits to her son, and she says hehas shown huge improvements since their visits began. Before he saw his mother,Albanese hadn't spoken in two years and had lost 40 pounds. Now, she says, heis functional enough to make eye contact with her and can converse with othermen in cells near him. But she can't always afford the $250 in gas and tollsthe seven-hour trip costs her. She has two younger children, both girls, whoneed her help getting to school, and leaving them to fend for themselves issometimes untenable.

"Thestate of Florida is not just punishing Nikko," Chapman said. "They're killingmy family. They're killing my son. They're killing me. And they're reallyhurting my daughters. And when he does get out of prison, then what? The damageis done. You can't undo this type of torture."

Follow Lauren Lee White on Twitter.

Illustration by Sam Taylor

Vladimir Putin has been making some big moves in Syria this week. On Wednesday, the Russian president ordered the first round of military airstrikes on Syrian targetsan aggressive escalation of the five-year-long conflict that has raised questions about who exactly Putin is targeting, and what he hopes to gain from the deployment.

The airstrikes come just two days after Putin's speech to the United Nations General Assembly, in which he told the world he wanted to the international community to team up against ISIS in a group "similar to the anti-Hitler coalition."On Sunday, US officials were surprised to learn that Putin had orchestrated an agreement with Iraq, Iran, and Syria to share military intelligence vis a vis the Islamic State

Publicly, Putin is taking a hard-line posture against the Islamic State, declaring that the Russian intervention is about defeating evil "criminals" who have "tasted blood." But Putin is also a big fan of Syrian president and probable war criminal Bashar al-Assad. And according to US Defense Secretary Ash Carter, the Russian warplanes that flew into Syrian airspace today dropped bombs in "areas where there were probably not could be an influencer in the Middle East again.

So what's the number one most important thing Russia wants to achieve in the short term?
The most important objective for Russia is actually to force negotiations, however contradictory that might sound.

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Illustration by Sam Taylor. Follow him on Twitter @sptsam or visit his website at samtaylorillustrator.com.

Richard Glossip was slated to die at 3 PM Wednesday. Photo via Change.org

Today, Richard Glossip narrowly escaped death for the fourth time.

The 52-year-old Oklahoma man, who's twice been convicted of paying a co-worker to kill their boss at a seedy motel, was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 3 PM local time. When the US Supreme Court denied his last-ditch appeal for a stay of execution this afternoon, it seemed like the guy was out of options. (Glossip had already won a stay from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals earlier this month after his lawyers produced new evidence, but that court narrrowly decided not to spare him on Monday.)

No one expected Governor Mary Fallina death penalty cheerleader who has repeatedly rejected appeals from Glossip's lawyersto intervene. But citing concerns about whether the drug cocktail prison officials planned to use on him passed legal muster, Fallin swooped in and gave the man widely believed to be innocent a bit more time to make his case.

"Last minute questions were raised today about Oklahoma's execution protocol and the chemicals used for lethal injection," Fallin said in a statement. "After consulting with the attorney general and the Department of Corrections, I have issued a 37 day stay of execution while the state addresses those questions and ensures it is complying fully with the protocols approved by federal courts."

The drug in question was not Midazolam, which the Supreme Court in June ruled is fair game for executioners to use as a sedative despite horrifying cases in Oklahoma and elsewhere that saw the condemned endure pain and burning sensations before dying. Instead, prison officials apparently planned to use potassium acetate as the thirdand deadlydrug in their cocktail, even though they traditionally use potassium chloride. Fallin wants to make sure that's Kosher.

Pope Francis called out America for practicing the death penalty in his speech to Congress last week and specifically called for Glossip to be spared in the hours leading up to his scheduled demise. Fallin did not reference the Pope's plea in her statement, but she did apologize to the Van Treese family, "who has waited so long to see justice done."

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