For many of us, Tinder is just about fucking, but not for everyone. All photos by author

Tinder is the hook-up generation's GPS for banging. It's quick, convenient, and provides access to seeing a new person naked IRL. Is it mainly to get laid? For myself and most people I know, that answer is a loud and inarguable "Obviously."

But browse through Tinder on any given day and you'll find people who disagree. Marked with bios that read "No hook-ups, swipe left bitch!" (real message in the bio of somebody I matched with), there are people on the app who legitimately say they're not on there for a quick orgasm. Some say they want friends, or long-term relationships, while others just want to avoid the emotional turmoil of fuck-and-chuck hook-up culture. Wanting to know a bit more, I asked some women I matched with about why they're not down with hookups.

Fatima, 19, Student

VICE: If not hook-ups, what are you looking for on Tinder?
Fatima: To be honest, at first, I was down for whatever, but after a year of going wild, I told myself second year of college that I just wanted a boyfriend. , but I'd rather have someone long-term than a one-night stand.

Was there anything in particular that turned you off from hook-up culture?
Lack of attractive guys I guess. Every guy I was down for lived too far for me to travel and every close guy was a fuck boy, so even if I wanted to have a friends with benefits with , before I could say anything, he was gone.

Have you had any luck with meaningful dates through here yet?
Well, I was a sheltered child so going off to college and being free—I went wild with hook-ups, even my guy friends would give me props and say I'm their idol. , I thought I had one the other day—I was not at all prepared to do anything but maybe a make-out sesh. I thought it went great and the guy said he had fun too, but then he ignored me and I finally got an answer from him which was, "It's not what I'm in for," which sucked.

Do you get negative responses when dudes find out you're not into just hooking up right away?
Not really. I recently started turning people down, and I've been doing a horrible job, you feel?

I do. At least you're trying! What's your ideal non-hook-up date, if there is one?
Nothing fancy really. I'm not a picky person. Like, as long as I'm with them, we could do anything and it'd be fine. But probably outside of a bedroom would be best.

Tiffanie, 20, Swim Coach

VICE: Your bio says to "swipe left" if someone wants to hook-up. Why?
Tiffanie: Tinder hook-ups are not good in my opinion. That's just my opinion. I think it's selling yourself short.

What do you mean by that?
I don't know. Like, you don't know these people. That alone makes me skeptical of meeting up with somebody. Why would I want to bang them off the bat? It doesn't make sense. It's not safe either.

So, are you against all hook-ups or just quick, fast hook-ups? Like, would you go on a date with somebody and then maybe hook-up afterward?
For sure, but they'd have to introduce it as a date and I'd have to like them. If someone's just in for sex, that's not something I'm comfortable with. They can do that on their own time and I'm OK with it, I just don't really want to in that sort of thing.

What's your experience on Tinder been like?
It's been good—I've met great people on here. I have a few good friends now because we met on Tinder. There was a guy I was seeing for a bit off here, but we're no longer together. We still talk.

Tinder is generally sold as central to the "Netflix and Chill" deal. Would you say it's built mainly for hook-ups and quick sex?
I don't think so, at least, not in my experience. It's a really fast way to meet people, but it's not like, overly-sexualized, y'know? The only and I are officially done.

Why did you choose the no hook-up policy on here?
Well, I don't think hooking up with other guys is the right way to get over someone. It just ends up making me feel disgusted and upset with myself.

Have you used Tinder for hook-ups in the past?
No, I normally used Tinder just to meet new people, but sometimes it leads to hook-ups. Now I just tend to avoid it.

What about hooking up casually makes you feel bad about yourself?
In the past, I would've used hooking up to make me feel complete. I haven't been "alone" in three years, so when I was, hooking up with someone was the way to go—especially with my close guy friends. Eventually people started calling me a whore, and I became something that I didn't want to be anymore. I guess I'm trying to cope with being single by not hooking up with people anymore, trying to find a new distraction in my life.

On the reverse side, has anyone got mad that you didn't want to hook-up?
No, I've never actually had anyone get mad at me, which is kind of surprising since it's Tinder.

Read more: So Many Women Pose With Elephants on Tinder

Karen, 19, Undeclared

VICE: Alright, if you don't me asking, why don't you have 'No hook-ups' in your bio?
Karen: Well, just because I'm not on Tinder for hook-ps doesn't mean I'm opposed to it. Like, my general motive on Tinder is just to talk to cool people, but if a hook-up becomes a thing then maybe I would.

That makes sense. Do you usually tell people that off the bat or do you wait until they ask you to hook-up?
I pretty much wait until they ask. I find it weird to announce a no hook-up policy. It's like, would I go up to some I just met in real life and tell them I have a no hook-up rule?

What's the response been when you tell somebody you're not about quick hook-ups?
I usually just ghost those people. Unless I've formed a friendship with them, then I'll tell them. Most people I end up befriending and asking have been super respectful and we just continue being friends. But the few times guys would throw temper tantrums and call me rude things, or they'll keep trying to convince me to .

That's something that seems to be a common sentiment about women I know who use Tinder. How often do you find yourself telling people no?
I actually haven't been on Tinder for a while. I was in a relationship and completely deactivated my account, I just got back on a week ago. So far, none, but I think I got it quite a lot. Like I said, I'd just ghost them.

With all that stress, do you think Tinder's worth its weight for you?
Kind of. I mean, I've honestly met a lot of cool ass people who have, one way or another, really changed my life and helped me grow as a person. I think the shittiness of it is worth it when you find some people you can bond with that you maybe wouldn't have met in real life.

