YouTube user siedmiokrotny explains that the Earth is flat.

My encounter with the flat earth began, like most life-changing discoveries, as a bit of a joke. It's always gratifying to stumble on some tiny, cohesive internet subculture that you never knew existed; it's like picking up an ordinary-looking rock to find that the earwigs have built an entire functioning miniature city underneath. There's a whole other reality there, scurrying under a very different sky: They have as little knowledge of you and your priorities as you had of them, and every new seam of strangeness just goes to show that the world is far richer and more complex than you ever thought. People who honestly, seriously, in the 21st century, believe that the Earth is flat, and that a vast global conspiracy exists to indoctrinate us into thinking that it's a sphere surrounded by empty space. Wouldn't you at least want to listen to what they have to say?

Like most fringe communities, the flat earth truth movement is a nebulous and sprawling collection of blogs and forums and long-decayed Facebook pages, a world wide cobweb, but if it has anything like a center, it's probably YouTube. There are thousands of true believers there, amateur cosmologists with their free copies of Windows Movie Maker, each of them certain that they've managed to single-handedly disprove 20 centuries of accepted science. I must have watched hours of flat earth rants; they're certainly better than anything on TV. Very quickly I learned to avoid the long, popular, pedantic videos, which invariably describe themselves as "documentaries" and tend to consist of one person in a dank little room, trying his best to sound reasonable (and it is almost always a he) as he drones about composite photos of Earth from space over a tedious slideshow.

The really fun stuff comes from the smaller accounts, the people who care far less about sounding respectable to outsiders, who are so deep in their hermetic community that they've forgotten how anyone could possibly not see the truth. Things get weird fast; it's like outsider art, each piece with its own gloriously mad formal innovations. One user has his insights appearing as subtitles over Hollywood footage of monsters and aliens, backed by an epic dubstep compilation, insisting that he's not making any assertions, that he's only asking questions—they're all phrased as what-if scenarios—but the titles give the game away. "What if the ILLUMINATI has STARGATE technology and flat earth will NEVER be the same?" "What if I believe that YOU'RE deceived and flat earth is real?" There's the guy who calls himself Math Powerland, and appears for unknown reasons in a suit jacket smeared with metallic paint. Or the people who think that the clues are in the language: The word planet is just plane plus an unfolded cube! And if we're not living in Hell, why do we greet each other with hell-o? It was funny: Look at these people, and how wrong they are, isn't it hilarious? Until, very suddenly, it wasn't funny any more.

You can only immerse yourself in this stuff for so long before you start to believe it. Far more than the people who think hip-hop is run by the Illuminati or that vaccines give your children autism, the flat earthers seem to be tapping into something real, the sense that there's a vast and irreducible wrongness about the world and the way we view it.

Standing on the beach, a brittle winter wind pushing me into the rising foam, I tried to see the curvature of the Earth on the horizon, and couldn't find it anywhere. It's flat! Why is it that nobody's trying to tap Antarctica's vast chemical resources, if it's just a floating continent and not the forbidden wall of ice that surrounds our flat world? Why is it that commercial flight paths in the southern hemisphere curve upwards, towards the equator, when it would make so much more sense to fly over the Antarctic Ocean? How come a flight from Wellington in New Zealand to Santiago in Chile stops over in Los Angeles? If the world is round, it's an enormous diversion, a pointless globe-straddling triangle, but if you map it as a flat plane with the North Pole in the center, the route forms an almost straight line.

Someone's lying to us. What does this person know, and why are we being kept in the dark? Laughing at the weirdness of the flat earth believers became a way of pushing out the unwelcome idea that they might actually be right. It became much harder to be sure of anything, once I was no longer certain of the ground I stood on; the world grew dark and mysterious, and monsters thrashed about just over the horizon. Where am I? Where am I really?

I found that the flat earthers really do have something important to teach us. They might be wrong about the shape of the Earth, but when it comes to other, more important questions, they're far closer to the truth than the people who drearily insist that the world is a floating sphere. Late last month, the rapper B.o.B. had a minor Twitter spat with televised astro-bore Neil deGrasse Tyson over the question of the flat earth: B.o.B. insisted it was real; Tyson maintained that it wasn't, and ended up featuring in an excruciatingly bad science-based rap parody to prove his point. ("The planet is a sphere, G!")

Tyson ended the exchange by writing, "Duude — to be clear: Being five centuries regressed in your reasoning doesn't mean we all can't still like your music," somehow managing to be more wrong than someone who thinks the world is flat. It's not just the terrible extraneous u in dude—it's that five centuries ago, in 1516, absolutely nobody thought that the world was flat. Tyson has been pretty forthright in his dismissal of philosophy, which is a shame. If he'd read his Hegel, he'd know that concepts in the present do not emerge undiluted from the past, that phenomena are products of the concrete totality of human relations.

As everyone knows, Columbus never proved that the Earth is round: The scholars of Europe were already well aware of that (and had been since ancient Greece); he thought that the world was much smaller than it is, and ended up proving himself wrong. The flat earth movement is a distinctly modern phenomenon, dating back no further than the mid-19th century, when pseudonymous writers such as Samuel Rowbotham (who called himself "Parallax") started writing pamphlets insisting that astronomy was a deception and the Earth was a flat plane.

It's notable that this development only took place in the context of the emergence of a truly global capitalism and what the philosopher Max Horkheimer would later call "instrumental reason"—scientific reason that doesn't just explain reality, but which is put to use (the mode of reason that alienates people from a world reconfigured as one vast factory). For millions, technological advances meant not freedom, but utter misery—and just as it declares that everything can be known, instrumental reason abstracts that knowledge beyond immediate experience. "Enlightenment," Horkheimer writes, "has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened Earth is radiant with triumphant calamity." Faced with a reality that could no longer be intuitively understood, whose secrets had become the property of a small class of scientists and administrators, the early flat earthers tried to claw back some of their autonomy. They insisted that their own experience, not the diktat of a ruling class, was true. And when you look at the Earth with your own two eyes, it doesn't look round. It looks flat.

In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments , Søren Kierkegaard tells a parable: A man escapes from a mental institution and into town, but he worries that he'll be returned to his cell if he's discovered to be mad. So he decides to answer every question with a statement that's undeniably true: "The Earth is round." This is, of course, is madness, and he's quickly locked away again. The banality of angrily insisting that the world is round makes it in a way far less true than the idea that it's actually flat. Because it's not true, in the boring, conventional sense of the word, flat earth theory has an enormous creative potential: all those thousands of people, constantly creating their crystalline new realities and uploading them to YouTube. Flat earth is fascinating because in an era where so much of the world is disenchanting and so much of social existence is already a given—you will have your job, you will have your life, you will be exploited, and then you will die—there are people who can dream the Earth itself into a different shape. It's flat.

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An elderly inmate writes a letter from a California prison medical facility. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Life Inside is an ongoing collaboration between The Marshall Project and VICE that offers first-person perspectives from those who live and work in the criminal justice system.

My daughter was eight the last time she wrote, and in the envelope was a note from her mother, my ex.

"I'm married again and two dads are too confusing for her right now. You can write me at this PO Box, but please don't write her anymore."

I was four years into a 30-year bid, and was being told that I didn't have a choice—that I must not write my daughter even one more time. I would just be... gone to her. No goodbye. No explanation about mommy and daddy's complications. Just silence and a hope that when she could, she might try to find me.

The next time I heard from her, she was two weeks away from turning 18. She wrote me a letter explaining just how traumatic it was for her when I stopped writing—when I vanished, without any warning. "Dear Dan," the letter began. "I don't know if you'll remember me or not, my name's Brooke and I'm your daughter..."

I sat there in the common area of my cell block, surrounded by the many dozens of strangers I lived with every single day, with the distorted voice of the PA barely making itself heard over the slap of dominoes on steel tabletops.

Her letter continued: "...Usually letters, you address with some sort of name, something you call the person. Something you've called the person forever. But I haven't known you forever. I've known the You in my mind, but I haven't known you. Dad? Danny? One sounds like too much, the other sounds too informal... I guess I'll just start with... hello.

"I'm on the brink of 18, and for years you have been on my mind every single day—over 2,920 of them (and yes I used a calculator). Each and every day, you were the person on my mind. Each day I wondered if I was still yours. I wrote you so many letters. But I never could mail them. I never knew how you felt, and I was terrified of rejection. I guess a part of me still is...."

Did she really believe I could just... forget her? That she meant so little to a man who cried over her for months? As if I hadn't spent years alone in a cell imagining the life she was leading?

Was she safe?

Was she smart?

Did she have a knack for multiplying fractions?

Did she ever think about me? The man who taught her to tie her shoes and invented the half-birthday, just for her, as an excuse to eat cake in November?

So began our relationship again, one crinkly letter at a time. We got to know each other, even if it wasn't easy. She was a young woman disrupted by my choices in life, torn up by my being torn from her, and she was brave enough to tell me just how much I sucked at being her dad.

I still pictured her at four-years-old, peeking out from behind her mom's leg. But in the photographs she sent, she was this grown up version of a girl with more piercings than I ever had.

After she graduated high school, she started planning a road trip from North Carolina up to Ohio to visit me, to see me for the first time since she was four.

I was so nervous.

I was so far removed from the man-child she called Daddy back then, back when I couldn't grow facial hair. I was 17 when she was born; now I'm 40 and tatted out, my arms covered with skulls and warriors, my chest, back, and shoulders scarred with prison ink. The word "hatred" is emblazoned on my neck. All the markings of the inmate I'd become, when I wasn't making decisions to succeed outside these walls but rather to be accepted by the men around me.

The only thing that remained of the person I was before was my need to be a dad.

I remember everything about that morning of her visit. Adjusting my pants and trying to get my shirt just right. A deep breath before entering the visiting room. Families filling neat rows of maroon chairs. Kids playing in their special area, designated by colorful carpet. The smell of microwaved vending-machine food, energy drinks, perfume.

I searched the crowded room, my eyes crossing unfamiliar face after unfamiliar face. All of a sudden, there they were: the eyes I remembered. And then she was in my arms, and it was all I could do not to smile like a stoner. We spent that entire day learning how to be Brooke and Dad.

Her resemblance to her mom stunned me, as did the fact that she used language in a way I'd always thought was my thing: She spoke in paragraphs, these long, run-on sentences filled with adjectives, adverbs, and digressions.

Too soon, the visiting room was closing. We slow-walked and lingered as best we could.

We had to watch each other walk away, unsure when we would see each other again or how our relationship would move forward. She would go back to her boyfriend, waiting in the parking lot. I would go back to my cell with its spartan, white concrete walls, its stainless steel toilet/sink combo—and loneliness. And I would pull the door closed behind me.

