Photo by Heather Davini Boucher

Around noon on Saturday, an SUV carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan pulled up to a park in Anaheim, California. A stand-off ensued between activists holding signs that read, "Freedom Has No Color," and Klansmen with titles like Grand Dragon and Exalted Cyclops whose signs read, "White Lives Do Matter Say No To Cultural Genocide." But when a man punched a hate group member in the back of the head, the scene descended into full-fledged chaos.

At one point, a man wearing a black shirt with Confederate patches on it wielded an American flag like a lance.

Eventually, a protestor wearing a studded leather jacket and a few others got close enough that the KKK member started jousting. "I'm a black man," one activist yelled before finally pouncing. "I'm here, baby."

The fight left three people stabbed and the pavement surrounding Pearson Park splattered with blood and Coca-Cola. Five people from the Klan and seven counter-protestors were arrested for participating in the gory melee. The protesters face charges ranging from assault with a deadly weapon to elder abuse, though local prosecutors have yet to indicate if they will go forward.

On Sunday, cops determined that the KKK members had acted in self defense or were merely protecting each other from instigators. As such, all five members of the hate group who were arrested have been released. Although Sergeant Daron Wyatt said the decision was based on both video evidence and interviews, it has left some residents frustrated with the city, which has a storied relationship with the Klan. In the 1920s, members of the hate group occupied four out of five of the city council seats, and nine out of ten spots on the police force. OCWeekly, a local paper, jokingly referred to Anaheim in a recent story as "Klanaheim."

A crowdfunding campaign was quickly set up to help the arrested protesters. "When the pigs came, they ended up targeting and arresting the counter protesters, many of them Black and Brown people, and not the racists who instigated the confrontation/violence in the first place," reads the campaign's page. "Not surprising."

Within five hours of the page being set up, $3,793 had been collected, and on Sunday, about a dozen people stormed the Anaheim police station to demand the protestors' release. Representatives for Santa Ana Cop Watch, the activist group behind the crowd funding campaign, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

At this stage, all three stabbing victims are in stable condition. Another protestor is still wanted by the police, and local law enforcement officials are defending how they handled the incident. They said a small group of officers—some plainclothes—were present for the rally, leaving it unclear how the situation exploded the way it did.

"We had individuals who specifically came there to commit acts of violence, and there is nothing to do to stop that," Sergeant Wyatt told the LA Times.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Marcus Barnes. Photo author's own

Marcus Barnes was the first person ever to be tried for "encouraging the commission of criminal damage," a charge never before heard of or handed out. When police arrested him on December 12, 2011, they were essentially saying that publishing a magazine about graffiti was the same as actively encouraging people to go spray up as much public property as possible. He was eventually cleared in court.

That magazine was called Keep the Faith, and only two issues had been released at the time. Over the course of three years and to the cost of Marcus's psychological and financial well-being, the government's newfound zeal for punishing graffiti was laid bare. Marcus won his case just over a year ago, so he has re-released the magazine as a celebration of the anniversary of common sense prevailing.

I spoke to him about the magazine, his struggles with the law, and graffiti's current position in the UK.

VICE: What was the idea behind Keep the Faith?
Marcus Barnes: I've been a writer for a long time, and there weren't any magazines out at the time that were representing the train graffiti side of things. And also at the time, the authorities' approach to writers was having an increasingly negative effect on everybody. There was a crew called DPM who was followed around, put under surveillance, was allowed to paint at train depots or whatever, and then was put away for one or two years. That whole thing cost the taxpayer £1 million . Then a couple of guys died. Ozone and Wants were hit by a train in Barking. So all of this bad stuff was going on, and I thought why not make something that showed people that like, even though you have friends who've died, or friends who've been put away—just keep the faith, because there's still good stuff happening.

You went through bad times with your court case. Can you tell us what that was like?
It was hellish man. I'd been raided a few times doing graffiti, but you kind of expect that, because you know the more you're out there and the more you push it, the closer you are to having police knock down your door and take all your stuff. That's just part and parcel of being an active illegal graffiti writer. But I was about 30 years old, a professional journalist, and hadn't done graffiti in about five years. I had friends who were still active who I hung around with, but I wasn't doing it. At the back of my mind I was thinking, "maybe they will come for me because I'm hanging around with these people, or maybe because my magazine has people doing illegal things they would want details of," but for them to come for me with a charge that had never been used before, for that to be thrown at me, I felt like, "How the hell am I going to fight this?"

How much did it cost to fight it? I heard it was like 28 grand a day for the court fees.
No, that's what it cost the taxpayer. I had to pay £3,000 up front in legal fees that had to be paid whether I won or not, just to have legal representation. But it cost me hope. I had so much uncertainty hanging over my head. I quit my job because I didn't want to have to tell my boss I needed a month off to be in court. I stopped my creative side of things—my writing, my graffiti,like legal stuff. I stopped seeing people who did graffiti, all my friends, and I was just depressed. I didn't even realize I was, though. It was actually at Burning Man, after seven days in the desert, that I broke down. It was kind of how I met my current girlfriend, but you know after seven days in the desert getting mashed, I had nothing left, and I felt they'd taken everything from me, and I was in floods of tears. It was after that when I came back that I decided I needed to get therapy to deal with this stuff.

What was the conclusion to the court case?
I got a not guilty verdict in the end.

Did you get any compensation for everything that happened?
I actually asked my lawyer about that, but he said I wasn't entitled to anything like that. You just suck it up, you won, that's it. All I could think, though, was why me? Of all the magazines, websites, why did they pick me? People were way more explicit in their "go out and do it" attitude. I didn't even say fuck the police or anything; I just said I liked graffiti. I think that's what sent me into a spiral of despair.

What do you think about the level of jail time writers are getting these days?
It's crazy. The reason is because graffiti has been put into a category called "volume crime." It's an attack against property. So basically it's like if you smash a window, it costs this amount of money, and as a graffiti writer, you're prolific, attacking trains constantly, building up a hell a lot of money doing crimes against property and property owners.

Over the years, the money they charge has gone up ridiculously. In 2002, a few other people and I got done for doing a whole train, and we were charged £540 total. Fast-forward to the graffiti case recently in 2012, and one section of a train was £1,500 . So it's gone up ten times in as many years. And the reason is because trains are all now owned by private foreign companies and leased back to us. So the overground trains are operated by a Chinese company. I don't want to get into conspiracy theories, but there is definitely a correlation between private companies taking ownership and these fines. The cleaning companies are also obviously making a killing from it and are all privately owned too. So what happens is the writers go over the financial custodial threshold, so if it's over 20 grand you can go to jail, anything less is a fine or community service.

So if they can prove you've done over 20 grand's worth of damage, they can put you away?
Yeah, which can be like ten trains, which sounds like a lot, but most writers will do way more than that. And if they get caught it's like 60, 70 grand and straight to jail.

Related: Watch 'Why the Deadly Asbestos Industry Is Still Alive and Well'

Is that why you think there are fewer taggers these days?
Yeah. There is a policy where if any train has any graffiti on it, it's not allowed to go into service. I don't know. I still think there are a lot of people getting busy. My one policy for doing graffiti, not that I ever encourage people do it, but my one policy when putting people in the magazine and stuff like that is that if you're going to do it, do it well. Don't just do any old shit.

Like lazy tags?
I feel like this is the era of the shit graffiti writer. It's like a lot of young people are kind of in an X Factor, Big Brother style mentality where they don't care what they're famous for as long as they're famous. There are a lot of kids doing stuff all over London that are shit, but everyone knows their names 'cause they're everywhere. I'd rather not have my stuff up if it was shit. When I was younger, I spent ages practicing my tag because I didn't want anyone to see it if it was shit—what's the point?

What do you think about the rise of graffiti on the internet? There's a lot more stuff now on Instagram and other social media outlets.
I actually wrote my dissertation on the link between graffiti and the internet, and this was back in 2003, about the evolution of all that. Like if I'm painting on Leake Street in Waterloo, there are tons of weekend warriors taking photos, and they're taking pictures just for the kudos of putting it online, but they didn't do the work. Sometimes it gets annoying because they take photos while I'm working and even though I'm painting in the public domain, I feel like it's an invasion of my privacy.

As a graffiti writer growing up, I had a hardcore mentality—don't post your pictures out there, earn your stripes from doing your stuff and let people know you're out there. Like if you did ten trains on the weekend and posted them all online, you're a dickhead. Firstly, you'd get in massive trouble anyway, but secondly, it's cheap fame. You don't need to shout about it.

Graffiti decorates the boards on a building site in east London. Photo author's own

Do you think we have a strange attitude toward graffiti? In some cases, you get glass being put over Banksy pieces and graffiti raising the house prices in an area, but then in other cases, people are being put away for two years just for a few tags.
There is the acceptable face of street art like Banksy and pretty murals and stuff like that, anything that fits in y'know? The fact is, the government is in league with property owners and local councils. They're all in league with each other and don't want anything that's there without their permission.

How do you think it ties in with gentrification?
A funny thing I heard was that a lot of these new builds in the process of being built will allow graffiti on the boards around the site, so it looks like it's a trendy up and coming area, and then as soon as the boards are taken away they put up signs saying "NO GRAFFITI" and enforce it incredibly hard. It's like, something as abstract as the war on terror or the war on drugs is almost the same as the war on graffiti, because you're never going to stop anyone doing it. So what—buff the wall, people will paint on it again, buff the wall, people will paint on it again. The way to move forward is to be progressive about it, accept that it's always going to be here and allow certain areas just to be painted on. Then you don't have to waste so much money cleaning it over and over.

You can buy Keep the Faith magazine here.

Follow Tom on Twitter.