Nikita, 19, Student

VICE: I'll start off by asking the obvious: why choose Tinder for not wanting to hook-up?
Nikita: Mostly because a lot of my friends have formed meaningful relationships with guys off Tinder that didn't necessarily start off with sex.

Do you find yourself getting a lot of people hitting you up just to bang?
Yeah, mostly.

How long does it usually take before they drop the question?
Usually four or five messages, but some will directly message me something sexual as their first message, which I do appreciate more because it's direct and I know what they're all about.

Do people ever get mad at you for saying "No thanks"?
Not really, but I am pretty straightforward about no hook-ups in my bio. I do find that guys have trouble believing I'm not looking for a hook-up though, but no one has really gotten angry about it.

That's interesting that they ignore your bio or think you're lying. Have you went on any successful dates through Tinder yet?
Nope.

Interviews have been edited slightly for clarity.

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Is cocaine relapse going to be less of an issue in the future? Photo by author

In a groundbreaking study, McGill University scientists have found a mechanism that could one day help cocaine addicts from relapsing.

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Read: You'll Never Look at Mr. Potatohead the Same After Watching Him Play Hungry Hungry Hippos

Earlier this week, a video of a road rage brawl in Texas basically decimated all of our lingering hope for humanity. But on Friday, a random video on Facebook has proven that there is still beauty and joy to be had in our cold and barren world, if you have $17.99 and know the right place to look.

In this case, the right place was apparently Kohl's, who sells a fancy roaring Chewbacca mask. A woman named Candace bought the mask for herself—her kids can play with it, she says in the video, but its not going in their toy box—and the Facebook Live recording of her opening it up and playing with it captures the raw, indomitable spirit of mankind better than anything since The Shawshank Redemption.

Her video has spread to all corners of the internet, but it's probably worth piling on as well. Sometimes you look around you and think, Man, life is trash, and then a woman in a plastic mask proves you wrong.

Even Chewie himself called the video "absolutely wonderful." There is still hope for us all. Happy Friday.

Me with my daily cigarette intake before the experiment. Image by Mitch Pinney

As of this month I'll have been smoking for nine years. My experiences trying to ditch cigs—with Nicabate, Champix, and a few cold turkey attempts—have always ended with me feeling sick and giving up. For a long time it's seemed like I'm condemned to addiction.

That's because quitting is really hard. Although most smokers plan to quit, the numbers suggest few actually pull it off: One study by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that while 77 percent of smokers intended to change their behavior, only 19 percent managed to quit for longer than a month.

After looking at my track record (basically just a history of me quitting quitting) I decided it was time to try something different. The internet offered me thousands of alternative solutions, but only four seemed even remotely plausible: the aversion method, acupuncture, natural remedies, and hypnotherapy.

So I tossed my last cigarette, told my dad I was quitting for good, and gave myself a month to try and make it stick. Every week I'd try a different alternative remedy until I found something that worked. Because something had to, right?

Week one: Making myself hate cigarettes by chain smoking

Aversion therapy meant smoking three cigarettes in a row every time I smoked, totalling at least 25 a day. Image by Mitch Pinney

The idea behind aversion therapy is simple: Link a negative response to a habit you're trying to break and, in turn, you'll never want to do it again. Research has shown that aversion therapy's effectiveness is unreliable. However, the idea of chain smoking three cigarettes at a time, at least 25 smokes a day, sounded like it might just do the trick.

All I can say is that smoking this much fucking sucked. I'm aware that's the point of aversion therapy, but still, it was a disgusting and ineffective way to quit. By the end of the week, I genuinely felt poisoned—mind and body.

I couldn't concentrate or communicate. I smelled terrible and constantly felt sick. Cigarettes did became a chore, which should've meant success. But my cravings and triggers still existed, and the only technique I had to deal with them was smoking more.

My sense is that even if you were to try to aversion approach for longer than a week, you wouldn't actually quit. You'd just become a heavier smoker.

The verdict: 1/10

Week two: Distracting myself from cigarettes with needles

I was told acupuncture would help relieve the stress of quitting. Image by Emilie Kilvington

Acupuncture works on the belief that certain points of the body are related to certain feelings. So putting a needle in these spots should relieve some pressures and negative emotions. There's research to suggest it can even reduce your desire to smoke.

I booked in for three hour-long sessions of acupuncture with Renee Knott, specially designed to stop nicotine cravings. We started each one by measuring my pulse, before inserting needles in my ears, wrist, forehead, and feet—all, Renee told me, are major spots for addiction and stress. The session would finish with meditation and a massage.

The meditation and massage were actually the most relaxing part. Image by Emilie Kilvington

For me, acupuncture felt effective because I was replacing cigarettes with an entirely new experience. It wasn't much about the actual needles, but rather the whole process of relaxing.

I found looking forward to my next session, or trying Renee's techniques that made me feel like I didn't need to smoke as much, especially for stress. Although I still smoked during this week, I felt guilty every time I did, and ended up cutting down from 15 to about five a day.

The verdict: 7/10

Week three: Trying to suppress my cravings by downing "natural remedies"

My natural remedies: herbal cigarettes, lime juice, black pepper oil, St John's wort, and passionflower tea. Image by Mitch Pinney

While it all might seem a bit airy-fairy, there's scientific evidence to suggest some herbs and oils operate in the same way as Nicabate, meaning they suppress your nicotine cravings and replace cigarettes with something less harmful.