Daniel Royston is a 40-year-old inmate at Marion Correctional Institution in Marion, Ohio, where he is serving 31 years for a rape and burglary he committed when he was 21.

A photo of Assange taken around the time he was at Melbourne. Image via

Thursday the United Nations concluded that Julian Assange is being detained illegally. This must come as a relief for Assange, who had tweeted a promise to turn himself over to the British police if the UN didn't rule in his favor.

So what now? Well, it will probably mean nothing. If Assange requests his passport back, as he promised he would, the UK government will likely ignore the request and he'll remain holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Or maybe he'll try to leave, in which case all bets are off.

Someone who is watching this whole saga with particular curiosity is Jerry Koliha, one of Assange's former teachers. Back in 2003, Assange enrolled himself into mathematics at Melbourne University. It was there that he did a semester in linear analysis under the tuition of Koliha.

We gave Koliha a call to see if he had a message for his former student.

VICE: Tell me about the first time you met Julian Assange.
Koliha: Well it was a third year mathematics subject. It's been six years since I retired, so that would've been 2006. He looked very distinctive sitting in the first row, because he was a mature age student. He asked very advanced questions. From the essays he handed in it was clear to me that—had he put his mind to it—that he could have been a very good mathematician. But he was quite erratic in attendance. You could see very clearly that he wouldn't be bound by the timetables, he'd just follow his own mind.

Did he come across as arrogant?
No, it wasn't arrogance. He was clever, he was asking very intelligent questions. Obviously, he was aware of his own intelligence, which may have come across badly to others. But I wouldn't say he was arrogant.

What kind of marks was he getting?
Very good grades, but I can't even tell you if he completed the subject. I had the feeling that he was a bit preoccupied with other things that interested him at the time.

Have you followed the WikiLeaks story?
I did follow what happened and my personal opinion is that our society needs to be more open. What he did, I appreciate. I endorse openness. Unfortunately the US has a lot to own up to, and to own up to democracy in general.

Do you think Julian has contributed to the world?
Definitely.

Julian's been accused of sexual assault in Sweden. What's your take on that?
I have no idea what transpired. How could I have an opinion on something that transpired in Sweden?

Well, I'm asking because you knew him personally.
If you're a lecturer in a class of 20-plus people, he's just one student sitting there. I didn't develop any closer relationship with him. With other students I did, but as I said, he was very preoccupied with other interests.

Do you wish you had gotten to know him better?
That would've been difficult. That comes from the student, not the lecturer.

At dinner parties do you ever bring out this story—that you taught Julian Assange?
Yes, I have to admit that I mention the name now and then . I wouldn't be human if I didn't. People usually ask what he's like, but I have to repeat what I just said to you. I really didn't know him that well. He was very intelligent, he has a very good mind, but that's all.

If you could be flown to the Ecuadorian Embassy right now, what would you say to Julian?
I'd say, "I'm sorry that you were forced to take this action and sit for three years in isolation. I would say, "I appreciate what you did with WikiLeaks."

What do you think you've learned from this experience, personally?
Well I think society—not just Australia, not just America, but all of society—should be far more open. It would solve a lot of problems. Openness is the key that could improve our society, and WikiLeaks has been a tremendous contribution to that. I sincerely hope everything will be OK for him.

How do you hope this will end?
I sincerely hope the US will amend its view on it, and the case that is pending will be abandoned, as it should be in the case of Snowden.

Follow Julian Morgans on Twitter.

Illustration by Dan Evans

I had a very happy, idyllic childhood. Even though I had Baptist ministers for parents, they weren't frightening or hardcore. They were very loving. I was an only child—my parents tried for 13 years to have a kid and my mom suffered lots of miscarriages. Life was great until I was about nine. Then the bullying started. It was typical stuff about my parents being ministers, and my faith, and Jesus. But I did kind of ask for it: I was always wearing pink pastel sweaters with Bermuda shorts and big badges that said "Jesus Loves You." I would have bullied me.

We moved and I went to an all-girls school. I became obsessed with boys. But by the time I was 15, I began to realize that sex was valued as something very precious in my family. When my friends started doing it, I was like, sure, that's fine, that's the way of the world, but I'm just not going to. At parties, my friends would couple off and drift into different rooms together and I would be left listening to the BBC World Service. I was sort of fine with that, but no-one else seemed to be.

All through my teens I became known as The Person Who Didn't Have Sex. My decision not to do it was often either used as the reason why a guy didn't want to go out with me, or as the reason he did—so he could break down the barriers, so to speak. But I was quite naughty. Every other sentence was an innuendo. I think that intrigued people—she talks about it, she's candid about it, but she doesn't do it. Guys found it confusing, which I understood. Then, when I was 23, my dad died suddenly. And then I lost five other people over an 18-month period, and I began to question my faith and everything I believed in. It was textbook: "Why is there so much suffering? Right, bye bye God. See you later."

After that I went on a three-year atheism rant and although I didn't go off the rails in the sense of doing drugs, I certainly fell in love with a guy I lost my virginity to. The irony was he was willing to wait for me, but by that point I was no longer looking forward to a wedding day with my dad not there to see it.

Since then, I've slept with two other guys. I've had four long-term relationships, but I haven't had sex in all of them. There was the guy I lost my virginity to, then I met a Christian boy and we didn't have sex for the year we were together. The following year I went out with someone else and he was very upset that we weren't having sex as he knew I'd done it before. We didn't have sex for a year, but then one night we were at a bar and he was complaining I was smoking, and knowing he was about to bring up the "sex card," I just said, "Oh come on then." After him I was with someone for five years. And it was during that relationship that I found my faith again.

I gave him the option to leave if he wanted to. He came into the relationship with a very different girlfriend, and his love language was physical—he expressed himself through sex—whereas mine was words of affirmation and emotional availability.

That's not to say my burning loins were not real. Sex is a bit like dieting—once you give up cakes and biscuits, it's all you think about. I started to watch porn to get my kicks, to sexually release myself, and became addicted. It was a total contradiction of my beliefs, but I thought I'm not doing this with anyone else, it's just me and a screen. It doesn't harm anyone. Of course, it was completely hypocritical. And now the irony is that I'm counseling couples and some have porn addictions and it's ruining their marriage.

At 31, after five years together, my boyfriend and I broke up. I didn't have much holding me in London so I moved to California, became a pastor, and haven't had sex for five years. It was my mother who came up with the term "neo-virgin." "A 'reformed virgin' sounds too convent-like," she told me one afternoon over tea. So that stuck, and I became a girl who returned to a lifestyle that held a battle worth fighting for—exclusivity, something meaningful.

Abstaining from sex after you know what it's like is a lot harder than if you'd never done it at all.

Although sex is the most phenomenal thing, it's created, I think, to bond. It's meant to hold you together and I'm not sure we're meant to use it so lightly. I've got some friends who say "I just got laid and I'm happy with that," but the majority of the time someone cries at the end of it because it doesn't work out. Abstaining from sex after you know what it's like is a lot harder than if you'd never done it at all: The visuals are there in your brain and you know how great it is. The temptation to do it is huge, but I actually feel more free now than before. Even if it can be difficult on the surface.

When I'm dating, I have to be very upfront. If I'm at a party and I'm known as The Christian, people either make a beeline for me because they want to start an argument, or they leave me the hell alone because they think I'm going to evangelize them. That's never been my agenda. But because I'm a pastor most people know before date one that sex is off the menu. However, if I haven't had The Conversation by date three, there's a problem. It's not hard to give up sex, but it gets difficult when you start falling in love with each other—that's when you have to have strong boundaries.

A lot of the time people say to me, "You're 35 and single, it's not really working out for you, this whole holding out thing, is it?" But the thing is, it wasn't working out for me before I abstained. I wonder if I was an atheist whether I would have made this decision anyway. By holding out, I have more clarity—does that person want to know me for me, or are they co-dependent and just can't not be in a relationship?

What's kind of lovely about it, is that so many of my friends are in the same boat. It's quite quaint in a way: We talk about when he held my hand, or the conversations we had. It's like we're 15 again.

Prude: The Misconceptions of a Neo-Virgin by Carrie Lloyd is out now.

In 2015, the two-man Manchester studio Acid Nerve put out a game that was all cute pixel art on the surface, but absolutely bloody maddening of difficulty in practice. Said title, Titan Souls—a boss-rush adventure that mixed Zelda-ish looks with Souls series–levels of punishment for the smallest mistakes (you can read more about it here)—immediately marked David Fenn and Mark Forster as indie game-makers to keep a beady eye on.

And now they're back, with a very different game to the one that made their studio's name. Telepaint! is a touchscreen puzzler where the player guides a paint bucket with legs, arms, and a face through multiple stages of naturally escalating difficulty, where portals must be navigated correctly to avoid deadly spills. (You appreciate the pun of the title, I'm sure.) Fenn puts it as "the gameplay of Portal meets Lemmings, with a whole bunch of twists along the way." On first impression, I thought of Simogo's sublime Beat Sneak Bandit "does" Splatoon, albeit mainly because the trailer—watch it below—had a clear sense of rhythm to it. And paint, obviously. (Alright, pedant, ink.)

I asked David a few questions about Acid Nerve's new game, to get a real idea of what to expect when Telepaint! comes out on iOS in, he says, "a matter of weeks."

VICE: Does Telepaint! have that rhythm I'm seeing in the gameplay, or is that merely for the trailer?
David Fenn: All the movement in the game is synchronized to the music's beat in the same way it's presented in the trailer, which lets us do some fun and clever tricks with sound throughout the game. It's not a "rhythm game"—you can play it comfortably with the sound off—but everything just happens rhythmically, adding a cool extra layer to the game and letting you get into the groove.

So this is a different perspective of play when compared to Titan Souls, with a far cuter aesthetic. But is it going to become comparably challenging, the deeper you get into it?
It's not quite as brutal as Titan Souls, and far more forgiving, but it can get quite challenging at some points. Some of the puzzles will require a lot of thought to beat, but overall the game should appeal to a broader variety of players than Titan Souls, which I would say is quite niche. We'll certainly still be impressed by anyone who manages to 100 percent the game, though.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film on the history of pinball

As per Titan Souls, too, this is an "old" idea that's now found its way to fruition—Mark and yourself had jammed a version of it a while ago. How pleased are you that you've been able to update it to a slick, iOS-ready release? And what part did Titan Souls' success play in allowing you to get to here with it?
We love game jams, they're great for prototyping unusual ideas and sometimes they reveal hidden gems. That's what happened with Titan Souls and the same happened for Telepaint! too. The success of Titan Souls has directly enabled us to go back and give this old prototype a similar treatment, which is something we're super happy to have been able to do.