There's a long road from the parliament to patients. Image via YouTube

While the passing of the Narcotic Drugs Amendment 2016 has legalized the cultivation and distribution of marijuana in Australia, there's still a long way to go before patients get access to pharmaceutical cannabinoids.

Troy Langman, CEO of medical marijuana lobby United in Compassion, told VICE that marijuana products are still probably a year from shops. The next six months will be spent drafting regulations to spell out how licensing will operate, along with production, security requirements, and distribution.

The first of these—licensing—is particularly complex. At the moment, it looks as though there will be two types of licenses: one for commercial growers, and another for researchers.

On the commercial side, interest from both local and international companies is fueling a speculative "medical marijuana boom." It's likely there will be separate licenses for growing the cannabis and producing the actual medication.

Some medical marijuana advocates are concerned the regulations may restrict what strains of cannabis can be grown, potentially limiting how many people can be aided. There are also questions around whether the government will allow plants to be grown outdoors, or if they will be restricted to cultivation in greenhouses. If companies are growing indoors, they may have their first crop within nine weeks of planting.

Regulation may mean only greenhouse growing is allowed. Image via YouTube

Once the cannabis is grown and processed into medication, it can be given to patients. Well, sort of. As the legalization amendment states, "manufacturing can begin once a medicinal formulation of cannabis is identified."

This "medicinal formulation" is currently under development at the University of Sydney, where a $33.7 million donation (the largest ever in Australia) is funding studies into the treatment of severe epilepsy, palliative pain, and nausea associated with chemotherapy. Childhood epilepsy research will also soon launch at the University of Melbourne; however, the study will only use synthetic cannabis.

Related: Watch 'Stoned Kids,' the first episode from our new season of 'Weediquette' on VICELAND

The federal government has also promised to down-schedule medical marijuana to a "controlled drug." However, each individual state reserves the right to maintain its status as "restricted." In New South Wales, a compassionate access scheme for children with severe epilepsy using the cannabis-based drug Epidolex is set to start in March.

If you've wondered how in Australia—a country still squabbling over marriage equality—allowed this relatively progressive policy to pass so quickly (the amendment was written in just eight weeks), United in Compassion's founder Lucy Haslam is a good place to start.

Haslam became an unlikely campaigner for medical marijuana after her 20-year-old son Daniel was diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer. Lucy's descriptions of the relief marijuana brought Daniel, easing his extreme nausea after chemotherapy, even won over conservative radio shock jock Alan Jones. NSW's Liberal Premier Mike Baird spoke at Daniel's memorial. Exactly a year after Daniel died, the amendment to narcotics legislation was passed.

NSW Premier Mike Baird speaking at United in Compassion's 2014 medical cannabis symposium. Image via YouTube

"Lucy, this wouldn't have happened without your contribution," Greens leader Richard Di Natale said as he addressed the Australian Parliament. "Your family's grief, your family's pain and suffering, has not been in vain." It's hoped the broad public and political support for medical marijuana will expedite the process of getting the product to patients. Or at least see an amnesty announced on imported medical cannabis treatment until Australian-grown marijuana is available.

However, Australia is in a precarious position. As anyone who had the pleasure to watch the four-hour Senate debate on narcotics reform would've noticed, almost every politician who spoke was at pains to mention that Australia's legalization of medical marijuana is in line with the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 1961. As the bill itself clearly states, "It is important to note that the Bill does not legalize the cultivation of cannabis or use of cannabis outside of regulated medical purposes."

This is largely driven by Tasmania's poppy industry, which grows around half of the world's opiates and is tightly monitored by the UN. Any regulation around medical marijuana must be carefully constructed to ensure it doesn't jeopardize this industry.

This could also mean the full legalization of marijuana may be a long way off. However, decriminalization will be on the table on March 2, when the National Drug Summit convenes in Canberra. The Greens have been pushing decriminalization in the past few months, an approach that may combat the fact that the number of illicit drug offenses has been rising in Australia since 2008.

Follow Maddison on Twitter.

Toronto's King of the Dot is one of the longest-running and most respected battle rap leagues in the world. KOTD live events have been hosted by Drake, Too $hort, Method Man, and Raekwon. YouTube videos of the battles have pulled in millions of views. It's easy to see why: This is rap in its rawest, most offensive, and most immature form—MCs lay down bars that touch on their opponents family, race, sexual orientation, appearance, and whatever else they can grab hold of.

I saw this in action earlier this month at Blackout 6ix, the sixth installment of KOTD's annual blowout event, which was held in a renovated warehouse space filled with vape smoke. Oakland rapper Pass began his second round by telling Toronto MC Bishop Brigante that "your main bitch worship my nuts—that's sacrilegious." Bishop replied with a Netflix shoutout: "You put yourself behind bars—you're Brendan Dassey."

Most of the time the battle rappers are pals and hug when the three rounds are finished. Sometimes they're not friends and punch each other during the battle. It's a tense atmosphere, where the vibe fluctuates from tears of joy to actual anger, then back again. Backstage, rappers smoke weed, drink tall cans, and discuss who beat who.

The crowd around the ring is a hazy mixed bag of city locals, small-towners, and crews that drove from Detroit, New York, Ottawa, and Windsor. It's mostly guys with a dusting of women. There are very few bottle service-type thots, and there are lots of guys who are high and want to tell you about their mixtapes.

Blackout 6ix brought out hundreds of fans, but on the first night of the two-night event, only the front row could see the battlers; everyone else just listened. Before the first battle began, KOTD founder Organik announced that security should remove anyone who speaks. No one was fucking around. Everyone takes this very seriously. "You're so scared of running long distances," Knamelis spat to overweight rapper Big T. "You haven't even watched the trailer for 8 Mile."

This Friday, March 4, HBO will air another episode from season four of VICE's Emmy-winning show. Last week, we explored the fight to cure blindness and the corporate takeover of the marijuana industry. This week, we investigate two major agricultural issues—the toll that meat production takes on the environment and the continuing depletion of our global water supply.

Reporter Isobel Yeung travels to the feedlots, farms, and slaughterhouses where our meat is made to understand how cutting corners to bring down market prices and increase demand can lead to environmental catastrophes.

Then, Vikram Gandhi travels to California's once-abundant farmland and the heart of São Paulo's reservoir system to assess the depths of the global water crisis and find out what can be done to reverse it.

Watch a trailer for Friday's episode above, and keep an eye out for the rest of season four, airing every Friday night at 11 PM, exclusively on HBO.

If you're desperately in need of moreVICE episodes to carry you through the week, you can watch our entire third season online now.

After a month of watching the 2016 clown car roll into early primary states, bringing its traveling flea circus into the isolated political environs of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, the presidential race will finally open up this week for Super Tuesday. Voters in 13 states—and one territory—will head to the polls on March 1, casting ballots in an onslaught that amounts to the biggest presidential contest before the general election in November.

If there's anything 2016 needs less at this point, it's another opportunity for cable news anchors to work themselves into a lather over the chaotic death spiral that is the presidential election. But so far, 2016 hasn't really cared what we think it needs. Super Tuesday is the kind of political made-for-TV marathon that keeps Wolf Blitzer up at night, talking strategy with his holograms. Expect every major media outlet to provide nonstop Super Tuesday coverage for the next 72 hours, shouting over one another to give hot-take analyses, play-by-play voting breakdowns, and unnecessary touch-screen demonstrations of just what it all means for the 2016 race.

In the words of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, it's gonna be yuuugee. Here's what you need you to know:

Which states are voting?
Technically, 13 states and American Samoa will hold nominating contests on March 1. But the big states to watch are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia, each of which will hold primaries for both Democrats and Republicans. Republicans will also get results from Alaska, which is holding its caucuses on Super Tuesday, and Democrats will hold their nominating contests in Colorado and American Samoa.

In a strange quirk of the GOP's nominating process, Republicans will also begin their caucuses in Colorado and Wyoming on Tuesday, but the results of those contests won't be made official until the state party conventions later this spring.

Combined, these states represent 22 percent of all the delegates up for grabs in the 2016 race—a total of 1,460, plus another 150 "superdelegates" who get to choose their candidate on the Democratic side.

What's at stake for Republicans?
To win the party's nomination, a Republican candidate needs to secure 1,237 delegates. So far, none of the five remaining GOP candidates—Trump, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Ohio Governor John Kasich, and Ben Carson—has racked up more than 100 delegates. Nearly 600 Republican delegates are up for grabs on Tuesday, which means the results will likely go a long way toward determining which candidates have a viable path to win the nomination.

Can anyone stop Donald Trump?
In the lead up to Super Tuesday, Trump has looked increasingly like the GOP's inevitable nominee, a predictable development that has nevertheless sent the Establishment into a full-blown panic. The orange-hued billionaire continues to hold his lead in national polls, and he continues to gain momentum from his three consecutive wins in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. With 81 delegates, he's the indisputable front-runner heading into Tuesday's contests, and he is expected to score big in the Southern states, where his support is particularly strong. The endorsements from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Maine Governor Paul LePage could also give him a boost in the Northeast, solidifying his standing with the swamp Yankee base that handed him a resounding win in New Hampshire earlier this month.

At this point, the question is not so much whether Trump will clean up on Super Tuesday but just how sweeping his wins will be in the states that vote this week. If he continues to rack up big wins like the ones he saw in South Carolina and Nevada this month, he'll end Super Tuesday with a huge lead in the delegate count, leaving the GOP elite to deal with the party's impending apocalypse.

