Cyborg tryst image by Lia Kantrowitz

Rich Lee is a pretty forward-thinking transhumanist. Most H+ folk, as they're sometimes known, dream of enhancing human life through technology, but their cybernetic hopes remain somewhere in the fuzzy fantasy of the future. Lee, however, is a part of a die-hard subculture known as biohackers or grinders who experiment with DIY body modifications. These implants or add-ons are known to many insiders by the mortifying term "wetware."

Lee came to prominence as a grinder in 2013 after implanting magnets into the cartilage nubs in front of his earholes that connected to a copper coil around his neck. These internal headphones pick up signals beyond human hearing. Now, he has his sights on augmenting his body for increased sexual pleasure. He wants to implant a vibrator into his pubic fat. The project, which he refers to as the Lovetron9000, is something he's been working on for five years. But this summer, he hopes he can finally realize his dream and implant the first ever subdermal sexual modification. In the text below, Lee lays out his vision for a transhumanist sex future. —Mark Hay

Photo of Rich Lee. Provided courtesy of Rich Lee

Some cool kids smoking in the early 20th century. Photo via Wikimedia

Read: We Tried the Most Disgusting E-Cig Flavors So You Don't Have To

Like the sweet enticement of the Marlboro Man of yesteryear, the inhaling industry is getting to our kids again—this time in the form of vaping.

A study out of Scotland's Stirling University found that of 4,000 kids ages 11–18, those who remember seeing a display or advertisement for e-cigs were twice as likely to try vaping, HeraldScotland reports.

The most striking thing about this study is that kids think vaping looks awesome, whereas we all know, vapes are just a lame stopgap to giving up smoking, or a hobby for men who stand outside their office buildings staring out into the distance, tasting the flavor of their vanilla and coffee concoctions, wondering when they'll need to replace the atomizer.

The European Union has called for tougher advertising restrictions for e-cigs starting next month to get kids to steer clear of the nicotine fairy lights, so they don't end up like those people who do e-liquid reviews on YouTube.

The study comes a few days after the news that child star and voice of Dora the Explorer, Fatima Ptacek, was suspended from school for vaping at school, again proving that teens really don't know what the fuck is cool.

Photo via Liberal Party of Canada

Michael Hackenberger claims he's not a dick to tigers. Screenshot via YouTube.

A Bowmanville Ontario zoo owner best known for calling a baboon a "cocksucker" on live TV has stepped down in light of animal cruelty charges he faces for allegedly whipping a tiger.

Michael Hackenberger, who runs Bowmanville Zoological Park, came under fire in December, when video footage that appeared to show him whipping a Siberian tiger 20 times during a training session was posted online by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Hackenberger was charged this week with four with four counts of causing an animal distress and one of failing to comply with the prescribed standards of care for an animal, according to the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (OSPCA).

Screengrab from Drake's Instagram

I used to be like you. I used to take photos on my phone and share them with my followers. I used to, I used to. Then, two weeks ago I got a notification that would change my social media presence for ever: Instagram user @champagnepapi had liked two of my photos and started following me. Over the next ten minutes my phone screen became a frenzied stampede of comments, likes, and new followers before it all became too much and my phone died. It was in this moment of calm that I understood a curtain had just fallen on my previous life, an era I now wistfully refer to as "Before Drake Started Following Me on Instagram."

It was around this time that I realized I was not an especially chill human being. I sent out a barrage of texts, an accompanying screenshot, and what I feel were quite reasonable statements like "omgomgomgomg" and "FUUUUUCCCKKKKKK." I spent the rest of the day reopening my notifications tab, just to make sure I hadn't dreamed it.

How had I, a lowly peon, toiling away in London's media industry like an absolute wanker, with barely 500 followers to my name, so undeservedly received the 6 God's blessing? Did he think my #tbts were a nostalgic celebration of South London circa '91. Or that the photos of my friends gawking drunk into the camera while swigging a Meantime Pale Ale told him something about the vacuous sense of self-loathing that comes from metropolitan hedonism? Could be. I mean, it's probably it's because I have a hand in a Drake-centric club night, imaginatively called "Drake Night," and I'd tagged him in some of the photos from it, but we'll never know for sure.

What I did know however was the paralyzing social media stage fright that quickly sets in once you realize that you now have the power to expose your favorite rapper to your spectacularly unremarkable life. The idea that Drake could feasibly scroll through to a blurry photo of me coming second at a pub's trivia night is terrifying. How could my drab, goes-out-maybe-twice-on-a-good-week existence possibly interest a man who's done it with Rihanna?

Thumbing through the other accounts Drake follows certainly didn't help. I've somehow snuck into an elite club and am currently rubbing tanned, digital shoulders with the likes of Amy Schumer, Steph Curry, and seemingly every single Section Boy. Drake's feed must be a non-stop stream of yachts, gorgeous women, seared scallops, and people posing on balconies in Dubai. Mine consists of the same few cats, hilarious local news headlines, and people being pleased that they've done a face swap with something that doesn't have a face. What can I, a schmuck whose only other claim to fame is occasionally being mistaken for a more hunched Jack Penate (#indieamnsety), possibly offer Toronto's favored son?

This is what I posted on Instagram before Drake started following me.

Anything I post would be a beige little reminder of what life without international fame is like. If Drake saw it, maybe he'd regret his previous act of charity and instantly unfollow me, condemning me to a life of forever being referred to as "the guy who Drake used to follow." I can't let that happen.

To understand how much this has immobilized my digital life, here's an example: Last weekend was my friend Jonathan's birthday. A bunch of us went for a meal. It was very nice. Here are some photos I took:

Two weeks ago I would have happily shared either of these without a second thought. But now, thanks to our new Canadian friend, I can't afford to be so reckless. Why would Drake want to see what Jonathan did for his birthday? Drake doesn't know who Jonathan is. Jonathan's cake was very nice, but Drake's probably used better cakes as ashtrays. See those balloons with Jonathan's face on? Drake doesn't care about Jonathan's balloons or Jonathan's face. I have a responsibility to someone more important than Jonathan now, and I can guarantee that that person couldn't give six shits about Jonathan and his delicious cake. With my newfound duties as one of his handpicked cultural curators I simply can't take up precious space in Drake's internal mood board with trash like this. Sorry Jonathan's birthday meal, I'm afraid you no longer make the cut. That being said, thanks so much for inviting me you guys, I had a really lovely time.

Perhaps I'm overreacting and Drake finds my life a delightful respite from the constantly naked models, adoring fans, and shoeboxes full of money, but it's a risk I'm simply not willing to take. It might not even be the fear of losing the kudos of the Drake follow that keeps me from posting anything, maybe it's something simpler than that. What if Drake saw my post, hidden amongst the thousand plus other accounts he follows, and silently decided I'm not that cool? Because even if I never found out, even if he'd stayed his thumb, kept following me, and stoically tolerated my mediocrity, I think on some level, I'd still know.

Be like Drake, follow Joe Iley on Instagram

Photo by Thanasak Wanichpan via Getty

Krista Moellers was in fourth grade when her symptoms began. She didn't have a name for it back then, but it's clear now that her spiral into severe depression began many years before her sophomore year of high school, when she tried to kill herself.

Moellers's depression was initially sparked by bullying at school. But even after the bullying stopped, what she describes as "dark moods" remained. She didn't feel comfortable talking about how she felt, and she withdrew from her friends and family. "I felt like I was the only one feeling this way," she told VICE.

Between 13 and 20 percent of people under 18 in the United States have a mental illness. Only about a third of teens get counseling, and unlike adults, who generally refer themselves to therapy (whether the digital kind or the in-person kind), the vast majority of adolescents come in for treatment at the urging of their parents—and engaging them is a challenge.

It was with this situation in mind that former video producer Jennifer Oko teamed up with five psychologists and psychiatrists to create psych.E, an app that serves as a social network and activity tracker for teens with mental health problems. It's currently in beta testing and is set to launch in the fall.

Oko's interest in teen mental health came about when she went looking for resources for a teenager she's close to who was struggling with suicidal thoughts. Surprised by how limited the mental health apps were for teenagers, and certain that the route to most teens' hearts and psyches was through their phones, Oko recruited David Grodberg, medical director at Yale's Child Study Center Outpatient Services, plus a team of under-18 advisors, to design a solution.

Psych.E aims to improve upon the small collection of mental-health apps for teens already out there. Mood 24/7 allows users to track their moods and send them to friends or healthcare providers. CodeBlue offers the ability to send a message to a designated support network in case of a mental health emergency. Both are free. Lantern, a subscription-based service, matches teens and college students with therapeutic exercises and coaches to help them identify and reach their mental health goals.

All have been hampered by low adoption rates. So Oko consulted her young advisory board to find out what was missing from the existing apps. What they revealed was simple and unanimous: All of them wanted a way to connect with other teens struggling with mental illness. "We realized the ability to connect with one another is an incentive to keep teens tracking and engaged in their treatment," Oko told VICE.

This shouldn't have surprised anyone. "For kids who suffer from mental health issues, there is significant comfort in knowing that other teens suffer similarly," Alexander Kolevzon, MD, director of Child Behavioral and Health Science at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, told VICE. "This 'normalization' of the experience provides enormous comfort and mitigates the vulnerability to social isolation."

There's inherent irony in using the very smartphones that hamper in-person human connection as a tool to combat social isolation. But Kolevzon points out that, like all of us, teenagers rely on their smartphones for social engagement and interaction—and plus, it's unrealistic to expect them to use archaic therapeutic strategies like a paper and pencil mood log.

Moellers, now 18, eventually wrote about her bullying and depression in a post that went viral in her community. She got dozens of messages from teens dealing with mental illness, which helped her appreciate how important it was to be able to talk about these shared experiences. "An app would be the starting point," she told VICE. "It would give people the chance to connect with others as well as give them the confidence they need to share their stories or help others who are struggling."