Thai researchers have reported that drinking fresh lime juice can be nearly as effective as medication, while a US study found black pepper essential oil and passionflower tea can reduce nicotine cravings. St John's wort can help with stress and anxiety—a common side effect from quitting. And herbal cigarettes are just something you can smoke that aren't addictive.

Despite being hopeful, I found none of these stopped my cravings nearly as much as medication had in the past. Maybe getting teased by co-workers for sniffing black pepper oil put me off, but most likely it just doesn't work. Either way, realistically you should just get your medicine from a doctor.

Nope. Image by Mitch Pinney

Also herbal cigarettes taste like shit.

The verdict: 3/10

Week four: Trying to hypnotize myself out of a bad habit

Me and my hypnotherapist Laura Masi. Image by author

Hypnotherapy was completely different to what I expected. Before my session with hypnotherapist Laura Masi, I went through a week-long "pre-therapy" which involved meditating for 20 minutes every day. I also had to write down every time I smoked and why. At the time, I remember feeling like this was going to be bullshit.

A podcast Laura got me to listen to every day before my hypnotherapy session. Image by author

During the actual hypnosis session, Laura put me under and told me a bunch of nice things: I have the power to quit, I'm not a slave to my addiction, etc. She also made me verbalize why I smoke and what "parts of me" let that happen.

Essentially, hypnotherapy is just deep meditation with a very supportive friend encouraging you to quit. And this isn't a bad thing. I left the session feeling like I didn't need to smoke, and if I did have a naughty cig, I'd feel guilty. Admittedly, that's exactly what I did less than two hours later but, oddly enough, I never felt like hypnotherapy was a failure.

In my previous attempts to quit, relapsing felt inevitable. But after this I had this newfound sense of confidence. I recall Laura saying when I was under, "Whether you quit today, or in the future—you will quit." I'm aware it all sounds tacky, but that's where I see the real merit in hypnotherapy. Unlike other therapies, where you are reliant on a substance to quit, with hypnotherapy the responsibility is on you.

The verdict: 8/10

Image by Mitch Pinney

Quitting smoking is no mean feat, especially when you've been doing it for nearly half your life. It'd be easy to dismiss these therapies as failures, but I think that would be unfair. What I gained was a lesson in dedication.

The reality is you can quit in the way that works for you, but it's going to take more than lime juice or needles. You actually need the confidence to quit, and to keep trying if you fail. The reality is that right now I just don't want to quit enough. I'm aware that many wait their whole lives for a bolt of inspiration, only to find it in the form of an inoperable stage IV tumor. But that's the problem with smoking: it's just so comforting that the threat of cancer makes me want to calm down with a cig.

It's hard to say when I'll quit, but this has shown me that I can and someday will. My history might show otherwise, but I'm more prepared and confident than in the past. It's just going to take a few more tries.

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A five-minute video uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday shows a Detroit school cop manhandling an unarmed student this past winter, the latest in a series of disturbing episodes set in one of the few places where America's children are supposed to be safe from violence.

The security camera footage, which begins at 8:25 AM on December 9, 2015, shows Cass Technical High School tenth-grader Destiny Heard being pushed, kicked, and dragged by Detroit Public Schools Public Safety Officer Charles Braziel as two security officers contracted by the district police department look on. While it is difficult to see the student the whole time—she is blocked by the three officers for a portion of the tape—the 15-year-old tells VICE that at one point during the video, when she is seen crouched on the floor, she was pepper-sprayed by Officer Braziel.

The video ends with one of the security guards carrying her down the hall as she twists and turns her body wildly.

"I truly did not expect anything like this to happen when I went to school," says Heard, who was apparently suspended for a month after the incident for allegedly kicking Braziel. "I've read about police brutality and read about it happening at other schools, but you don't think, Oh I am going to school, and this is what's going to happen to me. I was absolutely hysterical and surprised, I didn't understand what I did."

According to the sophomore student, the incident began after she arrived to school late and decided to use the elevator to get to her class on the sixth floor. Inside, a teacher asked to see her elevator pass, and when she produced an expired slip, Heard says she was told to get out. When she lingered by the elevator, the teacher accused her of trying to get back on and called a security officer. After a brusque exchange where Heard was asked to produce her identification, she says she headed to the second floor, where she was greeted by another security officer and then Orlando Bogins, the school's dean of students.

At this point, Heard says that Bogins—who had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication—began yelling at her for being insubordinate. She says she asked him not to shout at her in the hall, and when he continued to yell, she put her earbuds back on to ignore him. As Bogins continued to reprimand her, Heard says Officer Braziel came over and told her to give him her phone connected to the headphones. She refused, she says, at which point the officer apparently seized it from her, and in the process pushed her to the ground.

Around this point in time, the student claims, Bogins walked away, leaving her alone with the school cop. She says the officer told her to get up, and when she said no, instead asking for medical attention, he grabbed her. Seconds later, the incident on camera began, according to the teen.

How a back-and-forth over an elevator ride and relatively mild insubordination could end with a child being pepper-sprayed and then suspended for 30 days is perplexing. Especially when you consider that the first campus cop program in America was launched in nearby Flint, Michigan, in the 1950s, with an eye toward building relationships between law enforcement and youth.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the situation Heard found herself in may be due at least in part to a dramatic shift in campus police programs that began in the 1990s. That's when the concept of "juvenile super-predators" and "teenage time bombs" dominated the daily news cycles. This mass hysteria over violent teens reached its apex in 1999 with the Columbine High massacre in Colorado; around that time, the Justice Department's COPS in Schools grant program pumping out millions of federal dollars to support campus police officers. Michigan received $18,778,285 during that time period, adding 152 new police officers into schools with that money. A 2013 report from CRS found that while there were only 12,000 campus cops nationwide in 1997, by 2003 that number had grown to nearly 20,000.