You've gone mobile with this title, with it coming out for iPhone and iPad, but did you play around with making it work with "standard" controls? Did that just not suit the type of game it is?
The original game was made for six giant buttons, which people had to stand on to activate portals in the game. We enjoyed the puzzle potential this presented, but it would never have worked elegantly with traditional controls. Being able to see the layout of each portal on screen and immediately tapping to activate without thinking removes a layer of obfuscation that traditional controls would present, and it's also a lot faster and more free than it would be to click them one by one with a mouse. It's important to match the control scheme with the platform, so in the same way that touchscreen virtual joypads would never be on par with a physical control pad, the reverse situation applies to Telepaint!.

On Motherboard: How 'Dark Souls' Is Defeating Depression

You mention twists—what sort of fiendish traps are our bucket-like heroes going to have to look out for?
Each world introduces a new mechanic, and we play with each one extensively to max out its potential. There are keys and locks, pushable blocks, multiple characters, gravity flipping, Thwomp-like characters called Smoochers that chase you around, and some other new things as you get deeper into the game, as well as gradually built-up combinations of all of these things. Anything that moves can be teleported too, so everything is fully interactive and malleable in the game world, creating some interesting possibilities.

Telepaint! is out for iOS, as David says, "in a matter of weeks." Find Acid Nerve online here.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

In this episode of VICE Talks Film, we sit down with director Todd Haynes—the guy responsible for films like Far From Heaven, I'm Not There, and Velvet Goldmine—to discuss his latest movie, Carol. Then, we chat about what it was like shooting his first romantic film, the difficulties of making movies about women, the vast influence of David Bowie, and the nuances of falling in love.

The electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky," during a rare press tour of Florida State Prison at Starke in August 1989. (AP Photo/Mark Foley)

In Florida, there's no shortage of things that can kill you. It's the lightning-strike and shark-bite capital, as the Orlando Sentinel helpfully dubbed it. Also, alligators. But leaving natural phenomena aside, Florida is also one of the most execution-friendly destinations in America.

The Sunshine State has 389 death row inmates—more than any other besides California, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Alarmingly, Florida also leads the nation with 26 death row exonerations. "If you add it all together, Florida's the worst of the worst," when it comes to capital punishment, says Mark Elliott, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Meanwhile, American support for the death penalty is near a 40-year low, according to a Pew Research poll conducted last spring. The fact that DNA evidence can exonerate people who were long ago falsely convicted has inspired many to doubt the efficacy of the criminal justice system, and laws around the country are changing to mirror that shift in public opinion. In January, the Supreme Court—which still leans in favor of the death penalty in the abstract—deemed Florida's execution sentencing protocol unconstitutional.

But rather than take the death penalty off the books, politicians in Florida are currently arguing over new justifications they might use for killing convicts. Which begs the question of why, in a swing state that's often considered a barometer for the the rest of the country, officials are so dead-set on preserving capital punishment.

Bob Dekle, a law professor at the University of Florida, says the death penalty has been a part of the state's culture as long as he can remember. First it was hangings, and then, in 1923, it was the electric chair. Dekle's granddaddy was a sheriff in Union County in northern Florida back around the time of World War I, when the state's executions were still carried out at the local level. The old man threw the switch on an inmate himself once, a duty Dekle says grandpa didn't particularly enjoy. But that was local custom—at least until 1941, when local sheriffs were replaced by black-hooded executioners.

Things carried on that way until 1972, when Supreme Court justices, in a 5–4 decision, said that the death penalty was cruel and unusual—and often had a racial bias. Florida was the first state to pass a new law in hopes of resuming executions later that year, but a national moratorium remained in place until the Supreme Court's 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision. State officials were anxious to resume capital punishment, reflecting a sense of vigilante justice that permeates the Deep South, as well as some uniquely Floridian sensibilities.

"There's always been a sense in Florida that if you feel you have been victimized, you have an obligation to protect your honor by avenging what has taken place," Robert Snyder, a professor of American Studies at the University of South Florida, once told the Tampa Bay Times. "A sort of bestial spirit resides deep within the heart of people in Florida."

That bestial spirit produced a penal code that has been notoriously lax when it comes to executions. In most states, juries have to unanimously agree on aggravating factors to recommend a defendant be put to death. Florida is one of just two states where a simple majority is sufficient, and it's one of just three where judges can go rogue and take the execution route even if a jury doesn't call for it.

Suffice it to say Florida's death row tends to be pretty packed.

On May 25, 1979, a 30-year-old named John Spenkelink was the first person sent to Old Sparky once it got fired up again. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Spenkelink, who was convicted for murdering his roommate, was given two shots of whiskey before taking his seat in the chair. Dozens of men—and two women—were sent to die there in the coming decades. In fact, the frequency with which people were executed became a point of civic pride; in 1986, Tampa Mayor Bob Martinez ran for governor with the campaign promise that Florida's electric bill would go up if he were elected.

By the late 1990s, however, a number of malfunctions raised questions about whether or not the electric chair constituted cruel and unusual punishment. In March 1997, the state tried to electrocute Pedro Medina, but his head basically caught on fire as witnesses gasped for air. An official turned off the chair while Medina, who was mentally ill and possibly innocent, was still breathing.

Still, politicians grasped at straws, trying to justify the death penalty. State Senator Ginny Brown-Waite, who witnessed a particularly gruesome electrocution in 1999, said that the prisoner's nosebleed formed the sign of a cross on his shirt, which she suggested might be a sign from God that the execution was divinely mandated.

In 2000, Florida at least began granting prisoners the choice between Old Sparky and lethal injection; only one man has requested the chair since.

On January 7, Florida carried out the first execution in America this year. But on Tuesday, the State Supreme Court postponed the next one as lawmakers try to appease justices in Washington. The conversation will likely not address the racial issues brought up in the 1970s Supreme Court cases, although the degree to which the death penalty is imposed along those lines remains startling. (A January report authored by a professor at University of North Carolina found that no white person has ever been sentenced to death for killing a black person in Florida.)

For his part, Dekle—who has personally witnessed three executions in Florida—says other states passed stricter death penalty laws when capital punishment was reinstated decades ago specifically to discourage the Supreme Court from striking them down again. 43 Florida death row inmates have filed direct appeals and might see their sentences reduced to life in prison as a result of the January ruling.

"It's a mess that could have been avoided if the Supreme Court had 40 years ago said, 'Wait a minute, this ain't right," Dekle says of the troubled Florida law. "Eventually, they're gonna hammer out a new mechanism for imposing the death penalty, and quite likely people on death row are gonna get new sentencing hearings. And maybe 40 years from now, the Supreme Court will decide that's unconstitutional too."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Photo by Hannah Lawrence

Many of us spend January 1st thinking about alcohol. Often, that's because it's coming out of our noses, thickened by the half-digested pizza we picked up on the way back from our New Year's Eve party. And then comes the rest of the month: What we call "Dry January" and the rigmarole of discussing a colleague's temporary sobriety for an entire 31 days.

This year, the UK government has helped prolong our booze-related thoughts, telling us that we should drink no more than seven pints per week and that we should think about cancer every time we have a glass of wine. Both of the memos were buzzkills, but they were also completely true.

When alcohol dominates cultural consciousness in the way it has for the past month or so, it's difficult not to consider its role in your own life. To help a few of our friends and colleagues work through those thoughts, we asked them to write them all down and let us share them with the internet.

Photo by Robert Foster

JOEL GOLBY, STAFF WRITER, VICE

I didn't drink until I was 19 because my dad was an alcoholic and it killed him when I was 15, which, on the whole, doesn't make you too thirsty. That means I sort of missed out on that entire teenage rite-of-passage with alcohol—of drinking until you're sick on a park bench, of sneaking into rock clubs with extremely lax ID policies (it's always rock clubs), of loitering outside liquor stores with a pocket full of change and the one person in your group with the most polite voice asking adult passersby if they can score you some Bacardi—because I had too many searing memories of coming home to find my dad passed out in front of the TV; of having to make him strong black coffee to sober him up before my mom got home and they had yet another argument about it; of him moving out and dwelling in this tiny apartment, alone and watching televised golf, slowly slouching towards death.

Here's a fun anecdote: There was a time, after he had moved out and died, that I went up to the attic to sort some things, and this whole cascade of plastic cider bottles fell down on top of me, icy blue and crumpled, pooling to the floor at the base of the ladder. I was one final gift from dad. By the time we counted them up—laughing hysterically throughout, because you have to, because death is so absurd—there was something like 40 empty bottles of Frosty Jack there, chucked drunkenly into the attic to disguise a habit we all knew he had. It was a bad time, if I'm honest. It wasn't a fun time.

But now I love alcohol! It's great!

Second year of university I decided I was my own man—that alcohol wasn't a curse, that it was a vice, that I was better than that, that I could control it if I knew the size of it, and also it's really fucking hard to make friends when you just sit in your dorm room soberly playing Xbox alone. This was before I knew the statistics about children of alcoholics: that they are anywhere between two and nine (the regularly cited statistic is a firm "three") times more likely to develop drink or drug dependencies, three times more likely to consider suicide.

That seems at odds with how I think of alcohol: the lubricant for the best nights of my life, something I drink to relax and unwind, the pints I drink when I'm bonding with friends. But then sometimes I find myself drinking a few tins at home and I think: This is alright, isn't it? I find myself two or three drinks drunker than everyone else at the party and go: This is... This is cool. This is OK. I wake up with a hangover and spend an entire bottle of Gatorade telling myself, I'm not my dad. I got this. I'm in control.

I don't know: I think every child of an alcoholic spends moments of reflection wondering if they've slipped into the quicksand, too. My relationship with alcohol is a complex one, and if I'm honest, there was a two-year period back there where I was drinking too much, too familiarly. My mom died and I didn't know what to do. There's no direct causation there—that feels like I'm firing blanks in the dark, desperately trying to find something to blame—but the fact is that the quantity slowly started to increase. Alcohol was a blanket I could wrap around parts of my brain that got too loud in quiet moments. That's bad, isn't it? That's not good.

I think a lot of us, if we're really honest, are stranded in a similar boozy purgatory: always on that knife between "being drunk and having fun" and just "being drunk." Maybe for me the edges are just that little bit sharper because I've seen what alcoholism can do.

Personally, I'm trying to shift out of the habit of drinking six cans in front of the TV on a weeknight. I'm trying to take a more responsible attitude to myself and my health. I'm trying to lose weight, for goodness sake, because beer has made me look like someone put a haircut on the Stay-Puft man. I'm trying to escape a curse that's not a curse, a too-obvious destiny left by the man who came before me. But I don't want to give up drinking cold, because... well, I like drinking, and it's hard to tear my social life away from it without killing them both, like ivy growing on a tree. I don't want to admit that I'm not in control. But maybe in this, the year of our lord 2k16, it's time to be a little bit more grown up about it. Or get bang into smack instead. One of those two.