What about the other guys?
After a rancorous debate performance on Thursday night, Rubio goes into Super Tuesday as the clear Establishment favorite to take on Trump. While he trails behind the reality-TV mogul in most states, polls in several Midwestern states show him within striking distance. If he can win a state or two on Tuesday—and that's a big if—or at least come in close behind Trump in a handful of contests, he may be able to pick up enough delegates to stay in the game for another couple of weeks. If Rubio does manage to take advantage of the nutty Super Tuesday math like this, the Republican contest could turn into a two-man race after March 1, weakening Trump's momentum in the months going into the party's convention this summer.

For Cruz, Rubio's closest rival, Super Tuesday has come down to one state: Texas. Cruz is looking to win big on his home turf—incidentally, the most delegate-rich state to vote on Super Tuesday—in order to maintain a semblance of legitimacy for his candidacy going forward. After months of touting his Southern state strategy, though, Cruz seems likely to lose to Trump across the so-called SEC primary states. At this point, he and Rubio are like the Thelma and Louise of the GOP, driving off a cliff together in what may ultimately be a vain attempt to keep Trump out of the White House in 2017.

For Kasich and Carson, Super Tuesday looks even less promising. Both candidates continue to trail in the polls, running increasingly quixotic campaigns to the consternation of their entire party. It's not clear if Super Tuesday losses will knock either candidate out of the race, although Carson will probably take the opportunity to head home again to change his clothes.

What about the Democrats?
The electoral stakes on Super Tuesday are similarly high for Democrats, who will compete for 1,015 delegates on March 1—nearly a quarter of the total delegates needed to win the party's nomination. But coming off of Hillary Clinton's big win in South Carolina Saturday, the Democratic contest lacks the sort of nail-biting suspense typically associated with Super Tuesday.

At this point, Clinton continues to hold a lead in most of the major states set to cast ballots on Tuesday, including the delegate-heavy South and Midwest. Sanders seems likely to pick up wins in Vermont and Massachusetts, but at this point, it probably won't be enough to shake the perception that Clinton has all but won the party's nomination.

Like Rubio and Cruz, Sanders's only chance at staying in the game is to close the gap with Clinton in states that she is projected to win, picking off enough delegates to sustain the argument that he is running a viable campaign against the Democratic heir apparent.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

Chris Rock during his opening monologue at the 88th Oscars® at the Dolby® Theatre in Hollywood, California, on February 28, 2016. Photo by Aaron Poole/©A.M.P.A.S./courtesy of the Academy

In the lead-up to this year's Oscars, much interest focused on how Chris Rock would address the Academy's obvious—and self-acknowledged—diversity problem. Last night's ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in LA was a case study in the limits of self-awareness. The glitzy glad-handing and innate absurdity of the event, broadcasted to millions worldwide, was always going to make any sort of genuine impact unlikely, but the Academy proved beyond a doubt that it at least has a sense of humor about its glaring shortcomings.

Rock, of course, found himself in the awkward position of being expected by many to stick it to the man while standing onstage in the man's house with the man's money in his pockets. Clad in a sharp white tux, Rock strode out to the sounds of Public Enemy's anthem "Fight the Power," the song's juddering force immediately defanged by the vanilla surroundings.

He began by addressing the evening as the "White People's Choice Awards" before moving into edgier territory, wondering aloud why the #OscarsSoWhite outrage is happening now, and why it didn't happen in the 1950s and 60s. His answer? Because back then, "we was too busy being raped and lynched... When your grandmother's hanging from a tree, you don't care about best documentary foreign short." It was bold of Rock to summon up such charged imagery, but it was tone deaf given the ongoing problem of police brutality and the violent deaths of people like Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, and Sandra Bland. It also felt like an unwise trivialization of the very real struggles past generations of black actors had experienced: consider Gone with the Wind 's Hattie McDaniel, forced to sit at a segregated table for two at the 1940 Oscars.

Moments later, however, Rock attempted to redress the balance by chancing a bleak crack about how this year's "In Memoriam" package would simply feature "black people that were shot by the cops on their way to the movies." Rock aimed cutting, catty jibes at Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's non-attendance, then came out and said the magic words, "Yes, Hollywood is racist... in a 'sorority' way," thus identifying the smiling, non-hostile racism that can, and does, fester within ostensibly progressive circles, i.e., everyone in the audience and many at home.

GIF by Marina Gertz

Following a couple of great jokes, including one about Paul Giamatti's acting range (from "whupping Lupita in 12 Years a Slave to crying at Eazy-E 's funeral" in the space of one year), and a weak one dismissing the #AskHerMore anti-sexism movement, Rock's opening monologue led into a short package of sub-Hollywood Shuffle parodies riffing on the limited roles afforded to black actors. The most eye-catching was Tracey Morgan's transformation into a burly, pastry-munching iteration of The Danish Girl ("These Danishes is good though!") These skits were tame, but their satirical aim was clear enough, as was Angela Bassett's grimly amusing "Black History Minute" tribute to Jack Black.

Far harder to parse was the surreal appearance of Stacey Dash—Clueless star, rabidly right-wing Fox pundit, and Black History Month abolitionist—whom Rock announced as the new director of the Academy's "minority outreach program." Awkwardly positioned at the side of the stage and sporting a rictus grin, Dash boomed: "I cannot wait to help my people out. Happy Black History Month!" For anyone unaware of Dash's outspoken political affiliations, the joke wouldn't have seemed like a joke at all—rather a bizarre wheeling-out of a has-been actress. For those in the know—like this author—it was still a little baffling: Was Dash self-satirizing? And if so, why? Either way, it was a welcome impenetrable moment in a mostly predictable evening.

One troublingly persistent theme, however, was Rock 's insistence on framing the #OscarsSoWhite debate as a solely black and white issue, thus undermining the idea of "inclusivity" promoted in an upbeat speech by Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. For example, it took roughly two hours before any reference to the absence of Asian and Latino acting nominees was made. Matters weren't helped by a misguided stereotype gag involving three palpably confused Asian kids being introduced to the stage by Rock as "future accountants," or the reappearance of Sacha Baron Cohen's dated Ali G character, whose joke about "hardworking little yellow people with tiny dongs" (he was referring to minions, geddit?) was the evening's clear nadir. Ironic racism is still racism, and when it's dispensed by a moneyed insider at an event with minimal Asian representation, it's that much worse. Speaking of inclusivity, it's worth mentioning that being white didn't protect transgender musician Ahnoni from not being invited to perform despite being nominated for best song ("Manta Ray," from Racing Extinction ).

GIF by Marina Gertz

Elsewhere, there was the small matter of the awards themselves. Despite the near-total lack of color in the nominations and awards—notable exceptions were The Revenant 's Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy—there was an almost insulting bounty of color when it came to handing out the prizes. Chadwick Boseman, Pharrell Williams, Abraham Attah, Benicio del Toro, Priyanka Chopra, Michael B. Jordan, Common, John Legend, Quincy Jones, Dev Patel, Morgan Freeman, and more were all trotted out to bestow glory. This situation echoed that of the red carpet, on which almost all the interviewers and correspondents were either women, people of color, or both.

Some other political issues came up, giving this year's Oscars a markedly topical feel. Mad Max: Fury Road costume designer Jenny Beavan, keeping it real in a leather jacket and scarf combo, spoke up on climate change, as did best actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio. VP Joe Biden popped up briefly alongside Lady Gaga to rail against rape culture. Sam Smith, winner of the Oscar for best song for his caterwauling Bond theme "Writing's on the Wall," erroneously stated that no openly gay man had ever won an Oscar, before paying tribute to the international LGBT community. And Iñárritu, who won best director for the second year running, used his speech to make a well-intentioned but cringeworthy plea for color blindness: May "the color of our skin become as irrelevant as the length of our hair," he said as strains of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries—this year's hilariously ill-considered "get off the stage" music—built steam behind him.

Ultimately, though, this was Rock's show. Intermittently, he channeled the discomfiting straight talk of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, who spoke at the Oscars in 1977 and 1988, respectively, about industry racism. Mostly, though, he refrained to go for the jugular, jabbing instead at issues that run far deeper and wider than a glitzy awards night, or even an industry that seeks to address its problems by pointing and then laughing at them.

Follow Ashley on Twitter.

Pictured from top left, clockwise: Jamal Lewis, Mitchell S. Jackson, Kimberly Drew, Rashaad Newsome, DeRay Mckesson, Jessica Disu, niv Acosta, and Emerald Garner. Photos by Lazina Franklin, Charlotte B. Wales, Naima Green, Rashaad Newsome Studio, Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty, Mike Jue, Xeno, and National Action Network

In 1926, the historian Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week, a celebration of black accomplishment in early 20th century America. Taking the black tradition of celebrating both Abraham Lincoln's and Frederick Douglass's birthdays during the second week of February, he designated that week the time to nationally honor African-Americans who succeeded despite racism. Woodson's project was about remembrance during a time when there was no collective recording of the ways in which black people impacted American society. Fifty years later, the week grew into Black History Month, when in 1976 President Gerald Ford officially recognized February as "the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."

For a generation of younger black voices, Black History Month in 2016 feels like what the cultural critic Margo Jefferson wrote in her essay "Eccentricity" about the present day use of the word Negro. The celebration "reflects all the instabilities, all the circumstances, imposed on us. And by us." From a Google doodle of abolitionist Frederick Douglass to the New York Times's "Unpublished Black History" project, BHM today seems to have moved away from a carte-blanche projection of progress to an examination of the uneven reality of being black in America. The current generation appears more interested in a history that spotlights strides made by figures like MLK and Malcolm X while also grappling with the erasure of lesser-known black names such as Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker. During this month in America, black voices online seem interested in telling histories of black success while also accounting for the kind of routine racism that perpetuates black failure.

To better understand the way Black History Month resonates today, I reached out to an array of young black artists, activists, historians, writers, and a students to get their varied perspectives on what this month means to them.

Photo courtesy of Rashaad Newsome Studio

Rashaad Newsome, 30, a New York-based visual artist whose work of collage and performance explores representations of the black body in the vogue ballroom scene, hip-hop, and architecture.

Black History Month is every day of my life. But when the holiday comes around, it makes me think of how far we've come as a people. I think about my ancestors and how privileged I am to live my life as an artist. It also brings to mind my time at J. B. Martin Middle School in Paradis, Los Angeles, where in history class the history of black folks started and ended with slavery. J. B. Martin left me with a hunger for knowledge of self, one that led me to the Nation of Islam, the Five-Percent Nation, and the Holy Tabernacle Church.

"Black History Month is every day of my life... The search for black history is a never-ending journey."

The thing I got from all those experiences is that the search for black history is a never-ending journey. Black History Month is yet another reminder that there is still work to do. It is also a reminder of the revolting past Americans have and how we need to continue to work towards equality for all so that history doesn't repeat itself.

Photo by Xeno

niv Acosta, 27, performance artist whose most recent performance work, 'Discotropic,' is a mediation on the ways that the black body negotiates space.

Well, personally I don't believe in Black History Month. It's weird to me that this is the way America acknowledges that there is a history of blackness in this country. For me, when Black History Month comes around, it doesn't feel like it because I'm black all year long, and I prefer to celebrate it all year long. It's sort of like black history for white people, or as told by the victor. So, for me, Black History Month is a little bit of a slap in the face in terms of what we deserve. February is the shortest month and also the coldest month in a lot of places. For me, Black History Month would be, like, all of August or all of the summer. I just don't feel like I personally relate to Black History Month anymore in the ways that I feel like I was taught.

"I really want to know, what does Black History Month mean to non-black people?"

As a young black kid growing up in the public school system, our history is limited to slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement. There's a lot that's invisible in the retellings of that version of black history, which subverts a great portion of our heritage. It's sort of antithetical to black history. Black History Month is a way that white culture is giving us a handout, and therefore, it's white culture's only contribution to the discussion and it's lazy and ass-backwards. It's counter to progress, and it's scary. I think people think, Whoa, it's Black History Month, aren't you excited? That's a really troubling thing to me. I don't want to live in a world where we designate a small amount of time a year to an entire history of a people. I really want to know, what does Black History Month mean to non-black people?

Photo by Naima Green

Kimberly Drew, 25, founder of the website Black Contemporary Art and associate online community producer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, where she manages the museum's digital presence.

I think Black History Month is an opportunity to spend four weeks really amplifying the work I do the rest of the year. Playing the role of historian and broadcaster, I really take this annual reminder as an opportunity to rise to the occasion of the quiet work. During the month people are paying a little bit more attention to ways in which information about blackness is disseminated online or otherwise. I'm a big champion of personal black history and thinking about how to better record the histories that we have. For me, it's a month about precision.

"People are really thinking about how to put forth the black history that we want. It's super fascinating because black life does go viral."

I think one of the things that's unique about this Black History Month, with respect to the internet right now and Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar's performances, is how to insert as many other black histories into these mega-moments as possible. People are really thinking about how to manipulate these mediums, to put forth the black history that we want. It's super fascinating because black life does go viral.

This Black History Month, people have been tapping into the algorithm, and using it as a medium to put forth both academic and personal information. It's really fascinating to see people pimp Twitter and Facebook. Every other year I've done Black "Herstory" Month on these channels. I love doing a campaign like Black "Herstory" Month because it is an opportunity to #sayhername, and insert narratives that people may not know of women who were on the ground in movements and whose names should be a part of the dialogue.

Photo by Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty

DeRay Mckesson, 30, Black Lives Matter activist and current mayoral candidate for the city of Baltimore

Black History Month to me is a time when we are intentional about having a national conversation about the critical role that black people have played in the making of America. It's when we celebrate black culture. It should also be space where there's an acknowledgment of the trauma of enslavement and planning to correct that. I think now there is a focus on highlighting the everyday heroes of this work. When I think about social media, I try to use it as a platform to amplify the work of other people too. I've learned so much about people like Diane Nash over the past 18 months that I've not known much about before.

Photo by Lazina Franklin

Jamal Lewis, 25, filmmaker currently shooting the documentary, No Fats, No Femmes that explores perceptions of race, desire, and body image

Personally, I'm very much interested in black histories that aren't taught, particularly histories of black queer folk whose bodies often fail respectable notions of race, gender, and class. Folks like Marsha P. Johnson and Fannie Lou Hamer. The black histories that we were taught to celebrate are very male-centric. We were conditioned to believe that heroes had to look a certain way. Heroes whose image denotes a certain kind of dignified black person. It's about respectability. In school, I would have loved to celebrate the poet Essex Hemphill. His family has refused the public access to his estate. So there is so much more about Essex's life we may never know. The little information we do know about his life and work revels and reckons with occupying doubly marginalized space. It's about what it means to really walk throughout the world black and gay.

Photo by Mike Jue

Jessica Disu, 27, rapper and founder of the Chicago International Youth Peace Movement who is currently working to help stem the violence on Chicago's Southside

First and foremost, Black History Month should be celebrated every day. To me, Black History Month is a moment of reflection. The 28-day celebration is a reflection of past accomplishments of our black leaders across the diaspora. We need to acknowledge that black history is American history. When we look into our history textbooks, we don't see C.T. Vivan, or Ella Baker. I never read about those leaders until I was older. Black History Month is an opportunity to learn more about black excellence.

"We need to acknowledge that black history is American history."

Growing up, during Black History Month, it was tradition to write an essay about Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks. In the fifth grade, Ms. Olgetree said, "You can't write about Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks—you have to find someone else." That experience allowed me to do some research, and I learned about Garrett Morgan, who invented the traffic signal and gas mask. I look at Black History Month as an opportunity to learn about the past and look toward the future. The month represents a kind of an affirmation.

Photo by Charlotte M. Wales

Mitchell Jackson, 40, writer and author of the novel The Residue Years that follows the life of Grace, a recovering drug addict, and her drug-dealing son in a black neighborhood ravaged by the crack-cocaine epidemic in 1990s Portland, Oregon

Black History Month is a point of pride for me. It's the month when people are focused on highlighting the achievements of people who look like me. I read today that Betty Boop was a black woman. Not that I ever wondered about Betty Boop's race, but it was cool to find out. I especially like to find out the history of some of my favorite writers like James Baldwin or Ralph Elision. On the other hand, I also think, Well, damn, what about the other 11 months? Why are we not highlighting the achievements equally the rest of the year? Sometimes, I find myself being real ambivalent about it. I also think about this idea of blackness and where it came from. Black History Month is rooted in a certain idea of blackness, and it gives me pause when I start to consider who made that up. We came over here as Africans, so how did we get to this?

"I also think, Well, damn, What about the other 11 months? Why are we not highlighting the achievements equally the rest of the year?"

So on one hand, I do want to highlight the achievements of the people who have come before me. But then I also think you can see in Black History Month the power over people who ascribe to that idea of blackness. It's tough because we have been subjugated so long and you want to get that shine, but by accepting that you are also accepting that it's special and not normal. It's like if I have to tell you that Black Lives Matter than they matter less than they should already.

Photo by National Action Network

Emerald Garner, 23, is a college student and police-reform activist who's the daughter of Eric Garner, the unarmed black man who was choked to death on camera by a New York City police officer.

Black History Month means celebrating black people in any way, form, or fashion. What I usually do every Black History Month is learn something I never know before about my heritage. It's also about celebrating people who made things possible like Malcolm X, Emmett Till, or even now people who are relevant to today, like my father and Mike Brown. I look at those lives and see what we were fighting for 60 years ago is still the fight we are having right now. The fallen victims of our history should be celebrated regardless of race. We have lost a lot of people. We have to honor both the ones who stood up for civil rights and those killed by police misconduct. So personally, Black History Month will always be important to me, forever.

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Photo via Pixabay

Many of us have probably left an apartment in a less than pristine state while hastily moving out, but a woman in New Brunswick has trumped anything that even the worst tenants imaginable could possibly be capable of. In an interview with CBC, a landlord in Riverview recounted how a woman she evicted in August 2015 left behind rotting dead squid, shit of unknown origin(s) in piles and rubbed into floors, and hundreds of dead flies.

Pilgrims waiting for the Maghreb (sunset) Prayer to commence

This past fall I had the opportunity to take my mother to Mecca, Saudi Arabia for the Holy pilgrimage of Hajj. The Hajj is one of the largest gatherings of people on earth with about two million people making the journey each year. It's one of the pillars of Islam and every Muslim is supposed to make this pilgrimage once in their lifetime if they are financially capable. I didn't want my photography to interfere with my spiritual journey, so I made sure that I took photos only after I performed the necessary religious duties. But taking pictures is also the way I see the world, so part of me wanted to photograph all that was around me.

What was incredibly beautiful to see was the love between the pilgrims regardless of colour or country. I met Muslims who journeyed from Burkina Faso, the Philippines, China, Italy, and Spain. I met so many people with so many different stories. The one that stood out the most to me was a couple in their 70s from India, Ahmed and Fatima, who told me they had been saving up for Hajj for the last 40 years. Ahmed told me it was his main worry in life, and after this, they can now die in peace.

All my life I've been praying toward Mecca, but I only ever saw the Kabah in pictures and videos. It's hard to explain how overwhelming it was to see the Kabah. I can't remember the last time I cried before this, but when I laid eyes on the Kabah for the first time, I was unable to stop.

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In the first three contests of the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton underwhelmed against Senator Bernie Sanders, her self-described Democratic socialist challenger who scored a huge win in New Hampshire and kept it close in Iowa and Nevada, despite his rival's near universal support among the Democratic Establishment. But on Saturday, in the lead up to the all-important Super Tuesday primaries, Clinton managed to shift the race back in her favor, demolishing expectations with a huge win in South Carolina's primary.

