Photos by Dominik Witaszczyk

This article originally appeared on VICE Poland.

When I was in school, I had a very religious friend. I, on the other hand, was already a cynical asshole so I used to tease him a lot. After graduation, this friend decided to further devote his life to Jesus Christ and joined a seminary. That didn't surprise me, but what did surprise me was when, a while back, I learned that he had left the seminary and got engaged.

There isn't a lot of public data about how many priests have left the priesthood, but figures released by the Vatican in 2007 say that an average of 1076 priests left the church in some capacity, every year between 2000 and 2004. Józef Streżyński co-founded the Prezbyter society, which brings together former priests, priests who are considering leaving the clergy, nuns, and women who are in romantic relationships with members of the clergy. "We don't keep statistics or any lists of members. People come and go," he says.

So what issues does a resigning priest face? According to Streżyński, the main problem is that "people who take up priesthood or monastic life are obliged to do so for their whole lifetime. They don't have any alternatives. Leaving the priesthood isn't socially acceptable, so it can be hard for an ex-priest to build relationships. On top of that, everyday, civil life can seem daunting, because priests aren't prepared for that."

Reverent Piotr Dzedzej's collected stories from ex-clergymen for his book Porzucone sutanny, (Abandoned cassocks). Although he is an active priest, he doesn't judge the men who left the clergy. I decided to go and see Father Piotr to talk to him about what life is like for ex-priests, and why he decided to publish a book about them while being a priest himself. He picked me up from the train station in Goleniów, a small city in northwestern Poland, where he serves as a vicar in a local church.

VICE: What encouraged you to write this book?
Rev. Piotr Dzedzej: I have a friend who left the clergy. When you decide to devote your whole life to Jesus together, you start to think of each other as brothers. We took our holy orders at the same time. It was a shock to me when he left, because we had known each other for such a long time and nobody saw it coming.

Many people you interviewed for the book complain about the process of religious formation. What was your seminary like?
Nothing during my formation discouraged me from becoming a priest. The only thing that took me aback was the atmosphere of suspicion. We were all hoping we didn't get in anyone's bad books, and were afraid we'd get called out for something that we didn't even do, if that makes sense.

If you've just spent six years in a seminary and you go out into the world to do your work, how do you cope with a priest's daily life and reality?
Well, it doesn't come right away. Let me put it this way: a seminary prepares you in the way studying to be a doctor or a teacher prepares you for being a doctor or a teacher. It doesn't automatically help you understand all the tasks and problems you might face in the future.

Some of the former priests in the book told you about homosexual experiences in the seminary, and there are stories about heterosexual priests who couldn't deal with the temptations of the real world. Are love and sex the most common reasons that people resign?
No, these are individual cases—you can't make such generalizations. It's not like a priest is a dog on a leash, suddenly being let loose. There's no perfect way to prepare someone for the real world. And you hardly ever hear about the fact that priests give up a lot for their position—it's a form of martyrdom. Maybe that's something that should be mentioned more in seminaries. We need to be able to talk about that, and what it means, just like we need to talk more about the reasons that make people leave.

Priests who leave are often completely excommunicated, like they never existed. Why does that happen?
There are no official guidelines on how to behave in that kind of situation. Bishops and priests are only human—one bishop will try to talk and help, understand the root of the problem. Another will suspend a priest who expresses doubts and tell him there's nothing to discuss.

What happens to them once they get home?
That depends. People with common sense will understand that anyone is human and fallible. More shallow people, who think priests should be holier than God, won't accept someone's return. They may get a little too excited by the idea of someone falling from grace, too.

And so the second most gluttonous holiday is upon us. Yes, in theory, Easter is about that time Jesus rose—or something? He died and then got up again? All his friends had a big send off? One of them got kicked out the WhatsApp group for being a dick? Something about a big rock? I don't know. But I do know that, like all good Christian holidays, Easter has been distorted with time, commercialized, the true meaning hidden behind a shroud of gluttony and seasonal purchases. So now Easter is about eggs. Delicious, creamy eggs.

The creamiest of all the eggs is arguably the Creme Egg, so called for the sugar fondant filling and the fact that it is shaped like an egg. The Creme Egg is iconic. It is a symbol of what Easter is and what it can be. It is delicious. Australians keep putting coffee in them and it is hurting my heart.

Here's the new thing: the—and there are not enough quotation marks in the world for this one—"eggspresso," a new coffee shop trend where a shot of espresso is decanted into a hollowed-out egg, a sort of deconstructed seasonal mocha. Reports suggest that, while undoubtedly unholy, the resulting chocolate 'n' coffee concoction is mostly alright, if not actually good. In many ways: like-life.

But what if we put Creme Eggs in other popular lunchtime foods and drinks? If only someone was silly enough to volunteer to go and do a vodka shot out of a Creme Egg. If only someone was there to take photos of the whole sorry endeavor happening. If only.

(CREME) EGG AND Fries

What? Egg and fries, a British classic, the most British of classics, only instead of a good honest egg fried in vegetable oil, it's a a Creme Egg torn apart by bare hands and microwaved for a bit.
How did it taste? Not as bad as it looked. Creme Egg and fries tapped into the same palate tingling sensation as dipping your McDonald's fries into your milkshake does: sweet, salty, you know you're being disgusting but you're in too deep to care. Microwaved for maximum consistency, the flavors of once-frozen potato melded perfectly with the chocolaty overtones and sugary finish. In the end it was something like a salty brioche. I would eat this again.
Rating? Eight Creme Eggs out of ten.

STEAK TARTARE

What? Steak tartare. Do you know how hard it is to get steak tartare in Shoreditch at 11.30 AM the day before the Easter break? It is surprisingly hard. I had to go to Côte by the Barbican. I had to wait half an hour for someone to chop some steak into an egg. I had to carry it back to work in my own Tupperware.
How did it taste? I decided to disperse the egg evenly over the steak, which was by now comfortably reanimating at room temperature. It was oniony, it was sugary and it was sort of what you'd expect a Creme Egg mashed into chopped steak to taste like. Evidently, it wasn't too bad, as my colleague Leala came to join in and didn't even vomit once.
Rating? Raw steak and Creme Egg: 6/10

JÄG-EGG-BOMB

What? A Jägerbomb with a Creme Egg in it.
How did it taste? How does any Jägerbomb taste? A sort of hollow whisper of despair: a promise that you have done something to permanently alter your electrolytes; the threat that you are going to be awake for hours, skin shrinking, body shaking, feeling the Jägerbomb creep through you. Like that, but with added fondant. The hardest part of this mix was deciding at which point to put the egg in. I decided on trying to mash it in and pour everything else on top. To be honest, it was just a slightly more sugary Jägerbomb and felt like a bit of a waste of egg and energy drink alike. To confirm: I think putting a Creme Egg in a Jägerbomb is a waste. However, I think putting a Creme Egg in some $9.50 steak tartare is not a waste.
Rating? 3/10.

MISO EGG SOUP

What? Miso soup, beloved lunch option of the city worker who thinks they might really give this detox a go: "Yeah, actually, I feel good," they say. "No, I don't have those usual hunger pangs you get at about 4 PM, you know? I feel full, actually; happy. I might go to the gym later, this could be the start of a new me. Actually no fuck it I'm having a burrito."
How did it taste? The miso soup was interesting. Tip: if you're going to buy miso soup to crack a Creme Egg into as part of some elaborate photographic joke that stopped being funny two Jägerbombs ago, don't buy it 45 minutes before you need it so it can sit in the office and go from hot to lukewarm. I mean, I'm not saying that made the addition of a Creme Egg any worse, but it didn't exactly help.
Weirdly, the salty and savory base worked quite well with the sugary finish, and the half-melted chocolate texture produced something utterly sublime. Perhaps I was just so hungry that anything resembling food would have been fine, but I have to say it was a triumph.
Rating? I went in for seconds. Eight eggs out of ten cremes.

A SHOT OF VODKA DONE OUT OF A CREME EGG

What? A SHOT OF VODKA DONE OUT OF A CREME EGG.
How did it taste? LIKE A FUCKING SHOT OF VODKA DONE OUT OF A CREME EGG, BRO.
Rating? YEAH. DO THIS. DO THIS TO YOUR MOM. DO THIS TO YOUR GRANDMA. YOU'RE GOING HOME FOR A BIG FAMILY DINNER THIS WEEKEND, AREN'T YOU? BIG MEAL, YEAH? FAMILY GATHERING, YEAH? FILL YOUR CREME EGGS WITH VODKA AND TURN IT INTO A FUCKING PARTY. ONE THOUSAND CREME EGGS OUT OF TEN.

This is the kind of thing we're talking about when we say "horse diaper." Photo via Flickr user Natalie Maynor

Being a politician is hard work. Obviously the president has to make life or death decisions every day, but even run-of-the-mill local legislators are deluged with problems and have to grapple with the complex political and policy ramifications of potential solutions. Say I'm a city councilman in Selma, Alabama, and I look out my window: There's a horse walking down the street, shitting as it goes. My phone rings: One of my many loyal constituents is complaining about horse poop all over the place.