The author in his drinking days

JOHN DORAN, COLUMNIST, VICE

So another Drynuary is over. Is there any bigger indication of what a nation of absolute whoppers we've become than this nascent "tradition"? What a truly appalling time to be alive. As we speak, millions of goons all over this green and pleasant land are over-exaggeratedly telling each other about the "struggle" to stay dry for the last four weeks; how they nearly "didn't make it" like they're discussing their participation in the Charge of the Fucking Light Brigade.

Look, I don't want to be the ghost at the banquet, but only an idiot would think that drynuary works. Only an idiot would think that by being a raw-eating, pilates-practicing, auto-enema administering fruitarian on a Monday means you can shoot yourself in the face with a rocket launcher every other day of the week—because, funnily enough, that isn't how it works. And it's the same with alcohol.

Any idiot can stop drinking for four weeks when they can count down the days from 31 to zero. The real difficulties (and real benefits) lie in being able to have a few days off drinking every week—or, god forbid, drinking more sensibly in the first place. Instead, we have what is essentially the same as a macho drinking contest itself—a next to useless drying out period that puts strain on the internal organs, with benefits that can be wiped out in the stampede back off the wagon on February 1st. It's the equivalent of the coked-up banker insisting on his heart-bursting game of squash every Friday morning, despite the amount of racket he puts up his hooter during the week, and has little or nothing to do with health.

But then everything about drinking culture in the UK is hypocritical and ill thought out. As drinkers become thirstier and thirstier, the advice we receive from above gets more and more laughable. In Great Britain, more than nine million people drink "more than they are supposed to," and that figure will have gone up dramatically since the government issued new stringent alcohol consumption guidelines a few weeks ago.

Speaking as a chronic alcoholic (recovering for seven years) who was drunk nearly every day for well over 20 years—who nearly died several times over because of this; who, on average, exceeded the new government guidelines by a factor of 20 to 30 per week—I think it's fair to say I have a horse in this race despite being teetotal.

Everyone who drinks knows this advice is a waste of public money, and no one pays any attention to it other than the sort of people who would drink moderately anyway.

Admittedly, clearer links have been found between drinking and cancer than were evident the last time they were updated 20 years ago, but the difference these changes will make to those who already drink moderately are negligible. The new figures reflect a desire by the medical establishment to bring the risk of dying by alcohol-related causes to below 1 percent—what they deem a reasonable figure. But according to Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, an expert in risk analysis, it is important to put this figure into context. It turns out that now, if we follow the new guidelines, it's actually more dangerous to watch an hour of TV or eat bacon twice a week.

Coming soon! New government guidelines report that you can reduce your risks of getting seriously injured or killed in a car accident to acceptable levels by only leaving the house once a week between 11 AM and 4 PM. It's all based on 100 percent accurate statistics!

Government figures coming soon! Reduce your risk of becoming Pope by not converting to Catholicism and reduce your risk of becoming smeared in bear feces by not rolling around in the woods!

The real picture of heavy drinking in the UK—the one essentially ignored by this advice and Drynuary—is disastrous. Approximately 1.5 million people are either chronically addicted to booze or feel that they really can't control their drinking, and of them, 33,000 per year die because of alcohol-related incidents and chronic drinking combined.

To everyone reading this who is healthy and happy and going out for a drink tonight—I hope you have a really good time. It's none of my business, but seriously, do think about having a few days off a week if you don't already. Being able to drink is great; getting in a position where you have to stop isn't. To all my brothers and sisters who have quit the booze and taken the pledge—right on and stay strong, relish waking up tomorrow morning and your first thought not being either about phoning in sick or apologizing to your partner/roommates/parents. To anyone who is drinking but doesn't feel in control of the experience (anyone who really did struggle with staying dry in January) or doesn't derive any joy from it any more, please get in touch with your doctor or go to a walk-in NHS center and ask for an appointment as soon as possible. Quitting (or moderating, if that's right for you; chronic alcoholism and habitual binge drinking aren't the same thing) is tough, but if a dickhead like me can do it, then anyone can. Good luck.

John Doran's book on coping with alcoholism and drug addiction, Jolly Lad, is available from Strange Attractor.

HANNAH EWENS, JUNIOR EDITOR, VICE

A house party was the beginning. We all planned to stay over at the friend's house who had the most blasé parents, who wouldn't mind picking up six squawking teenage girls at 3 AM.

In the morning, I found myself wearing a slutty Alice in Wonderland outfit, hugging the toilet, and dribbling on the rug encircling its base. I called my dad to collect me—the stoic knight who'd always drive everyone home—and he physically placed me into the front seat of his Ford Galaxy. For the entire drive back around country roads I threw up every time we braked, turned a slight corner, or stopped at lights. It was collecting in the curvature of the leg space. After half an hour, it was surprisingly full. When we emergency stopped, it splashed up my white knee-high socks and stained them pink, making me puke harder through burning nostrils. Dad just sat silent and straight-faced, not angry, not disappointed. Just accepting, like he would every time I fucked up over the following ten years.

On to university: a dystopian social experiment where friendships are based on, and fueled by, drinking large quantities through funnels, tubes, or other seemingly unrelated household items. Drink equals fun, therefore not drinking equals boring. When the second wave of borderline eating disorders descends among your female friends, it's skipping dinner to drink a bottle of wine after work in order to have sex with someone from your shit part-time job. It's pre-gaming on the bus and deliberately annoying other passengers while your feistiest friend sticks her boobs in some guy's face. It's every weekend. Despite all its faults, it feels like freedom.

Until you're part of a generation who hit their mid-twenties and feel apathetic towards it. For me, it was accepting that the morning after a night of heavy drinking would always mean anxiety rattling through my bones. Without the comfort blanket of best friends there to pile in the bed with you, or spend the entire next day moaning and hungover with, it was different anyway. The sense of all being in it together was gone.

Bar the occasional blow out, I usually only drink a couple of glasses these days. I say this like it was some sort of mental health epiphany, but it's partly down to the fact that, for the past couple of years, I've been broke—really fucking broke—so I can't afford to go to the bar in London anyway. Maybe when I'm rich and famous I'll be back throwing up my stomach lining in people carriers. Until then.

SAM WOLFSON, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, VICE

People really love to tell me about their drunken fuck-ups. I'm not sure why—I'm not very trustworthy and bad at eye contact—but somehow I've ended up being my social group's paper of record for fumbled blow jobs and light trespassing committed under the influence of nine Stellas and a bag of Doritos.

When people tell those stories, the booze is the first thing they get out the way, almost like a disclaimer. I think "I was drunker than I've ever been" and "the following report contains flashing images" are of similar minimal importance to the narrative of what follows—just something to bear in mind.

That's how it should be. Alcohol is the least important part of any night out. Only the worst kind of schmuck bases their whole evening around the right kind of claret. For most people, the drinking is just a means to an end.

But then this year, I actually did dry January, and I really felt my whole life change color. I'm not a very dark person—I don't identify with personal essays on Thought Catalogue or anything like that—but stopping drinking did make me realize that there was more mess in my life than I was probably accounting for. Confused internal tangles managed to straighten themselves out. I was able to follow a train of thought with being knocked over by its implications.

It's not like everything in my life changed, or I felt healthier, or my skin improved. It was just a bit like I'd been wearing a pair of wet socks all day and I'd popped home and put on some nicer dry ones that had just come out the wash. I told you I wasn't dark.

Christ knows, I couldn't wait to start drinking again. Abstinence, vegetarianism, celibacy, holding in farts—I can imagine all these things have their advantages, but seeing as you only have one life it seems a waste to spend it not doing stuff.

JOE BISH, STAFF WRITER, VICE

As a teen, I pretentiously shirked drinking. While my peers were going to parks and each other's houses to drink entire two-liter bottles of blue water before vomiting them back up again, I was there scoffing, rolling joints, confused, and angry at their pointless shitfacing. The main thing that bothered me about it was that they didn't really like each other and would get trashed together to make each other more bearable. At the time I thought this was the height of pointlessness, not knowing that imbibing narcs to make humanity seem more tenable would become a great fixture in my life.

It was only after I got my first job at the tender age of 16 that I really dove headfirst into the world of alcohol. I was working at a record label after avoiding college. I wanted to hang out with older people—people who "got" me—not more guffawing, pizza-faced dilweeds. After a few months the inevitable sleigh bells of Christmas began to chime. This would be my first ever festive work do, so I decided to make the most of it and have a few jars.

As with any music biz shindig, there was a free bar all night, a tab running into the tens of thousands. I started my night with a cocktail called a "Wibble," a crimson liquid in a stupid shaped glass. I had a few conversations, milled about, got a couple of beers. Then came the turning point. I switched to red wine, it having been a mainstay of my childhood and a lot less gassy than constantly necking bottles of Becks. I had one, then another, then I had a dance, then two more. I started shouting gags at people and swanning around, almost knocking over a giant paper maché horse, and had some more wine.

Next thing I knew I was sat with my pants around my ankles in the bathroom, mid shit. I was sleeping, but woken by an angry bouncer whacking the door, telling me the venue was closing. In a daze I dragged my pants up and buttoned them. I opened the cubicle door and immediately vomited into the sink, which was a large metal trough. My vomit was a deep red.

I went outside to find my friends, who were all waiting. It was snowing and I was just in a T-shirt because my coat was in the cloakroom. I gave someone my ticket to collect it for me, leaning on my friend's shoulder, which I then threw up on.

We got in a cab and went to someone's house. While they stayed up doing drugs on a table, I slept on the sofa. The house had no heating and I was unbearably cold, but I was so trashed I fell straight to sleep. The next day everyone, including me, got a taxi to the office. They had McDonalds breakfasts, but I couldn't stomach it. I spent the next four hours periodically vomiting and lying on a sofa in the middle of the office. At one point I threw up in a metal mesh bin with no bag in it. Some of it went on the head of A&R's carpet. I got a cab home not long after that.

Ever since then I've been getting wasted almost constantly. I love it. That wasn't even my worst hangover. If you wanted to know about my worst hangovers then give me a fucking book deal, because there have been some absolutely catastrophic, life-changing ones that almost always end up in me paying $80 for a taxi. The point is, my first proper experience with alcohol was exactly as it should be: extremely excessive, extremely embarrassing, and extremely painful.

EMMA GARLAND, STAFF WRITER, NOISEY

Every year, one by one, people around me stop drinking. The reasons cited aren't morally, socially, or even health-driven, but usually down to lack of interest. Some were never bothered to begin with and others went too hard in college, and now their body is telling them to go home urgently. Either way, it's easy to let go of something when you don't miss it. "Straight meh-dge," Noisey editor Dan Ozzi calls it. For some people, though, it can become more than a choice or even a lifestyle—it becomes a personality trait, something that goes towards defining who you are, whether it's "straight edge" or "alcoholic."

My granddad passed away this time last year, and most of my of memories of him involve drinking—some of them funny, like when he got too plastered to drive so he stole a horse and rode it home over Caerphilly mountain. Some of them not so funny, like when he died because of a clusterfuck of health problems relating to alcohol abuse. It didn't matter how many times I'd visit him and try to explain my vegan diet or social drinking, he'd still offer me a vodka and tonic and a boiled egg the minute I sat down.

There are a number of reasons why I could call that sad or a waste, but to be honest, he lived how he wanted and was seemingly pleased about it until the last few months—and that was because they were spent in distinct sobriety on a mattress in his living room. Somewhere in my parents' house there's a faded photograph of him performing in drag as George Michael that says more about his character than his alcoholism ever did.

I always figured dealing with something like that close to home would give me some kind of cross to bear, but it hasn't. What—I'm not going to throw back an ice cold brewski on the bus on a summer's day because my granddad had a drinking problem? Not bloody likely. Will I ever run around a club again chasing shots of Jaegermeister with more shots of Jaegermeister and being sick into a selection of pint glasses? Perhaps not.

There are people I know who base their decisions on where they go not on who else will be there or what the activity is, but on how many beers they can get for a tenner. Personally, it doesn't mean that much to me. I would pick a particular person or a snack over a drink most days of the week, but if I tried to convince myself that I don't spend between 4:50 PM and 5 PM every Friday refreshing my work email until the announcement about free desk beers arrives, I'd be an absolute sham of a human.

A starving sea lion pup doesn't need reservations. Photo courtesy of SeaWorld

Read: Living Out of a Van Is the New American Dream

The Marine Room in La Jolla, California, got an unexpected guest Thursday morning: a starving eight-month-old female sea lion pup.

It wandered in searching for food and parked itself in a booth of the Marine Room, an upscale restaurant, the AP reports, creating an image that was simultaneously adorable and also pretty grim, since the pup was severely underweight and dehydrated.

The restaurant's owners promptly called SeaWorld for help, and workers came to the aid of the pup. The sea lion is the 47th the company says it has rescued this year, along with other marine mammals. It is now being cared for at SeaWorld's Animal Rescue Center in San Diego.

As that high number of rescues suggests, it's been a rough past year for sea lions, as their mortality rate has surged as a result of a diminished food supply brought on by warm ocean temperatures. Marine biologists have collected thousands of sick and dead pups as a result. Fortunately for this particular pup rescuers are "cautiously optimistic" about her recovery, according to the AP.

Most long-running television shows, at some point, will fall back on that trusty trope known as the "clip show"—an episode that consists primarily of excerpts from previous episodes (Friends, for example, had six spread over its ten seasons). Joel and Ethan Coen have been making feature films about America and its oddball inhabitants for 32 years now, and their latest offering, Hail, Caesar!, feels like their own idiosyncratic riff on that format. It's an enjoyably meandering compendium of tics, references, and themes (particularly religion, fate, and the movies) culled from their impressive canon and marshaled into a surprisingly coherent, curiously haunting whole.

Hail, Caesar!'s setting is Hollywood circa 1951, and our main man is Eddie Mannix (a gruffly likable Josh Brolin), head of physical production at Capitol Pictures. He's also a "fixer," tasked with making problems disappear. Coen aficionados will recognize (the fictional) Capitol as the same studio that employed Barton Fink (John Turturro) as a screenwriter in the 1991 film of the same name, set roughly a decade earlier. The tortured Fink was the consummate outsider: a lefty, intellectual, East Coast playwright whose mind disintegrated under pressure from the demands of the mainstream machine. Mannix, unlike Fink, is an inside man, and (no need to ask) a smooth operator—having him as our central character makes for a more comfortable viewing experience than Barton Fink.

However, Mannix also carries a weight on his shoulders: We first meet him in a confessional booth, where he bends the ear of his long-suffering Catholic priest about his failure to give up smoking, and his guilt at keeping the fact from his wife. In another amusing early scene, we see him focus-grouping with bickering religious leaders of different faiths about the best way to represent God onscreen—Mannix is, you see, supervising production on Hail, Caesar!, which is also the name of the main film-within-the-film, a big-budget yet chintzy-looking Biblical epic starring starring nice-but-dim matinee idol Baird Whitlock (George Clooney, in pleasingly self-effacing mode).

The plot, such as it is, kicks into gear when Whitlock is poisoned on set by an extra (a marvelously furtive cameo from Seinfeld alum Wayne Knight), then spirited away to a coastal hideout. Any fears we might have for Whitlock's safety are dispelled when we discover the identity of his captors: "The Future," a garrulous, genteel, kinda funny-lookin' group whose kidnapping scheme is every bit as whimsical as the one woven through The Big Lebowski.

The rest of the movie consists of a loosely interlocked series of vignettes peppered with eccentric characters. The constant is Mannix, whose predicament—that of a decent guy struggling to keep numerous plates spinning in the face of larger, unpredictable forces—recalls that which troubled Larry Gopnik, the protagonist of A Serious Man, a bleak comedy that transposed the Old Testament narrative of Job to the Minnesota suburbs of the 1960s.

Instead of Larry's apocalyptic bad luck, however, Mannix must contend with some very human problems. He's under pressure to accept a job that would make his life easier but rob him of the challenges on which he thrives. He must deal with posh British director Laurence Laurentz (a hilariously flighty Ralph Fiennes), who is desperately unhappy with the casting of the new romantic lead in his film, pretty boy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), a stuntman palpably uncomfortable with speaking roles. There's DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), an ingenue who sparkles in front of the cameras as a synchronized-swimming mermaid (wearing a "fish ass," as she bluntly puts it), but has a bewilderingly complicated personal life. And Mannix is also pestered by twin-sister journalists (Tilda Swinton, times two: haughty and haughtier) who threaten to undermine him in their own devious ways. Equally notable, by the way, is Michael Gambon as the embodiment of another classic Coen device: the unseen, omniscient (one might say godly) narrator. The Irish actor's stentorian purr is simultaneously authoritative, amused, and vaguely lascivious: a fitting tone-setter.

Smartly edited by "Roderick Jaynes" (who doesn't exist: It's the Coens!), Hail, Caesar! moves at an easy but never draggy pace, and soars in sequences that invite viewers to lose themselves in the magic of the movies, only for the curtain to be pulled back, revealing the artifice. This trick is best exemplified in a wonderful soundstage sequence depicting the filming of a scene from fictional musical Swingin' Dinghy, starring hunky Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) as a tap-dancing sailor. While Gurney hoofs and hollers (rather tunefully) through a happily homoerotic seafaring shindig entitled "No Dames!", the Coens chop up the scene, cutting between how it would be viewed by a paying audience (i.e., as envisioned by its director, swaggeringly played by Christopher Lambert), and how they themselves see it: a mess of complicated set-ups by the camera crew. While doing so, the Coens also cleverly point us toward some sinister, plot-sensitive background details. In moments like these, the Coens' directorial prowess is dizzying, at once cerebral, emotional, and narratively propulsive.

Hail, Caesar!'s tone is generally light, but, as in so much of the Coens' work, darkness loiters at the fringes. It uses the patina of flagrant, joyous artifice—and a cavalcade of well-judged star cameos—to mask a critique of shady dealing in the film industry, and cinema's enormous potential to operate simultaneously as an ideological weapon and a tool of suppression. On the shortcomings of the Hollywood "Dream Factory," it's not as vicious as, say, Robert Altman's The Player, or as luridly sour as David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. It is, however, a brilliant companion piece to Barton Fink, leaving the viewer with plenty to ponder once the laughs have subsided.

Follow Ashley on Twitter.

Illustration by Alex Jenkins

As far as bodily functions go, sneezing is probably the most comparable to orgasm. There's the initial tickle in your body, the build up of tension, the suspense, and then suddenly, like a volcanic eruption, you feel the explosion of physical relief. It feels satisfying to sneeze.

For some, it's also satisfying to watch other people sneeze. Sexually satisfying even. And these people are discovering online that they're not alone in the community of sneezing, coughing, and cold-and-flu fetishists.

"I'm attracted to sneezing, but also other symptoms like coughing, fevers, discomfort. So you might say I'm more of a cold-and-allergies fetishist," said Emma, a 29-year-old from Canada, who's active on a site for sneeze fetishsists.

As a kid, she remembers taking a special interest in sneezes in books and television—like a scene in the animated Frosty the Snowman movie, where a character "sneezes and shivers from being in the chilled boxcar on the train," or a book about Donald Duck's nephews who get sick, which she "read over and over."

Like Emma, Terry, a 21-year-old from the northeastern United States, was interested in sneezing from a very early age, but says "it wasn't until I hit puberty that I recognized my feelings about were becoming sexual in nature."

Both Emma and Terry discovered through internet searches in their late teens that the intense feelings they felt throughout childhood were not only a real fetish, but there were also others out there just like them.

Online, there are several places for sneeze fetishists to convene: There's Sneeze Fetish Forum, a 3,500-member community where people trade stories and observations and tips for coming out. There's a private sub-Reddit, r/sneezefetish, for general discussion. There's The Furry Sneezing Archive, for the intersection of sneezing and anthropomorphics. And plenty of web 1.0-style sites, like Tarot of Sneezing, where an early post from the webmaster acknowledged that "there are so many things out there now relating to sneezing—chat rooms and forums, so you can interact with others who like sneezing."

The point? If you're into sneezing, you're not alone.

"I think the first time I masturbated was while listening to the sounds of someone sneezing on a fetish site," said Emma. "Suddenly I was discovering a multitude of online areas that had people who were writing and sharing the same kind of fantasies that I'd made up in my head for a decade."

Watch: VICE meets a community of quicksand fetishists, who recreate versions of their favorite quicksand scenes with an erotic twist.

Lyna, a 21-year-old from rural Missouri, became a nurse after she discovered her sneezing fetish. She was quick to clarify that she doesn't get off on watching her patients sneeze, but says her fetish played into her desire to be a caretaker.

"Most sneezes really don't turn me on at all—probably a good thing, since I work in the medical field," said Lyna, "I prefer 'tough guys' with colds who deny that they're sick until they can't anymore, with long buildups and trying to hold back the sneeze, even trying to talk while fighting the need to sneeze. I also love how a man's voice gets hoarse when he's sick, so it's deeper and gravelly. I enjoy being the caretaker."

"A lot of what I find attractive has to do with a situation or a continued loss of control," said Emma, "So a single sneeze or cough, while occasionally appreciated, is simply mundane enough for me to often ignore. If someone is completely down and out with cold symptoms or totally non-functional because of hay fever, that's far more interesting than a single sneeze."

Compared to people with fetishes like bondage, BDSM, or pup play, the sneeze fetishists I spoke to were intensely private about their sex lives. They don't hold meet-ups or conventions, and aside from the chat rooms and internet forums where they talk to each other, everyone I spoke to said they kept their fetish a secret.

"I come from a very Southern Baptist family," said Lyna, "and the area I live in is a very closed-minded small town, so unless my fetish was something to do with big trucks, no one here will ever know."

According to Dr. Chris Donaghue, sex therapist and author of Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture, it's important to remove the shame and stigma from people with unusual desires. "That's the core problem here—the shame they feel , not the actual act," said Donaghue.

If there's one place where the sneeze fetishists felt totally free of shame, it's online. All the people interviewed for this story described the internet as an outlet for them to express desires freely, and an escape from the isolation in their daily lives.

"I think if the internet did not exist, I would have never identified my feelings as a fetish—perhaps never even as a sexual interest," said Emma.

Follow H. Alan Scott on Twitter.

(Still via "On Hold")

Best of VICE Canada returns to City on Sunday, February 7 with our two-part documentary "On Hold," which investigates the rarely discussed but highly contentious topic of transgender health access in Canada.

While nine out of ten provinces offer some access to some surgeries—though there is only one hospital, in Montreal, that provides the full gamut of treatments—New Brunswick stands alone by not offering any funded procedures to transgender individuals.

That's why we went to Fredericton to let AJ Ripley, a non-binary transgender person who prefers the pronouns "they and them," take us through their life in New Brunswick fighting for access to proper health services.

We also heard from transgender patients who are desperately battling for fair treatment in the healthcare system, and doctors and experts who say providing this care is both possible and, in fact, the difference between life and death.

Tune in Sunday nights at 10 PM for more.

Former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi arrives at a Toronto court on Friday, Feb. 5, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

The final sentence in a handwritten letter Lucy DeCoutere was asked to read it aloud in court evoked gasps from those watching.

"I love your hands. Lucy."

DeCoutere, a complainant in Jian Ghomeshi's sex assault trial, was quoting an old so-called "love letter" she'd sent the formerCBC host after he allegedly choked and slapped her in July 2003. Her accusations have resulted in one of four charges for which he's currently being tried.

In cross-examination that began yesterday and carried over into most of Friday, Ghomeshi's attorney Marie Henein repeatedly asked DeCoutere if she had been absolutely truthful with the court about all of her correspondences with Ghomeshi. She was particularly interested in those that happened after the alleged assault, which DeCoutere said took place at Ghomeshi's home in early July 2003.

Earlier this week, DeCoutere's lawyer contacted Crown counsel Michael Callaghan to make additional disclosures about DeCoutere's correspondences with Ghomeshi—things she hadn't initially told police when she reported the alleged attack. They mostly consisted of emails, which Henein went through one by one in court Friday.

The emails, many of which DeCoutere said she'd forgotten writing (they were from an old account she says she no longer has access to) indicated that DeCoutere had, on several occasions when she knew she and Ghomeshi would be in the same place, suggested they meet up.

Prior to the Gemini Awards in October 2003, she wrote, "If I do end up coming up to Tdot, do u wanna grab lunch?" In others, DeCoutere told Ghomeshi what was going on in her life and asked about career advice.

" were sharing your day and what's going on with the man you say sexually assaulted you, right," Henein asked; she repeated some variation of that question throughout the cross.

Prior to attending the same TV festival in Banff in June 2004, the event they'd met at a year prior, DeCoutere said, "How busy are you going to be in Banff? I wanna play with you."

DeCoutere told the court she was trying to be friendly with Ghomeshi to "normalize" the situation and, knowing that she'd run into him anyway, she wanted it to be on her terms.

"The way he treated me when he choked me was so extraordinary... I would look for ways to humanize him," she said, noting the sexual innuendos she sometimes made, things like "chance encounter in the broom closet?", and attaching a pic of her simulating a blowjob with a bottle, were all jokes, and that she had no romantic feelings toward him.

But Henein challenged her on that point, rehashing in court an email DeCoutere had sent Ghomeshi the day after the alleged choking and slapping took place.

"You kicked my ass last night and that makes me want to fuck your brains out tonight," it said.

"What happened was no sexual assault...The next day after thinking about it, you wanted to fuck his brains out," said Henein, to which DeCoutere responded, "Women can be assaulted by someone and still have positive feelings for them afterward."

Then Henein presented DeCoutere with the "love letter."

"You were too sparkling," it reads in describing the night the pair met in Banff, "when it came down to it, I just couldn't talk to you."

Of their weekend in July, including the night the alleged assault took place and subsequent meals, parties and a barbecue, she wrote, "I loved spending time with you this weekend, you are hilarious... I am sad we didn't spend the night together."

Henein then asked DeCoutere to read the final line: "I love your hands. Lucy."

Henein accused DeCoutere of deliberately omitting these details from her testimony, but DeCoutere said she didn't remember these emails or the love letter, which she said she hadn't laid eyes on in years.

At one point, Henein asked, "It is possible Miss DeCoutere, that you seem to forget the stuff that shows you're lying?"

The Crown briefly re-directed DeCoutere after her cross-examination, asking if there was any more context to the letter she wanted to share. She said that it explained her initial attraction to Ghomeshi, which was "legitimate" and commented that it seemed apologetic in tone, as if she were trying to placate him. Her instinct, she said, is to try to normalize traumatic situations.

"The last line of it is me pointing love to the very thing that he used to hurt me," she told the court, noting that it wasn't meant to signal that she liked being choked. "The things you used to hurt me, I could even love those, cause you're never gonna do it again."

Callaghan then told the judge he'd received a "new disclosure" from a third witness Friday morning and asked to adjourn until Monday.

He also said some witnesses may not be "legally appropriate" to call to the stand.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

All photos via the author

My body is buzzing—a feeling that reminds me of cocaine or ten cups of the worst brew, courses through me.

I'm about to embark on my first ever BDSM experience with Sir Dragon Z, a stranger nearly twice my age. He has a preference for intense scenes, mentally and physically with an element of D/s. Dominance and submission (D/s) is based on the premise that a willing exchange of power can be a gratifying and arousing experience for both parties. Submitting means I offer to hand over my personal power and autonomy to this leather-studded Dom, knowing he will push me and hurt me, yet I also trust he will respect my boundaries. I hear the echo of radical feminism, railing that BDSM supports femicide and legitimizes violence against women. Yeah, the D/s scares me. It also turns me on.

I'm wearing black tight pants open to the thigh, a pinstripe bustier, and fishnet body-suit covering select regions, then knee-high boots. One of the great things about embracing kink is slutty-superhero couture.

When we meet at a Vancouver kink conference, his pull is magnetic—his large, six-foot-plus frame poised. I'm intimidated yet excited.

Extensive planning goes into a consensual BDSM scene; partners discuss what they will and will not do. Informed consent is heavily encouraged in the kink community, unlike what Jian Ghomeshi is accused of doing.

Imagine such planning in the vanilla world. Sitting down with a lover-to-be and letting them know what you're into. "Yeah, I like my nipples played with," or "No, please don't stick your fingers up my asshole." So clean, so obvious, so never-fucking-happens.

Dragon Z and I find an X-shaped cross in the conference's dungeon room and discuss limits. I explain that I have a high pain tolerance but am untried. He nods and gives me an example of someone whose limit was insertion. Not just no sex, but no insertion. Ah, the specifics. I agree that is a good limit. Sexual touching is fine. "What about kissing?" he asks, "That can be insertion." I look at him, tilt my head, and nod. Kissing as insertion is fine.

"What about a hood?" I think I'm scowling. I might be making a growling sound in the back of my throat. "We'll leave the hood out for now. What about a blindfold?"

"That's fine."

"Thuddy pain or stingy?" he asks. "Thuddy," I reply.

"What about a collar?" I just look at him. "I like to use a collar when I scene because it is like an agreement of what we are doing," he says. I consider. "I'll let you think about it while I show you my other tools."

One by one, he hands me an array of tools. Whips and floggers thick and thin. A long, evil-looking stick about an inch wide.

Dragon holds up two lengths of thick metal chain-link, "I don't use ropes. I use chains." Is he proud of that?

He looks around his collection, then back at me. "This is the hardest part. Knowing how to start," he says, flexing his hands.

"Kneel in front of me," he says.

Awkwardly, I kneel.

He stares down at me and holds up the collar. I hadn't said yes. Nor had I said no.

How did I get myself into this?

Name: Friday. Experience: Brand-spanking new. Likes impact play and some pain. Looking to bottom to whoever is up for working with a newbie. No humiliation.

So read my ad in the "pick-up-and-play" thread for Westcoast Bound's dungeon party. That's how I got myself into this situation. Hosted by Metro Vancouver Kink (MVK), Westcoast Bound (WCB) is one of dozens of Kink/BDSM/Fetish conferences that take place each year across Canada and the United States. WCB presents numerous classes over the weekend that aim to educate new and old kinksters alike, exposing them to new techniques with which to delight—or terrify—their partners. It also promotes a safe community in which one can fly their freak flag. Well, I am one of those freaks.

Now, just to be clear, I am a card-carrying, argumentative, patriarchy-battling, colonialism-hating, pro-choice feminist. I am not one of those sniveling ignoramuses who thinks that declaring on YouTube that they don't need feminism anymore is an enlightened idea. I'm a woman working in male-dominated industries who has experienced sexual assault. I am also kinky as shit and enjoy getting choked-out and giving and receiving bruises during freaky encounters.

But it is time to put aside the rationale, the mental aerobics and just experience what I say I want to experience. My mind is swirling, tumbling down the rabbit hole.

I kneel before the man in leather, collar in his thick hands. Sir Dragon Z speaks slowly, ritually.

Donning the collar represents the responsibility you have to this scene, he says. "It is not a collar of permanence, or of ownership, but it is a collar of commitment to the scene we are engaging in. If you do well while wearing it, that reflects well on me. If you do badly, it reflects badly on me."

"When you are ready, kiss the collar and place your head in my lap." I kneel there for a breath, then another. I am going to do it. I am okay with doing it. But there is this massive stubborn resistance that wells up as I breathe and glare at the collar. I feel my mind try to lean forward on the exhale. Yet there I kneel, riding through my next inhale. I wonder if he will prompt me. Or perhaps let me out of making that decision. But he sits there, immobile, hands at rest in his lap, waiting. The mental psych out.

Collars are a sensitive subject for many anti-kink contingents. They are a highly visible, tangible symbol of ownership, power, dominance. Indeed that is why they are so popular among kinky folk. Good doggy.

Radical feminist philosophy balks at any suggestion that a woman might choose to submit to sexual domination by a man, discounting it as the result of cultural victimization and socialization. According to Gail Dines, a professor of sociology and an international anti-porn activist, BDSM is the same as actual torture and violates the the United Nations Convention Against Torture. She states in an article for CounterPunch that torture cannot be consented to and therefore the same should go for consensual BDSM.

My teeth clench. I lean towards the man in leather and kiss the damned thing, laying my head on his lap while he collars me.

I am to call him Sir. Yes, Sir; no, Sir; with respect, Sir. He attaches the hardened leather cuffs to my wrists and instructs me to undress—slowly, deliberately, with purpose.

Naked, he has me swivel, showing my ass, before instructing me to kneel and run my hands over his boots. "Smell the leather. Everything begins and ends with the leather." Blacked-out goggles snuff out the world.

I've done something wrong, something about the order of my hands. "Shit," I say.

"What did you say?" he barks. "Shit, Sir," I respond. "And did I tell you, you could say that?" "No, Sir." "Get up, lay across my lap." Like a recalcitrant child, he paddles my ass.

Moments later I commit my next foible, saying something other than the honorifics. Suddenly he is standing, bending me over the chair. "Ass up! I am going to hit you ten times. You are going to count them out and after each strike, say 'Thank you, Sir, may I have another?' Do you understand?" "Yes, Sir," I husk.

It fucking hurts. I call out the strikes, ask for another, miss number seven, and hear my voice crack.

My brain changes gears. It is a strange space to be in, to know that I am here willingly and not fight back, to just accept the punishment, to want it. Sir hauls me to the cross and chains my hands up against it.

I try to absorb each blow and not reveal the pain. Sir tells me I can express myself, but I do not want to be weak. Another hit catches me across the shoulder and the intensity and speed increases. I have to let the pain out somehow, so I move into and away from the blows. My body dances. "Good girl," he whispers. Eventually I yell and that becomes my release. I shake those chains.

The absurdity of my situation strikes me. Trussed up like an erotic turkey, unwilling to tap out, not really wanting to escape but knowing I should want to. My lips curl. Sir catches sight of the grin. He gives me a choice between ten strikes to remember or one that will lift me off the ground. "Answer quickly!" he snaps. "One!" I rasp and before it's fully vocalized my right ass cheek is hit—hard.

"Breathe. Breathing will save you." I breathe.

Then a sharp sting flares across my back and breathing is not enough. I rattle the chains and scream in gutter Spanish. "Eeeway puuuutaa!"

"What did you say? Answer quickly!" he snaps. "Son of a bitch, Whore!" I heave. "You're not calling me that, are you?" he asks. "No, Sir," I say quickly. "Good girl," He grinds himself against my ass. "But you'd like to call me that wouldn't you?" "Yes, Sir," I agree, my teeth bared. "Maybe I'll let you call me that later, but you have to earn that," and he wails on my back and hoists me two-feet high by the meat under my armpits. I yell.

He pulls me back to feel the way my screaming has turned him hard. "I love when people scream in foreign languages."

I can feel tears gather, seeping under the goggles. Tears of pain, tears of release. Sir likes the tears. Sir licks them from my cheeks. My breath hitches as the stick beats the soles of my feet. "Do you like that?" "No, Sir," I rasp. That is not a good pain. I could say Uncle, our safe word, but I won't. I do not show weakness. I will endure. That is how I show my strength in submission. "Good, I want you to remember this." He moves to the other foot.

Time swirls past, cresting waves of hurt and sensation, of harsh words and gentle praise. I am lost.

Then Sir is embracing me. "I got you. I'll take care of you." I shudder, muscles in my body spasming from tightening and relaxing and tightening again under the blows. I breathe in leather and man. He whispers, "I want to do so much more, but I'm not sure I should." I chuckle wetly.

"I'm proud of you," he says. Removing the goggles he tugs me to the ground and crawls over me. "Do you like breath play?" My lids are at half-mast. I am drunk on endorphins. "A little. Not enough experience to know, Sir."

He stares down and begins to constrict my throat. I sink into it, eyes closing. I feel a veil fogging over my mind. My body is loose as I mull over my questionable life choices. He slackens his hold, eyes peering down, possibly concerned. "Are you alright?" he asks. "Yes, Sir," I sigh. I am. Just pumped with endorphins and nearly catatonic. But I feel... safe.

Adherents of radical feminism believe that egalitarianism means eradicating the desire for men and women to partake in domination games, particularly in sexuality. They criticize the consensual pain and domination experienced by submissive women yet gloss over the reality of submissive men, dominant women, and a plethora of powerful gender-bending LGBTQ people who partake in BDSM.

Human sexuality is not a neat and pretty package. It is the most lizard-like part of our brains. It is dark, dirty, mean, playful, dominant, submissive, and messy. That complexity and wildness is what makes sex fun, intense, complicated and dynamic. I won't be trading my kinky proclivities for the civil love-sessions of the sanctimonious.

With me at the Dragon's knees, we reverse the ritual of the collar, "Smell the leather. Everything begins and ends with the leather." He hands me half a protein bar and says he will check on me later. I totter off in my boots and thong. Heated and bruised, my ass and back on display. Battle scars, I think to myself, with a cat-ate-the-cream smile. I'm still a fucking feminist.

Dave Mirra in 2004. Photo via Getty

Dave Mirra, the pro BMX biker with 24 X Games medals and a successful video game franchise to his name, has died.

Police in Greenville, North Carolina, responded to a report of an alleged suicide on Thursday and found the 41-year-old BMX superstar "sitting in a truck with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound." Mirra lived in Greenville with his wife, Lauren, and their two daughters, and had been visiting friends on Thursday before he died.

"We mourn the loss today of a great friend and wonderful human being who touched the lives of so many around the world with his gift," Greenville's mayor, Allen Thomas, said. " called Greenville, North Carolina, home and was as humble a guy talking with kids on a street corner about bikes as he was in his element on the world stage. A young life with so much to offer was taken too soon."

Dave Mirra was only 13 when he became co-sponsored by the Haro Bikes BMX team in 1987, and his sports career accelerated fast. His 1988 appearance in the Dorkin' in York freestyle BMX video series helped spread word of the versatile young star, and over the next few years he received multiple sponsorships and finally went pro for Hoffman Bikes in early 1992.

He was hit by a drunk driver in 1993, leaving him with a fractured skull and shoulder. After months of recovery, Mirra eventually rode straight back into the highest echelon of BMX. At 24, Mirra holds the second-largest number of X Games medals, exceeded only by Bob Burnquist's 26.

Throughout the 2000s, Mirra cemented his place as a pioneer and icon in the BMX world, releasing a signature shoe, a video game franchise, hosting a show for MTV, and even launching his own BMX company, Mirraco. He retired from the sport in 2011 but continued to compete in triathlons and as a rallycar racer, finishing the 2013 Global Rallycross Championship series in fourth place.

His potential suicide rocked the sports community Thursday evening, from ESPN and the X Games to a stunned local North Carolina sports reporter who proclaimed Mirra "simply the best of the best."

"Goodbye Dave Mirra," his longtime friend Tony Hawk wrote on Twitter. "A true pioneer, icon, and legend. Thank you for the memories... We are heartbroken."

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

When the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released its 2016 voter survey this week, the first few results in the report were illuminating, if not all that surprising. For 73 percent of registered Muslim voters, Islamophobia is the number one concern, up from third place in 2014. About the same percentage of Muslim voters plan to vote for one of the two Democrats running for president in 2016. But after Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the third most popular candidate was a little surprising: It turns out, 7.47 percent of Muslims support Donald Trump.

Trump, if you haven't been following the election, has called for a "shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," and is in favor of surveillance techniques that target people based on their religion, if that religion is Islam. It's safe to say the real estate tycoon and TV personality has adopted a posture toward Islam that speaks to the 14.6 percent of Americans who are "generally fearful" of Muslims. But even fellow conservatives have called Trump "a fascist" for his comments about American Muslims.

So if you're Muslim, what's the appeal of voting for the guy?

"He is anti-establishment, and he comes from the outside. I think one could—from the outside—bring a new perspective to things, and really shake things up in Washington," said Saba Ahmed, president and founder of the Republican Muslim Coalition, who famously wore an American Flag headscarf while being interviewed by Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly last fall.

Ahmed believes a greater Muslim presence in the GOP would help quash growing Islamophobia, both within the party and in the United States at large. "The rise of anti-Islamic sentiment is partially due to the voice of Muslim Americans being missing in the Republican Party," she told me.

Republican Muslims are yet another in a long line of counterintuitive political blocs in the US, like, for instance, the pro-Israeli Muslim group called the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, or the Log Cabin Republicans, the best-known organization representing gay conservatives in the US. But the idea of Muslims putting their support behind someone as outspoken as Trump is about trashing Muslims seems exceptionally strange—and Ahmed acknowledges that.

"We are very alarmed by his anti-Islamic rhetoric, and hope to see that change as the campaign goes on," she told me. "But from an economic standpoint, and his business skills, we would love to see him as our Republican nominee."

"He's worked with Muslims all his life, he has properties all over the Middle East, and he has significant business dealings in the Islamic world," she added.

It's not just Ahmed. A Facebook group called "Muslims for Trump" exists, and while it rarely gets updated, its anonymous creator published a long, wordy manifesto earlier this week. It's a little light on details about Trump's policy proposals, but the author does claim not to have heard "a single remark of hatred made by Mr. Trump. No one who has come forth has managed to provide a single example."

As for why Trump makes a good candidate, the post is as vague as it is verbose: "We must continue to voice our support, qua Muslims, for an America with a history and an identity, an America who celebrates her Christian heritage loudly and proudly," is the closest the writer gets to an explanation.

The Facebook page attracts sympathetic Muslims—though not necessarily ardent Trump supporters. "I find Trump's 'no need to always be politically correct' stance refreshing. I also like his apparent 'telling like it is' demeanor," Nash Khatri, an electrical engineer who has commented on the page, told me in a Facebook message. "I also think he is no dummy, and who knows? He may make a good president."

Other Muslim Republicans aren't so sure about Trump. "I do think he has an ability to put his finger on a pulse regarding what the issues are for Americans and on how social media driven marketing works nowadays," said Sarah Cochran, a representative of the Muslim civic group Emerge USA. However, she added, "I wouldn't vote for him."