After weeks of headlines about Sanders's upstart campaign, the weekend's victory seemed to confirm Clinton's inevitability as the Democratic Party's nominee. The former secretary of state pulled in nearly three-quarters of the vote in South Carolina, winning each of the state's 46 counties, as well as 39 delegates, compared to Sanders's 14.

In her victory speech, Clinton sounded more like a general election candidate than someone heading into Super Tuesday, congratulating Sanders for "running a great race," and pushing a message about "making America whole again." Tomorrow, she added, "this campaign goes national."

In fact, in the days before South Carolina's vote, Clinton seemed to almost forget she had a challenger, replacing attacks against Sanders with a new, loftier message about national unity. "I know with all my heart that our best years could be ahead of us, but that requires us to reject the kind of demagoguery and insults that we're hearing too much of in our political life right now," she told supporters in downtown Columbia Friday. "Tearing people down is easy—building them up is what we need to do."

Sanders, who flew to Minnesota Saturday night, admitted in a statement that Clinton had "won a decisive victory in South Carolina." But he refused to submit to her view of the Democratic race, adding that his campaign's "grassroots political revolution is growing state by state, and we won't stop now." Democracy, he told supporters at a rally in Rochester that same night, "is not a spectator sport."

While the decision to flee South Carolina on the night of the primary suggested that Sanders had already given up on the state, it also belied his campaign's last-ditch efforts to make an impact there. On Friday, the eve of the vote, the Sanders team rolled out Killer Mike and other surrogates for a rally at Claflin University, an historically black college in Orangeburg, just a 10-minute walk from where Clinton was rallying voters at her get-out-the-vote event at South Carolina State University. Of Clinton's perceived strength with black voters, the Atlanta-based rapper proclaimed, "That goddamn firewall's got a crack in it."

In her speech Saturday, Clinton downplayed talk of this firewall. "We are going to compete for every vote in every state," she said at a primary night rally in Columbia. "We are not going to take anyone for granted." But exit polls showed that her overwhelming support among black voters remained very much intact. According to CNN surveys, black voters made up more than 60 percent of the Democratic primary electorate in South Carolina—and that Clinton won and overwhelming 86 percent of their vote.

The results underscored underlying questions about the viability of Sanders's campaign, particularly as the race heads into Southern states on Super Tuesday. At Clinton's victory party Saturday night, voters said that while they liked the Vermont senator, they expressed doubt about his qualifications as a potential president. "Bernie is a good man, and I would have voted for him," Lucius Moultrie, a seafood-restaurant owner from Columbia, said. "I think that if he could become the vice president, it could be a winning ticket." Ultimately, Moultrie said, he decided to go with Clinton because of her position on criminal justice reform.

"I think is a good candidate, but I think Hillary would be better for the job of president," said Rita Johnson, a longtime Clinton backer from Spartanburg. "When I walked into the voting booth, I knew I would be voting for someone who was not only well-rounded on policy, but someone I could count on as far as community and family... She's someone you can depend on who's going to be there for the normal, everyday individual."

Even among young voters, Clinton's message of electability seemed to resonate. Sanders's "ideas are really cool and closer to the ultimate goal," said Lydia Harness, a twenty-something Clinton voter. "But I don't feel it's something that can be reached as quickly as he leads people to believe."

"As a young pregnant female, all of the health care modifications have helped me out," she added. "I just want things to keep going in the same direction."

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Qamishli is a town in the northeast of Syria that, like much of the country, has been upended by the war. In December, a terrorist attack by ISIS on the town's Christian neighborhood killed more than a dozen people. In response, the Sootoro militia, a group affiliated with the Assad regime, strengthened its presence in the district and set up roadblocks in order to protect the Christian community. But Kurdish troops see themselves as being in charge of the district, and last month, sectarian violence broke out in the form of a gunfight, killing a reported three Kurds and one Christian.

Today, Qamishli, once one of the last vestiges of normality in Syria, is dominated by fear. Recently, Sebastian Backhaus toured Qamishli's Christian quarter, and this is what he saw.

All photographs by photojournalist Sebastian Backhaus.

The author's collection of epilepsy medication

Let's just get this out of the way: I have epilepsy. For the most part, it's managed by the medication I take every morning and night, but I have this nagging anxiety about when to introduce it in new relationships. I've never convulsed on a guy mid-coitus (at least, not for seizure-related reasons), but I have had seizures on dates before, and trust me, it's surprisingly not cute. Nobody asks for a sexual partner with medical issues—I mean, I don't even want to date a guy with roommates—and my insecurities have led me to enter every relationship thinking that as soon as my partner finds out, he'll leave. It's as if I'm in a polyamorous relationship with my partner and my epilepsy, or a very loveable Anne Hathaway in that movie Love and Other Drugs.

It's not just me. According to the National Society for Epilepsy, one third of women and over half of men with epilepsy say the condition negatively affects their sex life. Besides the anxiety, and you know, the occasional seizure, some epilepsy medications also affect how hormones are processed, which can reduce sex drive. It's all very awkward to explain.

I've written before about how epilepsy affects my sex and dating life, but I wanted to see how other people deal with their chronic illnesses. So I asked some friends who have Crohn's disease, asthma, and narcolepsy how their sex lives have been affected by their illnesses.

Crohn's Disease

Stephanie Mickus, a writer living in Los Angeles, was diagnosed with Crohn's disease when she was 11. Crohn's involves inflammation of the digestive tract, which can cause fatigue, abdominal pain, and bloody diarrhea. Not super sexy.

Early on, Crohn's affected her dating life. "I was really weak, sick, pale, and for years, was fed through a tube surgically placed in my abdomen," she told me. "I wasn't physically intimate with anyone on any level until I was in college because of this."

That's not uncommon, according to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America, which also acknowledges that symptoms like incontinence and constant shitting can ruin "the mood." One man, whose story is highlighted on the organization's website, said his "symptoms hit hardest right after my wedding—cramping and diarrhea. I did not have much energy to be terribly frisky."

Besides the practical elements, dating with an illness like Crohn's can lead to a lot of doubts about relationship longevity. "I've always considered my Crohn's a liability in romantic relationships," said Mickus. "When you're at war with your body, it's hard to feel sexy and be able to express love the way you want to."

Asthma

Remember those kids who got out of PE in elementary school for having asthma? Not so fun once you've grown up and moved onto adult PE (by which I mean, sex). In a study of 350 emergency room patients treated for asthma at the Harlem Hospital in New York, 58 percent reported that asthma inhibited their sex life in some capacity. Some positions limit lung capacity by putting too much pressure on the chest; fucking too fast or for too long can wear out the respiratory system; and the adrenaline, especially during first time sex, can trigger an asthma attack.

As if that's not enough to deal with, asthmatics are also predisposed to a semen allergy. That's what happened to Brittany Meyer (not her real name), who found herself in a precarious situation after swallowing her boyfriend's semen triggered a severe asthma attack. "I had to go to the hospital and stay overnight," she told me. "I was 19 and afraid to tell anyone what actually caused it." Imagine if giving head sent you straight to the ER.

The condition, called human seminal plasma allergy, causes chest tightening, wheezing, full-blown anaphylaxis, and other symptoms when ingesting semen. For someone with asthma, who's already predisposed to these kinds of symptoms, it can be debilitating.

"To this day, my parents are like, 'Is your EpiPen up to date? What about your inhaler? We don't want that freak accident to happen again!'" said Meyer, who hasn't swallowed semen since.

Narcolepsy and Sexsomnia

Extreme tiredness from narcolepsy can lead to low sex drive or impotence, according to the Mayo Clinic, and some narcoleptics will even fall asleep during sex. Studies have also shown that orgasm can be a trigger for cataplexy, a narcolepsy-related condition that can cause someone to collapse from muscle weakness (yet remain conscious) at the onset of extreme emotions—fear, laughter, or orgasm.

Julie Flygare, a narcolepsy spokesperson and author of the narcolepsy memoir Wide Awake and Dreaming, wrote about her struggles with narcolepsy and cataplexy in an article for Women's Health, where she explained, "With orgasms, my head would start falling back like I had whiplash. It was really uncomfortable."

Narcolepsy isn't just limited to lethargy and spontaneous sleep. Another potential symptom is sexsomnia, defined as "sexual vocalizations or conversation, masturbation, sexual fondling, sexual intercourse with or without orgasm, and assaultive sexual behaviors during sleep."

On Motherboard: I Have Sexsomnia and Can't Be Cured

Obviously, the condition comes with huge emotional and even legal repercussions.

"I've woken up in the middle night having sex with girlfriends," said Dustin Marshall, 31, who suffers from sexsomnia. "I'm speaking and functional like I'm awake. I'm scared it could be perceived as rape and technically, it is, if the person doesn't want it." Marshall added that if he does have a sleepover with a girl, he stays awake until sunrise as to not do anything sexual in his sleep.

The consequences of sexsomnia trickle down into several aspects of Marshall's life and his relationships. "To this day, I'm cautious about where I spend the night—at a friends, or even worse, around family members. I have only spent the night at a serious girlfriend's house for years, because I'm horrified it could affect a relationship."

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Photo via Flickr user Jenifer Corrêa

Laila Mizami (not her real name) didn't set out to scam the system. "It started off really earnestly," she said. "I wanted to marry the person I was very in love with, who at the time wanted to marry me."