With more police, and more money supporting said police, came a shift in their role on campus. According to the same CRS report, about one-quarter of modern campus cop programs were created in large part because of media-incited fears, and another 25 percent were intended to deal with vandalism and rowdiness.

In effect, this means police are not only on hand to stop violence (only 4 percent of campus police programs were started for violence issues, according to the CRS report) but also to handle daily skirmishes and insubordination issues—problems that might previously have been handled by a teacher or administrator.

In Michigan, this trend toward more punitive measures is documented in a 1996 report by the state's Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights, which notes how the year prior, the state legislature was pushing for more "metal detectors and police officers as the primary focus for preventing disciplinary problems." Fast-forward 20 years, and Detroit Public Schools (DPS) has 78 police officers patrolling its schools and surrounding areas (43 officers designated specifically for the district's 25 high schools); in fact, DPS, which has been under state control on and off since 1999, is the only district in Michigan with its very own full-service police agency.

This means incidents that previously might have resulted in a conversation with a principal or an after-school detention may now be more likely to get handled by law enforcement.

"Everybody from the teacher on did the wrong thing, nobody did the right thing," adds Herd's mother, Venus, who says she found her daughter, "clothes all wet, eyes all puffy," when she arrived at the school later that morning.

Following the confrontation, which resulted in an ambulance taking Herd to the hospital, the school's principal, Lisa Phillips, suspended the teen for 30 days, according to her mother. The schools said she had kicked Braziel, though the child denies doing so.

"I asked Principal Phillips to please investigate before suspending, but she said she was following protocol and recommend a suspension pending expulsion," says the mother, who was disappointed with how the principal handled the incident. "I had so much admiration for Principal Phillips, and I never expected her to take the stand she took. I think she should have said this is not going to be tolerated, no student in my school will be treated this way, and he should have been out of the building."

VICE reached out to Principal Phillips and DPS's communications officer, who runs PR for the district's police department as well, but had yet to hear back at the time of publication.

In mid-January, Herd was allowed back into school, but the spat wasn't exactly over. Brazil pressed charges against the teen, resulting in more than one trip to the Lincoln Hall of Justice, Detroit's family-juvenile court. While the judge presiding over the case ultimately dropped the charges, the incident has been more than traumatic, according to the mother and her child, who believe the school intended to keep the video and assault under wraps (the footage only saw the light of day because the judge subpoenaed it, according to Heard.)

"I am absolutely appalled by the situation," says Herd, who has started seeing a therapist to deal with anxiety and depression. "None of it was justifiable."

In March, several high school students were pepper-sprayed by Detroit campus police after a brawl broke out at Central Collegiate High School, a school within the state-run Education Achievement Authority, which contracts campus police officers from DPS's department. And last October, video of a student at a school in South Carolina getting thrown across the floor went viral nationwide.

But for at least some teachers at Cass Tech, one of Detroit's top-performing high schools, the new video is both unexpected and deeply unnerving.

"I don't care what the girl did leading up to this, this is wrong, this is police brutality," says Joel Berger, an English teacher at the school who found out about the incident on Thursday. "In class discussions, students sometimes broach the topic of police brutality, but it is truly shocking and heartbreaking to see an example of it hit so close to home."

*Update 5/20: After this article was published, Michelle Zdrodowski, executive director of communications for Detroit Public Schools, issued the following statement to VICE:

"The Detroit Public Schools Police Department conducted a thorough investigation beginning on December 12, 2015 in response to a complaint filed surrounding the actions in the video. Judge Rhodes has reviewed the video, documentation involved in this investigation and is satisfied that this matter was appropriately addressed by the Detroit Public Schools Police Department. Consistent with Judge Rhodes' commitment to transparency, the District is releasing the report filed by the Detroit Public Schools Police Department regarding the incident in question. In adherence to the FERPA law, names of students have been redacted.

According to the DPS Police Department's final report, it was deemed that the officer followed proper procedures as outlined in the Force Continuum Policy contained in the DPS Police Officer Manual. In addition, the report outlines that several witnesses were interviewed, statements were consistent and the conclusions were justified by the evidence."

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Photo via Flickr user Patrick Nygren

Read: Here's Every Type of Annoying Person You're Friends with on Facebook

Selfies have fully dominated our modern world. They are with us on Friday nights at the bar, and while we're traveling the world, and during life's most precious moments, and sometimes used in lieu of a job interview. But all this selfie-shotting has fundamentally changed the way people see you and how we see ourselves, according to new research.

A study from the University of Toronto says that taking selfies can make you appear more narcissistic to those around you and give you a self-inflated view of yourself. Sure, that seems kind of self-evident, but now we've got the science to back it up.

For the study, researchers got 198 participates—100 of whom considered themselves "regular selfie-takers"—to take a selfie as well as just a regular old-fashioned portrait and rate how attractive and likable they thought their friends would think each was, if uploaded to social media. Then researchers had people from the public check out the participants' photos and rate them as to how attractive, likable, and narcissistic they thought each subject appeared.

Not only did most participants think they looked much better in their photos than the public did—ouch—the independent raters generally liked the portraits better than the selfies, and thought the selfie enthusiasts came across significantly more narcissistic in their selfies than everyone else.

The study suggests that taking selfies is basically just a way of showing people what you want them to see, but not necessarily what the rest of the world sees, which can come off as narcissistic and eventually make you think you're hotter than you think you are. But hey, what's wrong with a little self-love? This is Masturbation Month, after all.

Image by Lia Kantrowitz

The Gerontology Research Group was founded by a guy named Dr. Stephen Coles who was obsessed with slowing or reversing aging. He didn't succeed; cancer killed him at the relatively young age of 73. However, his brain was frozen with the hope that he could continue his studies once the technology existed to upload his memory to a computer. The website dedicated to his life's work seems similarly frozen in time––an Angelfire-esque relic of web 1.0. Meanwhile, as Coles's acolytes wait for his resurrection, they're busy verifying the claims of people who say they're supercentenarians, that is, over the age of 110. Although the group doesn't seem to be hosting events any longer, they still have ambassadors all over the world digging through records as well as a network of scientists scientists trying to stave off the inevitable human end for as long as possible.

About two weeks ago, I woke up with a numbness in my hand. I interpreted this sensation to mean that I'm dying, because I'm an adult child. And naturally, as a coping mechanism, I became very interested in the GRG's research. After all, it's very calming to read about a lady who smoked cigarettes for a literal century and maintained a pulse until she was 122.

Eventually I decided to confront my mortal terror even more directly by calling the director of the GRG's research and database division. Robert Young (real name) was a kid who corrected people's grammar at the age of two and then grew into the kind of adult who brags about his former precociousness in conversation. But he also has an obsessive mind when it comes to statistics and knows more about death than anyone alive. My hypochondria wasn't cured through our chat, but the gerontologist did teach me about the maximum human lifespan and what getting older means on a cellular level, as well as the story of the woman they call the "Michael Jordan of aging."

VICE: Have you always been interested in studying super old people, even as a kid?
Robert Young: The fact of the matter is that I became interested in this when I was a small child––about three-and-a-half. My great-great uncle was a World War I veteran and he passed away, and basically what happened was I asked my mother why he died, and she said, "Well, because he was old." So I thought in my mind that if old people died first, I wanna be friends with the old people so I can remember them while they're still here. And his wife, my great-great aunt, was 85 at the time, and she ended up living to 96 years, 361 days old. And that really kind of made me upset, because she died just four days short of 97. So I went from being interested in the maximum life span to more specifically keeping track of ages.

I got my first Guinness Book of World Records at the age of 10. Most of the oldest people were female, except for the title holder, who was a male, and he was 118. And no one else was older than 113. Something didn't look right. That got me interested in age validation, and later it turned out he was actually 15 years younger.

What's the goal of the GRG? Do you want to live forever?
So basically at the moment it has two main departments. One is run by the successor of Dr. Coles, who founded the GRG in 1990 and passed away in 2004 at the age of––unfortunately––only 73. The goal was for other scientists to get together and discuss the aging process and discuss potential treatments for the aging process. The idea at the time was that Western medicine was too focused on treating the symptoms of aging and not focused on treating the causes of aging. The idea was that if you put a bunch of bright minds together, you would get good results.

What's the history of age validation?
It started in the 1800s with life insurance policies. Actuaries were trying to figure out how long people lived to calculate rate for those policies. Except for the small niche field of actuarial research, very little research was done into supercentenarians.

There was no database when the GRG decided to start keeping track in 1998. About 1 in 5 million people in the US are 110 and older, and before the internet came along there was no way to assemble someone that rare into data groups. But when the internet came along, we could get information from all over the world, and it became viable to study them as a population group. Things have changed so fast since the GRG went online in 1995, almost 21 years ago. Smart phones came around 2007, 2008. Go back to 2004 and Ancestry.com only had 20 percent of the US census data online. Go back to 2000 and if you wanted to find a document on an extremely old person, you had to use the old hand-crank newsreel. Wow. It could take hours upon hours to look on every line of every page.

I feel like there's a story every month about the world's oldest person dying. Are you ever like "Oh shit, how'd we miss her?" Or do you ever see people being reported on that you know are liars?
So here's the thing. There's a misconception that the world's oldest person dies all the time. Not true. Since Guinness started keeping track in 1955, the average length of reign has been about 1.6 years. Part of the problem though is that we do have unverified claims of people saying they're older than the oldest person and that gets reported by the media. If you go online you can look up Typologies of Extreme Longevity Myths, a study of Social Security Administration data showed that over 98 percent claims turned out to be false. And the US data is the best in the world. So you can imagine if you're trying to look at places like Nigeria and Pakistan where 110 years ago, those records did not exist.

You also get what's called the longevity myth, which is where people's imaginations exceed reality. So if you don't have a record of when you're born and you're gonna guesstimate your age, and after the age of 80, people begin to inflate their age. Before 80, people understate their age. I think this is because of youth, vanity. But when people reach the point that age is something you don't wanna hide and be proud of––usually this involves the great grandmothers or the oldest person in the village––then it becomes a source of pride. The other thing is there's a fear of death. To hear a story about how there's a 130-year-old living out in the woods in the middle of nowhere sounds great.

Give it to me straight. What is the longest I could possibly live?
Scientifically speaking, the odds of living to 127 at the moment are one in a trillion, which means it's not happening. Living to anywhere between 115 and 120, you have what I call "probable impossible," I'd say there's about a 1 percent chance, but there's still a possibility. Between 120 and 127, the odds of surviving really begin to disappear totally. When we look at the statistics, we have currently 2,500 cases of people 110 plus. Of those, by the age of 118, only two. When you're going from 2,500 to two in just eight years, to me that's scary. That's just that there's a maximum life span. The death result is much higher than random chance––if you got hit by a bus, got shot, got sick. There must be a biological component. And studies show that there's a maximum life span for every mammal that's different. The oldest cat was 38. The oldest dog was about 30. The oldest mouse was four. The oldest elephant was 78. The oldest human was 122. Whales seem to live longer than humans. The oldest one on record was 211. Tortoises live to about 200.

Don't lobsters live forever or something?
Here's the thing. Some species such as lobsters and clams manage to get around aging by continuing to grow. Clams add a ring each year, lobsters continue to grow larger. Humans stop growing between 20 and 25. Most species stop growing and start aging. Then it becomes an issue of what your biological time clock is set to.

Humans seem to have a warranty period of about 100 years. The average cell divides every two years. Cells divide about 50 times. To get to 115, you'd have to age about 15 percent slower than normal. Basically, Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122, was called the Michael Jordan of aging. The point was that all the practice in the world isn't gonna make you play basketball like Michael Jordan. OK? On the other hand, if Michael Jordan never practiced, he wouldn't be as good as he was. So you have to fulfill your potential by trying to do the best you can do, but at the same time, you can't make yourself a longevity star.

Earlier you mentioned that we should focus on treating aging itself rather than symptoms. I don't think I even know what aging is.
That is an issue. Scientists don't agree on what aging is. You have the entropic metabolic processes resulting in accumulated damage due to inefficient operation over time. So there's intrinsic aging, which means biological aging, and external aging, which is effects. For example, you're more likely to age faster if you're in the sunlight all the time. That's a secondary effect. You're more likely to age faster if you smoke cigarettes.

Right now 48 of the 50 oldest people to have ever lived were women. Why?
Some ideas in the past came around that were discredited. For example, they said that it was about menopause and hormones. What we've found from the data at the GRG is that women outlive men at every age, including in the womb. Males are conceived at a ratio of about 125 to 100 over females by birth. This is biological compensation. Male fetuses have a higher mortality rate. Males outnumber females by about 105 to 100. The greater mortality rate means by about age 13, women are equal to men. This seems to be a biological effect. There's a concept called the Double X hypothesis. The Y chromosome is much smaller, and the vast majority of your DNA profile is around X. Normally, if a man has a mistake on the first X, like the genetic defect for colorblindness, he's basically toast. He's gonna be colorblind. But on a woman, they are much less likely to be colorblind because they would have to have the mistake on both X's, so they get two chances to get it right as opposed to just one.

What countries have the oldest people? Is there a diet or lifestyle or place that has a particularly high concentration of supercentenarians?
The maximum human life span is the same everywhere. When Susannah Mushatt Jones passed away on May 12, she was 116. And the oldest person in Europe was 116. The oldest person in Japan was 115. Very close together. Although the US doesn't have anybody who's 116 at the moment. The oldest person in North America lives in Jamaica and is 116. What we see is variation by region is very small.

There is some variation based on environment and lifestyle issues. You can add two or three years or minus. Supercentenarians tends to do better in warmer climates. It's interesting––Sweden hasn't had anyone yet over the age of 113. Places like the Carribbean, South Japan, South Europe, the Meditterraen tend to do well. But you have to understand, we're relying on the record systems of these places from 110 years ago and approximately 98 percent of the records available are gonna be from regions like North America, Europe, South America, Australia, Japan. There are vast regions of the world that had no records or almost no records––for example, Saudi Arabia. Some of the rulers of Saudi Arabia in the past didn't have birth records. China had birth registration by the 1950s, so by the 2060s, we're gonna see some good data from China.

I don't think I could find my birth certificate if I had to. If I live to be old, how would you verify my age?
A lot of the records are online. The key today is making sure the person alive is the person in the birth record. So basically, we need three keys for validation. One at or near the birth event. We need unique identifiers that allow you to identify the person in the birth record with the person alive today. We want recent identification showing the person and what they look like. And we want a mid-life record, such as a marriage certificate or a war record or something like that to help flesh out the story. If the person stayed in the same town for most of their life, if they stayed connected with their family, if they show up in census matches, it can be fairly easy to validate that the person alive today is in the person in the birth record. If the person disappeared off the grid, it becomes a problem.

Do you get the sense that it's even worth living that long? Is there any quality of life at 115?
I've probably met over 50 who are 110 plus. It can vary. One of the things that's clear to me is that you can't put them all in one category. We had one woman who was 116 who lived in her own home, she could walk with a walker, she ate Wendy's, she watched TV, she could do an interview. That's the ultimate extreme case of living well and hanging out with the great, great grandkids. On the other hand, we had a woman who was confined to bed for 21 hours a day, awake for only three, unable to get up. That's a sad situation where maybe it's not worth it. Most people are somewhere in the middle. One more thing I wanna say is that the people who live the oldest are in the best shape. So almost everybody that lives to be 115 was living on their own at 100. So we need to get rid of this idea of, "I'm gonna be 30 years in a nursing home." It's not like that.

What kills people who are that old?
Pneumonia is a big killer for 115 plus. Scientists don't wanna say this, but in many cases, it's just the aging process itself. There are times when they are simply in their room and fall asleep and never wake up.

I read on your website that Dr. Coles was frozen. What's the deal with that?
His brain was frozen. Well the idea is that in the future, we may be able to upload people's memories on a computer. The technology doesn't currently exist for that. So if you freeze the person's brain, you might be able to encode the memories maybe 100 years from now.

Is that something you're interested in?
I'm not sure yet. One thing you have to understand is that it's probably $100,000 . I think in Dr. Cole's case the Alcor Life Extension Foundation agreed to preserve his brain. Dr. Coles was involved in so many different fields––robotics, artificial intelligence. So looking at it from that perspective, if you're gonna preserve a great mind, why not have it be someone like Dr. Coles?

So the absolute maximum human age is 122, right? And in my lifetime, will I see that increase?
The observed ceiling is 122. Scientists have calculated that if you have 100 hypothetical universes, and the population of the world 110 plus years ago was over 800 million, the odds of one person reaching 122 was about 13 percent. Which means there was only a one in seven chance that Jeanne Calment would happen. Which is not that extreme. But the bottom line is that it was more likely not to happen. But I would say 125 is the realistic estimate for the limit, and 127 is possible if everything went right. It could happen in the future.

No mammal species has broken through the maximum life span barriers with the help of scientists. Only fruit flies. It's gonna take a lot more research to get to that. But beyond scientific breakthroughs, a person living today has a better life trajectory than the person who lived 110 year ago. Susannah Mushatt Jones, who was 116, was born into a segregated world in Alabama. Her family used the barter system. They were extremely poor. They didn't have decent health care. So I think that we're still gonna see gains because people in the past who didn't have these benefits managed to live to 116. With these benefits, I think you could add another five, or even seven years.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Albert Okura in the unofficial McDonald's museum. All photos by Justin Caffier

Albert Okura is a man obsessed with his destiny. The third-generation Japanese-American believes it was his destiny when he founded Juan Pollo, a Mexican-themed rotisserie chicken restaurant chain, in 1984. As he puts it, he is fated to roast more chickens than any man on Earth. By his own estimates, he's already personally cooked over one million birds. But he is far from done.

Okura also operates an unofficial McDonald's museum in San Bernardino, California, on the site of the chain's first ever restaurant. This too plays a role in his destiny fulfillment, and he will do anything—including swapping bodies—to ensure this destiny is fulfilled. But more on that later.

The site where the museum stands was originally home to an octagonal shack where brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald served barbecue-smoked meats and tamales to local teens and Route 66 tourists in the 1940s. Today, Okura's museum houses old photos and memorabilia, chronicling the growth of the chain—from its humble pre-war beginnings, to its Ray Kroc-helmed franchise explosion, to its current international sprawl.

Okura greeted me at the museum's entrance and immediately made it known that the site is in no way, shape, or form affiliated with the McDonald's corporation.

"They don't officially recognize us and they haven't made official contact, but I know they're monitoring us," Okura told me. "They understandably don't want us capitalizing off their name. I own a restaurant business and I have my office here, but I don't promote that part. I just see this as such a historically significant place."

And it's easy to believe Okura when he says that. He's very careful to stay within the letter of the law with the museum. He explained that while he can make reference to the historic nature of the site, he can't claim any corporate affiliation with McDonald's. There are no gentle nudges for "donations" that you might find at other attractions that pepper the towns of historic Route 66. He's able to display the bronze plaque which notes the site as a landmark, but only because it happened to come with the property—another indicator of "destiny," as Okura sees it.

Okura showed me shelves filled with every conceivable bit of history from the restaurant's early days: Autographed photos of the restaurant's employees. Tiles saved from another early McDonald's location, which was shut down and bulldozed. Even an early straw wrapper, from the original restaurant, flattened and framed.

"I want to find the story behind each item," Okura said, which explained why the walls and cases were plastered with handwritten notes detailing the origins of each object. Cardboard boxes of foreign entrées, promotional tie-in placemats, and various, horrifying iterations of Ronald McDonald were everywhere, and Okura had a story for each one.

We made our way to the back section of the room where Happy Meal toys—both international and domestic—were shelved. For some reason, two entire cases were devoted to a hodgepodge of "competitor toys," from restaurants like Wendy's and Burger King.

That's the thing about this place: There's a massive collection of "stuff" in the museum, but not much curation. Okura's policy that no item is too trivial for his McRepository left me feeling like I was in the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, unsure of where to direct my attention.

But this place is no joke to Okura. He belongs to a dying breed of people who still see the American Dream as an attainable reality, and his McDonald's fandom is rooted in his idolatry of the three men who made the company what it is today. He's read all the books about and by them, and eagerly awaits the forthcoming biopic, The Founder, which tells the story of the chain's formative years, ending with Ray Kroc leading the brand to global domination.

Like Kroc, Okura plans to turn his restaurant, which currently has over 25 locations, into an international staple. Okura gave me a copy of his book, The Chicken Man With a 50 Year Plan, pointing out that he purposefully wore sunglasses for the cover photo, so that people might mistakenly assume he was Hispanic, not Asian, thus lending authenticity to his Mexican-themed chicken chain.

Okura invited me to try Juan Pollo's chicken for myself, so I followed him to his restaurant. While I ate—half a chicken, with a side of macaroni casserole and beans, at Okura's recommendation—he told me about his three adult children. It wasn't just fatherly boasting. They too are part of his master plan. All three studied business, and are set to take over the chain and expand it to the social media age. "It's their destiny," he added.

For a man so focused on fatalism, Okura seemed to put a lot of thought and energy into ideas that would dramatically alter his future, sometimes in fantastical ways.

For instance, now that he's in his 60s, Okura says he's trying to acquire as much money as possible—not just to grow his chain, but to potentially place his brain in a "younger, stronger, faster" body, should such technology become available in his lifetime. "The poor never get anything like that so I'll need to have enough money to make that happen." If things don't pan out that way, Okura feels he can at least make it to 120 years old, given medical advancements and his family's history of living long.

And what will happen once he's roasted more poultry than anyone else? He says he'll follow in the footsteps of another of his idols, General George S. Patton, best known for leading the United States Army to victory in the invasion of Normandy during World War II.

"He believed his whole life that he was meant to lead armies into battle as a great general and he worked his whole life towards that. He was the only American general the Germans feared," Okura explained. "He fulfilled his destiny. Then, right after the war ended, a freak car accident, and he was dead."

I have no clue as to whether or not it's Okura's destiny to rotisserie grill chickens all the way into the next millennium, or whether he'll live forever in an ever-changing stable of host bodies. But his chicken was pretty good, and if there's anyone with the drive and focus to pull off such an improbable goal, it's him. He doesn't even need a Ray Kroc.

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.

In this week's edition of First-Person Shooter we gave two cameras to Henry, a magician and clown who also manages the magic shop at the store Abracadabra in New York City. As a professional entertainer who's performed all throughout the five boroughs during the last quarter century, Henry knows how to win over any type of crowd with his clowning and magic tricks.

On top of shooting two different birthday party gigs where he performed first as a clown and second as a magician, Henry snapped photos of his "pet room" where he lets his animals play and roam free in his house. He also ran into the Rat Man, a Times Square performer, during his work shift at Abracadabra. He even shared the best way to get a magician to reveal his secrets (hint: buy his magic products first).

VICE: What happened on your Friday?
Henry the Clown-Magician: I woke up at 8 AM to get ready for an 11 AM clown gig. After I finished, I went to Brooklyn for another gig as a magician. After both gigs were over, I headed over to Abracadabra to finish up some work. It was late by then, so I went home to wash my bunny and birds. They get a little dirty in the day from all the kids petting them.

How long have you been a magician/clown for?
Twenty-six years. I started when I was 14 years old in 1989. I was the class clown growing up and would play pranks on people, like put stink bombs in places and other silly stuff. I'd make everybody laugh in school, and make people laugh in general. I was a prankster. I would go to the magic shop to buy prank supplies, and, of course, I got into doing magic when the shop owner there taught me how to do a few tricks. I stopped buying prank supplies and started doing magic. When I would perform magic tricks for people, their reactions would drive me to learn more and more. That same year, I did my first magic show as a clown in my mother's building. I made 25 bucks.

Who's the guy with the rats in your photos?
He's a random guy who walked into the magic store looking for flash paper—a paper when you ignite it makes a big flash without any residue. We get a lot of interesting people in here. I think he's a street performer in Times Square.

Do you prefer performing as clown or a magician?
I like them both, but I prefer performing as a magician because it's less work before and after the gig. When I come home, I don't have to take off a bunch of clown makeup. That's what people don't see behind the scenes. I've got to take the whole costume off, which means I can't do another gig right after. Everybody in this same field feels this way.

What kind of crowd do you usually perform for? Does the crowd differ for your clown act and magician act?
All crowds—as long as they pay, I will perform for them. However, my bread and butter booking is birthday parties for kids as a magician, clown, or balloon guy—92 percent of my performances are for families.

How do you store and transport your animals?
I keep them at home. I have a cage for my rabbits and birds to contain them. They also have their own room in my apartment called the pet room where I let them roam free and they can do their thing. My girlfriend is an Animal Patrol Officer and she loves to play with bunnies.

How often do you perform?
Every single day of my life I'm performing. At the shop and at gigs on the weekends.

Do you reveal your tricks?
A magician never reveals their secrets. But I do sell magic tricks at Abracadabra for a living. I will show someone how any trick works if they want to buy it from the store.

Have you ever experienced somebody being afraid of a clown?
There's the Stephen King book (and movie adaptation) called IT, which is why I think a ton of people are scared of clowns. I hear "clowns just freak me out" a lot. But clowns are normal people. They are just doing a job and have a career like anybody else. The last thing I want to do is freak people out. Usually, when I start performing, people warm up to me very quickly, regardless of their past feelings about clowns. For professional clowns, their worst nightmare is to walk into a party and have a child or an adult be afraid of them. We're hired to put smiles on peoples face and make people happy—not to scare them.

Where can people see you perform or book you?
My website is Tricky Henry. Contact me through there or come say hi to me to me at Abracadabra.

Follow Julian on Instagram and visit his website to see his own photo work.

When the bells ring in the US Capitol to signal an upcoming vote, reporters scurry down from their third-floor cubicles to the basement to wait for lawmakers who are ushered to the Capitol on a mini-subway from their offices across the street. The setup usually makes the politicians easy prey for the press—but recently, congressional Republicans have been trying to avoid questions, hiding behind aides and taking what I can only presume are fake phone calls, in order to avoid sharing their feelings about the party's presumptive presidential nominee.

The hesitancy is understandable. On the one hand, vulnerable Republicans, particularly those in the US Senate, have tried to build up their own identity in Washington as serious-minded, debt-tackling lawmakers. Trump makes them uneasy because he alienates many of the Independent voters that they need to win their tight reelection races this fall.

Several of these senators up for reelection this year swept into office on the anti-Obama wave of the 2010 election—but in a midterm election with no presidential candidates on the ballot, many Independents and Democrats sat the cycle out. Republicans won't have that luxury instead. