All pages of 'Denim Delinquent' courtesy of HoZac Books

By the dawn of the 1970s, rock 'n' roll had gone from being a rebellion to an august cultural institution, and both musicians and critics were taking advantage of the genre's newfound cachet. While bands dipped into bottomless recording budgets to fill up album sides with long, ponderous suites of progressive rock, journalists kept pace by writing sprawling, navel-gazing reviews. The visceral charge of bands such as the Stooges, Grand Funk, and the New York Dolls was written off as silly kid stuff by the puka-shell-donning tastemakers of the high-profile rock publication, creating a gap between the top of the rock hierarchy and the fans who loved the joyous, insensitive noise coming out of the gutter.

That's where guys like Canadian Jim Parrett came in. Inspired by the the scant irreverent voices in rock journalism—namely Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer, Mike Saunders, and Nick Tosche— Parrett and others like him created small-time publications that predated the now-infamous punk 'zine boom by almost a decade. "Rolling Stone opened up new avenues with some interesting takes on the music scene until they started getting into the intellectual trip" says Parrett. "But when it comes to rock 'n' roll, intellect only gets in the way. What I wanted to do was communicate how it feels. How it sounds."

He tried to do that through Denim Delinquent, a zine he started in the summer of 1971. It lasted for eight smudgy, mimeographed issues, and it chased the roar of rock coming from London, Los Angeles, and his native Canada. Delinquent was inspired by equal parts raucous sounds, cheap drugs, and Mad magazine.

"Denim Delinquent didn't have as wide a view as Rolling Stone or Creem on what constitutes rock 'n' roll," declares Parrett."For Mark A. Jones and I, it was the power, the volume, the sound of a guitar, pounding drums, and just having a ball. We, like many other zine editors, were on a mission. It was a passion for us. What separated the big players from us is that we just did what we wanted without the pretty articles on Joni Mitchell or James Taylor. We had the freedom to invent ourselves without worrying that anybody would read the stuff. It was like our diary, with wacky illustrations and a whole lot of rocking going on. We were writing for ourselves, never thinking anybody would want to read it."

But people were reading. Delinquent fans included not only fellow zine editors like Phast Phreddie Patterson of Backdoor Man out in California or future Dictators member and Teenage Wasteland Gazette head honcho Andy Shernoff, but some of the the editors' inspirations. When Lester Bangs mailed in an unsolicited review of Lou Reed's fourth solo record Sally Can't Dance, Parrett and Jones knew it had to run. "Denim Delinquent number six had been completed, but there was no way we weren't going to include something by one of our idols," Parrett says. "So a page got cut with Bangs's piece in its place. However, Bangs's article was so long, the type ended up being tiny, so it would fit on a single page—it really should have been a two pager."

Denim Delinquent also had future rock stars courting the mag's favor. It supported Kiss from the get-go, and the band never forgot that. "I first saw Kiss opening, I think, for Blue Oyster Cult in 1974," remembers Parrett. "While the makeup and all that was fun, it was that monstrous sound they put out—everything up to the max, with thudding drums and power. It was that sound that I loved so much then. The fact that they were dismissed by so much of the rock press made them even more attractive. Gene Simmons contacted us and kept contacting us. He was very polite and always remembering our names, even a year apart from appearances. The band was nice enough after a 1976 show to autograph a dozen copies of the the magazine that we gave away in a contest with subscribers."

By this point in the game, Parrett was reaping the rewards of his passion project by getting his first paying freelance writing gigs in professional rock mags and being flown around on record labels' dime to check out band showcases. By 1977, he had a job and a family, was living in Dallas, and had stepped away from zine making.

"I put together a couple of punk groups and just stopped writing, which was truthfully a blessing—always hated writing, always will," he says. "Instead, I became another corporate stooge, dreading every moment of it, spending weekends with my poor kids in tow at record shops."

In the past few decades, proto-punk historians like Black to Comm's Chris Stigliano and Ugly Things co-conspirator Jeremy Cargill have sung the praises of Denim Delinquent in the pages of their magazines and their voices must have been pretty piercing, because now a compendium of the entire run will see the light of day via the publishing branch of the Chicago-based punk label HoZac later this month. Now back in Canada after years in the Middle East, Parrett is excited but skeptical how his down and dirty zine efforts will be taken 40 years after the fact.

"I don't know that Denim Delinquent will ever be anything more than a footnote." muses Parrett. "Most of the stuff I wrote was drunken, stoned stream of unconsciousness. It was something made to be fun, without any specific intellectual purpose. Remember, today's zines are wonders of dogged research into every nook and cranny of a band's music and their histories. Sure, Denim Delinquent has some cool interviews with Ron Asheton and Iggy Pop and others, but if you're looking for intellectual nourishment, you've come to the wrong place. If you just want to have fun, welcome aboard."

The Denim Delinquent compendium is available for pre-order from HoZac Records.

A young man who actually doesn't live with his parents, but you know, he's in a bedroom—you get the idea. Photo by Carl Wilson

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Living with your parents as an adult isn't ideal. It's nice, for instance, to have your own place, so you can decide which house plants you're going to buy and then never, ever water them. Or to be able to burn and irreversibly ruin saucepans without your mom screaming your full name at you. Or just, you know, have somewhere that's yours.

It's unfortunate, then, that more and more young people are now living with the people who raised them. According to the most recent survey out of the UK's Office of National Statistics, in 2013, 3.3 million 20- to 34-year-olds were living with their parents in the UK, a 25 percent increase from 1996. The main reasons for this, though bleak, are not surprising: financial insecurity among young people, topped off with a high cost of living.

However, living at home doesn't have to be shitty. Think about the positives: At least you have parents who are happy to house you until you get a job or work out what you're doing with your life. But if that's not good enough for you, you spoiled baby-human, here are a few more benefits to living with the people who made you.

THE LUXURY OF BEING ABLE TO THINK ABOUT YOURSELF LOADS

Living at home, especially if you've just graduated or are unemployed, gives you a better chance of figuring stuff out. Say you're spending the majority of your measly salary to rent an actual garden shed to live in: You're going to be a bit all over the place, aren't you? Come home from slaving away behind a desk all day, and you're not going to want to do much serious life thinking. The thinking goes that the stability of family life will allow you to establish what motivates you and to work out the steps you need to take to get the job you actually want. Or at least one you hate a little less.

Emerald, a 25-year-old trainee teacher, has lived with her parents in Sheffield for the past two years. The stability of home life—and her parents' advice—helped her identify all the things she did and didn't like in the world of work, before realizing teaching was the right idea for her. Without the luxury of "having the time to sit and think, to write my application, to try it out," she's unsure that she would have ever gone down that road.

GET TO KNOW YOUR PARENTS BETTER BEFORE THEY DIE

According to plenty of people I spoke to, being able to strengthen their relationship with their parents is one of the best things about "boomeranging" back home.

Bryony, a 26-year-old communications executive, lived with her parents in Kent on and off for eight months while she looked for work. She listed "spending time with my parents now we're all adults" as one of the most significant pros of her time there. "Although I was a bit worried we would fight like when I was a teenager, it was actually really nice, and I felt I got to know them much better as people rather than just 'parents.'"

And she makes a solid point: They are people, your parents, just like the sort you see in pubs or at bowling alleys. They probably have some semi-decent stories they'll actually share with you now you're at an age where they're no longer buying your clothes, so use your time with them to talk, rather than just going straight up to your room and scrolling through Instagram until your phone runs out of battery.

"Embrace it," says Helen, a 25-year-old teacher from Birmingham. "There's probably never going to be another time in your life when you're going to live with your parents. Sooner or later, it won't be there anymore, and you're going to miss it."

I MEAN, YES, YOU SAVE A TON OF MONEY

There's no shame in this one being a big motivation for moving home, assuming, obviously, you're lucky enough to have the option. But there has to be a purpose to it; you can't just be a lay around, telling your friends you're working on becoming a screenwriter while doing exactly zero writing and just waiting for production companies to hit you up on LinkedIn.

"Treat it as a safety net, but don't get comfy—it's not a hammock," says Rob, a 28-year-old personal trainer from London. "Use it as a base to build up to a point that you can take the first step toward your independence and keep your focus on that goal."

That goal could be anything, really, from saving for big things like a flat or further education, to small but equally important stuff, like taking an InDesign course or learning how to cross stitch so you can make terrible rap lyric cushion covers and sell them on Etsy. Having goals gives you something to aim for, stops you being a sponge, and hopefully staves off all that self-loathing.

IT'S A GOOD OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS ANYTHING THAT NEEDS ADDRESSING

One in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year, and for young people, anxiety and depression are particularly prevalent. Although everyone has his or her own way of dealing, the stability of living at home is usually a bit more of a positive force than, say, squatting a derelict Carphone Warehouse or living with housemates who really like doing cocaine and shouting at one another.

Depression was a determining factor in Emerald's decision to move back in with her parents. Living abroad with a poor support network, she was finding it increasingly difficult to cope with everyday life

"When I came back, I wasn't in a particularly good place," she says. "I found it hard to get up and do stuff, and it was nice to be somewhere where I couldn't just lie in bed all day: Someone will come along and make you get up. There's that kind of level of support. Having that really gave me the space I needed to work it out, go see my doctor, go see a therapist—basically sort myself out."

REALIZE IT'S A HUGE BLESSING, NOT A CURSE

Remember that being able to ping back into a rent-free or highly subsidized existence is a huge luxury, not your basic human right as offspring. Treat your parents with respect, don't throw a hissy fit when they ask you to wash your own clothes or stop collecting your nail clippings in a Tic Tac container on the night stand, because it's fucking gross.

Moving in with parents who will look out for and look after you is a luxury only a lucky few can rely on, so don't take it for granted.

France, once seen as the bastion of free will and equality, is an increasingly polarized society. In the upcoming presidential election Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front is, according to the latest polls, likely to come out on top in the first round of voting next April (to actually win the office, she'd have to win a second round, likely against former president Nicolas Sarkozy). The situation has gotten so bad that news that the National Front has plateaued in support—hovering between 23 and 27 percent of French voters—feels like a victory. At a time when Europe is increasingly drawn toward parties openly advocating racist policies, who's to say whether another terrorist attack on France by swarthy idiots corrupting Islam for their own mad agenda could shatter this glass ceiling?