She'd bought a marriage license over the summer, and when it came time to fill out her financial aid forms for the Ivy League school she attends, she realized she could have "all this money coming in on the basis of being married," even though she hadn't yet officially tied the knot. When she explained the situation to her financial advisor, Mizami said he told her not to worry—FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is self-reported, not verified by the government, so she wouldn't have to prove that she'd actually gone through with the marriage to take the grants.

What Mizami had stumbled into is what some would call a bureaucratic loophole, and others would call a federal crime. By buying a marriage license a week before signing her FAFSA application, she had qualified as an "independent," and therefore in need of government aid. The sum of that aid was about $20,000 in grants and a $5,000 Pell grant.

For many students, the independent designation is the difference between free or affordable tuition and years and years of debt. If you're "dependent," which applies to most students in college, your financial aid is judged on your parent's income. If you're "independent," need is judged on your own. Since full-time students rarely make a living on their own, that difference could mean tens of thousands of dollars. There are 13 ways a student can qualify as an independent—among them, things like being an orphan, serving in the military, or otherwise proving that your parents are out of the picture financially. Of all the options, getting married is the easiest.

The scheme is established enough that, at one point, there was a website (whypaytuition.com) set up like a dating site for tuition-based marriages. Rick Conley, who founded the site, served in the Air Force and said people "got married to take advantage of the benefits that the military gave married couples." College, he discovered, wasn't so different. "I found out that if two college kids got married, the college would give free tuition."

When it comes to schools with large endowments, discounted or free tuition is just one of the perks. I entered my own student income in Yale's Student Aid Calculator, and I wrote my status as "separated." I found that alongside eligibility to receive the Pell grant (a non-loan federal grant, up to $5,815 per year), my hypothetical Yale education would be free. At public schools, independent students also qualify instantly for instate tuition even if they're out-of-state students, which shaves off a significant portion of the tuition. Other benefits include work-study, and at some schools, eligibility to live off-campus rather than in expensive dorms.

It's quite a loophole—but are people actually exploiting it? I talked to Dan Barnard, who officiated a sham marriage eight years ago, while studying at UC Berkeley.

"The whole thing started out as a joke," said Barnard, who got his officiant license using an online service. "This was an openly homosexual man and a girl. It was as much a stab in the eye of the system of marriage as it was for the money."

According to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, 3.8 percent of students qualify as independent because of their marital status—small but not insubstantial. But financial aid experts say if students are marrying for tuition reasons, it's not happening often.

"If we get one student a year, that's a lot," said Don Crewell, director of financial aid at California Institute of Technology. Typically, he added, students "will decide after two or three years to get married," not at the on-set of college to save money on tuition.

Mizami, however, wasn't even married when she received aid. She bought a marriage license, but she decided not to go through with the wedding, and the uncertified license expired. I asked Audren Morris-Sandoval, a financial aid compliance officer at UCLA, what kind of proof was required to qualify as married on the FAFSA.

"The student signs the FAFSA under penalty of perjury; therefore, we do not require proof of marriage," wrote Morris-Sandoval in an email. "However, if students attempt to change their dependency status after they have filed a FAFSA as a result of marriage, we would typically request a copy of the marriage certificate." In other words, unless you're changing your status, proof isn't required at all.

Related: Going to an Ivy League School Sucks

"I definitely think this is a loophole that just wasn't thought through by some bureaucrat once-upon-a-time," said Mizami.

But according to lawyers, the consequences are pretty clear.

"That's perjury," said Paul Wallin, a defense attorney who's been dealing in such cases for 35 years. "She could get anything from probation to county jail."

In addition to perjury, Wallin said lying to get aid would be considered fraud. In 2000, Congress passed the College Scholarship Fraud Prevention Act, setting a maximum penalty of five years in prison or fines of up to $20,000 for anyone participating in Pell grant fraud. While the consequences are harsh, the fact remains that these crimes are largely undetected. "Someone would have to squeal on her," said Wallin.

Morris-Sandoval confirmed this, saying that investigations are held "usually receiving an anonymous report." Administrators look for inconsistencies if something looks awry and not necessarily evidence to prove that the marriage is legit. Crewell said that in his experience, he's never encountered a student who had committed fraud.

"Not that I'm aware of, anyway," he told me. "Every once in a while we'll ask about inconsistencies and see that they're addressed before we can proceed. But that's something we're required to do."

Mizami has two years of school left, and she expects her status to roll over without having to show any evidence of her marriage—which is lucky, since the evidence doesn't exist.

"The thing you learn above all else is how to play school," said Mizami. "It doesn't have to do with how brilliant you are, or how earnest you are, or how kind. It has to do with knowing which hoops to jump through in what ways. I don't think it's a cheaters' system. I think it's just how the world works."

"I made the marriage license into a paper boat," said Mizami. It now lies somewhere in the icy waters of Lake Michigan. Love, unlike student debt, rarely ever lasts.

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Sacha Baron Cohen as Ali G and Olivia Wilde at the Oscars Sunday night. Image via the Academy press page

Facts: On TV, you can completely get away with make making fun of fat people, disabled people, old people, trans people, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asians. There's no word you can't call them; even the obvious slur, chink, generally goes unbleeped. Ashton Kutcher can wear brownface, Tina Fey can create a character in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt named Dong who speaks broken English and is good at math, and Shaq can say, "Ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh" to Yao Ming on cable TV.

So it was both surprising and not-all-that-surprising that during this weekend's Oscars, when host Chris Rock joined in the mockery of the awards' glaring whiteness he also threw in a weak-ass bit about Asians. To be fair, Rock's joke was more awkward than offensive. He introduced some "accountants" from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm that tallies the Academy's votes: "They sent us their most dedicated, accurate, and hardworking representatives: Ming Xu, Bao Ling, and David Moskowitz." Three Asian kids entered, unsure of where to stand, while Rock continued, "If anyone's upset about that joke, just tweet about it on your phone that was also made by these kids."

Yeah, it's a trivial gag, a corny riff on two obvious stereotypes. But even worse, it's incoherent. They obviously tossed the Jewish name in to avoid looking like they were exclusively targeting Asians, but then the sweatshop joke doesn't fit with the Jewish stereotype—so it wasn't even a good racist joke.

It is an uncomfortable truth that a joke can be both funny and racist, which is different than saying that racism is funny. Consider the time Sarah Silverman went on Conan O'Brien and joked about being told to write "I hate chinks" on a form to weasel out of jury duty: "I said, 'I'm not going to put that on there just to get out of jury duty. I don't want people to think that about me. ' So instead I wrote, 'I love chinks.' And who doesn't?"

The humor in Silverman's joke is structural, turning on Silverman's faux ignorance of the offensiveness of "chink," and it doesn't reference any Asian stereotype. Any slur would've worked the same, and in fact, according to her memoir The Bedwetter, the original version used the N word. The important point everyone seems to miss in discussing this incident is that Conan's producers actually asked her to change it to "spic," because they considered it less offensive. She bargained, and "chink" was the compromise. That's what's offensive: the idea that targeting non-blacks in a joke is less offensive than targeting blacks.

Anthony Jeselnik, another comic agent provocateur, has a bit where he recounts having a joke about Asians running laundry services nixed by a Jimmy Fallon producer and replacing it with Asians building railroads—"a billion times more offensive," he boasts. The producer replies, "Anthony—build a railroad? That's perfect." And so Jeselnik got to tell the offensive joke, and he ends his bit by saying, "The point of that story is that people who get offended by jokes are fucking stupid."

He's wrong but not completely. There is definitely such a thing as reacting badly to a bad joke, or even a racist joke, and becoming this caricature of a sanctimonious, pearl-clutching, oversensitive, liberal killjoy who can't fathom why anyone would find a racist joke funny. (Racists find racist jokes funny because it feels nice to have your prejudices affirmed—see Thomas Hobbes's superiority theory of humor—and anti-racists can also occasionally find racist jokes funny in spite of themselves, because sometimes a joke's humor comes from its form and delivery, not its content.) Even more complicated is the fact that analyzing jokes, like I am right now, makes you look like you're missing the real point of a joke, which is to just sit back and not take it seriously.

But what Jeselnik and other try-hard edgy comics usually don't acknowledge is that what should and shouldn't offend, like any other matter of taste or opinion, isn't his call to make, any more than someone can tell you that you shouldn't like anchovies. This goes double when you're someone who has no idea what it's like to be a target of racism and will therefore look pretty dumb for running your mouth about it.

There came a second jab at Asians later in the Oscars show, when Sacha Baron Cohen (in his wannabe-black Ali G persona) pointed out that other minorities were also left out: "How come there is no Oscra for dem hard-working little yellow people with tiny dongs—you know, the Minions?" He uses the same combo of misdirection and faux buffoonery that Silverman used in her "chinks" joke, though this one is specific about playing on shared stereotypes—he's making the audience complete the racist thought.

GIF by Marina Gertz

Which doesn't make it any less racist, but it does make it clear that he expects the audience to already understand these prejudices. And where did they come from in the first place? These days, racism in the media against Asians often comes in the form of comedy. There's the obvious ridicule and minstrelsy, like the clownish roles on Two Broke Girls or Dads. But it's easiest to get away with a more modern form of ironic, self-aware racist comedy, delivered by confirmed liberals against non-black minorities, where the joke is based on the audience's awareness that racism is offensive—not only Rock, Silverman, Jeselnik, and Cohen's jokes, but also Stephen Colbert's tweet about starting "the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever," and Amy Schumer's many bits about Latinos.

No one really believes those comedians harbor any real malice for Asians or Latinos, and surely the main reason they're reaching for this material is to deliver a little shock with their punchlines, but their intent isn't the point. The point is that there's hardly any media representation for Asians, Latinos, and other non-black minorities except in the form of these insipid comic tropes; it's hard to take jokes when we're never taken seriously. (Hey, did you know more white actresses have won Oscars for playing Asian women than actual Asian women have?) Give us a few Asian Oscar nominees, and (why not?) an Asian Supreme Court Justice and an Asian president, and it'll be easier to laugh it off.