So I study the problem. How do you stop horses from shitting all over the place? I convene a panel. Or maybe I just google "solutions for horse poop HELP." Either way, I arrive at a solution: horse diapers. I write a bill that says, "If you have a horse, you must put a diaper on it while you are taking it around town." I do the hard work of handshaking and politicking, I sweet-talk the powerful horse owners, I receive a sizable donation from the horse diaper lobby. "We like what you're doing," the horse diaper lobbyist says to me on the golf course. The bill passes. A gavel is banged. A law is made. It's like Schoolhouse Rock.

Some version of this happened in Selma in 2013, and this is why it's hard to be a politician: No one will put a diaper on a horse. Councilman Michael Johnson told the Selma Times-Journal that since then, he's only seen one horse whose owner put a diaper on it. "Most of the time they take a chance and hope they don't get caught."

Horse poop, incidentally, used to be a serious problem in the pre-car era, when cities like London and New York had massive horse populations transporting people and goods, all of them filling the streets with literal tons of shit and piss every day. "Urine, of course... soaked the streets," author Lee Jackson told NPR last year in a segment on Victorian London. According to Lee, one solution back then was to hire young boys to run around picking up the horse shit in an effort to stem the tide. In New York, the Times complained about a massive pile of manure on East 92nd Street in 1880. Writing in Appleton's Magazine in 1908, journalist Harold Bolce argued that "most of the modern city's sanitary and economic problems were caused by the horse," and held that each year "20,000 New Yorkers died from 'maladies that fly in the dust, created mainly by horse manure.'"

That was a serious problem that only really got solved when cars replaced horses and created their own set of environmental issues. Selma's horse poop crisis, by contrast, is a minor nuisance, but the solution is simple: Diaper your horses. Please, diaper your horses, so Michael Johnson can stop talking about it.

The councilman doesn't want to be the horse diaper guy. "I'm tired of it because there's other things I could be doing than dealing with horses," he told the Times-Journal, and who can blame him? He most certainly could be dealing with other important things but then another horse walks by, defiantly un-diapered, and he's gotta make another call and another note to bring this up at the next council meeting. The police chief says that they're going to crack down on these horses, really enforce the law, even if cops probably don't want to stop a rider and say, "Excuse me, sir, I couldn't help but notice that your horse is not wearing a diaper."

But look, living in modern society is complicated. There is a web of responsibilities and consequences that we are all a part of. We are not just Ayn Randian self-interested individuals moving of our own volition and building trains or whatever. If you have a horse, it will shit, and someone has to clean it up, or someone else will step in it. The roads are public property, and allowing your horse to shit in them is a sort of vandalism, a marked disregard for the lives of others. If there ever was a symbol for the coarsening of American life, of the breakdown of our communities, it's a man who refuses, contrary to both the law and common courtesy, to diaper his horse. I hope Selma's equine enthusiasts get onboard with the law, but more than that, I wish we could go back to a kindler, gentler, more compassionate America, where no one needs to tell you to put a diaper on your horse; you just do it because it's the right thing to do.

Zangief and E. Honda take it easy in 2016. See below for illustrator Stephen Maurice Graham's thinking behind this image.

In February 1991, fighting (video) games changed forever. Capcom's Street Fighter II devastated the arcades of the time, in its native Japan and abroad, but it was when the game switched to home consoles (and computers, but the less said about those versions, the better) when its legend was guaranteed.

Speak to almost anybody who was playing video games in the early 1990s, and they'll have a story about when and where they first came across Street Fighter II. Chances are that they first played as Ryu or Ken, Guile or Dhalsim on the 1992 Super Nintendo port, which sold over six million copies worldwide and was Capcom's highest-selling individual piece of software until Resident Evil 5 passed it in 2013.

I know that was my experience—sitting on the carpet in front of a 14" CRT screen in my friend's house, amazed both at the game itself and its asking price. At launch in the UK, you'd have been lucky to take Street Fighter II for the SNES home for less than £60 . I'd seen the arcade game and had my breath stolen, and this was as close as I could imagine any home version being. It certainly kicked the Amiga conversion into the dirt, made it eat mud, and gave it a wedgie, for good measure. Whoever thought that a game that necessitated six individual buttons could be played using a single-trigger Zip Stick, bless you, you fantastic lunatic.

But my absolute favorite home version of Street Fighter II was the Mega Drive (Genesis, for American readers) port of Super Street Fighter II, which came out in the summer of 1994 on a "whopping" 40 megabit cartridge. You know, the one where a mean-looking Ryu built up a hadouken before launching it at the screen, ahead of the menu's arrival. So rad. Not only could you now play as any of the four "boss" characters—Balrog, M. Bison, Vega, and Sagat—but there were four all-new additions to the roster. Fei Long and Cammy I clicked with; Dee Jay and T. Hawk, not so much. I've still got it, boxed but dusty. The instruction booklet's long lost, and the cart rattles, but if I plug it into my second-model Mega Drive, it works just as it did over 20 years ago. (Just don't play it with a standard three-button pad, unless you're a total masochist.)

Not that I stuck with any of Super's new fighters—I've always been a Ken man. I know, how crushingly dull of me. But the character you played as on Street Fighter II, back then, is likely the same one you first select when firing up 2016's Street Fighter V, assuming they're available. This game, whether played solo against the machine or beside a friend who you'd soon fall out with over their spamming of the Hundred Hand Slap, got into the blood of millions faster and harder than even the most wicked booze this side of a free bar.

To mark Street Fighter II's 25th anniversary in 2016, regular VICE contributor Stephen Maurice Graham has (re)imagined what the original eight World Warriors would look like today, based on their ages at the time of the first game's release. Below, he explains his direction on each illustration, plus there are more Street Fighter II memories from VICE Gaming writers and fighting game super-fans Andi Hamilton and Dave Cook. Mike Diver

Ken's seen better days. Guile, he prefers to forget his past entirely.

When I first played Street Fighter II, it was at my friend Keith's house. He had a SNES and a Mega Drive and tons of games. He had that special mom persuasion power that netted him all the new consoles. He even had a Sir Alan Sugar Amstrad, which silently gathered dust next to Super Mario World and Earthworm Jim.

Keith was brilliant at Street Fighter and I was rubbish, a training dummy next to him. He was usually Ryu and I was Ken—so ever since then I've always thought of the American as the lesser character. I don't know if that was a thing in your playground or office space, but Ken was always the shit copycat one, right? A palette-swapped hanger-on?

Anyway, here poor Ken (born on Valentine's Day, 1965) has been rendered with a cane, broken leg, and a dodgy mustache. He's been worn down and broken—not by fighting, but by the realization he's a bit crap. He fights against Guile (December 23, 1960), who has put on a few pounds after all the PTSD he's suffered. Who could blame him, really, but at least he's still got the hair.

Too many Spinning Bird Kicks have rendered Chun Li's (March 1, 1968) legs completely ruined, so she now covers them with a long dress and wears orthopedic shoes to help her shuffle a little quicker towards her opponent. Said rival is Blanka (February 12, 1966), a biological experiment who shouldn't really even be alive. Initially I was going to just draw him as a pile of bubbling goo, but instead thought perhaps he'd deteriorate slowly, bones bending and hair falling out, losing his faculties until he's a gibbering wreck on the side of the street. Sorry, that was a bit of a sad one.

Dhalism (November 22, 1952) and Ryu (July 21, 1964) seem to have prospered, running off together to the bonus stage to run an eco-friendly car disposal service. I always loved this bonus stage—the graphics of the shattered car were amazing, and I always wanted to spend a bit more time there, thinking there was more to discover.

Finally, E. Honda (November 3, 1960) and Zangief (June 1, 1956) are just two old bears having a nice bath with each other. Stephen Maurice Graham

Blanka was nearly drawn as bubbling goo. Which still might have been a fate more favorable than Chun-Li's situation.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE Gaming's first episode of Open Words, made possible by NVIDIA SHIELD: playing 'GTAV' with Big Narstie

I first played the SNES version of Street Fighter II at my cousin's place, and I was just blown away by the graphics—which at the time, to my infant mind, felt arcade perfect, even though they weren't. I loved Blanka, especially because he was so animated, and his electric attack was fun to execute. Also, there was a slight elation that came with pulling off a well-timed shoryuken before the inputs became a thing of pop culture normalcy.

But above all else, I couldn't beat the game. Sure, Sagat took a good 20 or 30 attempts, but with Bison all bets were off. Street Fighter II was an early source of gaming frustration, but a hell of a fond time. I still have my original SNES cart and dust it off from time to time. Dave Cook

Insert your own joke about a knackered banger being banged about by a couple of knackered bangers.