These questions and more make Dheepan, the Palme d'Or–winning film by Jacques Audiard about a family of Sri Lankan refugees trying to get by in a virulently xenophobic Paris, the most urgent and radical French film to be released in America since Audiard's harrowing crime drama A Prophet in 2010.

It's true that Dheepan neither mentions the far-right party nor does it seem particularly concerned with it. But the film follows two asylum-seekers—who are the type of immigrants who are the scourge of the National Front—as they use fake passports and lie about their relationships as they seek refuge in France. Though Audiard does stop short of making them Muslim, as he did with the main character in A Prophet, choosing instead to have them be Tamil Tigers on the run from Sri Lanka, Audiard still seems to be making a point about a brutal civil war that the world ignored for decades. It's this ability to be on point without ramming home the point that has made Audiard the favorite director of politically tuned-in actors such as Edward Norton.

Audiard has been lauded as the French Scorsese, yet his victory in Cannes was met with a significant amount of backlash. The main criticism seemed to be aimed at the lack of realism in a genre film that seemed more inspired by Taxi Driver than anything else. This mixed reaction caused Cameron Bailey, the black artistic director of the Toronto International Film Festival, to wonder whether there was a racial dimension to the criticism. Audiard films typically sell around 2 million tickets in French cinemas, yet his Palme d'Or effort has only garnered 800,000 entries.

Much has been made of Audiard's choice of casting. To play the title role, he tapped Antonythasan Jesuthasan, a former Tamil Tiger turned author and now actor, whose own history shares remarkable similarities with his character. Dheepan's wife, Yalini, is played by non-actor Kalieaswari Srinivasan. In the film, the two Sri Lankans join forces to get to France, pretending to be husband and wife. But once in Paris, they encounter racism and violence as they struggle to hold onto the pretense of their marriage, taking on menial jobs as a domestic helper (Yalini) and building custodian (Dheepan) to make ends meet. Dheepan is a genre-busting film—in making the refugees action heroes, the film challenges notions of what a refugee is and, more importantly, their depictions onscreen.

VICE: Your hero is an immigrant from Sri Lanka. Do you think that this was an especially necessary topic to the tale, given the current political situation in France and the rise of the right throughout Europe?
Jacques Audiard: It was an immigrant in the form of someone who is really a stranger to French culture. They do not speak the French language—they came from a very faraway country that the French do not know about. I was also inspired by the writings of Montesquieu in the Persian Letters.

You have said that you do not necessarily think this is a political film. Yet it seems impossible that this is not a film with political intentions?
I don't know why, but in French cinema, as soon as you have an immigrant as a character, it is a political film. When you show the banlieue, the outskirts of a city, it's a political film. But I think the political value is elsewhere, in my case, in having actors who speak their own language, Tamil in this case, and in choosing to cast actors without having any Caucasian in the main roles. That is a political statement. People don't realize that, and they don't label it as political, funnily enough. I don't mean to judge French cinema, but I feel a bit cornered into only casting French people. I don't feel at ease very much with that.

"I think the political value is elsewhere, in my case, in having actors who speak their own language, Tamil in this case, and in choosing to cast actors without having any Caucasian in the main roles. That is a political statement."

There is a lot of academic research that the white middle-class male audience, of a certain age, can mainly associate with white protagonist on screen, whereas minorities and women can identify with other races and genders. Are you trying to break this barrier by having a Tamil hero?
If you tell yourself once a day that cinema needs reality in order to exist, then it's enough for me to walk out where I live and look around, without searching for excessive naturalism. I just want to make a portrait of society.

But you do this by avoiding realism in the storytelling?
I chose Tamil actors to give some realism, people who could embellish the characters and find poetry in the situation. However, I realized that when we were shooting, that the film refused some specific effects in the making of it. For instance, a shot that was too much framed, a dolly shot that was too much cared for, it was something that we realized didn't work. That was indicating that the film didn't want to have a shape, a usual narrative. It refused realism.

How did this affect the film?
It's curious, because I think the film changes. The first sequence when we are in the refugee camp is almost like a war movie. Then when they land in Paris, it looks like a documentary, a social film. Then in the projects, it's like another film. The thin line that ties all these stories together is the fake family, but I don't think it was very clear when we were filming the project that there would be these differences.

There are many films being made about refugees. What are the trappings for you, where you said, "I shouldn't do this or that"?
I think it is about making a film that is not about immigrants but about people. That is the main thrust. I think that is something we were discussing when writing the film, why would the movie be any different in its treatment of the characters than a movie with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. There is not a reason for that.

Some of the criticism of the film was that it went from a realistic setting to an optimistic, romanticized ideal. How do you feel about these comments?
It's not like that. The only family she has are those who are in the UK. That is why she goes. I think that if you look a little about the Tamil community, the diaspora is mainly in England and in Canada.

"I think it is about making a film that is not about immigrants but about people."

When he's watching TV news story about Tamils, he's watching a British news story despite being in France. Is that you condemning French media reporting of conflicts in the world?
I don't know about that. It's only the UK station where we could find a clip that told a bit of the history of the conflict.

Was there a language problem with the actors?
Whenever I'm asked what it means to direct actors, I often say that it's learning the language of those actors, and hopefully they will have to learn the language of Jacques. In this case, of course, it was even more difficult. I had to make a bigger effort to try and learn their acting language. Of course, I couldn't understand a single word, and I couldn't even understand all their ways of expressing emotions that were very different from mine, their sense of humor and their irony. I found all of that very interesting. In the case of Jesuthasan, I told him things, and he would say, "Yes, yes," and then he would run off and do different things. It did not create problems. I never got tired of filming them. I thought that they were of marvelous beauty.

Did you speak to Jesuthasan about his past? Did that influence your story?
Yes. I learned it during the casting. He introduced himself as a novelist, and when I talked to him about the subject of the film, he said, "It sounds like my life." Afterward, I read Gorilla, one of his books, that is literally his autobiography. It is amazing.

Is it too boring for you to make a straight action film?
Maybe. I think that genre is a bit like Russian dolls. It's very practical, very easy to not communicate with the audience. Inside it you have to show other things.

Is this your closest homage to Scorsese?
It's true. For the climax of the film, I was thinking a lot about Scorsese. I admire him, but I don't know if it's homage.

I heard you don't like the title.
The title Dheepan is a total failure. We needed a title in order to present the film at Cannes. We had to register one in order to show it to the selection committee at Cannes, and I was offered a full range of stupid titles, and this was the least stupid title.

Follow Kaleem Aftab on Twitter.

Dheepan opens at the IFC Center in New York on Friday, May 6.

Rapper Bobby Shmurda performs during Power 105.1's Powerhouse 2014 at Barclays Center on October 30, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Taylor Hill/Getty Images)

Read: What We Know About the Cement-Shoed Corpse That Washed Ashore in Brooklyn

The bizarre dead body that washed up on Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn earlier this week was allegedly a high-ranking member of the G Stone Crips, the crew cops say rapper Bobby Shmurda is affiliated with, DNAInfo reports.

Police sources told the outlet 28-year-old career criminal Peter Martinez was bound in plastic bags with his face duct-taped and some 100 pounds of cement encasing both feet.

Investigators believe Martinez's feet were dunked in a bucket of cement and left to harden, but the job was "botched." That might be because, as crime experts and a retired detective told VICE, cement shoes are something of a true crime urban legend, and experts in the practice aren't exactly readily available. In this case, air mixed with cement presumably made Martinez's corpse rise to the top of the water.

Ackquille Pollard—a.k.a. Bobby Shmurda—is already pretty chummy with the NYPD: As the Daily News reported, the rapper sued the department on Friday over what he says was a false arrest for gun and drug charges. Cops apprehended him at a friend's place in Rockaway Parkway on June 3, 2014, allegedly kicking down the door and ransacking the home without a warrant.

The suit claims the gun and drugs cops found did not belong to the rapper, and that officers were "chanting the lyrics to his chart-topping songs," the arrest leaving him with lasting "nervous shock and mental anguish." (A subsequent arrest on murder conspiracy charges left the rapper in New York City's Rikers Island jail for much of last year.)

Meanwhile, no arrests have been made over the death of Martinez, who reportedly owed a lot of money and whose girlfriend is currently pregnant.

Photo via Flickr user Michael Coghlan

Earlier this week, Peter Clarke, the chief Inspector of prisons, told the Guardian that synthetic cannabis is having a "devastating impact" on British prisons. Nineteen deaths in prison between 2012 and 2014 were linked to the use of synthetic cannabis, commonly known as spice, but on a day-to-day operational level, the drug has been cited as a factor in increased bullying, violence, and self-harm among the prison population.

I teach at a prison. With inevitable regularity, every group I teach will at some point ask me whether I have ever taken drugs, what drugs I am going to be taking after work, and what drugs I plan to take at the weekend. My stock answer is to tell them to mind their own business. Today I turned the question on them and asked about their experiences of spice in prison.

'I'M NOT GOING TO SMOKE SOMETHING THAT'S BEEN BUNGED UP SOMEONE'S ARSE'

Andre, 20, is expecting his release on tag to be confirmed any day now. This is his fourth time inside, all for very minor theft and never over three months at a time. He is open about his drug use outside of prison, saying that he smokes cannabis every day and uses cocaine most weekends—albeit his definition of a weekend being from after work on Thursday until the following Tuesday morning.

I ask Andre if he has smoked any spice in prison. "No bro, no fucking way. For a start, I'm not going to smoke something that's probably been bunged up someone's arse." OK, but what if it was thrown over the wall or dropped in by a drone? "No bro, still no chance. There's no way of knowing actually what spice is, could be fucking fish tranquilizer! Anyway, being inside is my detox before the summer."

Andre continues by describing a group of prisoners from his last sentence who would openly congregate in one cell and smoke spice during their association (association time being a prison equivalent to a communal work break or kids after-school club). Weren't they worried about an officer walking past? "No bro, most screws don't give a shit as long as it doesn't make you start kicking off and acting like a dick around the wing."

While I feel confident that most officers probably would intervene if they knew prisoners were smoking spice in open sight, I can see how prisoners might think the opposite: Spice is odorless, and combined with the fact that loud, erratic behavior is commonplace on most wings, it's easy to see how an officer without specific training might not pick up on the signs.