Ahmed also had some criticism of her preferred candidate. "I think he has been hurt in the polls by having a very arrogant attitude," she told me, adding that she thinks Trump needs to "humble down." But while she'd like Trump to change, she said she would still pull the lever for him in November should he become the Republican Party's Islamophobic presidential nominee.

"We believe that Islamic values are in line with the Republican party, and there's no way for us to go back to Democrats, or independents for that matter," she said.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Since VICE began tracking mass shootings earlier this week, there has been one such incident in the United States and three in Europe. A shooting in Washington, DC, injured four; a second in Shlisselburg, Russia, left two dead and three wounded; an apparent bank robbery in Odessa, Ukraine on Wednesday injured four security guards; and a shooting in Loures, Portugal on Thursday injured five. Every gun death and injury is a tragedy, but compared to data on the early days of recent years from the Gun Violence Archive—whose metrics we are largely following—one shooting with four casualties in a six-day period is a low figure for America. And the first six days of this week have been no abberation: To date, 2016 has seen mercifully few mass shootings in the United States compared to the same period in the last few years.

According to GVA data, the stretch from January 31 to February 5 yielded two shootings in both 2013 and 2014, and four in 2015. And when you zoom out and look at each of these years from January 1 through February 5, the 2016 numbers appear similarly encouraging: By this time in 2013, America had witnessed 14 mass shootings leaving 17 dead and 47 injured; in 2014 it was 19 events with 18 dead and 72 injured; in 2015 it was 26 shootings, with 42 dead and 86 injured. Although mass shootings in America have killed 21 people this year, more than the number by February 5 in 2013 or 2014, the total incident and casualty numbers (12 and 57, respectively) are down.

Still, these events are erratic and rarely-studied, so experts warn against reading too much into early figures.

As James Fox, a professor at Northeastern University specializing in mass murders and gun violence, points out, mass shootings are volatile phenomena, and the few years of data we have aren't robust enough to show real trends. To his eye, these figures fall within random variability. At this stage, he can't see any factors that would or could explain a decrease in shootings this year beyond chance. He adds that there remain far too many unknowns to say anything as to whether 2016 might witness any change when it comes to America's mass shooting problem.

" a couple people were poorer shots," he tells me of this year's lower tally of casualties and incidents so far.

So we'd be foolish to get complacent about the policy and social issues underlying gun violence. Shootings could stay low throughout the year. Or they could spike next week. The best thing we can do is continue monitoring the situation, keeping the horrific frequency of mass shootings in our minds as much as we can bear.

This post has been updated.

For my money, Brian Evenson is one of the most consistently vital and unnerving voices in writing today. Spanning 11 full-length novels, as well as works attributed to various pseudonyms and works in translation, Evenson's universe of psycho-cerebral horror maintains a consistently sating and reawakening pulse. There are no limits to reality when in the hands of Evenson's language, which speaks as calmly and clearly as a friend, while at the same time making something about the room in which you read him seem altered, off.

Now's a great time to be a Brian Evenson fan, new or longstanding, as Coffee House Press has just released a four-book set of new editions of his work. The set includes three rereleases of out-of-print titles—his novels Father of Lies (1998), The Open Curtain (2006), and Last Days (2009)—as well as his latest collection of short fictions, A Collapse of Horses , which finds the author still at the height of his powers.

1. Father of Lies is a novel written shortly after Evenson's well-documented self-excommunication from the Mormon Church early on in his career. He left the faith following accusations by the administration at BYU that his work was not fit for its religion, specifically the primal scenes of violence, incest, and cannibalism depicted in his first novel, Altmann's Tongue (1994). Not only did Evenson refuse to be kowtowed by someone else's interpretation of moral standards, he did not take the admonishment lying down. In Father of Lies, Evenson depicts a Mormon provost, Eldon Fochs, who regularly molests the teen females in his stead. As Fochs attempts to pursue the matter more deeply, the Mormon Church attempts to intervene, rearing an unnerving and emotionally terrifying orchestration of deceit, ritual abuse, and ambient religious mania. Father of Lies stands out among Evenson's work as the most institutionally critical, morally unsettling of the books in this collection.

2. The Open Curtain might be the author's most well known work, one I've read more than five times. The novel leads us through the increasingly surreal experience of a young man, Rudd, who becomes obsessed with his research of a murder committed by the grandson of former LDS president Brigham Young. The discovery comes in the midst of Rudd's parallel uncovering of the existence of a half-brother, with whom his relationship seems to blossom alongside their mutual fascination with the crime. Trying to describe the transitioning effects of how Evenson details the acid-like reconfiguring of Rudd's person in the presence of this brother, who may or may not actually exist, we begin to think, is nearly impossible. There's a touch of the time-shifting of Lost Highway in here, and the colors of Suspiria, and the soundtrack of Burzum's Hvis Lyset Tar Oss , and a whole other strange register which throughout it all just seems like a calm story dictated to you by a stranger in your sleep.

3. Having read an early excerpt of Last Days in the form of a short run glossy pamphlet titled The Brotherhood of Mutilation years ago, I remember feeling, in the digestion of that fragment, as if I'd stumbled through a door in my home I hadn't noticed was always there, leading to another version of the world that seemed like ours but also wasn't. A secret place, cryptic like a snuff film, but on paper, made of language. And yet, the full novel version of Last Days is all about truncation—it follows the experience of an ex-detective named Kline, who is abducted into a cult-like society that believes amputation brings people closer to God. Once taken, he is forced to help them investigate who murdered their leader. The clinical tone with which Evenson is able to traverse such situations, and the strange stark architecture of their world, makes even the most insidious or repulsive situations seem plausible, mathematical, nearby. Nothing is real, so everything is real.

4. A Collapse of Horses continues the series of Evenson's masterful short fiction collections, perhaps now breaking into the widest breadth of all his modes. While his earliest works often begat violence and sickness, more and more his work grows attended instead to the feel of space around the acts themselves, invoking deeper and deeper levels of the subconscious, the associative. Evenson's narrators recite various threads of reality, relentlessly questioning themselves: Am I remembering what I am saying happened to me correctly? Could I be getting something wrong? What is it about myself that I don't know?

This endlessly looping sense of perspective fills each story, and each page within each story, undoing itself as it continues. Just when it feels that you are beginning to parse the logic underneath the narrator's reality, something about that perspective seems to divert. Your own thoughts might be as much an enemy to you in figuring out where or who you are as the suspicion that something is wrong. And the nearer the bearer of the wrong feeling is allowed, the less the person in its midst can seem to recognize it.

One of the things I most love about Evenson's short fiction, and what makes it bigger than a book, is how it seems to work not as a body full of organs that come together by the association of being placed side by side, but instead the thriving feeling riding from one over into the other. The same terror that appears in a story about a man having surgery to remove "the tumor that had spread its fingers across his jaw and up one side of the neck" appears again wholly mutated a hundred pages later in the story of a woman who loses her ability to sleep after her husband, with whom she shares the bed, loses his arm. There is something there, and there is nothing there, and so it is the calm, almost mesmeric language with which Evenson fills in the space between the lines that lingers and folds over and changes intention and spreads and spreads.

No matter where you start with Evenson's work, the door is wide ajar, and once you go through it you won't be coming out.

Follow Blake Butler on Twitter.

Follow Leslie on Instagram, Tumblr, and buy her books from Fantagraphics.

A Jewdas political action in London. All photos courtesy of the author.

Growing up with the knowledge that you have a homeland, a country that was fought for in your name, to be a place of safety should you ever face persecution for your culture and your faith, is a comforting thought. This is what that the state of Israel promises the eight million Jews living in diaspora communities around the world.

The Israeli Government is mounting the pressure for us to make the move there, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling on Jews to relocate to the state: "I would like to tell all European Jews, and all Jews wherever they are: 'Israel is the home of every Jew... Israel is waiting for you with open arms,'" he said last year.

The problem is, for many young Jews right now, the modern state of Israel feels far from a home. A recent poll found that 47 percent of the UK's Jewish population believe that the Israeli government is "constantly creating obstacles to avoid engaging in the peace process." Three quarters said that the expansion of settlements on the West Bank is a "major obstacle to peace." Just under a third even said they wouldn't demand that Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Annie Cohen is a London-based student and member of Jewdas, a new non-Zionist Jewish organization based in London, which uses the tagline "radical voices for the alternative diaspora." The group's aim—according to its website—is to harness the "great radicalism of Jewish tradition, a tradition of dreamers, subversives, cosmopolitans, and counter-culturalists" by "putting loyalty to ideas of international justice over tribalism and parochialism." The group is populated mostly by under-30s, and meets regularly, hosting cultural events and organizing political campaigns such as the refugee fundraiser "Beigels not Borders."

Organized communities in the diaspora seem unwilling to reflect this change in attitudes. The list of active, major Jewish youth movements in the UK are Zionist in their entirety, offering "unparalleled opportunities to meet other young Jewish people and to have fun whilst exploring personal connections to both Judaism and Israel."

Attempting to avoid these political fractures by by sticking to synagogue is no more fruitful. Festivals such as Yom Ha'atzmaut (Independence Day), the celebration of Israel's creation, are now inescapable dates in the religious calendar. The Prayer for the State of Israel read in services week on week. Israel has been weaved into the very fabric of modern Jewish practice.

So in the summer of 2015, Cohen went to a week-long summit in Morocco, along with representatives from 10 other countries, to launch an alternative, international Jewish organization. "The outcome of these meetings feels really important, we're just getting started, but we're growing, and will start campaigning together soon," she said. "It was an emotional experience to be sat for six days with people who care so much about ending the occupation. It felt so empowering, transforming our own communities, with people who had traveled across the world to be together."

Organizations like Jewdas have been growing in number and popularity worldwide. In the United States, Hillel, the organization representing Jewish students, split over Israel. Campus branches calling for "inclusivity and open discourse" have seen no other option but to form their own organization. Young Jews in Australia, South Africa, and Canada have new local groups, too.

"What grew from trying to create spaces for Jews who shared anti-Zionist politics turned into something bigger, into somewhere you can be Jewish and not feel excluded for your views, where in fact they're the norm," Cohen said. "We can support each other, especially those of us in countries where organizations are already vocal in their support for the Palestinian struggle, we can help members in other countries who are trying to get stuff off the ground."

When Rothman was 19, he lived in a Palestinian village inside Israel for a few months. For the first time, he saw Palestinians as people, which went against everything he'd been taught as a child. "There are a lot of concepts to grapple with in this conflict, and I didn't know any Palestinians personally," he said. "I suppose growing up I learned to view this whole group of people as a political concept, so it was easy to paint this nation as a threat."

But the community is changing, a new Jewish identity is being formed, one that's distinct from Zionist politics. It comes at a time when dissenting voices and places of comfort, have never been more in demand.

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