Tony Tulathimutte is the author of Private Citizens. Follow him on Twitter.

An antique hand gun (on the left) seized by police in East London. Photo: Metropolitan Police

Last week, British police called for tighter laws on the ownership of antique guns. Currently, a loophole means these weapons can be lawfully purchased and used to commit crimes, with ammunition specially made for the otherwise obsolete calibers. The idea of a North London gang member using an 18th century blunderbuss to ward off rivals might seem a bit far-fetched, but according to the National Ballistics Intelligence Service, a trend has emerged of modern-day criminals wielding antique weapons.

Firearms law expert David Dyson, however, says the threat posed by these guns is relatively low compared to other types of illegal weaponry. "If you look at the statistics, you will find that they still only represent a very small percentage of firearms used in crime," he explains.

Looking at the figures, you can see what he means; in 2013/14 there were 7,709 recorded offenses involving firearms, while the police estimate there are around 100 of these antique weapons currently being used by criminals. That's not to say they don't still pose a threat, of course; any working gun in the hands of someone who might want to harm someone else is objectively not a good thing. But how many criminals actually want to get a hold of dueling pistols? Would they deliberately set out to buy the type of guns used at the Somme, or are these weapons only purchased by those with limited connections and few other options?

Former gangster Jason Cook, who carried guns in his role as a gangland debt collector, says: "Using antique guns has amateur written all over it, because guns are readily available to be rented or bought. Serious criminals have access to guns and wouldn't entertain this. When I used guns, I made sure they were the real deal and not antiques, replicas, decommissioned guns that had been reactivated, or anything like that. This depends on the criminal, though—people will still use those kinds of guns to shoot, even though they don't always work properly and can sometimes explode in your hand. At the end of the day, a gun's still a gun, whether it looks as if it stepped out of a Western or not."

Darryl Laycock—who was once a member of Manchester's Doddington gang and was jailed for his involvement in the sale of firearms in 2009, before later reforming and joining anti-violence organization One Minute in May—agrees that some criminals aren't too picky about using antique firearms, despite the risks they pose. "Obviously there's going to be an element of danger to using an antique revolver," he says. "You don't know what you're putting in your hand."

Thing is, gunmen are—by definition—risk-takers, and they often tend to view weapon malfunctions as an occupational hazard, so it's unlikely the more foolhardy criminals out there will be too put off by the dangers associated with antique firearms. You could also argue the relative benefits of these weapons might almost balance out these risks; unlike other varieties of legal firearm, no registration system exists for recording and tracing them. If the police search a car and find an antique gun in the trunk, as long as there isn't any ammunition lying around, the suspect can claim to be a collector and has a decent chance of getting away with it.

Anyone sentenced to prison for three months or more is banned from possessing antique guns for five years. But in my previous job, ghost-writing memoirs for former criminals, I met people who'd managed to avoid being arrested for that long while committing crimes every day of the week. Anybody sentenced to three years or more is banned from owning an antique gun for life, but offenders have been given less than that for offenses including armed robbery, involvement in major drug rings, and even repeatedly stabbing a victim in the head. So current laws still leave plenty of scope for serious criminals to legally possess firearms—and, in some cases, use them to commit murders.

A Thompson submachine gun, similar to those used in WWII, which was seized in East London. Photo: Metropolitan Police

One of the areas in which antique weapons are believed to be particularly rife is the West Midlands, after members of a local gang were found to be sourcing the guns, making special ammunition for them and selling the weapons on for around £3,000 a pop. A former gangster, who doesn't want to be named, says they have also become a problem in Liverpool, blaming the ease with which they can be bought and pointing out that not all cartridges in antique guns are obsolete—using antique .38 revolvers as an example.

Nana Agyeman of AccessUK, an organization that provides gang prevention workshops for young people, says research carried out by the charity has found conventional firearms are becoming harder to get hold of, leading to an increase in gang members looking for alternatives. "I think it's quite clear that the law needs to be changed if criminals are exploiting loopholes in current legislation to use these 'ornaments' for crimes," he says.

Although these weapons are clearly causing harm, suggestions to better regulate their sale haven't gone down well across the board. David Scheres of Pembroke Fine Arms is an antique gun dealer, and he is vehemently opposed to the tightening of the current laws.

"Britain has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, and further new legislation will only affect legitimate and law-abiding collectors, licensed shooters, and historians," he argues. "The criminal fraternity will continue to commit crimes unless they're apprehended and dealt with by the existing laws they're breaking. Criminals are disassociated from the reality that other people matter, and it's their motivation and activity that should be the subject of policing, not the activity of bona fide collectors and shooters who have no criminal intent in the pursuit of their hobby. Antique guns are interesting, have both intrinsic and historical value, and there is no confirmed data of their significant use in crime in the UK."

Related: Watch 'Blind Gunslinger,' our documentary about Carey McWilliams, the first totally blind person in the USA to acquire a concealed-carry permit.

Iain Overton, the director of policy at anti-violence organization Action on Armed Violence and the author of Gun Baby Gun, has a similar perspective. "Let's be frank—there's no widespread danger of armed robberies with Dick Turpin-style guns," he says. "In the great scheme of things, guns—antiques or not—are a relatively minor threat in the UK. Gun control here works."

Looking at the facts, it could be argued that these weapons don't constitute enough threat to warrant more stringent legislation. However, what it really boils down to is whether or not you believe that the joy some people get from having old guns on their mantelpieces justifies the odd person getting shot. And that's a very tricky case to make.

Two guys playing Luchador at the London Gaming Market. Photo by Ashton Hertz

Gaming is so close to being fully immersive. Facial recognition software is almost at the point where you can scan your face and render 3D versions of yourself that don't look like disfigured Marvel villains. Virtual reality headsets—once they've sorted out the fact they currently make you feel a bit sick—are nearly able to drop players into the thick of it. Gesture control tech isn't far off when it comes to characters emulating the movements of players. Humans are almost one with the machine.

So, at first, it strikes me as odd that we're apparently in the midst of widespread board game revivalism. Why would people be so enthralled with stationary bits of plastic and card when they have all these expansive interactive worlds accessible to them?

"Without a doubt, we are in the middle of the golden age of board games," says Nick Meenachan, founder of the YouTube channel Board Game Brawl.

He would say that, of course, being a man who founded a YouTube channel about board games. But he's not lying. Sales of board games have been on the rise every year for the past decade; there are listicles of the best board game cafes and bars; Meenachan's is one of many successful YouTube channels focusing on board games, most of which have tens of thousands of followers.

"There's something to be said about being at a table with your friends, live and in-person," says Meenachan when I ask him for his thoughts on the popularity of board games. "These communities will always be connected."

The communities he's referring to aren't anything new. Warhammer and Dungeons & Dragons have had strong cult followings since the 1970s and 80s, spawning all sorts of clubs, meet-ups, and conventions—and those continue today. What's surprising is that, even after classics like Magic: The Gathering and Monopoly have been digitized, physical sales continue to grow.

Dave Mills (front left) and the Dark Cleo Productions team

" increased in popularity and become more normal, as with other things that were once niche and geeky and that only nerds played," says Dave Mills, avid board gamer and co-founder of gaming site Dark Cleo Productions, as we walk around the London Gaming Market, an expo held every four months for people who want to buy and trade video games, board games, and all their associated merchandise. "The idea of board gamers was always big, burly guys with complicated battle maps sitting around in dark rooms, but things are different now."

Mills explains that there are "gateway games" he and the Dark Cleo team bring along to game fairs and expos to get people hooked. "Give people a simple game—a theme they can relate to—and then introduce them slowly to the mechanics of other games," he says. "That way, more people can get involved and see the appeal."

Hundreds of new games are being made every year to appeal to all those prospective new converts, many of which rely on crowdfunding to get off the ground. Matt Sloan, founder of Beer & Board Games, and a regular online game reviewer, says, "I think that the ability for board games to reach all the various corners of geek culture is what gets people excited about them, and the niches that they explore can be insanely specific. The possibilities are endless."

Read on Motherboard: Five Days at the World Championship of Competitive Cyberpunk Card Gaming

He's right: There are plenty of bizarre and sometimes controversial titles appearing in the board game market, like Operation F.A.U.S.T., a game where you have to rescue art from Nazis, Machine of Death: The Creative Assassination Game, and FUCK—The Game.

Could this interest have anything to do with the rejection of video games? Is it like the vinyl revival? Do people want something tangible as a reaction to apps and clouds and expansion packs? Have all the dads in Chucks and vintage T-shirts migrated from Rough Trade to Games Workshop, ready to brag about the rare first pressing of Cluedo they picked up in a flea market?

"I do believe that many gamers have been missing the basic human necessity of human interaction," says Meenachan. "It's just not the same over a microphone while playing some shoot 'em up video game."

Sloan agrees, saying it's the "tactile appeal and face-to-face interaction" that sets board games apart from video games.

Some of the games available at the London Gaming Market. Photo by Ashton Hertz

Thing is, there's a huge amount of crossover between the two, and many gamers play both. MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) like World of Warcraft share many similarities with classics like Dungeons & Dragons, and among those I speak to there doesn't seem to be a pick-your-side mentality. However, this doesn't mean they're the same: They exist for different reasons, and each has its own appeal. Board games are books to video games movies: Your imagination drives the gameplay; you add meaning and excitement to the inanimate cards and figures that sit motionless in front of you.

Mills from Dark Cleo suggests that younger generations taking an interest in board games could help to set them up with valuable life skills. "You learn life strategies and principles—strategic thinking, social skills, learning to lose and win," he says. "In some games, you have to learn that when you're going down one path and it's not working out, you need to change paths and rethink things. The games often teach us these things without us realizing it: organization, resource management, preplanning, changing your moves."

In an in-depth "board versus video game" thread on Reddit, many argued that solo play is both a pro and con of video gaming. Some said that gathering friends together and setting up boards was a hassle, while others suggested the isolation of video gaming has driven people towards tabletop gaming. So it's a predictably mixed bag of opinions from a discussion between loads of strangers online. However, the isolation point was interesting, considering the growing market for marathon YouTube videos of people playing board games.

Related: Watch 'eSports,' our documentary about the world of competitive video gaming.

Why, for instance, if one the main appeals of board games is social interaction, has this eight-hour video of people playing Risk Legacy gotten over 4,000 views? "It's satisfying, even if only vicariously, to watch others enjoy games that ," says Meenachan, suggesting that these videos are just a way for the disconnected to connect.

"Board games are timeless and ageless," says Mills from Dark Cleo. "We've had granddads bring their eight-year-old grandsons to conventions, and they've both sat down and played a game together. I've been involved in several groups and societies, and you get a lot of people who suffer from social anxieties or even autism and other disabilities, but they're welcomed in. You've all got something to focus on, and the social side of it comes naturally."

This open-armed ethos is certainly something to be lauded, and whether or not the skills you learn on the tabletop really do translate into life lessons, watching the groups of people playing "gateway games" at the London Games Market made me realize the simple of attraction of it all. As one Reddit user wrote: "I value board games more because playing a board game simply means I am with my friends."

Follow Jak on Twitter.

An empty flat in the Gallowgate estate in Glasgow. All pictures courtesy of the Glasgow Renaissance

Urban planning in Glasgow, Scotland, has never suffered from a lack ambition. When post-war zeal dictated that the infamous slum of the city was to be torpedoed in the late 1960s and 1970s, there were mass scale demolitions. Thousands of Glaswegians were transported into towering new high-rises across the city. Vast structures, such as the recently demolished Red Road and the starkly brutalist Dennistoun twin towers, were the tallest residential buildings in Europe when they were erected. It seems so vastly improbable from our vantage point more than 50 years on, but these were truly utopian undertakings. They had kitchens, hot water, indoor plumbing, mixer taps. For residents reared on some of the worst slum conditions in Europe, life in the towers seemed like luxury.

What happened in the following decades is common knowledge. For a variety of complex reasons—lack of upkeep, insufficient vetting of new tenants, endemic long-term economic decline—the high-rises became a byword for deprivation, poverty, and appalling social conditions. The same enthusiasm for demolition that gripped Glasgow planners in the 1960s is present again today: Since 2006, more than a quarter of the city's high-rises have been demolished as part of a bold, and at times worryingly scattergun, vision for Glasgow's future.

"The skyline of Glasgow is set to be radically transformed, as swatches of high-rise tower blocks make way for thousands of new homes across the city. Glasgow is enjoying a real renaissance. We're delivering on better housing, and we have regained our sense of ambition. This is an announcement that looks to the future, and we are determined we will not repeat the mistakes of the past"—Glasgow City Council (2006)

BAFTA-winning filmmaker Chris Leslie has been charting these changes since 2007 through his constantly evolving project The Glasgow Renaissance, a multimedia documentation that combines photography, first-person accounts, and archival film. His work approaches the changes in the city with nuance and depth, acknowledging the urgent need for real, sustainable, regeneration in the city, while posing questions as to what that means, and about who might get left behind in the drive towards transformation.

We caught up with Chris to discuss the Glasgow Renaissance and his upcoming film Reimagining Glasgow, with Oscar Marz.

The Red Road estate before its destruction

VICE: You've been documenting the "condemned and disappearing housing schemes of the city" since 2007. Was there a particular catalyst that set your work on this path?
Chris: In 1996, I spent six months living and volunteering in war-torn villages in Croatia and then Sarajevo, Bosnia. Both places were destroyed and cleansed and had lost a lot of population. The destruction in Sarajevo was on a grand scale. I'm not making deliberate comparisons between Glasgow and Bosnia, but I guess that environment of loss and transition kind of stayed with me when I arrived back in Glasgow to settle down a few years later. The process of clearing many of Glasgow's high rises had already begun, and there were parts of Dalmarnock that resembled frontline Sarajevo. The systematic destruction of "failed" homes was made public and exposed for all to see.

A lot of the coverage has focused on Red Road. Why do you think that is?
The death of Red Road and indeed any high-rise is a long process—from the flats' demise and depopulation in the 80s and 90s to the later housing of destitute asylum seekers, all the way through to its final demolition. So Red Road was always to be the centerpiece, a way for people to commemorate the changes to Glasgow's skyline, but it's just one part of the changes. 30 percent of high-rise flats in the city have been demolished since 2006.

Why do you think there is this emotional connection to demolishing old apartments?
The focus was always on the romanticism of the flats when they were first built, the new buildings, the new opportunities, all that hope and promise. But that was history, and now it's a marker of progress to blow them up. The idea of blowing them up to commemorate the Commonwealth Games could only be considered in Glasgow.

You acknowledge that it's difficult to argue against the fact that "Glasgow needs regeneration, or that a renaissance could usher in positive change," while presenting the case that the change is perhaps too wholesale, too sweeping, and ultimately cyclical. Do you see any evidence of long-term, sustainable regeneration, or are you ultimately cynical about the whole process?
Glasgow has always been a tale of two cities and all those shiny zinc-clad buildings, housing museums, and sport facilities don't resonate with a lot of Glaswegians. But that's the image of Glasgow today, the image they want to portray. I can understand the need to market the city like this, but in areas of the city, in the north and in the East End, there is so much derelict land and vast open stretches of ruin and decay. But these areas are far from the sheen of the city center and the prying eyes of visitors and tourists, and they are of zero "commercial" value or interest.

You're quite skeptical about the binary choice between "good change," represented by demolition and new building, and the bad old symbols of decay and despair, represented by the high-rise buildings. Do you think that anything was learned from the legacy of the 1960s when high-rise buildings were first built, which is kind of analogous to the changes being undertaken today?
With regards to housing, we are worse off. In the 1960s, the councils were doing their best to address a humanitarian issue as Glasgow had the worst post-war housing conditions in Europe. There was a real need and urge to do something for the better, even if in the end much of it was a botched job. Today the construction of social housing is lead by volume, profit, and ever-decreasing quality control, so in many ways it's actually worse.

And then there is Glasgow's love of motorways and the destruction and chaos attendant with the building of even more roads in the city, at the same time that other countries are abandoning them and reclaiming land. In Glasgow, we continue to build and extend the roadways in areas that have the lowest car ownership. It doesn't make sense.

One of the most moving pieces is the one detailing the Jaconelli's battle for compensation in the pre-Commonwealth Games ghost town that was once Dalmarnock. You talk about the irony of "salvation via a two week mega-sporting event." What did the build-up to the games make explicit about the Glasgow Renaissance?
If Glasgow didn't win the bid to host the Commonwealth Games, what would have become of Dalmarnock? And why was Glasgow reliant on winning the bid for the regeneration of the area to go ahead? Without the Commonwealth Games infrastructure, there would be no significant change to the area.

The regeneration of the area was made so much easier and fluid by the fact that there was nothing left in Dalmarnock—a population of 50,000 decimated to just a few thousand and an abundance of post-industrial brown sites—waiting desperately on any kind of investment. Dalmarnock was ripe for change and its population desperate. A rebirth is a lot easier if you have a clean sweep of the area.

Bluevale & Whitevale flats seem from below

So this project, which so far has mostly been about stories and photography online, is now being turned into an upcoming film with Oscar Marzaroli. Is this the first time you've collaborated with another artist on your Glasgow work?
The film looks at Glasgow's regeneration over the past 40 years and the pledges made by the Corporation of the City of Glasgow. The film playfully reworks Oscar Marzaroli's 1970 film Glasgow 1980 and uses previously unseen footage shot by Marzaroli for an uncompleted follow-up film, Glasgow's Progress, alongside new footage of Glasgow today. It shows how Glasgow has been torn down, reimagined, and transformed, and it questions the city's seemingly never ending urban renewal. After eight years of documentation of the city, it was a great project to work on and of course be paid to do! All the work I have done up until now has been self-funded and self-initiated so it's good when others see value in your work.

I've also got a book coming out later in the year, alongside an exhibition on the project at the Glasgow School of Art—supported by Creative Scotland. I think this year is turning into a good one for the project. After eight years of documentation, it's a good position to have arrived at.

Do you personally feel optimistic about Glasgow's "regenerated" future?
I think you should ask me that question in 25–30 years time, and we can see what's happening to the same homes we're building now to replace the ones we are destroying. Then we'll have a definitive answer. A bit more imagination would be beneficial rather than the usual terms of "knock 'em down, build them up again." Perhaps just the documenting, questioning, and debating of the issues are a good starting point. But there is already some interesting and positive projects going on around Glasgow—some high-rise flats are being developed and more importantly reimagined, so perhaps we are seeing a turning point.

Tickets to the Glasgow Renaissance film are here.

Follow Francisco on Twitter.

In 2015, the deeply devout Catholic country of the Philippines passed the historic Reproductive Health Bill—a law that would require the introduction of sex education into schools and provide free contraceptives for its poorest women. However, government bureaucracy and religious opposition has meant the reproductive health law is not reaching the women who need it the most. In turn, it is having fatal consequences.

We head to the Philippines, where teen pregnancy and teenage maternal deaths are on the rise, to seek out the limited options that women have when faced with an unwanted pregnancy.