'IT'S MAINLY THE YOUNGER LADS, BUT OLDER PEOPLE ARE GETTING INTO IT'

Jackson, 28, is in prison for driving while disqualified (and several times over the legal limit of alcohol). Despite only receiving a sentence of a couple of months, he's been unfortunate in that he's had to move between prisons three times. I ask Jackson whether he noticed a strong synthetic cannabis presence across each of the prisons. "Yeah, it's mainly the younger lads, but there's more older people getting into it now. A wing cleaner at the first jail, probably about forty, used to smoke it on his tea break. He only got caught when, after one break, he started dancing on the pool table, singing about shagging a governor's wife."

I want to know if Jackson's seen anything more serious. "An eighteen-year-old took a big drag on some mamba out in the yard. Next thing he was on the floor having a full-on seizure. Had to go to hospital." A few other men in the group have witnessed similar reactions to spice, and these darker anecdotes seem to outweigh the "calling out the governor" type of hi-jinx.

I ask Jackson if he's ever tried spice in prison. "At the first jail, yeah. A kid who worked on the servery used to sell it—he called it crom. We ended up sat in the cell spinning out to The Chase for an hour. Felt fucking rough after, mind."

'IT'S FOOD FOR WASTEMEN'

Eric, 30, is one year into a three-year sentence for the supply of class A drugs. He says that he uses cocaine socially when not in prison, and has in the past smoked weed. Like Andre, Eric also says that he sees prison as an opportunity to enjoy a period of sobriety, but when I ask him whether he would use synthetic drugs on the outside, he is immediately dismissive of spice, calling it "food for wastemen." I ask him to expand, and he relates me back to Andre's point about many synthetic cannabis products having been found to contain ingredients such as tranquilizer intended for use on koi carp.

But would he sell it? "Nah, I've only ever moved stuff that I know there'll be no comeback from. There's no way of knowing what you're selling with that, and the last thing you want is man dying on you."

Related: Watch 'Spice Boys'

'THE PEOPLE IN HERE ARE CRIMINALS. YOU CAN'T JUST ASK THEM NOT TO DO SOMETHING'

Ant, 22, has pleaded guilty to a Section 20 (more commonly known as GBH) and is looking at a sentence of at least three years. He tells me that he committed the attack while "monged off my face on meow" and has found the ready availability of drugs in prison to be something of an issue; he seems to genuinely not want to take them, and is aware that should he fail a drug test between now and his sentencing, it will harm his chances of a more lenient sentence.

It's clear that Ant's been getting annoyed with how lightly some members of the group have been treating the discussion, and I ask him what he thinks should be done to help keep spice out of prison. "They could start by having more screws on more shifts. If there isn't even one screw on every landing during association, then what do they expect to happen? The people in here are criminals for fuck's sake, you can't just ask them not to do something."

It's always difficult to keep group discussions about drugs on track—partly because of the general fascination over whether or not I take them, but also because it's evident that drugs tend to play a prominent part of many prisoners' lives outside of jail. With this is mind, it's no surprise that a difficult to detect, and potent high is proving so popular, even taking into account the apparent risks attached to using it.

On the basis that it appears near impossible to keep drugs out of prison, I ask the group members whether they think there should be tougher sanctions imposed on those who are caught using drugs, synthetic or otherwise. "Instead of more punishment, just give us something interesting to do all day and then some proper food before bed," Ant says. It's difficult to argue with this; if I was bored, demotivated, and hungry all day every day, there's probably a fair chance I'd be tempted to sit on my bunk and watch the Beast chase down retired accountants from Maidstone as I tripped out on a bit of spice.

Buy Gregory's comics and visit his website and Tumblr.

Anthony Firkins and his wife Julie before his death. Photo courtesy of Julie Cobio Firkins

This piece was published in partnership with the Influence.

Julie Cobio Firkins prayed and then walked into a room to watch her 33-year-old husband die. "The video that you're going to see is very sad," she remembers the officer warning her—twice—before playing footage from a police bodycam. But as the tape rolled, she had a different thought: It was brutal, not sad.

Why were all those officers tasing her husband, over and over, while he lay under a trailer truck? And why, once they had him in handcuffs, didn't they help him more when he cried out that he couldn't breathe?

"If you're talking, you're breathing, dude," an officer said.

On a clear, mild night in April 2013, at just after three, an Idaho man named Bobby Muse called 911 because he thought he heard a woman screaming. Two Nampa County police officers drove to a neighborhood in Nampa known to police as a place where trouble happens.

But on their way to the call, Officer Eric Duke noticed a guy driving a pickup truck with his lights off. Duke tried to alert him by flashing his own lights, but Anthony Firkins raced away in his truck, a move that might make more sense given his likely state of mind—he'd recently relapsed on meth. He'd agreed to get help, but put it off because the week before he ran into police, a grandfather he'd adored had died.

"He was high on meth and probably freaked out, getting chased by police," Julie says. He'd had at least one panic attack before. "The way I know him, he was probably like, Who are these guys? What are they doing? I'm pretty sure he was just scared."

"I can still hear his screams," —Julie Cobio Firkins

Anthony Firkins sped through the small town, blowing through red lights and stop signs. When his pickup hit some railway tracks, it skidded and spun down the road, crashing into a fence. He ran out, hopped onto the truck bed, and jumped a fence into the lot of Pacific Steel & Recycling. He crawled under the axle of a truck trailer, and that's where officers found him. Most of the police bodycam footage—the Influence obtained several videos—starts there.

"Taser taser taser!" an officer yells, as they run to block off both sides of the truck. The tasers start going off. Another yells, "Tase him again!"

An officer drags him out from under the trailer. The confusing footage shows a blur of limbs, handcuffs, a wooden baton. Tasers go off the entire time. "Slow it down guys!" a voice of reason cautions, once Firkins has been hauled from under the truck. A taser pops again—this time a direct hit to his bare side. They're knocking him (though notthathard) with a baton and then their fists, trying to get him in position to be cuffed.

The cops handcuff him and search his pockets. Breathing heavily, they then begin to calm down and mill around, collecting evidence. Over the next five minutes or so, they make small talk, sometimes punctuated by noises from Firkins and their responses.

At one point, Firkins yells loudly. Then he wails "help" a total of seven times. "Save me!" he cries.

"We just did, man," an officer replies. "You're good."

"Relax," one says. "Don't start getting froggy, dude!" another warns. "Don't get froggy!"

"Oh shit!" Firkins screams. "I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. Goddammit, I can't breathe. I promise. I can't fucking breathe. Help!"

"I'm going to die," he moans.

"You're not going to die," says one. "We got the medics coming in here, so you're OK."

He gets quiet. The officers start chatting about how dirty their uniforms are—one suggests his wife won't be pleased with the extra laundry. Minutes later, they notice that Firkins has stopped breathing.

"I can still hear his screams," says his wife, Julie.

His dad, Anthony Firkins Sr., got the call while driving for the trucking company where his son had also worked. He took on the unfathomably grim job of studying the autopsy photos. "Nobody should have to look at their child's brain, but I had to."

Everyone seemed at a loss as to why Anthony Firkins had died.

"He was young. He was healthy. They were digging for a reason," Julie says. Did he maybe have a heart condition, she says an officer asked her on the phone.

He didn't.

Then the coroner reached a conclusion that made no sense to them: She said Firkins's cause of death was consistent with "excited delirium" (with acute meth intoxication as another significant condition). The manner of death—homicide, suicide, etc.—was undetermined.

His family had never heard of excited delirium. This was not a satisfying answer. "They were tasing him, beating him, not letting him breathe," Julie says. "Just to say that it was excited delirium, that's a cop out."

Sheriff's recruits observe handcuffing techniques at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission Basic Law Enforcement Academy in Burien last year. Photo by Karen Ducey for the Washington Post via Getty Images

Excited delirium is a very strange thing. Coined in the mid 1980s by a Miami medical examiner named Charles Wetli to explain deaths that seemed linked to cocaine use (but not overdose), it reportedly makes sufferers erupt in bizarre, aggressive behavior that may end in sudden death.

Dr. Wetli thought excited delirium mostly afflicted young men with outsize coke habits, but he also proposed some highly dubious risk factors for women: a history of cocaine use and too much sex.

When the dead bodies of sex workers began turning up around Miami throughout the 1980s, baffling detectives, who could find no signs of struggle or clear cause of death, Dr. Wetli surmised that after years of crack use, just one sex act was enough to kill them off. The women, it turned out, had in fact been asphyxiated, most likely by a serial killer.

"You're talking about little girls on the street, and it's not too hard to asphyxiate them, especially when you have their backs on the ground and your weight on their abdomen," a pathology professor told theLos Angeles Times.

Ever since, there's been disagreement about what excited delirium is and what causes it—and whether it exists. Yet it's found its way into police training: Cops are widely taught that people in a state of excited delirium are out of their minds, have "superhuman strength," and are "impervious to pain."

It's "the difference between a Tyrannosaurus and a tabby cat. There's no subtlety about the intensity of energy, the physicality. It doesn't seem like you're dealing with anything human," expert William Everett is quoted saying in the Idaho Peace Officer Standards & Training lesson plan.

And medical examiners cite excited delirium as cause of death, even though it's not recognized by the American Medical Association or the DSM (the American College of Emergency Physicians does recognize it as a distinct medical condition).

Civil liberties advocates are highly skeptical of the idea that otherwise healthy people just drop dead in police custody for reasons that have nothing to do with the police. "There have been more empirically based reasons why someone might have expired that aren't investigated once excited delirium is raised," says Eric Balaban, senior staff counsel at the ACLU's National Prison Project. "In instances where it's been raised initially, once more inquiry has been done, they've often changed the cause of death."

Set against that are the cops who say they've witnessed it.

Police academy instructor Rick Bowen once showed up at a domestic violence call. He was "a very seasoned street cop" by then, he says, but this was like nothing he'd ever seen. "There was a long, violent struggle. He was almost animalistic; all of his actions were like that of a... caged animal." Bowen says he would like to send the bill for his five knee surgeries to excited delirium deniers and tell them about the nightmares he had for years.

The man singlehandedly took on a squad of cops, Bowen says. "Then he was completely silent." He died right in front of him; if Bowen had known what excited delirium was at the time, he says, he could have gotten the man medical help before it was too late.

"I fail to see where this is coming from, that excited delirium has become a very common reason for people to die." —Dr. Werner Spitz

Captain Greg Meyer spent 30 years in the LAPD; the popularity of PCP in the 70s and 80s made life decidedly unpleasant for police. "One little white guy, an architecture student, fought six cops and woke up in the hospital with no memory of it," he says. Back then they didn't have a fancy medical term for it: "We just called it 'whacked out.'"

"Some people make excuses for them," Meyer says of drug users. "'Not their fault,' which is crap. They choose to take the drugs; they could die. C'est la vie!"

Theories that have been floated about how someone could die of excited delirium include an extreme spike in body temperature, a sudden jolt of adrenaline, or skeletal muscle breakdown.

Excited delirium skeptics acknowledge that aggression, confusion, and strange behavior exist. Obviously, sometimes people do too many drugs and freak out, or have an underlying mental health problem that spirals into a psychotic episode. And it can be difficult to safely restrain someone in a mental health crisis, whether you call it excited delirium or not.

Where the two sides drastically part ways is in the idea that people are just dying from excited delirium. These deaths almost always seem to happen during encounters with police, skeptics point out. And there are many ways to die in police custody that aren't mysterious at all.

Dr. Werner Spitz, a German forensic pathologist with black-rimmed eye glasses and a shock of white hair, has been involved in enough historic investigations and trials to thrill a conspiracy theorist: the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.; OJ Simpson, Phil Spector, JonBenet Ramsey, Casey Anthony.

He says he's seen close to a hundred cases where excited delirium was cited as cause of death. He hasn't seen one where he came away convinced that that's what actually happened. "I fail to see where this is coming from, that excited delirium has become a very common reason for people to die," he says. Often, he finds a more straightforward explanation: suffocation through being restrained in a way that prevents breathing.

"Maybe they can breathe just a little bit or maybe they cannot breathe at all," Dr. Spitz says. "Occasionally... individuals cannot breathe, and they'll even scream, 'I cannot breathe.' If they breathe, they'll be fine. If they don't, they'll be dead."

"It happens routinely," adds Erik Heipt, a Seattle lawyer who litigates policy brutality cases for the firm Budge & Heipt. "Someone is held in the prone position with multiple officers on their back, goes still, and dies underneath the weight.

"It's a vicious cycle where you have officers who are perceiving someone resisting," he continues. "So they're pushing down on them to get them to stop resisting. They're underneath, having trouble breathing, so they're struggling harder. Police add more body weight. stops moving... all of the sudden they look, and the person's face is purple."

If they've been running, struggling, experiencing a mental health crisis, or using certain drugs, compression and positional asphyxia become especially dangerous. Just when they might need to breathe more deeply, police action might make it harder to breathe, leading to hypoxia: a mismatch of oxygen needs to oxygen the body's getting. A sneaky killer.

"The process of hypoxia is insidious, and subjects might not exhibit any clear symptoms before they simply stop breathing," Dr. Donald Reay, the chief medical examiner for Seattle, wrote in 1996. "Generally, it takes several minutes for significant hypoxia to occur, but it can happen more quickly if the subject has been violently active and is already out of breath."

Even after a person has stopped struggling, police might continue putting pressure on him or her, thinking he or she just tired out or stopped resisting, when really he or she has passed out. Later, officers might say the suspect had been trying to throw them off and run away.

"But that's not why he's rising," Dr. Spitz says. "When you cannot breathe, you fight for your life. And you only have one of those."

In 2010, Brian Torgerson, 45, opened his door to find two Seattle Police Department officers. His dad had called them because Brian, who was schizophrenic, had hit him, then got in his car and drove off. His parents hoped officers would get him help.

Brian and the officers chatted outside his door. But when they grabbed him, he locked his arms to his chest. They tussled, and the cops called for backup. Officers from two precincts stormed up the stairs to Brian's apartment.

Despite witness testimony that Brian wasn't resisting, especially after he was handcuffed—unless you count his yelling "You're killing me!" pre-handcuffs—over the next 20 minutes, multiple officers at a time sat on him or pressed down on him with their knees. They covered his head and neck in a spit hood, which became so drenched with his blood and vomit that it likely choked him further. They strapped him, facedown—and still wearing the spit hood—to a flat board, and then sat on and kneed him again, even though his hands and legs were bound to the board.

"I was concerned that the man might be having trouble breathing given the number of officers on top of him and the fact that he was on his stomach strapped to the board," a witness said. Brian lived but suffered severe, permanent brain damage.

Right after the incident, the department posted a version of events on its website: "The officers escorted the man down to the street where they were waiting for transportation to the hospital. While there, the man stopped breathing," as the Seattle Times reported.

In court, the officers involved didn't exactly lie about what happened, but there were some peculiar omissions.

"The incident resulted in a 'Help the Officer' radio broadcast. Officers responded from the both the West and East Precincts. The Seattle Fire Department arrived and treated Torgerson for medical problems and a cut to the nose. He was subsequently transported to HMC," stated officer G. Leavitt, swiftly passing over the part where Torgerson was handcuffed, bleeding and vomiting, in a spit hood, with officers on his back.

"Any body position that interferes with breathing can cause death," states a training manual used by police in Victoria, Canada.

"If there were a medal for withholding important information from a court of law, the defendants would win the gold." lawyers for Torgerson's family wrote in a legal brief. "From reading defendant's motion, for example, the Court would have no idea that for over 20 minutes after Brian Torgerson's hands were cuffed behind his back and his legs zip-tied together, multiple officers were on top of him—holding him in a prone (facedown) position position by kneeling on his upper back, literally compressing him with enough body weight to suffocate him and stayed on top of him after noting he was no longer breathing."

Asphyxiation doesn't mark the body in any way, leaving no physical signs to make it obvious to coroners that someone died because he or she couldn't breathe ("It's not like CSI," Heipt, who helped litigate the Torgerson case, helpfully notes). Circumstantial evidence, like video or witness testimony, is the only way to determine suffocation from compression as cause of death. It can be all too easy to bury what really happened, like in the terse prose of a police report.

The city offered a $1.75 million settlement to end the Torgersons' case—apparently they weren't too confident in officers' defense that Brian's heart stopped due to excited delirium and that they'd used reasonable force.

Whenever an in-custody death of this kind doesn't implicate police, there's no pressure on departments to change their training procedures. "That gives blanket permit to the police department to continue to do this," says Dr. Spitz, "instead of looking the thing straight in the face, calling it what it is."

In his experience, it seems that a lot of officers don't realize how little weight it takes to suffocate someone. It's not just chest compression that does it, either; pressing down on the lower body can also be dangerous if it prevents the diaphragm from expanding.

When Kevin Colindres, an 18-year-old autistic man from Florida, died after an encounter with police, the medical examiner didn't understand why. So she asked officers to recreate the incident, with the officer who'd applied restraint taking Kevin's place.

As Dr. Spitz says, "In less than one minute, the officer that applied the restraint but was subject of restraint ... he indicated to the restraining officer, 'Get off of me right now,' he said. 'I can't breathe.' He very severely panicked under the restraints."

But there are best practices to avoid asphyxia in a person who's been restrained.

Police guidelines in other countries seem unequivocal. "Any body position that interferes with breathing can cause death," states a training manual used by police in Victoria, Canada. Officers are told to recognize risks such as people saying they can't breathe, gurgling/gasping sounds, panic, prolonged resistance, and "sudden tranquility." They must also avoid or at least utterly minimize the time spent in a prone restraint. And: "Do not sit or lean on the abdomen EVER."

The UK's College of Policing "authorized professional practice" sheet similarly warns officers of death risks if someone is positioned in a way that inhibits breathing and counsels, "the best management is de-escalation, avoiding prone restraint, restraining for the minimum amount of time, lying the detainee on their side and constant monitoring of vital signs."

And even in the US, a 1995 manual by the Department of Justice advised, "To help ensure subject safety and minimize the risk of sudden in-custody death, officers should learn to recognize factors contributing to positional asphyxia. Where possible, avoid the use of maximally prone restraint techniques (e.g. hogtying)." Other guidelines included "as soon as the suspect is handcuffed, get him off his stomach." The NYPD issues very similar advice.

Other professionals concur: "... We are trained to never put a patient facedown on the ground," wrote Marc E. Fitch, who's trained ER staff and mental health providers on crisis prevention techniques. He explains, "Facedown on the ground, the patient is often unable to expand his chest to take a breath. This condition is exacerbated by people piling on top of the patient in an effort to keep him or her down, the patient's weight and health conditions, and his or her stress level." Other risk factors include obesity and recent use of drugs like cocaine or meth.

The advice is sometimes muddied, however. For example, the basic training manual used in Idaho—where Anthony Firkins died—splits restraint instructions into three categories: compliant, unknown risk and high-risk handcuffing. It seems to suggest that prone handcuffing is the best strategy for a "high-risk" suspect: "... The highlighted areas in each section emphasize the principle to be accomplished. The methods to accomplish it may vary depending on circumstances and environment. Control and officer safety are always primary considerations," and includes an illustration.

Yet the manual does embed a Wikipedia entry on positional asphyxia at the end, as well as Dr. Reay's paper on it. And in the section on excited delirium as one of the ten tips presented by an expert says to avoid the prone position during transport—as did a police bulletin distributed to Nampa sheriff's deputies in 2010. It seems like a confusing combination.

Seattle police recruits Travis Duennes, left, and Tre Smith work together through a practice scenario at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission in Burien. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

On a boiling July day in 2011, Alonzo Ashley and his girlfriend were at Denver Zoo when Ashley got so sick from the heat that he threw up. He went to a water fountain to splash water on his head. When a security guard came up to him, he allegedly became hostile, although his girlfriend says he merely told the security guard to leave him alone. At that point, Ashley seemed to lose it. He chased after the security guard and pushed over some trash cans. Zoo officials called the police.

The first officer on the scene told him to sit. Ashley sat, but then got up and wandered away. More officers arrived and tried to take him down, tasing him in "drive stun" mode—a direct hit designed to cause pain—and punching him in the stomach. They tased him again. Officers would later note that Ashley seemed "extremely strong."

"Help me, Grandma, I don't want to go," the apparently confused Ashley cried out.

He was handcuffed, laid on his stomach, his legs folded in a figure-four lock—crossed and pressed toward his back. He threw up again. After a few minutes, Ashley stopped breathing and was pronounced dead in the hospital.

Later, one of the officers said that Ashley's sweating and apparent strength led him to conclude they had an excited delirium case on their hands. The trial documents note, "It is often impossible to control individuals experiencing excited delirium using traditional pain compliance techniques. Paradoxically, these individuals are physiologically more likely to die from a prolonged struggle, but also more likely to physically resist restraint."

This is a potentially lethal paradox, regardless of one's stance on excited delirium. Let's say that excited delirium exists and gives you superhuman strength, and you can die from it. Or, let's say it's nonsense, but the symptoms associated with it have developed because of a mental health crisis or bad drug reaction (or in Ashley's case, possibly overheating). What are officers supposed to do to make sure the person, others in the area, and officers are safe?

Michael Brantley, a police instructor at the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, believes that excited delirium exists and that it can result in death on its own. He also doubts that aggressive police tactics are the best way to prevent that outcome. "I think a lot of it depends on situation. If you have someone already agitated because of the state they're in, to introduce pepper spray, a taser, a large group of officers, it can increase that anxiety already kicking up their system."

But Captain Greg Meyer thinks tasers are a godsend in their purported ability to incapacitate excited delirium sufferers—and that the sooner they're under control, the sooner they can get medical help.

The science is still out on tasers, but it seems clear that their overuse can escalate an already fraught police encounter. In fact, lawsuits over sudden deaths in police custody have targeted manufacturer Taser International. The company, for its part, has not inspired confidence by avidly promoting the idea that "excited delirium" can be deadly on its own to police departments, even distributing a pithy note to share with bereaved families: "We regret the unfortunate loss of life. There are many cases where excited delirium caused by various mental disorders or medical conditions, that may or may not include drug use, can lead to a fatal conclusion."

Check out the VICE News documentary on racial disparities in who gets pulled over by cops in one New Jersey town.

Death associated with restraint asphyxia in police custody has been endlessly debated, with some experts (those favored by police departments) contending that it's unlikely that people die that way. Some researchers have concluded that you probably can't die like that; others that you can.

As Rick Bowen points out, no cop ever went to work hoping for a mysterious in-custody death on their watch. And police just don't get the right training to deal with mentally ill or otherwise distressed people—an oversight that far too often ends in fatal shootings. But many police practices and habits escalate situations that can and should be de-escalated.

Julie Firkins couldn't understand why a dead dog got more attention than her dead husband.

Anthony Firkins's family wonders what might have been had officers handled things differently. He was tasered six times (according to the Idaho Statesman's count).

It should be noted that once he was in cuffs, officers calmed down and tried to get him to relax; footage doesn't suggest multiple officers putting weight on his back for an extended period, like in the Brian Torgerson case (although the police cams don't pick up everything and it's pretty dark). The two officers, Joshua Krohn and Eric Duke, who spent the most time with Firkins after he'd been restrained, tried to calm him down. "Just relax man. Take deep breaths, you're alright," Krohn told him.

But other than short spells on his left side and then his right side—while officers searched his pockets a minute or so later—Firkins was handcuffed and down on his stomach, in the prone position that many training manuals advise against.

He was on his stomach when he repeatedly yelled that he couldn't breathe. The idea that people who are having trouble breathing can't talk appears to be a misconception—air can come out of you, even there isn't enough coming in.

Firkins was prone when Officer Duke put him in a figure four-figure leg lock, crossing his legs behind his back and pressing them against his back. He'd kicked back his legs once, but after that, he stopped physically struggling or making much noise.

He was still on his stomach when Officer Becky Doney—who later told investigators that he'd stopped fighting at that point, which video evidence confirms—placed him in a hobble restraint.

Firkins stayed prone until officer Garrett Tillet noticed that the "fine dust" on the ground under his face was no longer moving. He felt under his nose and couldn't find his breath.

"Yeah he was breathing... and his breathing was shallow about twenty seconds earlier, and then I took my hands off him," Officer Krohn told the arriving EMTs.

Firkins had no pulse by the time the medics arrived. They took him to the ER, where doctors tried to revive him, pumping his chest. They briefly brought back a pulse, but it didn't last. He was pronounced dead shortly after five in the morning.

In 2014, a Filer, Idaho, officer shot and killed a black lab. The story was widely reported, the dead dog memorialized on a Facebook page with more than 11,000 likes demanding that "Officer Hassani get out of Filer, Idaho." The mayor and city council faced a recall campaign over the incident.

Julie Firkins couldn't understand why a dead dog got more attention than her dead husband.

Both she and Anthony Sr. still don't get why no one faced any consequences for her husband's death, or why the family didn't even get an apology. It took Julie ten months to even get access to one of the videos—the chief of police let her watch it, but only if she promised not to bring recording materials into the room (the Nampa Police Department declined to comment, noting that the statute of limitations hadn't expired).

Eventually, the family gave up on suing, because the amount of money they might have obtained in a lawsuit wouldn't have offset the money spent on lawyers and experts, and money is tight. Anthony Firkins left three kids behind, now aged 12, eight, and six.

"We're talking about a human being's life," says Anthony Sr. "Three boys," he adds of the kids. "I wish I could have filmed the funeral, so could see their broken hearts."

A version of this article was originally published by the Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow the Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

Follow Tana Ganeva on Twitter.

All photos courtesy interviewees

Drake, Drizzy, the 6 God, whatever the fuck you want to call him, has one of the strongest brands in hip-hop right now. So strong, in fact, a not insignificant number of people are branding their bodies with homages to him.

A few years ago, one woman even inked her forehead with Drake's name (in really tragic block letters)—an act that prompted the internet to collectively go "WTF?" and caused Drake himself to confront the LA tattoo artist behind it in person.

But, as a quick search of the hashtag #Draketattoo on Instagram will reveal, people aren't shying away from getting ink of Drake's face, lyrics, even the logo for his record label OVO.

VICE reached out to a bunch of them to get the stories behind their (apparent) lifelong commitments to Drake.

Marisa Quin, 23, Baltimore

What meaning does the 6ix have to you, since you're not from Toronto?
It was also the album art for "Summer Sixteen." I thought it would be this intricate ode to his music and the city Views is about, without necessarily knowing it was tied to him if you don't know much about him.

So wait, what happened with Drake on Instagram?
Drake was one of the first one hundred people to like. It kind of blew up after that.

Did you lose your shit?
It was insane. but it's also social media, It would have been so much more insane if he had like given me free tickets or something.

Were you kinda pissed he didn't?
I mean there's still time right! No, it's fine, I didn't get the tattoo for the possibility of his attention, I got it because I love his music and I how I connect with his lyrics.

Chase, 30, Tampa (who answered all questions in the form of Drake lyrics)

How'd you settle on this tattoo?
I don't really give a fuck, and my excuse is that I'm young.

What kinds of reactions do you get?
Jealousy is just love and hate at the same time.

Any regrets?
Nah, started from the bottom now I'm here.

And here are a few more tats of the Sad King for you:

Interviews have been condensed for style and clarity.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

A few years ago, Estonia had a problem. The small, Baltic nation had spent the past several decades in the midst of a technological revolution, using the term "e-Estonia" to describe a set of sweeping digital reforms: Citizens could vote online, pay their taxes online, and track government legislation online. Parliament went paperless in 2000, the same year the government declared internet access a human right. By 2013, they'd even hired their first-ever chief information officer, Taavi Kotka, to continue fine-tuning the kind of technological literacy that would come to define the nation of 1.3 million people. And yet, it still wasn't quite enough to make Estonia the Silicon Valley of Europe.

The problem was, no one wanted to live there. In fact, more people were leaving Estonia than moving there, and they were taking their business ideas with them. It didn't help that their Nordic neighbors, like Sweden and Norway, had better social benefits to attract EU migrants, driving immigration elsewhere.

"Nobody wants to come to Estonia physically," Kotka recently told me over Skype, tilting his computer's camera toward the window by way of explanation. Outside, the city was covered in a blanket of gray. "And this is spring."

And so, the internet capital of the world had an idea: What if they could entice people to bring their companies and their tax dollars here, to Estonia, without requiring them to actually move to Estonia? What if they could use the internet to fundamentally alter the relationship between the government and the people it serves? In 2014, they decided that they could—and with that, "e-residency" was born.

When the e-residency program was introduced, the government set a goal of bringing in 10 million e-residents by 2025. So far, they've attracted about 10,000. In exchange for setting up companies in Estonia, e-residents can freely use some of the digital services that Estonian citizens already enjoy—like the ability to register their company online, use e-banking to cover transactions, and a super efficient online tax system that reportedly takes about five minutes to file each year.

"It's pure business," Kotka told me on Skype. "If you think about government like a company, to get more revenue and profit you need more customers." To get more customers, you have to compete with the stuff that already exist—in this case, the civic services provided in other countries.

Taavi Kotka. Photo courtesy of Taavi Kotka

If you're looking for digital efficiency—as an entrepreneur or otherwise—you could do worse that Estonia. There's free, public WiFi just about everywhere you go, and the people there seem obsessed with using the internet to improve daily life. You want to buy a train ticket? Do it online. You need a prescription from your doctor? It's online. You want to give the government the name of your newborn baby without making a trip to the hospital? You can do that online, too.

Offering some of those services to people outside the country is a "promising model," according to Ev Boyle, the founder and director of Civic Tech USC, a project that studies the intersection of technology, citizenship, and government. "Government is a service, and people are paying for that service—that's what taxes are. So if government can become more efficient, easier to access, and easier to use, that's what governments should be doing."

Related: America's Immigration System Desperately Needs a Digital Makeover

There are a lot of things that e-residency is not: It's not a tax shelter, it's not an easy path to EU citizenship, it's not even official residency in Estonia. Instead, e-residents get a digital ID card with a cryptographic key to securely sign digital documents, eliminating the need for ink signatures on official paperwork. They can also open bank accounts using Estonia's e-banking system and set up an Estonian company using the country's online system. It might not sound like much, but by eliminating the bureaucracy and hassle of establishing a business, e-residents can spend more of their time actually running their business. And unlike most countries, Estonia offers a zero percent tax on undistributed profits—meaning, if the profits are reinvested into the company, you don't owe any corporate taxes, which can be a huge deal for start-ups.

"People are more mobile than ever before, and with increasing mobility, governments are going to compete with one another," said Boyle, who pointed out that Americans already do this when choosing where to live or establish a business. There are, for example, a stunningly high number of corporations registered in Delaware, because of its low tax rates. ("Companies choose our state, and we are proud of it," Richard Geisenberger, Delaware's chief deputy secretary of state, told the New York Times, noting that tax revenue from these companies accounted for a quarter of the state's budget.) Estonia's e-residency program introduces that same type of competition on an international level, but with the added bonus of better business technology.

Arvind Kumar, an entrepreneur from India, used the e-residency program to establish his manufacturing technology company, Kaytek Solutions OÜ, in January. He told me it took about half a day to create the company, register it online with the Estonian government, and open a dedicated company bank account. That was it. Then he moved on to actually working with clients.

"Civic technology in Estonia is far ahead of India," Kumar told me. Had he founded the company in India, he said, there would have been mounds of paperwork and procedural formalities. Plus, since his company is global-facing, having it registered in Estonia allows him to transact with EU clients, something that would have been much harder with an Indian bank.

Of course, the e-residency program is far from perfect. One American writer, who signed up for e-residency last year, was more puzzled than dazzled by the program. He also noted that setting up a business wasn't quite the 15-minute breeze that had been advertised, and he couldn't do it without having an Estonian address.

Kotka, who worked in the private sector before he was hired by the Estonian government, isn't bothered by those kinds of complaints. "We wanted to run this like a government startup," he told me, "and with any startup, you develop your product when you get to market."

When the program first launched, applicants had to visit Estonia to apply, get government clearance, and open an Estonian bank account. Now, you can apply online, pick up your digital ID card at an Estonian embassy, and as of this month, open an Estonian bank account without having to meet a teller face to face. You still need a physical address in Estonia to start your company, but Kotka thinks that'll change soon, too—and there are already services renting out "virtual office space" for entrepreneurs who want to claim a square foot of Estonian land to run their business. The government is also hosting a hackathon to inspire new ideas for the e-residency program later this year.

In Kotka's vision of the future, government services will start to look more like the private sector, and people will be able to choose between them the same way people can freely choose to use a service like Spotify over Google Music. But Boyle isn't convinced it'll go that far.

"There's a lot we don't know about the future, but what government does and provides is still mostly local," said Boyle. "You're not going to go to a doctor in Estonia using Skype. Your street are paved by your local government—Estonia's not going to do that for you through the computer."

Follow Arielle Pardes on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user DieselDemon

For 15 months, my life was a cell. I had spent roughly half of my time in jail so far on lockdown. But the five-and-a-half hour long drive from Millhaven Institution in Bath, Ontario, to Fenbrook Institution in Gravenhurst—while handcuffed in a prison van—made me wish I was back in my cell. There were seven other inmates in the paddy wagon, and near the back there were two guys who weren't handcuffed. I found out they were going to Frontenac Institution—the minimum-security side of Collins Bay.

Toronto is in the middle of a grey market marijuana dispensary boom. Since Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015, weed entrepreneurs have been illegally opening up shop all over the city.

Even though there's no guarantee that Trudeau's plan for legal marijuana will include storefront businesses, these operations are opening almost daily. These shops don't only sell regular weed—more and more customers are coming through the doors of their local dispensary looking for marijuana edibles. While these stores insist they're providing a medical need to cannabis patients, can a weed soda or a chronic cookie really be considered medicinal? VICE host and medical marijuana patient Damian Abraham does the tough job of trying to figure that out.

The author with her father around 1990. Photo courtesy of Pamela Brunskill

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

My dad was a man who built stained-glass lamps and custom homes. He studied philosophy in college, and loved poetry and nature. When I was in middle school, he rowed a canoe with me.

And when I was in high school, he killed my stepmother and her lover.

The message I internalized growing up in Buffalo, New York, was that criminals were dangerous people, people who would bring society down and make America unsafe for the rest of us. They were people you didn't want to be associated with. And since I only heard of violence on TV but hadn't experienced it, it was easy to judge.

I only shared the news about Dad with my closest friends. Even then, I was scared as to how they would react. When I first told Jeff, who's now my husband, it was the night after the shootings. We were sophomores at the homecoming dance, swaying to the first harrowing measures of "November Rain." My heart hammered in my chest. "Um," I stammered, my voice hoarse, high-pitched and teary, so unlike the upbeat friend I usually was with him. "My dad killed my stepmother last night." Jeff pulled away to look at me, but I quickly pulled him back. "That's not all. He killed her lover, too," I said.

He nodded slightly, put my head on his shoulder, and continued to slow dance as though nothing were wrong.

For my freshman year of college, I went to Wittenburg University in Ohio, where I met and dated an incredibly nice boy. While we walked along the grass one day, I asked Luke*, "How do you feel about people who kill other people?"

He thought I was making a joke and let out a little guffaw. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

My neck tensed, as it always did whenever I thought about Dad. "My dad killed my stepmother and her lover when I was in high school."

Quiet. Because of course: No one ever knows how to react.

I didn't add anything about my father filing for bankruptcy, my stepmother filing for divorce, or him walking in on her with an off-duty cop in their bedroom. I waited for Luke to break up with me, to say that he couldn't be associated with someone attached to that type of behavior.

Instead, he said, "That has nothing to do with you."

There were times I wished my father had died that night. We hadn't gotten along well beforehand, and afterward it became a contentious battle of his demands and my deciding whether or not he deserved my support. But I could never completely give up on him; he was still my father. Which is why I sought empathy for a man whose actions I found reprehensible. And it's why, six months after one of my daughters asked me who my father was, I took both of them to meet him.

It hadn't been planned. Jeff was supposed to drop me off at Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. But, as we turned onto Dannemora's Cook Street that frigid January day, he surprised me by asking if I wanted to bring the girls in. Even more surprising, I said yes.

Jeff and I passed through the concrete walls of the maximum-security prison with our girls. We answered guards' questions, walked through a metal detector (I knew by now not to wear an underwire bra), and submitted to a guard's censure when we didn't have documentation for our kids. At one point, one of my daughters, Mackenzie, asked, "Where are we?" I told her, "Prison."

After a series of stops, we walked into the visiting room. I saw him for a split second before he saw us through the glass window. My father looked almost the same as he had two years earlier, the last time I visited. Balding, small belly, faded purple sweatshirt, bulbous red nose. Almost exactly like some of my grandmother's brothers. He waved to me eagerly. Through the door, I could see his silhouette as he turned his back to the officer and was checked for contraband.

When he came out, he squeezed me firmly and started crying. I almost cried too, though I couldn't explain why.

"You brought the girls!"

He extended his hand to Jeff and shook it. "Good to see you again," Dad said. Then he turned to the girls. "You must be Josie." Jeff sat down with Josie in his lap. Dad turned to Mackenzie. "And you must be Mackenzie. Do you know who I am?" he asked her. Mackenzie buried her head in my shoulder. "I'm your grandpa. Your mommy's my daughter, just like you're her daughter."

Mackenzie continued to cling to me. A little later, she and I went to the vending room to get snacks, and she stopped in the hallway on the way back to peer past the iron bars into the long corridor.

"Is he going back in the dungeon?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He broke the law and now he's paying the price."

"Is he a bad man?"

I thought for a second. "No, but he did some bad things."

*Not his real name.

Paul Ryan (Photo: Gage Skidmore, via)

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

US News

• Ryan Not Willing to Endorse Trump, Yet
  House Speaker Paul Ryan says he is "not ready" to endorse Donald Trump, saying the presumptive GOP nominee needed to "do more to unify this party." Asked at a rally late Thursday if Ryan's criticism stung, Trump's manager Corey Lewandowski pointed to the stage and said: "That's the leader of the Republican Party."—NBC News
• Paterno Allegedly Knew of Sex Abuse in 1976
  The late Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno allegedly knew about accusations of former assistant Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing children as early as 1976. The claim emerged in a dispute over who should pay Penn State's share of $60 million in settlements to 26 men who say Sandusky abused them as kids.—USA Today
• Obama Commutes Sentences for 58 Prisoners
  President Obama has commuted the sentences of 58 federal prisoners, 18 of whom were serving life sentences. The White House said Thursday most of the inmates were non-violent drug offenders, part of a strategy to ease punishments for drug offences in the criminal justice system.—ABC News
• US Wants to Sell War Aircraft to Nigeria
  The US military is seeking to approve a sale of 12 light attack aircraft to Nigeria to aid its fight against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The US also plans to provide additional training to Nigerian infantry forces. There are now 6,200 American troops, most of them Special Operations Forces, in Africa.—Reuters

International News

• Air Strike Hits Refugee Camp, 30 Killed
  An air strike on a camp for Syrian refugees near the country's border with Turkey has killed at least 30 people and injured at least 80 others. Stephen O'Brien, the UN humanitarian affairs chief, said the attack on the Idlib province camp could amount to a war crime. Activists on the ground were split on whether Russian or Syrian planes were behind the attack.—Al Jazeera
• North Korea Stages Rare Party Congress
  North Korea's ruling party is holding its congress in Pyongyang today, the first in the country in 36 years. Thousands of delegates are meeting for a choreographed show of support, seen as an unofficial coronation of Kim Jong-un. The meeting will also see a new central committee elected.—CNN
• Alberta Evacuees Airlifted to Safety
  Canadian officials are airlifting around 8,000 people stranded in an area north of the fire-ravaged city of Fort McMurray. They had been staying in oilsands work camps, but with the wildfire continuing to spread, 4,000 of them have been flown further north to Edmonton and Calgary. Another 4,000 are expected to be rescued this morning.—BBC News
• Woman Killed in Israeli Strike on Gaza
  A 54-year-old woman was killed and several others wounded in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip. Israel said it was responding to mortar rounds fired by Hamas fighters. The clashes began after Israel discovered a new tunnel on the southern Gaza border reaching into Israel.—Deutsche Welle

:( (Photo by Krystian Graba, via)

Everything Else

• SpaceX Rocket Lands After Launching Satellite
  An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Florida early Friday, put a communications satellite into orbit, then managed to land on a small ocean platform. "Woohoo!!" tweeted SpaceX boss Elon Musk.—Reuters
• FDA Officially Regulates Vaping
  Vaping is now federally regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. The government agency revealed it has prohibited the sale of e-cigarettes to people under the age of 18 and banned free samples of e-liquids.—Motherboard
• New Yorkers Must Pay for Plastic Bags
  New York City council passed a bill requiring corner stores to charge a minimum five cent fee for plastic bags. Supporters say it will help cut down on the 9.3 billion plastic bags New Yorkers throw away each year.—VICE News
• Wildfires Could Become More Common
  Recent research shows the warmer temperatures expected from climate change will lead to an increase in wildfires. Mike Wotton, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, said: "There will be more fires on the landscape."—Motherboard

Done with reading for today? Fine—instead, watch the latest episode of 'VICE Talks', where we chat with filmmaker Eva Orner about her new film 'Chasing Asylum'.

Still from 'Mad Men.' Photo via IMDB/Lionsgate Television

On paper, modern motherhood can seem like a raw deal. Infant care costs more than college in some states, moms are routinely shamed on social media for looking either too pregnant or not nearly pregnant enough, and America is still the only developed nation that doesn't offer paid maternity leave. But for all the economic, emotional, and physical strife associated with bringing kids into the world, few mothers would ever admit to regretting their decision to do so.

"Saying you regret having your kids? It just seems so profoundly norm-violating," says Robin Simon, a Wake Forest College sociology professor who specializes in the mental health effects of parenting. "I don't think that very many parents do regret it, in part because the ideology is so powerful. They don't regret it, they're just like, 'Wow, I didn't know it would be this hard.'"

Feelings of regret among mothers aren't just culturally taboo—they're also incredibly rare, according to one study conducted by the US Department of Health and Human Services between 2002 and 2003. Of the more than 7,000 mothers surveyed, an overwhelming 97 percent said they agreed with the statement: "The rewards of being a parent are worth it despite the cost and the work it takes." But the data raises the question: What about the 3 percent of mothers who disagreed?

"R" is one of those mothers for whom the turmoil of parenting far outweighs the rewards. Afraid to tell anyone she knew about her parental remorse, she turned to the Internet for answers and in July 2012 founded a Facebook group for parents who regret having children. Four years and nearly 2,000 members later, she now knows she's not the only one who feels this way. "We get countless people who thank us for the page, because we are accepting, and we show the brutal reality of parenthood—that parenthood isn't just smiles and laughter," Zephyr, a co-moderator of the group, wrote to me in a Facebook message. (Both he and R wished to be identified only by their first names or initials.)

For many of the group's members, who submit their confessions via Facebook messages for Zephyr and R to repost anonymously, the community is the only socially acceptable forum to utter the kind of feelings most parents would consider unfathomable—and even online, it can be tough to open up.

"The parents are very nervous about coming forward with their confessions, mainly because they don't want their families to look down on them, or their children finding out, and having issues arise," Zephyr told me. Their anxieties are not without merit: The Facebook group has been repeatedly attacked, spammed, and reported by "happy parents," as Zephyr calls them, or people who see the page as offensive, demeaning, and even abusive.

"The comments range from the typical sexist 'You should have thought about keeping your legs closed' comments directed at the mothers to directed at parents about being 'doxxed,'" Zephyr explained. Others have threatened to call protective services on members of the group, based on their confessions.

When studying parents in comparison to their childless counterparts, researchers have found that "parents, and mothers in particular, do not report greater happiness, greater health, greater psychological well being than people who have never had kids," according to Simon, who is herself a mother and grandmother. She insists motherhood can be an incredibly pleasurable, fulfilling experience, but "it's just that those benefits are elusive," at least from a scientific perspective. "It's very hard for researchers to put their finger on it. I mean, it's really sad," she said, adding that the United States' lack of financial and social support for families doesn't make things any easier on parents.

When it comes to parenthood, women can often face even greater challenges, in part due to workplace biases. In a study published in 2014, University of Massachusetts sociologist Michelle Budig found that women typically experienced a 4 percent decrease in wages for every child they've mothered; men, on the other hand, saw a 6 percent wage increase after becoming fathers. Not only that, but mothers are typically hired for lower pay and receive fewer raises and promotions compared to their childless counterparts, studies show. Researchers have dubbed it the "motherhood penalty." But for all the attention paid to the psychological and professional downsides of motherhood, very few researchers have actually investigated mothers who regret motherhood.

Orna Donath, an Israeli sociologist specializing in gender and women's health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, is one of the few academics to tackle the subject. Last year, she conducted interviews with a group of 23 mothers, including five grandmothers, who all said they regretted giving birth. She determined regret by asking two key questions: "If you could go back, with the knowledge and experience you have now, would you still become a mother?" and "From your point of view, are there advantages to motherhood?" All of the mothers in the study answered the first question negatively, and if they answered yes to the second question, they were asked a third: "From your point of view, do the advantages outweigh disadvantages?" They all responded with a resounding no.

Donath says the study—and the book it inspired, Regretting Motherhood, which was published in Germany in February—isn't intended to be a generalization of all mothers, nor is it representative of an average population. "On the contrary, the aim from the outset was to sketch a complex roadmap that will allow mothers from diverse social groups to locate themselves on it in order to allow a variety of subjective maternal experiences to exist," Donath wrote to me in an email. As a woman who always knew she never wanted to have kids, she says she conducted the research in part to address the dearth of scholarship on the taboo topic.

"The existence of regretting motherhood tends to be denied and therefore, allegedly, there is nothing to study about," she wrote. But her focus groups prove otherwise, and the research has opened up the possibility for deeper analysis among larger sample groups, and at the very least, more open conversations among mothers about having regret.

When Isabella Dutton wrote about regretting motherhood for The Daily Mail in 2013, she received a storm of criticism online. The most "liked" comment on the article called her "an utterly miserable, cold-hearted and selfish woman." Backlash aside, the article also resonated with parents who identified with Dutton's regret—and admired her honesty. A Google search of her name today reveals pages of blog posts, essays, and online forums from parents celebrating, defending, and pledging gratitude to Dutton for saying the previously unspeakable.

Others besides Dutton are coming forward, too. In March, mother Simone Chubb wrote an article for XO Jane titled, "I Love My Baby, But I Regret Becoming a Mother," in which she detailed her physically grueling pregnancy and her post-partum lack of sex life and self-confidence—not to mention depression and lack of sleep. As well, anonymous forums like Reddit, Quora, and Whisper are riddled with threads from mothers attempting to reconcile their own regret. They might discover they're not alone in feeling it.

Follow Jennifer Swann on Twitter.

The best thing about the 2016 election is that it will be over come November. The worst thing about it is that one of the candidates will have become president. As it stands, it looks like the campaign will come down to who voters hate less, with both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump working very hard to ratchet up the negativity. So, who to pick? On one hand, you have Trump, whose nomination-clinching victory in Indiana on Tuesday had Republicans burning their voter registration cards and even thinking about supporting Clinton. On the other, there's Clinton, whose hawkish foreign policy views, ties to Wall Street donors, and habit of attempting to keep her emails secret have many liberals and leftists thinking they might be more ready for anyone—even Trump—than Hillary.

But voters don't technically need to choose between the lesser of these two evils, even though it's a given that one of them will wind up in the Oval Office. If your conscience compels you to not lend your ballot to Trump or Clinton for whatever reason, or if you just want to have a "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos" excuse later on when the country really slides into hell, you have options. Here are a few:

GARY JOHNSON

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

Like a spurned lover drunkenly swiping through Tinder the evening after a breakup, many potential Republican voters were apparently googling "Libertarian Party" on the night of Trump's ascension. The LP, as its friends call it, is the most popular third party in the US at this point, which is to say it's incredibly unpopular. In 2012, the party's presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, got around 1.2 million ballots (full disclosure: including mine), which equalled a mere 1 percent of the popular vote. Johnson—who is on track to get the LP nomination again—is a former Republican who served as governor of New Mexico, giving him better credentials than most third partiers.

In the past, the LP's blend of policies—it's anti-surveillance, anti-tax, anti–big government, pro-immigration, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun, pro–drug legalization, among other things—hasn't appealed to many people, but with Trump at the head of the GOP, even some conservatives who blog at RedState are thinking about throwing in their lot with Johnson, despite his qualified support of abortion. This is the best chance in decades for a third-party candidate to crack 5 percent of the popular vote, and Johnson knows it. "If nothing comes of this election with regard to the Libertarian Party, then nothing is going to ever come of it, I don't think," he told MSNBC in March.

JILL STEIN

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

Since that whole Ralph Nader thing in 2000, the Green Party has faded from view, but it's still out there waiting for liberal Democrats to come around. Activist Jill Stein, the Green Party's presumptive nominee, has for years been promoting an agenda that's basically Bernie Sanders–plus: A $15 federal minimum wage! Free college! An end to the war on drugs! Single-payer healthcare! Nuclear disarmament! No more blind support of Israel! A "Green New Deal" that would give everyone a job plus end our dependence on oil! Voting Green, like voting Libertarian, has always been an exercise in imagining the world as you want it to be rather than how it is. However, for a lot of people, backing Stein over Clinton is the ethical choice, like eating local or putting solar panels on your roof. (In case you were wondering, yes, there is what-if-Bernie-teamed-up-with-the-Greens fan fiction floating around out there.)

JIM HEDGES

There aren't that many good photos of Jim Hedges out there, so here's an old Prohibition Party campaign doodad.

Hey, whatever happened to the Prohibition Party, you ask? Nothing happened to it, it's still with us, still calling for a ban on all alcohol and also some other stuff. The party's 2012 candidate ran on a platform that was just the King James Bible; in 2016, it's backing a 78-year-old former professional tuba player who once told VICE weed is safer than alcohol and supports both a wall on the Mexican border and a bunch of financial reforms that would turn banks into government institutions, I think? It's a little confusing, but citizens in the three states where the PP is on the ballot so far (Colorado, Arkansas, and Mississippi) will have an exciting choice to make.

WHOEVER THE REFORM PARTY NOMINATES

Reform Party candidate Lynn S. Kahn

Reform Party founder Ross Perot made his organization briefly viable in the 90s, but things took a turn in 2000 during a bitter nomination fight that was won by noted racist Pat Buchanan. "The Reform Party will acknowledge that the party was taken over by the far right in 2000," reads a recent press release explaining all that unpleasantness. "Some of the people responsible for this take over were White Supremacists. After years of infighting and lengthy court proceedings, we successfully regained control of our party, and those involved with white supremacy organizations were marginalized, removed from leadership positions, and systematically forced out." So the Reform Party is BACK, baby, and the party's one presidential candidate with a working website, Lynn S. Kahn, sounds basically like a Republican. Vote for her if you want!

MIMI SOLTYSIK

Photo by Mike Pearl

As profiled for VICE by Mike Pearl back in March, Emidio "Mimi" Soltysik is a former guitarist in a "stoner metal band called Pill Shovel" who is the Socialist Party's nominee. He admits he's going to lose the election, and he told Pearl, "In a very hypothetical fairytale situation where we won in this system—we'd have to fire ourselves on the first day... If we actually made it to that spot in this system, we would've have had to so thoroughly compromise who we are to get there, that we would've betrayed everyone." What's not to like?

NO ONE

Photo via Flickr user marabuchi

Just like voting, not voting is a time-honored American tradition. Nothing says fuck that quite like staying home and playing Destiny while everyone else is lining up at the polling station. If you want to really drive the point home while participating in the process, leave the top spot on your ballot blank and vote for state and local offices (though you should double-check with a poll worker to make sure that won't invalidate your ballot somehow). Your apathy will go unnoticed by whoever wins the election, but who cares?

A TOASTER

Photo via Flickr user John Bell

You can trust a toaster. A toaster won't let you down. A toaster won't make paid speeches to Goldman Sachs. A toaster won't ban Muslims from entering the country. Stick the bread in the slot and press the thing down, then out comes toast, just like that. Simple, reliable, dependable—the way America should be. And if your bread gets jammed in there, and the room fills with smoke, it's probably your fault, not the toaster's. What, did you put a bagel in there? Don't be greedy. Vote toaster 2016.

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Image via Wildrose Leader Brian Jean

OK.

When David Cameron did a U-turn on Wednesday and agreed that the UK could take in up to 3,000 unaccompanied minors after all, I can't imagine it was because he sympathized with the young Syrians fleeing their decimated homeland. Nor because he particularly cared about gay teenagers running from death sentences in Gambia, or the Afghan kids escaping the no-go zones emerging in Kabul since troops pulled out. No: He did it to quash a growing Conservative backbench rebellion, which would have been highly embarrassing for him. But still, we should be thankful for small mercies.

So far we've lost track of around 10,000 refugee kids in Europe. They've dipped under the radar and are now living on roadsides—working illegally if they're lucky, being trafficked if they're not. These are the most desperate cases. Lone children taking off from their homeland in fear of death and running blindly across foreign territory just to try to stay alive. Some are as young as nine years old.

As borders across Europe slam shut, new routes open up, each more dangerous than the last. Since the EU-Turkey deal in March halted the flow of refugees through Greece, now Sicily, and the nearby island of Lampedusa—the closest points of Europe to Africa—have become the new front line. According to Save the Children, so far this year, the number of lone teenagers washing up on these Italian shores is 4,100—four times as many as last year.

And they are getting younger. These days, 13- and 14-year-olds are commonplace, and the emergency reception centers dotted in the rolling hills of Sicily's heartland are full of young boys (and it is overwhelmingly boys; 90 percent of all unaccompanied minors are male) struggling to get their bearings. One of the main routes out of Africa is now through Libya, where a dark chaos reigns and each boy who passes through brings with him hellish tales of imprisonment, bonded labor, and beatings.

"Our goal is to give these boys the tools to become independent," says Save the Children, which provides emergency care from the moment the boys step off the boat. An impressive ambition. Caring for 3,000 of them in the UK is a start. Cameron has agreed to take in the most needy—but his next battle is working out which.

At a Save the Children center in Sicily, I asked a number of young refugees for their stories.

Drissa, 17, from Mali

It's taken me two years to get here. I left my country because of the civil war. I was living in Bamako, the Mali capital, and we were in the crossfire. We pretty much lived under siege in our home—it was difficult to go out even to get food. My school closed down a long time ago, my parents died when I was smaller, and when my elder brother was killed in the conflict, I had no choice but to leave.

My grandmother gave me some money, and I set off in April of 2014 and traveled to the Ivory Coast. I stayed there for almost a year selling plastic carrier bags, trying to raise money for the rest of my journey.

The moment I left the Ivory Coast, I realized how difficult it was going to be. I wasn't brave enough and wanted to go back. I called up my grandmother, but she told me Ebola had broken out, and I couldn't return.

I went on through Guinea, Niger, and on to Libya. I got there in February this year and was immediately taken and locked in a kind of private prison in someone's house. I was there for five days when some men came and took me away and made me work for them. They paid me nothing. My job was to fill bags with sand and carry it up to a house that was under construction.

Eventually they let me go. I went straight to the beach to try and cross the sea. The police stopped me and took all my money before they let me get on the boat. We set off at midnight and the moment I got on I thought, This is it, my time is up. I was sure I was going to die. It was terrifying. Thankfully, at ten the next morning, we were picked out of the sea by an Italian rescue boat.

I have spoken with my grandmother on the phone; she is so very happy that I made it here. But the thought of me staying here and her being over there is too much to bear. I try not to think about it. It is very bad.

Sunny, 17, from Pakistan

I can't remember when I left Pakistan. I think it was about six to eight months ago. I lived near the border with Afghanistan. I left after two of my best friends were kidnapped and taken to join a terrorist group. I never believed things like that really happened. I was terrified I would be next. I talked about it with my mom and dad, and they agreed for my safety it would be a good idea for me to leave. I have an uncle in Italy, so I thought I would try and go to him.

I traveled through Iran, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, and Austria. My father is retired from the military; he gave me €6,000 for my journey. I traveled mainly by paying people to take me in their cars. Often there were many, many people squeezed in—ten in the back seat and five in the front. To get to Greece I got in a three-by-nine-foot boat. I was half in the water and half in the boat. When we landed, the army directed us to a camp, and we were sent first to Germany and then on to Sicily.

I try to speak to my mom and dad and uncles as often as possible. My dad sent me my certificates from Pakistan. I have one in office admin and two from Scout camp. I'm hoping they will help me get a job.

Bo, 15, from Nigeria

I was born in northern Nigeria and am the youngest in my family. When I was 12 years old, a group of men came to my home and surrounded my family. I was lucky because I was behind the window, so they didn't know I was there. I saw them tie my brother's arms and legs, and they slaughtered him like a goat. I could see my father and my mother crying. Then they killed my father with a dagger; they just cut his neck. They also killed two of my three brothers. I saw it all.

My mom motioned to me to run because she knew I would be next. I started running. I saw a truck with the back door open and just ran on to it. Eight days later, I arrived in Niger and started begging in the streets for money. A man approached me and asked if I would like to go to Libya. I didn't know where or what Libya was, but he said it was better than Niger.

I got in a very big, long truck. It was full of people, and many of them were fighting. There were lots of people—people from Senegal, Nigeria, Mali, Ghana—and all of them wanted to go to Libya. It took about three days to get there because the truck broke down in the desert. Luckily, I had a little bit of my own water. I was a little boy, so people didn't try to steal it from me.

When I got to Libya, I was arrested. I thought they were police because they were in uniform. I was told I had entered the country illegally, and then I began the worst part of my life. I was put in jail for two years, where I was crucified, sometimes upside down, and beaten day and night. They put me in chains—I'm still covered in scars. When they gave us food, they gave it to us like dogs; they would throw it on the floor and rub our head while we ate it straight off the floor. I lost my mind a little bit more every day.

One night, I saw some people running, so I ran too, and that's when I saw the boats. I didn't have any idea of what Italy was or where it was, but I ran and jumped on the boat anyway. I had been seeing people die in front of me for years at this point—I thought anything would be better than where I was.

I'm here now and happy to be alive. I don't know where my mom is, and I haven't spoken to her since I left. If they allow me to stay in Italy, I would love to. I would like to go to school and work, and to know what life is.

Joseph, 17, from Guinea

Both my mom and dad are dead. After they died, I wasn't brave enough to stay in Guinea. I do have one older sister, but she has a fiancée, so she is safe. When I told her I was thinking of leaving, she encouraged me. She gave me some money to get to Senegal. I spent a year there working as a porter to raise money for the rest of my journey. Then I traveled through Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. The minute I got to Libya, I was put in prison. My captors ordered me to ring my family and tell them to send money. I told them I had no family, and they beat me.

It's impossible to describe how bad it was in prison. There were around ten to fifteen of us, and we were picked up every morning at six or 7 and made to go and work. They paid us nothing. After about a month, they suddenly just let us go.

We went in the night to take the boat. There were one hundred fifteen of us all squeezed into a very small boat. I wasn't scared. Everyone else was scared, but I was calm. I thought, This is just something I have to do. When I called my sister to tell her I had made it to Italy, she couldn't believe it. She was so happy for me.

For more information or to pledge support for unaccompanied minors, visit Save the Children's website.

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A pack of modafinil. Photo by the author

Wouldn't your career be going better if you could actually concentrate? Mine would. Imagine it: a workday without distraction, where the mere concept of rest was for the weak and puerile, and your mind was razor-sharp until you decided you were finished with it until the morning.

Ethically, that seems sound. But working your average competitive white-collar job—me writing this piece of content, a classic example—isn't a matter of life and death, and as a knowledge-based, competitive society, that's where we could most realistically see growth in the use of modafinil. As Professor Chatterjee ultimately asks: Even if modafinil turns out to be safe in the long-term, in using it more and more, where are we going? And, importantly, are we going to like it when we get there?

Follow Hannah Ewens on Twitter.

The weed doc is out. Screengrab.

A Langley, BC naturopathic doctor who was handing out pot prescriptions over Skype has been suspended from practicing and was ordered to pay a $25,000 fine.

Jonas Laforge was suspended last October, following an investigation by the BC College of Naturopathic Physicians.

Laforge admitted he's been working with marijuana dispensaries to provide patients with "confirmation of diagnosis" letters for weed after speaking to them over Skype. But as a naturopathic doctor he has no legal authority to do so, the College said, rendering his prescriptions completely invalid.

Laforge continued to help patients access weed even after he got a letter from the College in July 2014 telling him it's against the law. He was also found guilty of providing cash-only Botox services without being licensed. As a result, he's been fined and suspended for a year.

The College said Laforge failed to disclose his criminal record, which, according to the CBC, stems from a 2002 pot possession conviction. He was sentenced to 70 days after customs agents reportedly found 20 kilograms of weed in his car.

The College is currently investigating six other naturopaths who are allegedly working with weed dispensaries, the CBC reports.

Under Health Canada rules, valid medical weed prescriptions can only come from a physician or a nurse practitioner. But anecdotally, people in Toronto and Vancouver, where there are hundreds of dispensaries, are reporting they're able to get prescriptions via Skype meetings held in the shops, or even just by showing up with some cash.

Both cities have recently pledged to crack down on dispensaries.

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Check out Matias San Juan's Tumblr.