Psych.E is free to use, and like any good app for teens, it offers incentives—in this case, for users to do their therapeutic homework. As they track their moods and engage with content, they earn "diamonds" that can be used to add features to their avatars.

Pilot programs using the app will begin next month at multiple clinics, psychiatric hospitals, and schools across the country. During the pilot, school counselors and mental health providers will offer teens access to the app by way of anonymous codes, and their feedback and usage patterns will be collected along the way. "We're hoping psych.E will give adolescents an opportunity to talk about things that are happening for them in real-time so that their sessions with their providers are less abstract," Keith Wales, director of outpatient services at Eliot Hospital in Everett, Massachusetts, told VICE.

Although it was created with suicidal young people in mind, the app is designed to be used by teens with any kind of diagnosed mental illness. Maddy*, a member of psych.E's teen advisory board, says she isn't embarrassed by having ADHD, but she hasn't been able to talk to anyone who gets it because none of her friends have the same diagnosis. She sees a doctor and takes medication to control her symptoms, but she would have liked to compare notes with others about her medication trial and error, among other things.

Maddy will use psych.E's mood and medication trackers to capture her progress over time, but like Moellers, she is most excited to connect with other teens living with mental illnesses. And while she isn't averse to meeting peers in therapy groups or at school, she feels safer opening up about her struggles via her phone. "Honestly, if we met in person I would just get their numbers," she said with a laugh, "and text them when I got home."

*Maddy asked that we not use her last name.

Read: Meet the Florida Woman Fighting the Authorities to Keep Her Pet Gator

Alligators are magnificent and fascinating creatures. They're huge, they're old as shit, and they make cuddly pets. You have to keep your eye on them, though. If you're not careful, they'll eat your damn dog or your Burger King or—as the video above makes abundantly clear—one another.

The video, which looks like something out of that underwater scene in The Phantom Menace, was shot in (of course) Florida and uploaded Wednesday by user Alex Figueroa. Figueroa came across the hot gator-on-gator cannibalism while taking a morning stroll by the Circle B Bar Reserve in Lakeland, and decided to film it because that is really the only thing to do in that situation.

He estimates the winning gator's length was about 11 or 12 feet. In other words, "He's massive," as someone in the video astutely notes. Gators, man. Gators. Just watch the video. It's fucking brutal.

Photo via Flickr user Stephen Little

Read: The US Treasury Is Finally Going to Put a Woman's Face on Paper Currency

Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical about Alexander Hamilton may have sparked the Founding Father's reintroduction into the American consciousness, but it could also be the reason a woman's face won't be appearing on US currency anytime soon, TIME reports.

After all the hullabaloo raised over replacing Andrew Jackson—a confusing choice from the beginning—with a woman on the $20 bill, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew agreed to slap a woman's face over Alexander Hamilton's on the $10, instead.

But that was all before Lew became a raving fan of the impossible-to-get-into Broadway musical, Hamilton. Lew gave Lin-Manuel Miranda a tour of the Treasury in March and told New York Magazine how ingenious he thinks the musical is. Apparently he's not alone, as Lew has been getting a ton of complaints about dropping Hamilton from the bill.

In an effort to compromise, Lew suggested keeping Hamilton on the front of the bill and placing a lady who was a "champion of democracy" somewhere on the back. It's a move that Barbara Ortiz Howard, founder of the nonprofit group Women on 20s, compared to making women take a backseat on the bus.

Lew holds the tough decision of whether Hamilton stays, goes, or shares his home on the bill, and is expected to announce the new design any day now. But after telling Miranda the Hamilton cast will be super stoked about the new bill, it's not looking like the first secretary of the treasury will be going anywhere.

There's a wonderful feeling of unity, of togetherness, to Rezzed, the three-day games show organized by EGX and held at London's two-level Tobacco Dock space. In my head, it's a show for the smaller, usually independently made video games—a space where the most out-there ideas coexist with others of a more knowingly commercial slant. But it finds space, too, for mainstream-aimed productions, and sits them beside the madcap creations with no bias as to what's the "bigger deal."

So a once-around-the-block will see the average punter's attention grabbed by a buffet of tempting interactive experiences. There's PlayStation VR over there, with a host of titles being showcased; Dark Souls III and Just Cause 3 have rooms of their own; the SEGA-sponsored Leftfield Collection, where some stunningly singular games have settled for the duration; and an area full from wall to wall of indie video games and cardboard distractions, a melting pot of pixels and paper. It's a rush, walking around the show, absorbing all the colors and sounds, seeing the smiles on faces as a game does something totally unexpected—or, totally delivers on anticipation, in powerfully vivid fashion.

There's no one theme that ties all of these titles together, no overarching narrative to each year's Rezzed. It's just a show, like many others, albeit smaller, more welcoming, and easier on the eardrums on account of not being held inside a gigantic hanger-type space. But if forced to nominate one on account of what I see on a busy Saturday afternoon's prowling, I'd lean toward sharing, specifically with others breathing the same air as you. The biggest draws—Dark Souls III, the various VR setups—might be isolating, single-player pursuits, but head into the middle of the main indie area, and all around are cables twisted with one another, pads divvied out between same-game competitors.

One such title is Super Arcade Football, which looks like the bastard offspring of Sensible and Microprose Soccer, two 16bit kicking simulators that I spent way too much time with. The ball is large, the players bright, and the slide tackles almost always result in at least a booking. It's a little rough at the moment, with lengthy delays between fouls and restarts as one of the tiny outfields runs offscreen to retrieve the ball, and the aftertouch isn't as enjoyably exaggerated as the game's spiritual predecessors. But played beside one of the guys actually making the thing, at London's Outofthebit, Super Arcade Football is a raw thrill of shrieked disbelief at refereeing decisions and hoots of victory when a match-winning golden goal is rifled into the net. That's by me, by the way. I beat one of the game's makers. I probably deserve some sort of prize.

The local co-op glee is infectious, and at every turn, friends are lording it over one another, scoring bragging rights on brand-new games. Stikbold!, by Danish studio Game Swing, is an appealingly aesthetically backward dodgeball "adventure" for up to four players at a time, out now on PC and consoles, where colorful arenas can be invaded by obstacles, animals, and camper vans. Black and White Bushido by Ground Shatter pits rival samurai warriors against each other, either one on one or two on two, across 2D stages bathed in bright whites and pitch blacks. Match the shade of your avatar to the corresponding background to play stealthy, or go on the attack outside of such safety. Ghost Town Games' Overcooked might well be the multiplayer star of the show, though. Cooperative as well as competitive, it puts four players in a (often fantastical) kitchen and asks them to complete as many food orders as possible within a short space of time. It's really one of those "it's better if you see it" kind of games, so do.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's film on professional competitive gaming, eSports

Xbox has a solid presence at Rezzed, and devote much of its allotted space to Quantum Break and Rocket League (the latter is also found on the Special Effect stand, where it can be played using chin controllers and large buttons). On one side of its room, though, are a bunch of smaller-profile titles to tickle the fancy of those already familiar with glitzy shooters and jet-powered football thrills. Raging Justice is a slightly tongue-in-cheek revival of the side-scrolling beat 'em ups of yore—the Final Fights and Streets of Rages of the 16bit world. I'm totally torn over whether it's subconsciously my favorite game of all at the show, or a stinking heap of shit. It's stiff, but deliberately so. It's crude, but, again, that's the point. Not so far from Makin Games' throwback brawler is Mad Fellow Games' Aaero, an initially average-looking into-the-screen shooter, which, on closer inspection, has a great deal of potential for longevity. The path your ship must follow is determined by the music track being played at the time, and a solid licensed soundtrack is promised. There's a definite Rez influence going on, in the lock-on targeting and its splashes of neon, and I know I can totally get on board with a rail shooter backed by Katy B basslines. Have a look at it in motion here.

A very different breed of cooperative game is Mi Clos Studio's Antioch: Scarlett Bay, an interactive fiction affair that's taken on in pairs. Each player assumes the role of a detective working in the strange town of Antioch, and teamwork is essential in unraveling the investigation in question. Your "partner" might be a friend sat right beside you, or a stranger connected to the same case via the internet. It sounds very intriguing, and will be available for tablets, smartphones, and smartwatches, because why not.

Equally fascinating is Brainwash Gang: The Mixtape, pitched as a compilation of game types packaged under a single, decidedly weird banner. I play through a scenario where I'm one of three actual humans making up part of a jury, and the three of us must decide the fate of a... OK, I'll say "deviant walrus," and let your imagination do the rest. This seemingly simple scenario—look, the flippered defendant is a total creep, and obviously "did it"—is complicated by the small matter of one of the three players (me) accepting a bribe to get ol' flappy spanks off the hook. What follows is hilarious, incredibly rude, and completely captivating—and with net-connected collaborators, it'll be even more enthralling (our Rezzed play-through being slightly spoiled by everyone knowing I had the bribe).

There's a great joy to be had in watching people of all ages try out games of all kinds at Rezzed. Sure, the younger attendees gravitate toward the biggest, most shiny experiences, but that's only at first. Later there's a raft of kids lining up to play Gang Beasts in VR, and scattered across the stations for retro-styled zombie shooter Dead Pixels II: Straight to Video, rock 'n' rolling multiplayer crawl 'em up Super Dungeon Bros, and combative platformer Last Fight, which has a hint of Power Stone about it. Nothing's pushed into the corner, or here as a makeweight. Every title has its place, and its space to make an impression, whatever its budget and however sizable its development team.