I used to live in a shitty village that had a fun fair show up once a year. It was largely horrible, but there was an arcade on it that was full of coin sliders but had one copy of Street Fighter II. The buttons and stick barely worked and it was covered in cigarette burns, but hearing that music and watching that intro—where that dude totally KTFOs a guy and the camera pans up to show the Street Fighter logo—was about the coolest fucking thing I had ever seen at, like, nine years old. Didn't even have a go on it; I just watched that attract mode and had my trousers blown into orbit by how awesome it looked.

Then I got a SNES, and a summer holiday of showing up at mates houses with a pad and a copy of SFII (nobody had two SNES pads of their own, come on now) happened and started a lifetime of playing fighting games. Andi Hamilton

Character ages taken from the Street Fighter Wiki.

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Photo by Evan Agostini/Associated Press

Donald Trump is an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in cash.

Actually, that's the tagline for Erika Girardi, one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but it applies equally to Trump. Even if, for a moment, you set aside the man's politics, his views toward Muslims and Mexicans, and the litany of weird, branded products that carry his name, it's still hard to understand why people like him so much.

The mystery extends beyond Trump's political supporters. The Manhattan real estate mogul has dated a string of beautiful ladies, from Rowanne Brewer to Carla Bruni to his current wife, Melania Trump. His first wife Ivana Trump, and his second, Marla Maples—both bombshells—famously got in a verbal sparring match over who loved him more.

But why? Trump's not exactly conventionally good looking. The orange skin, the inexplicably light bags under his eyes, the hair. Even an experiment to make Trump look "as hot as possible" through Photoshop resulted in a slightly meaner and worse-looking version of Benedict Cumberbatch.

There are theories: Ann Coulter suggested last year that it's because "he's tall, he's hilariously funny." Todd Shackelford, a psychologist at Oakland University, told Slate it's because "women are far more forgiving of physical attributes" and instead, "status, prestige, and resource acquisition are remarkably predictably linked to assessments by women of male attractiveness." Or maybe it's just that his lovers were attracted to a younger version of Trump—the one who graced the cover of Playboy in 1990—rather than the current one.

I wanted to get to the bottom of it. Is Trump actually sexy? I reached out to several Trump lovers, who each asked to remain anonymous, to see if they could weigh in.

Photo by Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

SUBJECT ONE: The Woman Who Started a Reddit Thread Debating Trump's Sex Appeal

I found this 27-year-old woman after she confessed on Reddit: "I find Donald Trump sexually attractive." I reached out to her to ask if she could pinpoint exactly what did it for her, and this is what she told me.

What is it that you find physically attractive about Trump?
He does have some physical features that I absolutely adore. First, his stature. I like tall men with broad shoulders. I may be a bit old fashioned in this regard, but I want to feel protected with a man. Donald comes off as physically imposing, but approachable in his interviews. I also really love his teeth, even if they are veneers.

Do you think his personal qualities—like fame, money, success—make him more physically attractive?
I'd be lying if I said the fame and money didn't catch my attention—if not for those, I wouldn't know who he was to begin with. What is more important, though, is his success and his ability to project confidence.

The hair and tan—we gotta talk about it. What are your thoughts?
I get the tan. Looking at Donald's face, it's pretty obvious that he is suffering from a bit of rosacea (unsurprising, given that his mother was Scottish). A tan sort of balances things out and looks better on the camera. The spray tan does usually come off as unnatural, but a natural suntan isn't really an option with rosacea. I don't have any problem with the hair. I actually kind of like it.

Why do you think so many beautiful women have been attracted to Trump?
I think that for most women who find him attractive, the money and fame are the initial attention-getter. The confidence, drive, and success are what win Trumpettes over. I also understand that when the cameras are off, he is a much nicer guy.

Let's say Trump wasn't wealthy. Still hot?
Still hot. That said, I likely would have never heard of him, if not for his wealth.

Screenshot via Babes for Trump on Instagram

SUBJECT TWO: The Men Who Run "Babes For Trump"

Babes for Trump has collected quite a following, on both Instagram and Twitter. Dozens of hot women have contributed photos of themselves supporting Trump, as if wearing a bikini is the key to Making America Great Again. Intrigued, I emailed the four young men who run the account.

Is Babes for Trump a serious or satirical project?
This is a real account. The idea came about one evening when we were on Twitter browsing through our feed and saw the hashtag #babesfortrump accompanied with an image of an attractive young woman. This immediately sparked the idea to create an account that blended two of the hottest social media trends out right now—politics and sex appeal.

We hadn't seen anything like it before, considering the supposed negative and derogatory rhetoric surrounding Donald Trump. We were baffled to see that young college women were full on supporting Trump and weren't afraid to show a little skin while they're at it. So we ran with it.

What do you think these women find sexy about Trump?
This is a tricky one, because we don't want to speak for everyone, but we think the draw to him is that he has the quintessential "bad boy" attitude about him. He isn't afraid to be controversial or speak his feelings. We also think he can be considered sexy because of his past with women—it's well known that Trump likes an attractive woman.

So, is Trump himself sexy?
Absolutely, Trump is sexy. He ran a beauty pageant—the man knows sexy. He is the embodiment of an image that people want, whatever that may be, and that is the definition of sexy.

Who are these women contributing photos to Babes for Trump?
Women want to be desired; women want their voices heard. We believe that much of the media puts this assumption out there that women don't like Trump, and that if they do, there is something wrong with them. That is just not true. What we are seeing is that America's "Girl Next Door" might be your biggest Trump fan. Like we said before, there is this misconception out there that young women don't like Trump, and they do.

What would Donald Trump's Tinder bio say?
If you think the only thing about me that stands tall and is made of stone is my wall, you'd be sadly mistaken.

Photo by Larry Marano/Getty Images for 2014 Trump Invitational Grand Prix

SUBJECT THREE: A Member of the Band The Trumpettes

The Trumpettes are a four-person band with one song, "Trump Tsunami." It's weirdly sexual. I emailed their manager, Richard, who put me in touch with Raydea, the singer of the band. Here's her explanation of Trump's sex appeal.

Who are the Trumpettes?
We're a group of girls that love the idea of Trump, the movement, the swagger he has, which is so masculine and assertive. He knows he's the shit, and we like what he represents. That's Trump—he may be brash, but he's real, and he's a strong individual who believes in himself and others.

Do you find him attractive?
He's really cute, with his little boy face. We're not trying to push Melania aside, but we're here to completely support.

You actually think he's good looking?
I think he looks great. He's six-three, with his wide shoulders, beautiful skin, those blue eyes. It's all there. And he walks like a man walks! There's something so sexy about that. He knows what he wants and how to get it, and that's alluring.

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This gallery originally appeared on VICE Serbia

It was as if everything suddenly happened in a day. In Serbia, Thursday, March 24 couldn't have been more packed with news events: former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was sentenced to 40 years in prison for war crimes, it was the anniversary of the start of NATO's 1999 bombing campaign on Serbia—launched against Belgrade's repression of Kosovo, anti-NATO rally,—and a group of left-wingers faced off a bigger group of far-right protesters rallying against NATO and the EU.

Karadžić is the highest-ranking official to be sentenced for genocide committed during the Bosnian war, in which 100,000 people were killed and more than 2.2 million fled their homes. It was and still is the bloodiest conflict Europe has seen after World War II.

In central Belgrade, the verdict against Karadžić inspired street vendors to put up makeshift stands selling badges and Serbian flags for a rally called by another war crimes suspect, Serbian hardline politician Vojislav Seselj.

Seselj, whose sentencing is expected on March 31, said his rally was a protest "against the verdict on Radovan Karadžić," which came, as coincidence would have it, on the same day NATO began its air war against Serbia 17 years ago."

Several thousand people cheered Seselj's anti-EU vows and chanted "Serbia, Russia, we do not need the Union" and "Fuck you, Clinton," reminding us all that the US' current future presidential candidate's husband was seen here as a key architect behind NATO's air war on Serbia.

Then it was time for a brief stand-off between left-wingers and right-wingers, who barked at each other until anti-riot police units lost their patience and separated the two groups.

Prayers, candles, flags, and firecrackers: this long March 24 was finally over. Here's what our photographer saw.

VICE is tracking mass shootings in America in 2016, and comparing the numbers with their European counterparts. Read our rationale for the project and the metrics we're using here.

Over the past seven days, America has witnessed four mass shootings that left three dead and 14 injured. On Saturday afternoon, a drive-by in Wetumpka, Alabama killed two and injured two more. Later that night, gunfire at a house party in Plantation, Florida, killed one and wounded four others. And on Monday and Tuesday evening, shooters opened fire on young people on the streets of Chicago, Illinois and Selma, California, respectively, leaving four wounded in each incident. These attacks bring the tally of mass shootings in America in 2016 to date to 72 dead and 212 injured.

This figure surpasses the self-proclaimed body count of Gary Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer and America's most prolific ever, who credited himself with 71 murders between 1982 and his 2001 capture in Washington State.

Europe, meanwhile, saw no mass shootings this past week, leaving that continent's toll from such attacks this year at seven dead and 36 injured—less than a sixth of American casualties. Of course, all eyes are on Europe this week anyway in the wake of Tuesday's Brussels airport suicide bombings, which left 31 dead and over 270 wounded. The largest act of violence, terrorist or otherwise, on the continent since the Paris terror attacks last November, the Brussels tragedy has triggered massive anti-terror investigations—and plenty of fear—in the region.

That attack has rightfully received much more attention than America's latest batch of mass shootings given its scale and importance for ongoing discussions on defense and safety in Europe and elsewhere. But even if Americans should be engaged with and sympathetic to the situation in Brussels, we cannot turn our national conversation completely to terrorism at risk of losing sight of the total gravity and grinding accumulation of mass shootings and their casualties in the United States.

With 284 overall casualties, this year's scattered mass shootings, which tend to receive haphazard attention at best, have been almost as bloody as the Belgium attack with its 301 casualties. And over the course of 2015, by one popular measure, similar incidents left 475 Americans dead and 1,870 wounded for a total of 2,345 casualties, far outstripping the level of carnage of Paris and Brussels combined. That toll even farther outstrips the number of Americans who have died in Islamic terrorist violence between 9/11 and the end of last year—a figure that stands at 45 people.

Terrorist attacks, somewhat like those perpetrated by serial killers, tend to become totemic symbols—driving conversations for months and years. This makes sense: massive, irregular, and devastating, these events leave behind a serious impact. And they point to legitimate concerns and threats. But we can't let abject horror distract us from the constant, almost rote danger of mass gun violence in America.

In weeks like this, as we all look to Belgium and the specter of terrorism, we ought to remember that the United States faces a slow but mounting tide of internal terror. We ought to remember that while they (somewhat) rarely grab the national spotlight, mass shootings are a constant threat in America—far worse than that of terrorism. We ought to know that we have the capability to hold two concerns simultaneously—that we can both respond to events like Brussels and our own mass shooting epidemic, which constantly compromises the safety and security of every American citizen. So even though this week was calm by American mass shooting standards, we can and should continue to be aware of these tragedies and the perversity of a gun culture gone off the rails—even as we pay due respect to European suffering.

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The author with her prosthetic leg

I lost my leg in the summer of 1992, while driving a blue Honda Nighthawk 450 motorcycle. A woman with the windows rolled up later told police "it was dusk and hard to see," after making an illegal left turn into my leg. When an ambulance arrived on the scene, my leather jacket was soaked in fresh blood and the skin from my ankle to my knee had been peeled clean; my tibia and fibula had splintered through my shin. The impact was so forceful that my shoes flew off, my glasses shattered, my hip and left thumb snapped, my helmet cracked.

When the paramedic cut off my jeans, I remembered I hadn't worn underwear that day, and so I lay on the stretcher fully exposed to four EMTs, two gas station attendants from the nearby Chevron, a dozen passersby, and the woman who'd have to live with the fact that she'd caused this macabre vignette. In that moment, I felt sorry for her. I figured I'd die from my injuries, but she'd have to live with her guilt and embarrassment at seeing me there, bloody and exposed.

I didn't die, though. After two weeks of metal rods, a vein transplant, and chemical debridement that caused searing, impossible pain, doctors would saw off everything six inches below my knee. Seven surgeries and three months of hospitalization later, I would move back in with my dad and stepmother, trying to adjust to life as a 21-year-old without a leg.

When you become an amputee, doctors warn you about the things that will be difficult—things like learning how to walk with an aluminum walker. No one warned me about what it would be like to have sex without my leg. I hadn't had much sex in my life up to then, most of what I had had involved wearing a t-shirt and dwelling on my body insecurities. Now, no t-shirt could hide my stump.

The first time I tried to have sex as an amputee was with a girl I'd known for about a year. I'd asked her out a few times before I'd lost my leg, but she always said no. This time, though, she was game for what I assumed was a pity-fuck. I tried to climb on her, over and over, but I couldn't bend my stump knee past 90 degrees. I cried, threw up from my own shame, and asked her to leave.

The stump became a symbol of my own sexual failure. So when a woman told me about amputee fetishes, it was sort of lost on me, and seemed kinda rude. When I later slept with that woman and she revealed she wanted me because of my stump—she wanted smell it, lick it, have me screw her with it—I became more interested in the power of my own fetish appeal.

Watch: VICE investigates the erotic appeal of quicksand on screen

Having people want me with that sort of desperate hunger was an intoxicating force I could use to my advantage. Now that I had this superpower to attract women, I was obsessed with it. I started going to lesbian bars where I wooed women with tales of my courage in the face of the accident, where I'd take my prosthetic leg off and whomp it proudly on the bar. Once, a bartender offered to pour champagne into my hollow leg (though I declined, saying the prosthetic would rust). I was the life of the party, and now that I'd found my tribe, I was way more popular with my stump than I'd ever been with my leg.

I played into the fetish for a decade, until one night, I realized how lonely I'd become. By 2013, I'd lived as many years as an amputee as I had as a non-amputee, and I realized my social and sexual life post-amputation was empty. I thought being a fetish gave me power—that it was some great trick to get women in bed—but instead, it surrounded me with lovers who saw me as a peg leg, not a person.

Now, I've "hung up the fake leg," so to speak. I eventually married someone who appreciates the person beneath the stump, who gets to smell the stump sweat, witness the subway stairs as they bust open the skin on my knee, and see the blood and guts of what makes me mortal. To her, I'm not a fetish; I'm a person who has had to walk a long way to be brave.

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VICE's new 24-hour cable TV channel VICELAND launched on February 29, but we're still rolling out the first season of our new shows. Today we're excited to bring you the premiere of our new fashion and travel series, STATES OF UNDRESS, before it airs on the network on March 30.

The series follows host Hailey Gates as she explores fashion scenes from all over the world, addressing the issues that the industry often ignores and investigating what the rest of the world is wearing, and why.

On the first episode, Gates heads to Pakistan to explore the contrast between the vibrant colors and outfits of the small, but active fashion scene and the limited clothing options that women have in the more conservative areas of the country. She meets progressive designers at Karachi Fashion week, talks about women's role in today's society with a conservative imam, and meets the female victims of violent acid attacks who have been targeted for their fashion choices.

Watch the episode above and stay tuned for the series premiere March 30 on VICELAND. Until then, you can watch free episodes of shows like WEEDIQUETTE,BALLS DEEP, and GAYCATION online now.

Photo via Getty Images

This article originally appeared in The Trace.

Ted Cruz named Frank Gaffney his foreign policy advisor on Thursday, a move that threatens to involve the Republican presidential contender in a contentious fight to get the party's most prominent anti-tax advocate kicked off the National Rifle Association's board.

Gaffney once worked for President Ronald Reagan's Department of Defense and now runs the Center for Security Policy, a hyper-conservative think tank that promulgates theories about a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to infiltrate the U.S. government. The Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed Gaffney "one of America's most notorious Islamophobes." For years, he has also worked to take down an unlikely target: Republican superstar and founder of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist.

Norquist is best known for browbeating GOP lawmakers into signing "The Taxpayer Protection Pledge," which contractually requires them to resist tax increases of almost any sort. But as The Trace reported in February, he also serves on the board of the NRA, and at the moment he is the subject of a recall effort spearheaded by Tea Party icon Glenn Beck. To make his case to his followers, many of whom are affiliated with the NRA, Beck has primarily relied on distorted evidence gathered by Gaffney.

The gist of Beck and Gaffney's beef with Norquist is an assertion that the latter has ties to Islamist extremists, which is a considerable distortion of reality. In the 1990s, Norquist started an organization called the Islamic Free Market Institute (IFMI), with the goal of spreading free market ideas to the Middle East. At times, he crossed paths with some people later identified as extremists—evidence, according to Beck and Gaffney, that Norquist has conspired with people who want to harm America.

Beck's feud with Norquist dates to at least 2013, and he has advocated since then to boot the anti-tax advocate from the NRA's board. A recall effort, led by Beck, is well underway, and a heated debate has broken out among the organization's members. On the popular firearms enthusiast website Ammoland, there have been posts defending Norquist, and others calling for his dismissal. In February, one commenter wrote, "The NRA better press the issue ... or it will lose tons of members, myself included!"

Whether Gaffney's involvement in the internecine NRA battle has implications for Cruz remains to be seen, but at minimum it promises to make potential conversations with senior NRA members—and Norquist himself—more complicated.

Cruz has sought to position himself as the most pro-gun candidate in the election. Yet by hiring Gaffney, Cruz may anger a number of long-serving NRA board members, including David Keene, the organization's president from 2011 to 2013, who have made public statements against the effort to recall Norquist.

Cruz could also lose the support of a man who is a natural ally. In April, on his campaign site, the Republican candidate announced that he had signed Norquist's pledge. As president, the press release read, "he will oppose and veto any all efforts to increase taxes." The release quoted Norquist, who referred to Cruz as a "strong and consistent advocate for taxpayers."