I can list more titles that jumped out at me: perspective-shifting top-down shooter Tokyo 42, Barbara-Ian (and its venue-roaming cardboard-wearing mascot), the (sincerely) hilarious body simulator (I suppose?) Manual Samuel, the gym ball–controlled The World Is Flat, and puzzle-platformer-racer-thing Unbox. There's more, of course, but really: There's too much good at Rezzed to squeeze into just one article, and it's truly inspiring to see both the variety of video game experiences being crafted by teams both massive and minute right now, and how the public is ready and willing to give all of them a try. Video games: They bring people together, you know.

All photography by Jake Lewis / Follow Jake on Twitter.

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Sometimes, it's good to take stock of your normal. Just because something is routine, does that make it right? Take the UK: Is it rational and/or sensible to have three chicken shops on every street in every major city? Why is it that people from Newcastle and Leeds, two cities a mere 100 miles from each other, speak so completely differently? Who allowed Mrs. Brown's Boys to be shown on television?

The questions are endless. And if you're not someone who thinks a lot about the world beyond our borders, it's easy to develop a very narrow-minded idea of what's "normal" and what's not.

To better understand what's unusual about life in the UK to people who haven't been born and raised on our shores, we asked a few friends who emigrated here from various countries around the world about what shocked them most when they first arrived.

"For me, the most surprising thing, coming over from New Zealand, was this sense of nationalism you have—this real English pride thing. But then, also, the prevalence of littering: People just toss their stuff on the ground, and there's no sense of pride in that, so it seems quite at odds. It sounds like such a minor thing, but it's quite weird when you're walking home, and people are just chucking shit on the ground. Weirdly, that's what's stuck in my mind the most. This juxtaposition of national pride and just chucking rubbish into the street. People love to litter here."—Tim, New Zealand

"What shocked me most when I moved to the UK from Denmark is how normal cocaine is, and how many people do it. People do it in Copenhagen, obviously, like in most other cities in the Western world, but it's just a whole new level in London. People talk about it more casually, like, 'Oh yeah, let's do some gak.' It's less of a taboo here."—Aleksander, Denmark

"Probably the craziest thing was how you can get alcohol at any time here. In Canada, you have to go to an LCBO or a beer store—it's very government-controlled, and you just kind of have to deal with it. Like, if you forget to get alcohol for a night out, and it's past nine, you're screwed. Also, I had issues with the language, in terms of things like pants versus trousers, or braces versus suspenders. I had that problem a LOT. What else? I noticed cars are really tiny here, and everyone is sort of super aggro when they're driving."—Wesley, Canada

"I was sixteen when I moved here from Singapore, where the only British comedy that made it over when I was growing up was old reruns of Mr. Bean and bootleg Monty Python CDs from Thailand—if you were lucky. As a result, I was unprepared for the British tradition of taking the piss out of everything, including one another and themselves. For four months I basically thought British people were just insanely mean and incapable of taking anything seriously. This is still true of certain people I know, but I now understand this to be more of an individual, personal failing on their part. Things I was also unprepared for: brown sauce—seriously, what is it?—class anxiety, winter, and why the McNugget curry sauce at your McDonald's tastes like sugary mud."—Zing, Singapore

"After I graduated from school in Russia, I decided to do my International Foundation Year in the UK. Having listened to Radio 4, read Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, and watched films like Pollyanna, I had a pretty solid idea of what England was like. But then I went to Manchester to study, so none of those things were applicable. The grammar was what shocked me the most—saying "there is many people" instead of "there are," or "if it was," instead of "if it were." It twisted my mind and made me want to rip their tongues off."—Lina, Russia

"I moved to the UK from Greece when I was eighteen to attend university. Back then, I found it really strange how openly everyone talked about being broke. In Greece, before the financial crisis began, admitting you couldn't afford something was a big taboo. But British people also tend to be a little cheap: For example, a flatmate in my first year of uni once offered me some money in exchange for a glass of milk—I thought that was pretty gross. Also, everything in this country works the opposite way. You drive on the wrong side of the road, doors unlock to the right instead of the left, and your beer is served warm. Also, why is everything so old-fashioned? Why do you still have gas stoves, and why does everyone have baths without rinsing after? There is no point in getting in the water if you aren't going to get clean. And why do you not have shutters? I don't understand how people sleep with the sun in their face. One thing I love, though, is your sense of individuality, your quirky fashion sense, and the feeling I get that, out of the whole of Europe, this is the one country in which people are allowed to be themselves."—Elektra, Greece

"I moved here from the Netherlands about a month and a half ago, and what's shocked me the most is just the extreme Britishness of everyone and how, like, being British seems to be a very vital part of people's lives. In the Netherlands, if you have a Dutch flag on something, you're basically a Nazi. You're like a crazy nationalist person. It's starting to change a bit now, but that's how it was when I was growing up. I've also lived in the US for a bit, and I found Americans a lot easier to talk to. They talk a lot slower, whereas Brits, I'm intimidated at how fast they speak to one another."—Wiegertje, Netherlands

"Coming from Armenia, the first thing that shocked me was the language, especially in the north. I had a hard time for the first six months, but you get used to it. The second thing was the politeness—you don't know what being polite is if you haven't lived here. The first time I experienced British politeness affecting me was when I apologized to someone after they walked into me. As for general culture, men around the world love soccer, but here it's a religion. Pubs are where you worship your team, and drinking beer is how you worship. Also, Brits seem to adore reality TV. They have shows about drunk people going for kebabs, and people here love them! In general, though, it's a good place to be."—Viz, Armenia

"I'm going to reel a few things off: sweet popcorn. It's a CRIME. Who does that? The class system and how much people seem to be subconsciously controlled by it. Separate taps for hot and cold water: just plain stupid, and also unhygienic and time-consuming if you're supposed to actually fill up the sink to achieve agreeable rinsing-soap-off-hands temperature. The electricity prices and how the pricey heat just goes right out of the non-insulated windows—stupid. Other than that, it's pretty decent here. Oh, but what do you do with all the cards people give you for special occasions? Are you supposed to store them? And also, is it, like, bad manners to not dig out that "Happy Easter" card a friend gave you two years ago and put it on your fridge when he came over for dinner? Is that how Brits measure true friendship?"—Milene, Sweden

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Ottawa Street, described by Windsor tourism as a "hidden gem." Photo via Flickr user Jim Cagney.

As a relatively recent Ontario transplant, my working knowledge of Windsor is limited.

What I knew about the border town, upon embarking on this mission to discover why people live there, was that Stephen Colbert dubbed it the "worst place on earth" and later the "earth's rectum."

A quick Google search led me to online forums filled with other flattering labels describing Windsor as Canada's/Ontario's "armpit," a place known for car robberies, drug dealing, and "0-little culture." One person rather poetically noted, "Windsor smells like desperate American youth mixed in with dirty Canadian hosers" while a University of Windsor student said, "The city may smell...and the university may be shitty... but who gives a fuck once your (sic) drunk." Fair enough.

The crash of the once-booming automotive industry has led to rampant unemployment, with a 30 percent reduction in manufacturing jobs over the last decade or so, and is likely behind Windsor's rep for being rough around the edges.

It can't be all bad though. After all, Windsor is home to more than 200,000 people, so there must be something keeping them around. In 2014, the city even placed 162nd on MoneySense magazine's "Best Places to Live" list (for context, Toronto and Vancouver came in 32nd and 39th, respectively). In the interest of learning more about this much ragged-on town, I reached out to a bunch of Windsorites to hear about some of its major draws:

It's Near Detroit

Pretty much everyone I interviewed praised Windsor's proximity to Detroit (about 3.6 kilometres separate them) as a big plus—if not the only plus.

Some of the city's best views are of the Detroit skyline, and it's where residents get their fix of big-city music/culture.

"I don't think I would still be here if it wasn't for Detroit," said Murad Erzinclioglu, 32, who runs the music department at local college radio station CJAM 99.1 and organizes annual arts festival The FAM, which he says is akin to a mini version of Toronto's NXNE music festival.

"It's still one of the top 10 markets for music... It's the birthplace of techno and Motown. These kinds of things inform to a certain extent Windsor, there's a lot to live up to."

"Detroit is one of the best things about Windsor," added Daniel Bombardier, 39, a visual artist who left the city to live in Vancouver and Toronto in his 20s and moved back 12 years ago.

"You can fly outta Detroit to anywhere in the world. That's pretty much what me and my friends do—leave as often as we can. The slogan should be 'Welcome to Windsor, a great place to store your shit.'"

As an artist, Bombardier said was inspired by witnessing Detroit's rise and fall firsthand. "It blows my mind... As far as statements on consumerism and capitalism and politics, it's like the front lines of it all."

Locals feel so attached to their US neighbour, they've nicknamed Windsor, "South Detroit," (it is in fact south of Detroit) according to photographer Kevin Kavanaugh, who spent his childhood watching Red Wings games and touring arts venues in the American city.

"We're pretty much one and the same," he said, though he admitted the love affair is somewhat lopsided. "Detroit would never think of Windsor as a suburb of them."

As a trade off of sorts, underage Americans flock to Windsor nightclubs like the Boom Boom Room, a venue known for its fake tattoos and weed.

Pizza

Windsorites are obsessed with their pizza, often making outlandish claims that it's the best in the world.

I asked University of Windsor law student Becca S., 30, what the secret is, to which she replied "basically pepperoni is chopped up in small pieces. That's it."

Still Becca is faithful to her hometown pies—she prefers a place called Krusty's, where the owner "sounds like Krusty the Clown" and calls her nicknames like "angel, princess, or baby."

She was quick to slam Conde Naste Traveler's recent global pizza ranking that placed Edmonton eighth in the world (Windsor didn't make the list). "It's bullshit," she said. "Windsor is the pizza capital of Canada, end of story."

Home of the best pizza in Canada, apparently. Photo via Salma Abumeeiz.

Bob Abumeeiz, owner of Arcata Pizzeria, a Windsor institution for more than 60 years, said a local couple who moved to Regina paid $140 to ship one of his pizzas to their new home during last year's Super Bowl. The rage right now is Arcata's shawarma pizza, a combination of garlic paste, basil and meat that's been marinated for 48 hours—they recently went through 80 pounds of chicken in two days.

Asked about his thoughts on the Edmonton pizza ranking, he said he wants to throw down in some kind of competition.

"I'm the first one to sign up. I'm not afraid to lose."

Strip Clubs Galore

The City of Windsor actually stopped giving out new strip club licenses because there are already so many of the establishments around, including Leopard's Lounge, a place known for recruiting college girls by promising to pay their tuitions and hosting offensive dwarf tosses.

When the latter event took place in February, back by popular demand, club owner Sam Katzman told VICE "we think of Leopard's Lounge as Canada's home for dwarf tossing." (The event drew the ire of the Little People of Canada, which started a petition to stop it.)

Dean Scott, 27, editor of the Windsor Independent, covered the toss for VICE and said, "it was kind of fucked up to talk to some of the people in the audience and see how much joy and delight they found in it." That includes one Albertan who flew in to see it, despite having skipped five family Christmases in a row because he didn't want to pay for airfare.

Scott told me Windsor's fixation with pizza and strip clubs are a part of its effort "to look for anything to grab onto a source of pride." He cited the excitement over the penis bush scandal of 2013 as another example of that.

The Windsor penis bush had been up since July. Just got taken down yesterday. R.I.P. http://t.co/snUInV1Gv9 pic.twitter.com/P4ENUc9a53
— Isaac (@WorldofIsaac) October 18, 2013

It's Cheap as Fuck

While those of us living in big cities are at times forced to rent out literal boxes to get by, it's not uncommon for youngish Windsorites to own multiple homes.

Kavanaugh told me he has three properties, including a house/photography studio that he and his wife share, and is in the process of acquiring another. And while the market is not nearly as hot as Vancouver's or Toronto's, he said there are occasional "bidding wars" in sought after progressive neighbourhoods.

After moving back to Windsor, Bombardier convinced a building owner to let him in live and work in an apartment in exchange for paying the guy's property taxes—about $700 a month. The arrangement allowed him to save up and purchase his own 5,000-square-foot space downtown for $100,000.

"In Toronto it would be a $3-million building," he said.

He's also managed to take advantage of auto industry bust by using old machines and factories to make art.

"We'll make a production line of pieces of artwork," he said.

All of the entrepreneurs I spoke to said Windsor has two crucial characteristics necessary for success: it's affordable and kind of lacking in everything, so the chances of having an original idea are much higher than in larger, more cultured cities.

Budding Weed Scene

One of the more positive reviews I came across pegged Windsor as a "poor man's Amsterdam" with its abundance of weed and strip clubs.

There's some truth to that assessment. Windsor recently opened up the largest vapour lounge in North America—and possibly the world, said owner Jon Liedtke, 27.

Housed in a 6,000-square foot former nightclub, Higher Limits has a head shop with pipes and other smoking paraphernalia, a horseshoe bar lined with Volcano vaporizers, a dab station, arcade games, and pool tables.

"Go big or go home," said Liedtke.

It's open to medical marijuana users, though staffers are not actually allowed to ask for anyone's license. Themed activities for 4/20 next week will include making "craft bongs" out of melons.

Liedtke said both cops and neighbours have been pretty chill about the lounge's opening.

"The cannabis scene is really growing," he said.

Windsor North aka Detroit looking good on a sunny day. Photo via Flickr user Wigwam Jones.

There's beauty in the shittiness

Some locals have fully embraced Windsor for its gritty charm.

"It's like living in a real life David Lynch movie," said Bombardier. "It just seems like every single person that walks by every day is just a different character and there's some malfunction."

People regularly push around shopping carts, he said, "like they're a fucking accessory."

From an artistic POV, he said he doesn't like things to be clean and shiny and "gentrification all up my ass" (cough, Vancouver), but prefers to be in a place that's hit rock bottom and is slowly building itself up again.

A homey, small town feel where everybody knows each other was also touted as one of the nicer things about Windsor, though both Becca and another female university student told me the incestuousness sucks when it comes to dating. Like, you fuck one person "and you knock out all the options by proxy," said Becca, who favours dudes from Detroit anyway.

Read: A Mysterious Hum is Plaguing Windsor, Canada.

Still, it would be unfair to say Windsor has won everyone over.

Simona Lepadatu, 23, who is currently in teacher's college, has lived there since she was a baby and her parents moved "against my will."

Her list of beefs includes air pollution from Detroit factories, a sloppy bro vibe downtown, and zero job prospects outside of the casino and club industries.

"Since city transit is terrible, it makes living here very difficult," she said, adding newcomers who discover these flaws get depressed and leave. It's something she plans to do as soon as she graduates.

"Stephen Colbert is probably right."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

In mid-March, when thousands of protesters took to the streets of Chicago to protest Donald Trump's rally there, eventually leading the candidate to cancel the event indefinitely, many of those watching noted that the outcome wasn't really a surprise.

After months of making divisive comments about virtually every demographic in America, Trump, who had held most of his pro-wrestling-style arena rallies in "safe" spaces—i.e. mostly white, working-class cities and towns—Trump had finally entered enemy territory: a liberal urban center. And not just any liberal urban center, but Chicago, that bleeding heart of liberal activism at the dead center of Obama's America. Disruption was inevitable.

Perhaps the same can be said about Trump's hometown. If so, we're about to find out.

On Thursday evening, Trump, alongside Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, will be honored as a special guest at the New York State Republican Gala, a $1,000-a-plate dinner at the swanky Grand Hyatt Hotel, near Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan. But the real spectacle may be just outside, where protesters are planning to show up en masse in the hopes of shutting the whole thing down.

"Trump's rhetoric is an instigation to racist, anti-migrant and misogynist violence," Kalisa Moore, part of a group known as the Stop Trump Coalition, said in a statement, according to ThinkProgress. "As a matter of self-defense and protection of New Yorkers, we intend to do what the city's elected so-called leaders refuse to do—and shut down Trump from spreading his hateful message."

Most of the mobilization has occurred on Facebook, where several pages have called for a protest of the billionaire businessman's appearance. The largest of those, "Shut Down Trump in NYC," had over 2,000 RSVPs as of Thursday morning, and is being organized by the International Action Center, in conjunction with other social justice groups. "Trump may think New York is some kind of home base," the event page reads. "Let's show him that his racism, anti-woman chauvinism and anti-Muslim bigotry is not welcome here."

At this point, it appears the plan is to fan out on the blocks around Grand Central Terminal—right at rush hour, at an intersection that is perpetually jammed. It's the perfect setup for a shit-show—with the groups converging on the hotel from all different directions. In an email, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department told VICE that "an adequate detail of officers will be assigned" to the streets around the event, but that the gala is being held on private property, and therefore will fall under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service.

The New York GOP dinner comes just days before the state's presidential primary on April 19, and it's one of the first competitive, and crucial, nominating contests the Empire State has seen in years. Polls in New York show Trump leading the other two Republican candidates by big margins, and his recent rallies both upstate and downstate have attracted thousands. But while the reality-TV star starts and ends most of his days in Midtown, at the Trump Tower, his campaign has yet to hold an event anywhere in the five boroughs.

Since Thursday's gala isn't a Trump rally—the other candidates will also be present—the battle between the dueling pro- and anti-Trump forces is not likely to be as visible as it has been at some of the Donald's other performances. Online, his supporters don't appear to have organized any official counter-rally to defend their candidate in New York, although some have issued a virtual call-to-arms, asking fellow Trump fans to show up at the Grand Hyatt to block the protesters. "We need to counter this. This has to stop," one supporter wrote on Facebook. "These are not protestors they are anarchist and need to be held accountable."

At this point in the presidential race, messy anti-Trump protests have become a routine part of the news cycle. But in New York City, where the Trump juggernaut all began, resentment toward the hometown candidate is tangible. The front page of New York Daily News has been cycling anti-Trump headlines almost every day, and leading elected officials—particularly New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, a vocal, if unhelpful, Hillary Clinton surrogate—now barely even acknowledge that Trump lives here.

The opposition to the Republican frontrunner is so combustible that a few weeks ago, hundreds of people turned up to protest Trump outside his New York hotels—and he wasn't even in town. The question tonight is, what will happen when he is?

Follow John on Twitter.

Haifa, Israel, at night. Photo via Flickr user Mark Nakasone

Yossi works in a supermarket warehouse in Haifa, a city in the north of Israel. His father is a Christian Arab and his mother a Jew, but he lived most of his life following the Jewish part of his heritage: He celebrated a bar mitzvah, served in the Israeli army, and speaks flawless Hebrew. But online, his Arab side comes out: He's Yusuf, an Israeli Arab escort.

"Israeli gay men have a fetish for Arabs," he explained. "Sometimes they want to dominate me and sometimes they want to be dominated, but for a Jewish man, sex with an Arab is always about who has the power, the control."

Last month, the Israeli government released its first-ever survey on prostitution. The survey, conducted by the social affairs and public security ministries, found that annual payments to sex workers amounted to an estimated 1.2 billion shekels (about $308 million) in 2014. Of the roughly 12,000 prostitutes working in Israel that year, about 5 percent of them—between 550 and 570 people—were men. And of those men, 19 percent were Arabs, a larger percentage than the proportion of male Arabs in Israel's general population, which is around 9 percent in the mixed Israeli cities. This disparity was even sharper among young people, ages 18 to 25, where Arab male prostitutes outnumbered their Jewish counterparts by more than three to one.

Dr. Yoav Santo, one of the sociologists who led the study, cited several reasons for the overrepresentation of Arab men in Israel's prostitution industry: Arab men have a harder time finding jobs in the Jewish market, he said, and since Arab society generally has less tolerance for sexual variants, those who identify as gay or trans are frequently ostracized, increasing their social vulnerability and leading to even greater financial stress. Under these circumstances, the sex trade often becomes the only solution.

And then, of course, there's the racial component—the demand for Arab submissives. "The most recurrent impetus to hire a prostitute, whether male or female, is the desire to express dominance," said Santo over the phone from Israel. "The same rubric explains why Arabs seeking to hire a prostitute will often want someone dressed as an Israeli female soldier.

"Sexuality is the dark mirror of society," he added. "Whatever social or racial taboos a society harbors will inevitably come into play between a sex worker and his or her client."

Yusuf has become adept at fulfilling the fantasies of Jewish Israeli men. Per Israel's complex racial dynamics, these fantasies aren't as straightforward as one might imagine. "Sure, sometimes they will wear an IDF uniform and dominate me, but sometimes they will wear the uniform and pay me to dominate them," he explained in a phone interview. "Sometimes they want me to dress like an Arab woman, in women's lingerie and a hijab. There was one guy who wanted me to wear a keffiyeh, wave a fake Arabian sword, and yell at him in Arabic while I fake 'raped' him," he said, laughing. "It's like theater."

Yusuf has been on both the giving and receiving end of the bondage, degradations, and racial slurs often involved in nationalistic fantasies. For the right price, he is willing to do almost anything, save extreme pain, knives, or fecal play. He doesn't mind being called a "dirty Arab"—it's his most common term of endearment, he says—but he balks at the idea of having his face covered during sex. "As if I'm a Palestinian detainee, or a masked Palestinian terrorist... I don't like that. Why? Because I want them to see my eyes. It makes it harder for them to forget I'm human."

"Sexuality is the dark mirror of society. Whatever social or racial taboos a society harbors will inevitably come into play between a sex worker and his client." — Dr. Yoav Santo

Data from the Israeli government prostitution survey suggested Arab male prostitutes make roughly the same income as Jewish male prostitutes, but some of the Arab men said they get business specifically because of their ethnicity. Salah, a 19-year-old Muslim Bedouin who works as a prostitute in south Tel-Aviv, said generally he's picked up on the street.

"A car stops I ask, 'Do you want to fuck?'" he said in a phone interview. If the driver asks if he's Arab, Salah knows the interaction will be about one of two things: "This is either about a man who wants to fuck a young hot guy, or about an Israeli who wants to fuck an Arab."

Salah was born and raised, along with his nine siblings, in a Bedouin village near the Arab city of Nazareth. Even before he realized he was gay, he was "the black sheep of the family," he said. At 17, an older man seduced him. "I didn't want to be gay," Salah said. "I told myself I'm not, but from that day on, I knew that's what I like."

When his conservative Muslim family discovered he was interested in other men, "they tied me up and tried to beat the gay out of me," he said. "It didn't help. The gay wouldn't come out."

Prostitution soon became his bread and butter. He finds clients near the old bus station and a public park called Gan Hachashmal, a popular gay hookup spot. "Men come here, ask me out for a drink, take me to a motel room, end of story," he said. "I have no home, no family, no help. What else is there for me to do?"

Many of the men pursued sex work because they had few other options.

Sami, who grew up in a traditional Muslim family in East Jerusalem, was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 14. By the time he was 17, he was suicidal. He says a month in a mental institution and some "bad influences" led him to prostitution. "I came with friends to Gan Hahashmal in Tel Aviv," he said, recalling his first time. "They told me 'stand here, a car will come, a man will give you 100, 150 NIS . Then go in the car with him.'"

The experience led him to discover a bisexual identity. He found entertaining men enjoyable, along with the newfound freedom and income the "hobby" offered. Though his family does not know he works intermittently as a prostitute, they were not willing to accept his attraction to men, so sex work became a way for him to express his sexual identity.

When he's with a client, he said, "I get to do anything and everything. Back home, I can't do anything at all."

The last names of the sex workers have been omitted to protect their identities.

Follow Orli on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

Read: A Lawyer for Trump's Campaign Manager Once Lost His Job After Biting a Florida Stripper

Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump's campaign manager who was caught on tape grabbing former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at an event in March, is off the hook.

Palm Beach County State Attorney David Aronberg announced the decision Thursday, suggesting officials simply did not think there was enough evidence to prosecute Lewandowski for battery and that the charges would be dropped.

According to CNN, prosecutors at one point tried to broker a deal where Lewandowski would apologize; the Trump campaign even shared a draft of an apology letter to Aronberg's office. But the prosecutor suggested Thursday the promise of an apology didn't factor into his choice, though it was encouraged. "We always appreciate when people take responsibility for their actions," he said.

Fields, who has since resigned from Breitbart, may still pursue a defamation case against the campaign manager, a source told Politico.

Trump has always stood behind Lewandowski and told CNN's Anderson Cooper that his campaign manager's behavior was a necessary security measure. "She had a pen in her hand, which Secret Service is not liking because they don't know what it is, whether it's a little bomb."

Early in Salima Koroma's intimate, provocative debut documentary Bad Rap, the rapper Rekstizzy and his manager Jaeki Cho are having an argument over the direction of their music video. The debate is over one motif in particular, which shows the Asian rapper squirting condiments over the butts of his black dancers. Cho worries some may find it offensive, but Rekstizzy refuses to back down. "Whatever we do, people are gonna talk shit on us, cause we're Asian," explains the charismatic, portly rapper. "It's time for us to not give a fuck about what people think. We have go to all out and just offend them... Everything we do is . Me being a rapper is offensive to people, dog."

This type of realness is what gives Bad Rap its bite. The documentary, premiering this Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival, explores the complicated history of Asian Americans in hip-hop and their impact within the genre, following the trials and tribulations of four rappers: David "Rekstizzy" Lee, Nora "Awkwafina" Lum, Richard "Lyricks" Lee, and the main character, Jonathan "Dumbfoundead" Park. As they deal with the challenges of trying to get ahead in the industry—playing small shows, scraping together funds for music videos—the artists battle Asian stereotypes, karaoke-bar gigs, and disappointed immigrant parents in order to do what they love in a space where many believe they don't belong.

It's been a similar struggle for the 27-year-old Koroma who, full disclosure, I've been friends with since 2014. When she first began working on Bad Rap, the preconceived notions were simple: Asians can't rap, and black women like herself can't single-handedly make films. With her insightful and complex documentary, however, she proves both stereotypes wrong.

VICE: Give me a little bit of the backstory on how you came up with Bad Rap.
Salima Koroma: I read an article in XXL about one of K-Pop's biggest stars, G Dragon, and at that time you never really saw K-Pop artists in urban magazines. So I contacted the person who wrote that article and told him I was doing a documentary and we got on the phone that night and talked for a while. Jaeki Cho, who is now my producing partner, was like, "Salima, nobody ever talks about Asians in hip-hop and there are so many Asian rappers who are integral to the history of hip-hop. And I just happen to know Asian rappers."

Working with Jaeki is very interesting because Jaeki is Korean-American and he was very passionate about the history, from the Mountain Brothers, to Jin, to all types of things and I felt like, Listen, homie, I am a filmmaker, and this movie has to be good. It can't just be about the history, because this also has to be enjoyable .

Did you grow up with a lot of Asian friends?
I did not, no. In college I just happened to have a lot of Asian friends. When people ask me how I got into K-Pop, I just don't know how to answer because it was something that was very organic when it happened. I liked the music, I liked the culture surrounding it, and I liked how pristine it was on the outside. But when you dug deeper, there was crazy shady shit going on.

Lyricks

How much did your interest in both K-Pop and hip-hop played into your desire to make the film?
I used to write a lot of essays about sociocultural aspects of K-Pop, and one of the things we used to talk about a lot was how K-Pop male bands probably couldn't make it in the US because of the fact that they have this stigma of being too girly or too feminine. That was interesting because what if you're a hip-hop artist? How do people perceive you if you're someone who's supposed to be hard and dope? How do you enter into this hip-hop discussion about hip-hop culture?

When I first started pitching this story about Asian American rappers, the question I always got was, "Where's Psy in this?" Which blew my mind because a) he's not Asian American, and b) it just showed that the idea of what an Asian person is here in America is very monolithic. How can you be hip-hop if that's what your image is?

"To be honest, what hip-hop is perceived to be is the antithesis of what Asian Americans are considered to be in this country."

Where does that come from?
I actually don't know where this comes from. I can say where we see it and how it's been perpetuated. Asians are the model minority. They come to the US, they get into the middle-class jobs—what do they have to rap about? They have everything that they need. To be honest, what hip-hop is perceived to be is the antithesis of what Asian Americans are considered to be in this country. So you take these two things that are so opposite and you try to put them together and people don't think it makes sense.

How does it make sense?
You know, you have your Miley Cyruses, your Iggy Azaleas, your Riff Raffs, your Rachel Dolezals. You have all this, and at times it feels like caricatures of black people. So it's sort of like, "White people have already done it, and now you got the Asians trying to come up in here?"

When labels say, "I don't know how to market this" or "I don't know how receptive people are going to be," who is the audience?
There are different kinds of people who like hip-hop. You have your purists, who are like "This is what hip-hop is. It's Wu-Tang, it's old-school hip-hop, it's Kendrick, it's J. Cole." You have the people who are sick and tired of hip-hop being appropriated, who are like, "Fuck these Asians. I don't care if you're good or not, this is not your shit." And then you have people who are ready to embrace anything. So you sort of have this fragmented audience that you're trying to market to.

Where do you fall in this?
I almost wish that I was part of a label so I could be like, "Yo! There's this Asian market here that's ready for Asian rappers and their perspectives." I hate to sound cliché, but hip-hop was the story of the streets, what was happening in communities, perspectives of shit that's happening in worlds that you don't know about. As a journalist, knowing how important it is to have these perspectives, is why I feel like Asian rappers have a story to tell. And not a monolithic story, like they're all talking about the same shit, but they all have different perspectives.

If you love hip-hop and you're just spitting shit that's real to you, then why can't that just be accepted? Just let people rap. I've heard things about me like, "Oh, she's over here promoting this appropriation." I know what appropriation is, I'm woke. So, for me, my whole thing is, are you living your truth? Unlike the Iggy Azaleas, who are making a caricature of what she thinks is black.

"You have the people who are sick and tired of hip-hop being appropriated, who are like, 'Fuck these Asians. I don't care if you're good or not, this is not your shit.'"

Do you think that's the reaction of the black community? Or everybody involved in hip-hop, including white people?
I think the people who matter are those who are the "gatekeepers," because after having spoken to a lot of people after doing Bad Rap , like people on the radio, I've learned that people don't care. If it's dope, it's dope. Even in Bad Rap, we had people who were behind the scenes that were like, "We're not sure how to market this film because who is going to want to watch this?" Which is crazy to me because we've had so much grassroots support, but the gatekeepers don't know how to market an Asian rapper.

Do Asian rappers get away with less because they're Asian?
You gotta be good. You gotta have your hard knocks, and people are going to try to push you and see if you're able to take it. I think that these artists are able to take it, too. That's the one thing about this film. You never see people whining about the fact that a label can't market them or that they can't book a show. No. They're trying to up their game and become that person who will break the mold and make it into the mainstream.

A group like the Mountain Brothers made some dope-ass shit. When I heard about them in your film I was like, "Whaaat?" It makes me kind of rethink, does your race matter?
Here's the thing: Historically, Asians and blacks have not had a good relationship. I'm from California, so I've heard about the LA riots and I understand how that happened. You had these Korean shop owners who were suspicious of the blacks and that made the blacks suspicious of the Koreans. These stereotypes that blacks have of Asians and that Asians have of blacks, historically, is another source of tension. When I say that Asians are the antithesis to what hip-hop is, I'm saying that in all forms of that concept.

Producer Jaeki Cho and director/producer Salima Koroma

That brings me to another question about Afro-Asian solidarity. It's out there, but we can look at a protest that came from Peter Liang's conviction for murdering Akai Gurley as an example of the tension that still exists between blacks and Asians. How many Asian rappers really understand the extent to which they're taking an art form from another community? And how many of them are actually participating in the shit that's happening to that community?
That is a great question. I think what's really interesting is that most of these rappers, if not all, know more about hip-hop history than a lot of people that I know. Jaeki, my producing partner, learned English through hip-hop. In terms of social justice, this has come up several times, where something like an Eric Garner happens or something like Tamir Rice happens. They're expected to go above and beyond. If you want to be considered someone who is authentic and legitimate about hip-hop, then you gotta care about black people more than black people care about black people.

How many of these rappers are doing it because they think they have to, versus doing it because they actually care?
I have to say that as people of color, we go through the same kinds of discrimination. That makes us very sympathetic to each other. You have a Chris Rock, who can bring out some Asian kids at the Oscars and say whatever he wants to say about them and everyone is supposed to laugh, but when you talk about black people then no one is allowed to laugh. People see the struggle that African-American people are going through, they see it and speak up on it so they can relate to it. They share the same threat.

Let's talk about you, as a black woman, doing this piece that is comprised of Asians. Did you come at it as a journalist or as a black woman?
I always get the question of, "How did you integrate into the Asian culture during the film?" Or, "How did you relate to these people? You're so different!" And I find that to be a funny question for a few reasons. The first reason being that there is no difference. We had many more things in common than what we didn't. We're all about the same age and we're all doing creative shit that we're putting our soul into. I love hip-hop the same way that they love hip-hop.

As a black woman, I do feel like an outcast, or I do feel like I am a black, female filmmaker. There are not that many of us.

Growing up, what was your favorite hip-hop song and what's your favorite hip-hop song by an Asian artist?
Hands down, my first favorite song ever was Nas "If I Ruled the World." And my favorite song by an Asian artist—I mean, I don't wanna say I have a favorite song by an Asian artist—but Dumbfoundead's "Are We There Yet" was and is the spirit of what the film is. So, you know, people who are reading this, go listen to that song.

Follow Sarah on Twitter.

Bad Rap premieres this Saturday, April 20 at Tribeca Film Festival.

Bernie Sanders debates Hillary Clinton during the CNN primary in Brooklyn. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Sanders and Clinton Get Personal in Brooklyn Debate
At a angry Democratic debate in Brooklyn, Bernie Sanders accused Hillary Clinton of using a "racist term" when she spoke of "superpredators" in 1996. Sanders also promised to release his tax returns Friday after Clinton accused him of not being transparent about his own finances. "They are very boring," said Sanders.—CBS News

Microsoft Sues Justice Department
The tech giant is suing the US Department of Justice over secrecy orders that block Microsoft from notifying its customers when their emails are examined by the government. Microsoft believes its constitutional rights, and the constitutional rights of its customers, are being violated.— Reuters

Chicago PD Won't Release Report of Teenager Shot 16 Times
The city of Chicago will not release official reports of a teenager shot 16 times by police. Warren Robinson, 16, was shot and killed after being chased by Chicago police in July 2014, but the department is refusing freedom of information requests because Robinson was a juvenile. —NBC News

Democrats Sue Arizona Over Voter Rights
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and various wings of the Democratic Party will file a lawsuit in federal court today targeting Arizona's elections practices. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Republicans are using "every legal loophole" to try to disenfranchise voters, especially minorities. —VICE News

International News

Earthquake Kills Nine in Southern Japan
At least nine people are dead and more than 800 injured after a powerful, magnitude 6.5 earthquake hit the island of Kyushu in southern Japan. Officials say more people are trapped under collapsed buildings, but rescue operations by Japanese soldiers were disrupted overnight by a series of aftershocks. —AP

Spanish Minister Resigns over Panama Leaks
Spain's Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria has resigned after alleged links to offshore companies listed in the Panama Papers. Soria continues to deny any wrongdoing, but he said he was stepping down to limit any damage to the country's caretaker government, the People's Party. —Bloomberg

Anti-Mugabe Protesters March in Zimbabwe
In the country's first anti-government rally in years, thousands of people marched through the streets of Zimbabwe's capital Harare calling for an end to the rule of President Robert Mugabe. Supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) are angry at corruption and the lack of jobs. —Al Jazeera

North Korean Birthday Missile Launch Fails
North Korea attempted to conduct a missile test to coincide with the birthday of founding leader Kim Il-sung, but the launch appears to have failed. South Korea officials believe the misfiring rocket was a previously untested "Musudan" medium-range ballistic missile. —Reuters

Edward Snowden, who is on French composer Jean Michel Jarre's new album. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Edward Snowden Turns to Music
Wikileaks whistleblower has collaborated with Jean Michel Jarre on "Exit", a track on the French musician's new album. Snowden said he became a big fan of electronic music through eight-bit video game "chiptunes." —Rolling Stone

Manson Cult Killer Recommended for Parole
Leslie Van Houten, the youngest member of the Manson family cult, has been deemed "suitable for parole." The 66-year-old was convicted in 1969 for the killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. The full parole board has 120 days to review. —CNN

Czech Republic Wants to Change Its Name
The Czech Republic is considering change its name to "Czechia" to make it easier for companies and sports teams to use it on products and clothing. If approved by parliament, "Czechia" would would need to be lodged with the United Nations. —BBC News

Zoo Owner Charged for Whipping Tiger
Michael Hackenberger—the Ontario zoo owner who once called a baboon a "cocksucker" on live TV—has stepped down after he was charged for whipping a tiger. Video footage appears to show him striking a Siberian tiger 20 times. —VICE

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There was supposedly a Democratic debate going on in the Brooklyn Navy Yard Thursday night, but anyone flipping channels past CNN might have confused the relentless shrieking cheers for the sounds of a campaign rally.

For two hours, the two increasingly cranky candidates interrupted each other—and talked right over the moderators—whenever it suited them. Nearly every time either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders made a point, the audience burst into howling applause, punctuated by the occasional round of boos and heckling directed toward the stage. It was the sort of behavior you might expect from noisy young Sanders fans—there were plenty of "Ber-nie!" chants throughout the night—but Clinton had her own band of whooping partisans there, and they treated the ninth Democratic debate like it was an NBA game.

Basketball has one big advantage over politics though: At least there's a clear winner. While Clinton and Sanders definitely came to Brooklyn ready for a brawl, neither candidate ended the night with a clear victory, and neither had any breakthrough narrative that might change the narrative of this interminable primary campaign.

Clinton, who is leading by double digits in New York primary polls, continued to cast herself as the hard-eyed realist who knows what policies can actually be achieved politically, and who can build on the current administration's success in pushing a liberal agenda. Though she talked up her "big, bold, progressive goals for America" in her opening statement, you got the sense that this was mostly because the democratic socialist standing next to her is so unquestionably bold and progressive. Clinton's goal has never been to start a revolution—her message is that she's a proud product of the Democratic Establishment, and she's here to help.

Of course, we knew this about Clinton before Thursday's debate. It's an argument we've heard from her many times, just as we've heard that Sanders is, as he put it in his opening statement, "determined to end a rigged economy where the rich get richer and everybody else get poorer, and create an economy that works for all of us, not just the One Percent," and that he, unlike Clinton, isn't funded by special interests and super PACs.

What made Thursday night different was its unmistakable hostility. After months of relatively genteel political discourse, the nastiness simmering between the Democratic presidential campaigns finally crept onto the debate stage. Both candidates spent some of the night doing the "Mad? No, I actually think this is funny" chuckle when attacked, but they weren't fooling anyone.

It's been a long campaign—much longer than anyone anticipated it would be—so it's not surprising that at this point, the fissures between the campaigns have opened into canyons. Sanders, in particular, seemed to relish backing the frontrunner into corners. As the debate opened, he walked back—ever so slightly—his recent comment that Clinton's vote for the war in Iraq made her "unqualified" to be president, but maintained that he questions her judgment

He proceeded to launch a series of attacks, taking shots at her for, among other things: supporting fracking in other countries as secretary of state, failing to get behind a $15 federal minimum wage, taking money from fossil fuel lobbyists, withholding transcripts from her Goldman Sachs speeches, and backing the US military intervention in Libya. (Clinton defended that last decision, even though Libya has essentially become a failed state.) In a moment that was a break from the norms of presidential politics, he went after her for being overly pro-Israel, saying that we need to "treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity." At several points, he accused her of not answering the moderators' questions, prompting a round of pointless bickering in which Clinton insisted she had so answered the question, and Sanders replied that no, she had not, and so on.

Clinton's main line of attack—that Sanders is an impractical dreamer—was summed up in the "It's easy to diagnose the problem, it's harder to do something about the problem" line she repeated a couple times. Her strategy was to cuddle up to President Barack Obama, touting her role in the administration's progressive accomplishments while spinning Sanders's critiques of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and the Paris climate change agreement as attacks on the popular president's record.

It's hard to say who came out on top in these little spats. When Sanders struggled to come up with an example in which Clinton's ties to Wall Street influenced her political decisions, Hillary fans likely rolled their eyes; Bernie Bros were already crowing only about her 2001 vote for the bankruptcy reform bill backed by banks and credit card companies.

For the most part, the debate was more theater than politics. From Sanders mocking Clinton's claim that she'd been tough on Wall Street, to Clinton's guns-come-down-from-Vermont-and-kill-New-Yorkers bit, the whole thing was obviously a show. By the time it got to the point where Sanders was taken to task for not doing enough fundraising for the Democratic Party, it was clear that it wasn't even a good one.

As is always apparent in these debates, the candidates agreed more than they disagreed, making their wrangling sometimes resemble arguments over which flavor of ice cream an imaginary castle in the sky should be. The federal minimum wage currently sits at $7.25; getting a Republican-controlled Congress to bump it up at all—let alone to $12 or $15—will be next to impossible. Substantive gun control measures are similarly out of reach. And both candidates support college affordability, criminal justice reform, gay rights, renewable energy, reining in Wall Street, paid family leave, Planned Parenthood—the list goes on.

This agreement is why perhaps the most important moment of the night came late, when Clinton suddenly pivoted from talking about the Supreme Court to abortion:

"We've had eight debates before, this is our ninth. We've not had one question about a woman's right to make her own decisions about reproductive healthcare, not one question," she said. "And in the meantime, we have states, governors doing everything they can to restrict women's rights. We have a presidential candidate by the name of Donald Trump saying that women should be punished. And we are never asked about this."

That earned Clinton her biggest swelling of applause, and had the added benefit of reminding voters that she is the first serious female candidate for president in American history. It also pointed to a sobering truth: For all the sound and fury, the primary is just a prelude to the general election, a contest with high, real-world stakes. Despite the challenge from Sanders, Clinton is clearly assuming she's going to be leading the charge against the Republicans come November. And she's probably not wrong.

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

Twice a week, a line of prisoners forms outside the communal bathroom in the education building here at the California State Prison in Los Angeles County. One latex-gloved guard sits at a small desk outside the toilet area, checking identification cards against a computer printout. After confirming you're on the list, he takes a small piece of cloth, rubs it on one of your hands, and then slips it into a small baggie with your name on it.

Another gloved guard looms, holding a small, clear, plastic bottle. "Try and fill it up to this line," he tells you as he hands you a pair of blue latex gloves and watches you put them on before giving you the sample bottle.

After more than 35 continuous years of prison and at least a hundred urinalysis tests, I don't have any trouble going while someone watches. It's uncomfortable, and holding yourself with gloves on feels particularly unnatural, but I do what I have to and move on.

For many of my peers, however, the whole process is a grueling battle between modesty, cultural prohibitions, general resentment, and punitive possibilities. In every group of 20 or 30 men, there are at least a couple who either can't or won't fill it up to the line in the requisite amount of time. The consequences for failing to provide a sample are severe—things like loss of visiting privileges and outside yard time, to start—and the consequences get progressively worse for each "refusal."

This is the War on Drugs as practiced in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which has doubled down its efforts to identify users and punish them into sobriety.

Random, widespread urinalysis is but one facet of the strategy. Guards in black shirts wander around the prison accompanied by dogs decked out in little camo-green collars with the world "police" emblazoned on top and a mock badge dangling at the bottom. You see lines of prisoners posted up against a wall while a dog moves from one to the next, sniffing away.

The most controversial devices are the ion scanners now being used at several test sites out of the Golden State's vast empire of 34 prisons.

A random selection of outside visitors must allow a guard to take one of those same small pieces of cloth and rub it on their hands. The cloth is then placed inside a machine that scans for traces (in parts per billion) of prohibited substances. If the machine detects anything untoward, a second scan is conducted.

A second positive scan sets off a series of steps that can culminate in a body search. Visitors can refuse the search, but that could result in them being barred from coming back*.

The trouble with the ion scanners is that they are simultaneously unreliable and too sensitive. Visitors report testing positive for one substance, washing their hands, and then testing positive for a completely different and unrelated substance—neither of which they've consciously handled.

In California, another problem is medical marijuana. While state law allows the prescribed use of substances that contain THC, the prison system considers any positive finding on their ion scanners as grounds for either a body search or the loss of contact visits if those visitors don't have appropriate documentation from a doctor.

Of the numerous problems associated with the urinalysis program, one of the least appreciated is the astonishing number of foods, prescription and over-the-counter medications, and simple but unpredictable combinations of otherwise legal substances that can register as a false positive on a drug screen.

Photo by Faye Blaylock. Chainmail and sword courtesy of Rob Miller

The music industry is like the public bar of an alehouse that helps create and sustain mental illness in its customers, and it's attached to a saloon bar designed to attract those who already suffer from it.

Carry away the empties. Brush away the wisps of torn Rizla, shredded beer mats, and desiccated tobacco flakes from the table top; mop up the tacky pools of spilled wine and lager; scratch all the filthy patina away, and sand off the varnish until there's just pristine wood left bare. It doesn't matter how deep down you go, you will always find entrenched (and mainly unhelpful) beliefs about madness and creativity, depression and depth, rage and authenticity.

There are many reasons for this state of affairs, but the most serious amplification factor is the kind of toleration of heavy drink and drug use among adults that is not found in many other walks of life. The culture that surrounds the production of music can feel like it is overflowing with fragile souls, and it's not uncommon to encounter people who are having full-on psychotic episodes. And sometimes these events play out with terrible consequences.

But—rules of thumb aside—I think it's important to recognize that this isn't something that should be seen as negative in every instance. There is the space for some people to prosper (creatively, emotionally, and financially) in a way that simply wouldn't have been possible had they gone into teaching or bus driving.

In 2004, very early in my career as a music journalist, while working for the redoubtable Metal Hammer magazine, I interviewed Sid Wilson, Slipknot's DJ. I came away from the experience quite badly shaken when I realized how shattered his perception of reality was. It's something I was relatively intimate with myself, having had a full-on nervous breakdown at college months before being kicked out in 1991. As a chronic alcoholic and habitual heavy drug user, I had spent the intervening years intermittently suffering from horrendous hallucinations, fits, and disturbing distortions in my perception of reality during brief periods of withdrawal. But Sid from Slipknot was something else entirely.

Quite soon into our interview I realized that something wasn't right. He measured out five teaspoons of sugar and used a small wooden stirrer to level off the surface of each one before lowering the spoon slowly into his cup of coffee. Then he stirred each measurement of sugar five times clockwise and five times counter-clockwise, counting out loud as he did it. Even though we were indoors, and it was hot, he was wearing a bandana wrapped around his head and two hats on top of that. He said it helped control the flow of information pouring into his head from "back home."

He claimed that he was an alien sent from the constellation of Orion to help save mankind and to prepare the good people of Earth for intergalactic warfare, like he was an extraterrestrial second coming. "I believe I am from Orion," he said, "but I am proud to be here on Earth completing this mission."

He talked to me for three hours about his belief system, which was a mixture of the rapture, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Battlefield Earth, and St. John's Book of Revelation. In fact, he talked to me for so long that someone had to come and get him because the band was due on stage and was waiting for him in the wings. It came as very little surprise to hear that once, while a high school drug dealer, Sid had eaten a blotter sheet of 75 tabs of LSD one evening. He phoned me the next day apologizing for not showing me the tattoo that had revealed his purpose to him. It was of the World Trade Center on fire. A tattoo he says he got done in August of 2001.

It was years before I realized that—post-formative LSD experience, at least—things had panned out for Sid very well indeed, all things considered. He was arguably living in the most congenial of worlds for someone with his outlook on life. In short: He neither wanted nor needed my sympathy.

But what about the musicians who don't have a good record deal and international fame? What happens to musicians like Sauron V*, an unknown and unsigned black metal musician from Great Yarmouth*, right at the periphery of the culture? What happens to people like him when their signals become scrambled and the new information comes flowing in faster than they can control?

An excerpt from the audiobook of John Doran's memoir, Jolly Lad

Around the same time I interviewed Sid Wilson, one of my regular Metal Hammer jobs was writing the demos column. One day, the magazine gave me a CD-R bearing the name Marie Antoinette*, written in spiky, Slayer-style, felt-tip lettering. The music was unbelievably basic. On one track, I heard the lyrics "You're a fucking disgrace to your fucking race" and what sounded like some other throwback boot boy stuff about murdering "fags," and dashed off a bracing zero out of ten review.

A few months later, another parcel arrived at the magazine offices for me. Marie Antoinette had self-released two singles, one called "Why Don't You Stick This CD Up Your Arse John Doran, You Sarcastic Little Creep" and another with the more prosaic title "We Hate You John Doran." They were accompanied by an ominous-looking C90. The tape was part biography, part death threat, and, most uncomfortably, part session in the psychiatrist's chair. Marie Antoinette was a Great Yarmouth–based punk metal band with one member, Sauron V, who sang and played guitar. The tape contained the first of very many death threats he would make against me: "You know, I've been really depressed since your review. I haven't been this depressed since the last time I was in prison for assault. I'm going to find you and break your fucking head open. I'm going to kill you."

I can't remember why I decided to review the next batch of Marie Antoinette singles in my column and give them zero out of ten, but whatever my reasoning was, it was completely faulty, and I genuinely wish I hadn't. The snide trolling had the obvious effect that I knew it would, and another batch of CD singles with a cassette-recorded death threat arrived at Hammer a few weeks after publication. I wanted to review these, but luckily my editor, Jamie, called time on the idiocy, and I was banned from mentioning them in the magazine again.

Hammer was less fortunate, though. Sauron V got it into his head that I worked—or possibly even lived—at its offices, and he started bombarding the place with threatening calls, which, after a few months, always came at 9 PM, when sometimes he would even use up the entire message storage capacity of the magazine telling the guys how much he hated me, how brilliant his band was, and what he was going to do to me.

The death threats stopped for a while, but when they recommenced, the magazine called the police, and I had to visit Marylebone CID to talk to a couple of detectives. One of them asked for a summary of what happened and for my opinion. I started: "Whatever happens, as far as I'm concerned, I don't want this guy to go to prison on my account. Whatever is wrong with him, prison hasn't worked for him in the past, and I dare say it won't do now. But mainly I just don't want it on my conscience. The guy's obviously got problems."

The detective stopped me: "Oh no. It won't come to that. He's not fit to plead. He'll never get as far as trial." I must have looked confused, so he explained that some time after I had started reviewing Marie Antoinette demos in Hammer, S5 had gone round to his neighbor's house and attacked him with an ornamental samurai sword, breaking his arm in several places. It wasn't the first time he'd been sectioned, and he was now detained indefinitely in a secure psychiatric hospital.

"Well, in that case, what I'd really like is for him to have his phone privileges removed," I said to the detective, who agreed that under the circumstances it probably was the wisest course of action.

Photo by Maria Jefferis

When my book, Jolly Lad, came out last year, I included both of these stories (and several others) for two main reasons. The first was the fact that I was not very well mentally myself, and I simply wanted to illustrate that there was a lot of it about. The second was because of my (not entirely original) belief that the boundaries of what constitutes madness are, to a relative degree, quite flexible, depending on certain factors such as class, gender, wealth, profession, geography, time, and race.

I grew up in the 1970s next door to Europe's then-largest psychiatric unit, Rainhill Hospital, and probably because of this never asked myself the romantic and visibly daft question: Who's to say it's them who are mad? Maybe it's us who are mad. But no, it's almost certainly not us.

However, all of my experiences as an adult slowly led me to believe that there was a sizable gray area not considered by either position, in which privilege played a significant role. And it seemed to me, with every passing year, that more and more of us ended up living—or scraping by—in the gray area.

Straight after the publication of my book, on the May 1 last year, I went on a 31-date reading tour around England in the back of a van with the Norwegian blackened noise rock band Arabrot. Everything went swimmingly until we arrived in Great Yarmouth. After a grueling 13-hour drive, we loaded into the town's only metal venue, did a sound check, and nipped out to get some takeout before the gig. I grabbed a copy of the local listings mag to flip through while we were waiting for food and scanned that month's lineup for the venue we were playing. Nestled in among all the local bands with names like Led Henge and Kurgen was a listing for excellent doom sorts, Moss. Then I noticed with some irritation that we'd been billed as John Doran and Arab Rot, as if I was fronting some kind of EDL-friendly NSBM band. And then, just below that, listed for the following night at the same venue, I saw the words Marie Antoinette.

Sometimes—just once or twice in a lifetime, by my reckoning—things happen that are so terrifying, so utterly anxiety generating, that you reach a sweet spot of horror so complete that it is an analogue of total zen calm. I viewed the rest of my evening as if from outside of my own body. I saw myself traipsing back to the venue to perform on a stage where a man who had sent me multiple death threats was due to appear in less than 24 hours' time. I saw myself clutching sweatily onto a copy of the listings mag that he clearly read. I saw myself glancing at the advert over and over again, as if somehow, magically, my name would no longer be next to that of Marie Antoinette. I saw myself asking the venue owner if Great Yarmouth was home to two different bands of that name, and then I saw myself slump slightly when the answer came back that no, there were not—that Sauron V had recently formed a new version of the band with local teenagers after being released from the hospital.

There is a stage beyond fight or flight: terror so pure it mimics serenity. It was in this fugue state that Arabrot and I took to the stage that night. Because I was literally above and beyond caring, I read the passage from my book about Sauron V. "Whatever happens tonight," I reasoned to myself, "will either end very badly or provide me with something else to write about."

As Arabrot's doom-ridden riffs clanged round the basement—as we filled the venue with controlled feedback and machine noise—I intoned passages about alcohol, madness, drugs, and redemption. I could feel a presence in the room, a hulking solidity to the shadows at the rear of the venue by the cigarette machine where the purple pools of light gave way to the impenetrable onyx. But when the house lights came up, there was no one there—either I'd imagined it, or they had left. We loaded out of the venue in record time and hit the road immediately, despite the fact the main act that night, Sly and the Family Drone, are one of my favorite live bands in the whole world, and I'd been looking forward to watching them play all week.

We flew down the A47 like we were clinging to a rocket, listening to Slayer albums at full volume, gabbling like a bunch of four-year-olds. We were checked into a Travelodge just outside of Leicester and fast asleep before it even turned 2 AM.

Going on tour was great. One of the best experiences of my life. But still, I knew I was little more than a tourist and very soon it would be time to go home.

As a postscript, I need to apologize to someone, and that person is Sauron V—what I perceived to be hateful and violent lyrical concerns notwithstanding. I've repeated my story about him as a pub anecdote many times over since our run-in, but it took the painstakingly repetitive process of editing a book and recording an audiobook to get it through my thick skull that none of it was funny. There is nothing amusing about extreme violence, psychiatric hospitals, mental illness, obsession, depression, and revenge, and I regret my role smirking at it all. In the unlikely event he's reading, I'd like to offer a sincere apology for that much at least. Arabrot and myself are planning another English tour for 2017 or 2018, and maybe it's nothing more than a ridiculous daydream, but even from my position as a middle-aged man, I can sense that there's still time left to rescue something creative from this whole horrific mess when we roll back through Great Yarmouth next time. There is always time for all of us to make things right.

*Names and locations have been changed.

The audiobook of John Doran's memoir about his recovery from alcoholism, habitual drug use, and mental illness, Jolly Lad, which is based on his Menk column for VICE, is out now. You can "pick up" a copy from Audible by clicking on this link. Otherwise, Amazon and iTunes also have it.

Photo via Flickr user kevinkarnsfamily.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled mandatory minimum sentences for repeat drug traffickers are unconstitutional.

The decision, one of two released Friday morning, overturns a policy brought in under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper that forced judges to hand down a minimum of one year in jail to people who are convicted of more than one trafficking offence within a 10-year-period.

A separate ruling also struck down a law that infringed on a judge's ability to give credit for time served prior to a conviction.

Civil liberties advocates argued the laws amount to "cruel and unusual punishment"—a Charter violation—that disproportionately affects drug addicts and marginalized people. They said that the laws also effectively tie a judge's hands when it comes to using discretion during sentencing.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin's decision makes note of the mandatory minimum law's broad reach, pointing out that it could lead to jail time for someone who was simply passing around a joint.

"At one end of the range of conduct caught by the mandatory minimum sentence provision stands a professional drug dealer who engages in the business of dangerous drugs for profit, who is in possession of a large amount of drugs, and who has been convicted many times for similar offences," she wrote. "At the other end of the range stands the addict who is charged for sharing a small amount of drugs with a friend or spouse, and finds herself sentenced to a year in prison because of a single conviction for sharing marihuana in a social occasion nine years before. Most Canadians would be shocked to find that such a person could be sent to prison for one year."

The case wound up in Supreme Court when Vancouver man Joseph Lloyd was sentenced to a year in prison after being convicted of possession for the purpose of trafficking. He'd been caught in 2013 holding a few grams of heroin, crack cocaine, and crystal methamphetamine, and had a prior conviction. Lloyd's lawyer argued his client was addicted to those drugs and was in engaging in low-level dealing to support his habit.

M-J Milloy, a research scientist with the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, told VICE the decision is repairing "a mistake made by the last federal government."

"Incarceration has few if any beneficial impacts for people who are addicted to drugs. It does not encourage or help or facilitate people ending their addictions and entering into recovery."

When the Harper government brought in the "tough on crime" law under 2012's Safe Streets and Communities Act, it was pitched as a way to nail major drug traffickers, but Milloy said the reality is it's just been another way to target addicts.

"With this and hopefully pending legalization of cannabis, we'll be moving away from the idea that we can arrest and imprison our way out of drug addiction."

The BC Civil Liberties Association, which acted as an intervener in both cases, said in a statement that mandatory minimum sentences are ineffective, costly, and unjust.

"They serve to perpetuate systemic discrimination in our justice system and are inconsistent with the goals of reconciliation set out in the Truth and Reconciliation Report," said BCCLA lawyer Laura Track.

However the organization noted that dozens of mandatory minimum laws remain on the books in Canada.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.