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Photo via Flickr user Will

Read: A Christian Group Called 'Dead Raising Team' Wants to Resurrect You

While some churches across the country are currently stuffing plastic eggs with Peeps and practicing the same boring old hymns, Bishop Rickey Moore of Sunrise Baptist Church in Louisiana is taking his congregation's Easter celebration to the next level.

According to KLSA News, on Friday afternoon Moore will seal himself up inside a coffin and plans to emerge on Easter Sunday—recreating Jesus's resurrection in a dramatic way. (It's not clear whether he's saying that he's going to stay in that coffin for the whole three days, David Blaine–style.) "I had a vision about how I could get this city's attention," Moore told KLSA. "The lord gave me a vision and because of the vision he gave me I stepped out on faith." The stunt is part of the church's elaborate Easter drama, which will depict the trial, crucifixion, and now resurrection, of Christ.

Spend your workday browsing the internet, like this guy. Photo via Flickr user Sean MacEntee

A few years ago, I heard a story about a guy—let's call him Steve—who worked as an accountant at a large hotel in the early 90s. His job was to take all of the various income from the hotel rooms, room service, the gift shop, and so on, and compile them into one big report for the hotel management. The data came in through different sources, and back in the 90s, before computers were as sophisticated as they were today, a human was needed to sort these things out into a clean, cohesive report.

Of course, this was very boring. So one day, Steve got the idea one day to write a code that would take the various income sources, translate them into a common format, and compile the report automatically. He says it took him 12 weeks, using a programming language called BASIC, but eventually he managed to streamline the data entry into an Excel sheet.

"It automated my daily work almost completely, in three keystrokes," he wrote on Reddit.

Steve says he rode on the coattails of this program for about a year, and with all his extra free time, he was able to help other departments with IT problems. When he finally got bored of collecting a paycheck for the work of his computer algorithm, Steve quit. Instead of giving his boss two weeks notice, he handed over the code and instructions for how to run it, adding that he'd already found his "replacement."

Stories like this one used to seem exceptional, but today there are few, if any, jobs you couldn't automate away in a similar fashion. Companies have been working on the project of automation for decades, and in some ways, this makes us squeamish: Our identities are wrapped up in the type of work we do, and we'd rather maintain our livelihoods than be replaced by a robot. At the same time, most of us are bored at work. A full 70 percent of employees are "checked out" at work, according to a Gallup survey that studied American workplaces between 2010 and 2012. Of that group, 18 percent went so far as to say they were "actively disengaged" from their work, meaning they not only stopped caring about their own jobs, but even cut into the productivity of others.

Even dream jobs come with a healthy dose of drudgery—which is why people with the means hire personal assistants to do the shit work for them. So if you could outsource that work to a computer program, while keeping your paycheck and boosting your productivity, wouldn't you?

Related: Every Job Could Be a Casualty of the Robot Revolution, Even Yours

Those who have done it make a compelling case for self-automation. Aaron Rogers was hired as a network operator for a large company in 2010. His job was to sit in front of a panel of screens and monitor the systems to make sure everything ran smoothly. If something went wrong, Rogers was supposed to personally troubleshoot the problem or call in a senior member of the team. When he wasn't staring at the screens, he was responsible for things like archiving files, rebooting servers, performing backups, and a truly horrible task that involved comparing two extremely long data reports to find discrepancies. "For every 1,000 lines of data, there were about five discrepancies, and the reports could be tens of thousands of lines long," Rogers told me. "As you can imagine, it got incredibly tedious very quickly."

It only got worse when Rogers was moved to the night shift in 2011, which involved more of the same menial tasks, but all night long. "That's when I really started to consider learning how to automate," he told me. He'd only taken one coding class at a community college, but he figured, Why not give it a shot?

At first, he started looking for simple, routine tasks. The company had a set of log files that had to be archived at the end of each business day, so instead of doing it manually, he used a scripting language called Powershell to do it automatically. And it worked. After that, he started learning more about coding and automating other parts of his job, including the task of comparing the two databases.

After a year, he showed his team what he'd done and eliminated the need for the night shift altogether. By the end of 2012, Roger's scripts had eliminated the need for network operators altogether; the company promoted him to systems engineer, where he does more technical, analytical work.

On Motherboard: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

Cases like these are more common in technical workplaces, where employees are more likely to know how to write code and their tasks are more likely to involve data, spreadsheets, and numbers. But creative fields have begun to automate, too.

Take Phil Parker, an economist who fine-tuned the process of automated book-writing. Parker told me he developed algorithms for book writing mostly to increase productivity, as it takes a fairly long time and a chunk of money to write an academic book. "The idea was not to remove the boring parts , but that is perhaps a positive artifact of the process," he said. Now, Parker has "authored" thousands of academic books—everything from a physicians' guide to Klinefelter Syndrome to The 2007-2012 World Outlook for Luggage and Utility Racks—which he says take about 20 minutes to "write" and edit.

It made me wonder: Could I automate my own job? I posed the question to the team at Automated Insights, which designed a program called Wordsmith to generate content at places like the Associated Press, Yahoo!, and Samsung. In 2013, Automated Insights' algorithms wrote more than 300 million stories—substantially more than any major media company, and likely more than all major media companies combined.

Last October, Automated Insights released a self-service version of Wordsmith so that individuals could customize their own content needs using the platform. They included a drop-down menu with different industries—like media, marketing, healthcare, energy—to see who was interested in using the software. "But the end of week one, every single industry had been selected by someone who wanted to use it," said Dan Dillon, the company's director of marketing.

Dillon and his team gave me a demonstration of Wordsmith and showed me how within an hour or so, you could easily build an algorithm that could write thousands of data-driven stories. It doesn't work for things like op-eds, which are mainly thought-driven, but it does a pretty good job of explaining hard numbers and could easily work for recapping crime reports or election results. And unlike human writers, who need time to analyze what a list of numbers tells us about the world, the algorithm can spit out a story almost instantly.

Dillon noted that plenty of people are self-automating already, and we're bound to continue self-automating as our relationship with technology grows closer. But others aren't so sure. You still have to learn to code, find a task that's automatable, and write a script that can do it as well as (or better than) a human. That's not easy. Rogers put out a call last year offering to automate parts of other peoples' jobs for them, but even then, he didn't get any takers.

If it's the actual coding that seems like a burden, not to worry: Take a page from the guy who outsourced his own job to workers in China, collected a six-figure paycheck, and spent his days scrolling through Reddit threads. Automation, but with human technology.

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

Photo by Rodrigo Vaz via Getty

A Tribe Called Quest's Malik Taylor, aka Phife Dawg, died on Wednesday at age 45 from complications of diabetes. Phife was known for being a pioneer of hip-hop, and, to a much lesser extent, as having a sweet tooth. (A few bars into the 1991 track "Buggin Out," he notes, I drink a lot of soda so they call me Dr. Pepper.) Taylor was diagnosed with the disease in 1991, at the age of 20.

A 20-year-old diagnosed with diabetes was once exceedingly rare—the disease was called "adult-onset" diabetes for a reason. But increasingly children and young adults are being diagnosed in alarming numbers. The rise was noted with concern back in 2000, when the American Diabetes Association published a consensus statement on the subject. A 2014 study found that the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among ten to 19-year-olds rose 30 percent between 2001 and 2009. By 2012, fully one half of the entire US adult population had either diabetes or pre-diabetes.

There's a common perception that people who have diabetes can just take meds and live a normal life. A growing industry normalizes the disease with lotions, supplements, medications, magazines, and food and drinks that cater to a diabetic population. But as Taylor's death illustrates, diabetes is not something to take lightly, and this is especially true for those diagnosed young, since living with the disease for longer can lead to worse outcomes. Complications include blindness, end-stage kidney failure, stroke, and numbness in the extremities—which means wounds go unnoticed, get infected, and can result in amputations. Taylor was so sick that in 2008 he required a kidney transplant from his wife, Deisha Taylor.

In the US, rates of childhood and adolescent diabetes are highest among blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans. (This is also the case for the adult population.) One out of every two black babies born in the year 2000 is expected to develop type 2 diabetes. A 2005 report in the The New England Journal of Medicine predicts that obesity and its related ailments could result in the current generation of children having shorter lifespans than their parents—for the first time in two centuries. Taylor's mother puts a face on this tragic reality. She posted a note on her Facebook page that read, "Family, my heart is shattered at the loss of my beautiful son."

Obesity and its related ailments could result in the current generation of children having shorter lifespans than their parents—for the first time in two centuries.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 1980 there were fewer than 6,000 diagnoses of diabetes annually in the US; in 2010 there were nearly 22,000 diagnoses—and likely many more, given that as many as one-third of people with the disease remain undiagnosed.

Why the dramatic shift?

So much has changed about our food supply in the past 60 years, it's hard to know where to begin. The transition to our ultra-processed diet began in the late 50s, but it was the 1980s when Big Food really took off. New substances in the food supply proliferated, including high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), trans fats, antibiotics, and growth hormones in the meat and milk supply, and myriad other chemical additives and preservatives. There was an explosion of concentrated feeding animal operations, or CAFOs, supplying cheap meat to the ever-increasing fast food market, and soda consumption was at an all-time high. At that time, with the exception of some back-to-the-land types, little fuss was made over feeding children things like brightly-colored sweet cereals for breakfast, or allowing them to drink soda every day.

Certainly, the case against HFCS has been well documented and its role in the development of type 2 diabetes is known. Sugar in general has taken the heat in recent years, with some experts, like UCSF endocrinologist Robert Lustig, pinning our health crises on a national increase in sugar consumption. This may in fact be true, but it is only part of a much more complex and worrisome picture.

Some researchers believe that there are additional factors at play. For instance: Bacteria-killing elements in our food supply—be it antibiotic residue and pesticide residues in our foods, or certain food additives—are possibly wreaking havoc on the trillions of bacteria residing in each of our guts. This important invisible ecosystem, called the microbiome, is responsible for maintaining human health in a variety of ways, and early research suggests that changes in our gut bacteria may be making us more susceptible to obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic dysfunction. "There is evidence that prescribed antibiotics are associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes," Martin Blaser, professor of microbiology at New York University's School of Medicine, told VICE. Antibiotic residue in food could play a role, too, he says, but much is still uncertain. There's also early evidence that emulsifiers commonly found in packaged foods, like carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) and polysorbate 80, can disrupt gut bacteria and lead to metabolic diseases.

It goes even beyond sugar and bacteria, though. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs, are ubiquitous in the food supply and our general environment, from pesticides to the plastic used in food packaging. Bisphenol-A, or BPA, one of the most common and most studied, is everywhere—including the Dr. Pepper bottles and cans that Taylor loved so much. The CDC found that "nearly all" Americans tested had levels of BPA in their blood—a frightening reality when you consider that BPA can cause excess insulin production, which in turn can lead to diabetes. "Rodent studies have shown that environmental chemicals can induce obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other aspects of metabolic syndrome," Laura Vandenberg, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Massachusetts, told VICE. "Typically, these studies have involved low-level exposures during gestation or infancy. The kinds of chemicals that can induce these metabolic diseases include BPA, some phthalates, pesticides, and other industrial chemicals."

People living in poor communities tend to have higher rates of exposure to environmental pollutants, and these include a great many EDCs. Reliance on a highly processed food diet means greater exposure to the plastics in food packaging, as well as things like pesticide residue, antibiotic residue, and harmful food additives, often in high amounts and acting in combination. The food industry will point to studies that show that the "low doses" of additives and chemicals we are all exposed to are harmless—but a large amount of literature on EDCs challenges this idea, Vandenberg said. What's more, we are all exposed to combinations of chemicals every day and combinations are not currently being tested. "Humans are exposed to many, many chemicals at once," Vandenberg said. How many is anyone's guess, but the the vast majority are largely unregulated and have not been tested for safety.

Taylor grew up in this kind of food environment, as did many of us raised in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And for Taylor, growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood in Queens, the options for healthy eating were likely much narrower than they were for those growing up in more affluent white areas. Today, those discrepancies appear to have worsened dramatically. A 2014 report by the Harvard School of Public Health found that while diet quality improved among people of high socioeconomic status, it deteriorated among those at the other end of the spectrum, and the gap between the two doubled between 2000 and 2010.

Where does this leave us? In the case of Taylor, his death illustrates the tragic outcome of living in a dangerous food environment. Taylor, born in 1970, was part of an early generation of unwitting test subjects for an unregulated industrial food system. We are only just beginning to see the results of this experiment gone wrong.

Kristin Wartman is writing her first book, Formerly Known As Food, a critical look at how the industrial food system is changing our minds, bodies, and culture. It will be published by St. Martin's Press. She has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Newsweek, among many other publications.

Check out Nilas's Tumblr.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

You already know about Paris Hilton, the brain behind "that's hot." Paris, who gets paid thousands to turn up to clubs and pose. Paris, who indulged in the gaudy pantomime of learning about employment with Nicole Richie on The Simple Life. But for all its comedy boings and obvious set-ups, The Simple Life will always be a surprisingly solid foundation class in Work Ethic 101.

Debuting in 2003, the reality show was developed in Fox's comedy department by visionaries looking to take old sitcom concepts and make them real. Brad Johnson, Senior VP of comedy development, told TV Week he wanted to riff off Green Acres, a 1960s sitcom about a couple from the city relocated to the countryside. So the premise of The Simple Life, as the banjo-riddled theme tune goes, was: "Let's take two girls, both filthy rich/From the bright lights into the sticks." The situation: the sticks. The comedy: that they will muck up terribly, every episode.

Paris, a 22-year-old heiress to a $290 million fortune, and Nicole, 21-year-old daughter of Lionel Richie, have their Sidekick mobile phones and purses confiscated before being sent for a month to Altus, Arkansas. Population: 817. They lodge with farming family the Ledings, in a bedroom on a porch replete with bugs and a functioning well.

The culture shock doesn't end there. There's no money to be made by strolling into a shop (Paris thinks Walmart "sells walls") and juggling a Starbucks frappé while paparazzi snap away. Instead, our protagonists must do like Arkansans do, and work. And each job they do—and are subsequently fired from—is manual, hand-callousing work: dairy farming, ranching, prepping fast food, and pumping gas. But they do it all—sort of.

MAKING A MOCKERY OF DRUDGERY

Janet and Albert Leding set a great example: after painfully early morning starts, they still manage to chalk up a list of Paris and Nicole's chores, rub off that list after doing said chores for their errant guests, and then spend time explaining how Paris and Nicole have fucked up. At first, it's reasonable questioning: Why did they use the dairy farmer's hot tub while at work? Why did Nicole lie about her cat dying as an excuse for being in bed on a work day? And they work hard to suppress the frustration imbued by Paris every time she quietly mumbles "That's not cute" before slinking off.

There's a worrying moment on their first day at Sonic Burger, in season one's third episode, where Paris is adept at making crispy bacon on the grill, and Nicole has mastered popping onions into rings to batter. You wonder if this is it. If the series will show them getting on in their new life, scoffing burgers during their 10:00 AM break, each settling down with one of the truckers who turn up for breakfast and chuckle along with Paris's helium-pitched baby talk and Nicole's goading of "Do you work with hot guys? Hot guys like you? Do you take baths together?"

But of course, it can't be. Responding as anyone should to the tedium of having to pervert vegetables into hydrogenated fat-laden tubes of stodge, Nicole shoves whole onions in the machine, jamming it. Later, Paris and Nicole change the 15-foot noticeboard outside to read: "1/2 PRICE ANAL SALTY WEINER BURGERS." It's silly and stupid, but it's entertaining. And sure, they're "bratty" enough to be able to take the piss out of jobs they'll never have to do; but they send the drudgery up, not the people. A genuine fondness grows between the girls and the Ledings, whose Grandma weeps as they leave, telling them they're "good girls." The toddler son asks if Nicole can be his sister.

"YOU'VE PRETTY MUCH MESSED EVERYTHING UP"

Paris and Nicole's various supervisors moan that they're "not needed anymore" and have "pretty much messed everything up." But as Arnold Toynbee, the 19th century economist and social reformer who helped laborers in slums unionize, once said: "The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play."

And on The Simple Life, Paris and Nicole did just that, whether falling about dressed as fast-food mascots, topping up milk bottles with a bucket of water and quipping: "It'll be less fattening, I'm doing them a favor," or flirting with the local boys and promising them jobs as model in LA. All the while, the series debuted with 13 million viewers (gaining 300,000 more for the second episode) and four more seasons followed. What The Simple Life can teach us: to persist, to entertain, to say thank you when it's due, and to not let a man called Albert trap you in his house.

Follow Sophie on Twitter.

This is a condensed version of Gareth McConnell's essay from 'Looking for Looking for Love,' a photobook documenting the 1980s nightlife in one of the UK's seaside nightclubs in Merseyside's. See a full gallery of photos from the book here.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

I can only speculate about what happened to the people in these pictures. Perhaps, like those I shared the dance floor with, they joined the dole queue or became students or apprentices. Became parents and joiners and accountants, went to the docks or the shipyards, became builders and police officers (bent or otherwise), crooks, drug dealers, musicians, alcoholics and addicts, suicides, murderers, or murder victims. Became prisoners, émigrés, rich, poor or poorer—or all of the above.

What I do know is that Tom Wood's Looking for Love book provides a glimpse of British nightlife dancing towards the explosion of one of the most significant and mythologized youth-cultural phenomena the country has ever seen—the acid house movement and the birth of the ecstasy generation.

I never set foot in the Chelsea Reach, where Tom took his photos, but I have been to plenty of places like it: Sparkles down the road in Carrick, The Coach in Banbridge, The Crescent on Sandy Row, and the king of them all, Kelly's in Portrush. I remember the pints of lager, the smoke, the sticky carpets and slippery dance floors, the fake IDs to get you past the aggro bouncers. I remember screaming to be heard above the music, when it was so packed you couldn't fucking move.

I remember the smuggled quarter bottle and a five deal of hash, and talking about it all on Monday morning at school coz we were only 13 or 14 when we started going. I remember the clothes and the hairstyles and the music, and I see the faces of my childhood friends and adversaries. I see my sister in a skinny black tie, white buttoned-down shirt, and a perm. I see the girls I kissed, the unrequited loves and lost sweethearts, my own and everyone else's.

I see Skimmer, who would start unbuttoning his trousers to the first beats of Man 2 Man Meets Man Parrish's "Male Stripper," and then spend the next half hour prancing about in a pair of C&A undies. I see the older girls who wouldn't look at you twice and the nutty boys who would beat you if you were caught looking. I see the exuberance and hope and frustration and fragility and defeat of youth all mixed up in one boozy, smoky, hormonal stew—swaying spinning, groping, snogging, shouting, laughing. I see the queue at the chippies and smell the burger vans. I see the inevitable fights and tears and flashing lights, a hand-job if you're lucky, a party, the walk home, the lift, the coach, someone's bed or couch or floor or cell.

I remember when we all started taking little pills and powders and squares of perforated paper with tiny pictures of smiley faces and strawberries printed on them, when we started wearing baggy clothes and growing our hair and hugging strangers and freaky dancing till dawn and telling each other we loved each other. I remember smoking big spliffs on the comedown and talking shit and walking home at noon the next day or the day after that listening to the birds sing.

I remember putting all our old records and cassettes under the bed because we knew we weren't gonna need them anymore. I remember driving round the country and putting on nights and doing deals and reading Mixmag and The Face and i-D, as well as saving up for a trip to Ibiza and thinking just maybe anything's possible after all. There was gonna be no more slow dances for us, no more lights on, and getting your coat at 1 AM, no more drunken fights and sausage suppers. We were going raving, and so was everybody else.

It's hard for me to look back at these pictures without a warm sense of nostalgia, but then simmering through comes a great anger and disappointment at what has been lost. Over 25 years on, with the Criminal Justice Act of 1994 ancient history but its agenda still reverberating, every mouse click and phone call can be spied on, the NHS is up for sale, Legal Aid dismantled, and the 2011 riots dismissed as 'apolitical'—if we just set aside economic and social inequalities, the housing crisis, stop and search, police profiling.

But no need to worry, you can post comments about it on Facebook or Twitter, maybe borrow a few hundred quid off Wonga and boogie on down to the corporate festival of your choice, complete with security and sniffer-dogs. 'Drug use will not be tolerated here! ... unless, of course, it's this pint of warm piss for five (taxable) English pounds, thank you very much.'

Lorded over by oligarchs and sneering politicians we find ourselves in the midst of more banking-induced austerity, struggling with student fees and Workfare and zero-hour contracts, and slim-to-no chance of getting a trade or an apprenticeship—and even if you do, good luck with those rights. So switch on the telly or pick up a paper and drink in your fill of lifestyle bile: food, celebrity, and property porn masquerading as culture, quietly vilifying the disenfranchised: "Lock up the poor, be a grass, be a tout, dial this number, you're not like them. Fuck em.' Until it's you they're coming for.

Looking for Looking for Love is out now on Sorika.

Welcome back to First-Person Shooter, a photo series that offers a brief vantage into the world of compelling and strange individuals. Each Friday, we give two disposable cameras to one person to document a night of his or her life.

In this week's installment, we shipped two cameras out to Arthur, an Uber and Lyft driver in LA. During the day, he's an illustrator, but at night he makes extra cash by driving intoxicated Californians around the city.

Arthur was a cool guy, and he witnessed some weird stuff on the Friday he burnt through his exposures. One passenger cracked a brew before getting in the car and then asked to idle outside his ex-girlfriend's place for a while. Others slugged Four Lokos and cheap liquor.

When Arthur finished his shift, he followed suit and went to a house party before calling his own ride home "to document the experience from the other side." Here's what else he told us about the night he snapped the following pics.

VICE: Can you tell us about what went down on Friday night?
Arthur the Uber Driver: Friday was fun. I started driving in Gardena, then made my way to Hollywood, and finished my night in the Valley. I live in Studio City, so that route was perfect.

What time do you usually start driving?
Anywhere between 8 and 10 PM. I like the job because the hours are flexible. I drive about four nights a week.

Are people rude or really nice?
Women are always nice. Men are mostly nice, unless they're with their girlfriends.

Are people especially rowdy on Friday night? Anybody ever throw up in your car?
Nobody's thrown up yet. As far as I know, nobody's come close. Puke smell doesn't go away easily.

It looks like a guy is drinking outside your car. What do you do when this happens?
Tell them to finish their drink outside the car. That guy was weird. When we got to his destination, which was an apartment complex, he had me sit outside with him for 20 minutes. I thought we were waiting to meet his friend, but he eventually admitted we were outside his ex-girlfriend's building.

We hear you drive both for Uber and Lyft? What's the difference?
I never use Uber as a passenger. Lyft is usually cheaper, and they take a more reasonable portion of drivers' earnings. I mostly only drive for Uber because it's more popular.

Looks like you photographed a lot of your passengers. Were there any weird reactions?
Most passengers didn't want to be photographed. I expected people to get looser as the night went on, but the drunker they got, the less they wanted their pictures taken by a stranger with a cardboard camera. I said I was doing it for VICE, but that must've seemed like a crazy lie. One of my night's passengers said, "I turned down Millionaire Matchmaker. I'm not saying yes to VICE."

It looks like you're being driven by somebody else at the end of the night. What happened here?
I went to a party after I finished driving for the night. Thought I'd take a Lyft home and document the experience from the other side. I was hoping my driver would show how diverse the drivers in LA are, but he was just another white guy with long hair. He was basically me, but willing to work later.

What do you do during your time off?
I draw illustrations. Check them out on my website.

Follow Julian on Instagram and visit his website for more of his photo work.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

All photos by the author

Olya was checking Facebook on her way to work when she learned that her friend Buse, a fellow trans sex worker, had been brutally murdered at home by a client. Buse had lived on the outskirts of Istanbul. This wasn't the first time Olya had lost a colleague and friend to a hate crime—and she suspects it won't be the last.

"My friend was killed and the murderer is still out there. He could be my next client. But I still have to work," she tells VICE. "In this community, nobody ever dies of natural causes. Every day, I come back home from work, shut the door behind myself, and take a deep breath and say, 'Thank God I'm alive for one more day.'"

With 39 recorded murders between 2008 and 2015, Turkey is the most dangerous place in Europe to be a transgender person, followed pretty closely by Italy. Most of these crimes were reportedly committed against sex workers, who have no legal recognition or protection.

"People who demand to have sex with transgender women tend to be those behind the murders. Sometimes, after having sex, they feel embarrassed about having slept with a transgender woman," Olya says. "It doesn't suit their manliness. They get aggressive and kill the sex worker."

When Olya received death threats in her coastal hometown, 41-year-old Oyku Ay—another transgender woman and a prominent activist in Istanbul—invited her to move into a safe shelter. Run by charity the Istanbul LGBTT Solidarity Association, it's tucked away in an apartment—secretly, for security reasons—and hosts up to 20 homeless trans people who would otherwise be on the streets.

Neighbors, frequenters of the nearby mosque, or anyone outside the LGBT+ community have no idea about the handful of transgender women living in the top floors of the old, moldy flat. Shelter residents keep most curtains closed and some of the women hardly leave in order to keep a low profile.

Inside, Oyku walks me through her room. She's a devout Muslim, with a dressing room in her flat and a cupboard full of dozens of hijabs—which she shows off proudly. "Please write that I am very attached to my religion and Turkish traditions," she says. "When people hear 'trans sex worker' they shouldn't immediately think of a deviant drug addict."

Oyku (left) and Olya, in the shelter. All photos by Didem Tali.

Oyku's got a colorful collection of wigs that she's keen to show me. And beside them, a Ya Sin Muslim prayer text sits stacked with other religious books. "I don't pray with the wigs of course, they are just for the clients," she says with a laugh. "My work and my religion... They can coexist. They are different things."

Turkey's transgender community isn't necessarily synonymous with sex work, but the overwhelming majority of transgender people in the shelter feel they haven't got other means to sustain themselves, thanks to transphobic working environments. "All my life, I dreamed of having a normal day job, but it wasn't my kismet," Oyku says. "When I realized I wouldn't get a day job, I opened a café with my brother. But we lost the business when people eventually learned about me. They said they didn't want to be fed by a faggot."

When people discovered that shelter tenant and former sex worker Ozlem was a trans woman, she says she lost her home and her business as a beautician. "I was standing near a bridge, ready to commit suicide. But because my foot was broken at the time, I couldn't jump.

"The next day, I found out about the shelter and came here. If I hadn't found this place, I would have found another way to kill myself. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful to be here. But we're worried about our futures," she adds.

Ozlem's comments echo a tension mentioned by most of the women I spoke to. Once they've decided to "come out" as trans, they've got to grapple with the limitations of working in an industry that doesn't offer them legal protection, when they struggle to find work elsewhere. Until sex workers are offered protection granted to other people in high-risk jobs, Oyku also has the feeling that life won't get safer for trans women in Turkey any time soon.

"In the same way that a miner can go hundreds of meters underground despite the risks to feed his family, we do sex work," she says. "It's dangerous. We know it. But as long as the stigma lingers, we continue to get excluded and bullied in all walks of life, and sex work will remain the only way of making money." That said, Oyku is still grateful for what she has achieved in life. In her 40s, she's more comfortable than she has ever been. Although she still does sex work, she also makes money from a farming business she set up in her hometown in eastern Turkey.

Seda, who arrived at the shelter around the same time as Ozlem, is hopeful, too: "I am 44 but I still look like a model. You'll now publish my photos somewhere. The world will know about us. Who knows what the future holds?" she says, laughing.

Seda, on the roof of the shelter

Obviously, it's not all giggles and wig stands. But in the face of a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood where rent prices and changing demographics may push the LGBT+ community out altogether, the women at the shelter say they're doing their best.

"There was a time I slept with five winebibbers in a row for a piece of bread. If you'd asked me in my 20s, I wouldn't have known if I was going to be alive by the time I was 40," Oyku says. "I thought about moving to Germany to make my life easier, but I won't. I couldn't live anywhere outside Turkey. At times I'm heartbroken, but I still love my country. It's our duty to do our best to change things and benefit our community. If we don't, who will?"

Follow Didem on Twitter

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

It's comforting to know that the way we drink in the UK has barely changed for the past 30 years. Faces flushed from the prickly heat of a few pints, sweat making our hair stick to our foreheads, and the relentless slinging of arms over shoulders as we use each other for balance—or stagger off in search of a kiss or fumble.

These film photos, shot from 1984 to 1987 in a Merseyside club by photographer Tom Wood, show as much. He collated them into book Looking for Love, released in 1989. "I first picked up the book in the college library in Farnham circa 1992, and my belly rolled over at the greatness of it," wrote fellow photographer Gareth McConnell, in the introduction to his own book: Looking for Looking for Love.

It's a 2015 follow-up photobook to Tom's original in which McConnell slices up images from Looking for Love that were shot in New Brighton's Chelsea Reach nightclub all those years ago. Check them out below, and click here to read a condensed version of Gareth's book introduction on UK club culture in the age of austerity.

Image via Flickr user St. Albert

"The psychedelic experience has the potential to help a lot of people," said Daniel Miller, founder of the Psychedelic Society of Brooklyn. I met him back in January at the Hell Phone Bar in Bushwick. The 33-year-old was dressed conservatively in a blue polo and jeans, looking more like the developer of some app than a nascent leader in the drug legalization movement. Subtlety, it was only his hat that highlighted his passion for mind-altering substances—the cap featured the image of a unicorn in front of a rainbow.

" helped me quit smoking, but that's a secondary effect of my experience," he told me. "Mostly, it helped me be a happier person."

The hallucinogenic drug proselytizer was at the bar to support an event co-hosted by his group. The Psychedelic Society of Brooklyn's mission is to provide better education and encourage a "community-wide conversation that indirectly changes cultural and political attitudes towards psychedelics, thus shaping the inevitable post-prohibition world." To do that, Miller and his organization host a variety of events like the one I attended.

Like every Psychedelic Society meeting, the room was a psychedelic safe space. Under the bar's dimmed lights, roughly 100 people packed tables and stood in front of a small stage as they talked openly about their experiences with drugs. A computer programmer in his late twenties shared LSD advice with a middle-aged lawyer ("200 micrograms will really open your mind"). Miller made the rounds to speak one-on-one with his group's members. And Martin Dockery, a professional storyteller, took the stage to recount the tale of an acid trip he had on a bicycle in Basel, Switzerland, where Albert Hoffman first invented LSD. The crowd, silent throughout the performance, burst into roaring applause at the end.

Miller never expected to become a psychedelics advocate. Son of Aaron David Miller, an American diplomat to the Middle East, Daniel studied physics at Princeton and law at Georgetown University. He then began a promising career as the social policy director for the Ohio Business Roundtable, a trade organization "comprised of the CEOs of the state's largest and most influential business enterprises," according to their website.

But Miller said he felt worn down by his competitive, goal-oriented attitude. "I was just really, really unhappy," Miller told me. "I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, and I was unhealthy."

After working for three years after law school, Miller quit his job in August 2014 at the age of 31 and looked for the next step. That's when a friend convinced him to take his first hit of LSD.

"The LSD experience gave me a core sense of how to view the world. It wasn't us versus them, I felt I was part of a larger whole, like I was connected with others," Miller told me. "I didn't feel like I was trying to win all the time—and that had been a driving philosophy for a long time."

On top of realizing that drugs can inspire personal growth and deep introspection, he realized something was wrong with the way psychedelics are prohibited and stigmatized in society. "When I had that experience , I thought to myself, Wow, that drug changed my life and it's illegal ? I've been told my entire life it's dangerous; it's as bad as heroin," Miller fumed to me. "That's an injustice."

The group doesn't just talk decriminalization, but also what a world with more open attitudes towards LSD could look like. "You still need to ask how and for what purpose? It's such an intellectual topic. Set and setting are integral to psychedelics. Who is going to design that set and setting? Architects and engineers and politicians need to come together to ask these questions," Miller explained.

In the summer of 2015 Miller moved to New York and started the Psychedelic Society of Brooklyn. He was not sure what he wanted to achieve with the group, but was certain he had to do something to share his message.

"I knew I needed to orient my life around different values and I didn't want to get a job similar to one I had before," Miller told me. "I believe in this, I believe it's wrong that these drugs are prohibited, and I think I have a good skill set to move the conversation forward. I thought starting a meetup would be a great way to that."

He advertised the group on Meetup and about 20 people showed up at the first meeting in Prospect Park last June. It was a varied group that included an architecture student, a nanny from South Africa, and a yoga instructor who had been a subject in DMT studies at the University of New Mexico. As the new members sat on blankets in the grass, Miller delivered a speech about the injustice of the prohibition of psychedelics.

But despite his indignation, he was afraid to speak openly about his personal experience or to have anyone else do so. "I didn't want my group to describe their trips," he said. "I was worried that it would taint me with impropriety, that it would put me at risk with the Bar ."

As time went on, Miller heard stories reminiscent of his own powerful trip and realized the potential of that message. "I heard person after person tell me about their experience and I realized how passionate people could be and how effective their story could be in terms of advocacy," he said. Miller decided to "come out of the psychedelic closet," as he calls it, and penned an article for Newsweek magazine titled "How Taking Acid Helped Me Stop Smoking."

The meetings of the Psychedelic Society of Brooklyn soon evolved from focusing just on theory and facts about psychedelics through lectures and film screenings, to also include informal summits held at community dinners, small-group meetings, and open mic events where members could share their personal experiences. Today, the group has over 600 registered members, though monthly meet-up attendance varies from a couple dozen people, to the drug advocates packing entire bars like Hell Phone.

"The people who are coming are not just political advocates," said Noah Law, Psychedelic Society member and former chairman of the New York City Bar's Committee on Drugs and the Law. "They're people who have a positive view of psychedelics and want to meet other people in a straight, daytime, nice, normal setting," Potter told me over the phone. "I hadn't encountered that before."

These days, there are people of all walks of life who hope to broaden the use of psychedelics. Lately, there's been a well-documented trend of young professionals, many of them in the seemingly drug-unfriendly worlds of finance or tech, who are experimenting with LSD microdoses to help them professionally.

And the Psychedelic Society of Brooklyn is by no means the only group pushing to change the public's attitudes towards drugs. For example, there's the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a non-profit research and educational organization based in Santa Cruz, California "that develops medical, legal, and cultural contexts for people to benefit from the careful uses of psychedelics and marijuana."

"What we do on the public education side of things seems to be reducing the stigma ," explained Brad Burge, MAPS's Director of Communications and Marketing. "That makes funders more willing to give to the research and it helps regulators be more confident in approving the research protocols."

Miller and the Psychedelic Society of Brooklyn have similar goals in mind, and plan on advocating more publicly for psychedelics in the near future. On April 19, the anniversary of Albert Hoffman's first LSD trip, Miller will lead a bike ride to raise awareness about the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics and to demonstrate the number of people behind the cause. Pending permits from the city, the route will end at the United Nations, where a Special Session of the General Assembly on the World Drug Problem is scheduled to begin that day. At the finish line, a live performance company called Psymoposia will host a psychedelic storytelling event.

"Years ago if someone told me that right now I would be trying to advocate to legalize psychedelics, I would have said, 'You're fucking insane,'" Miller told me.

"It's not like one day I woke up and thought I should be and advocate for psychedelics. I just woke up and said I'm going to do something."

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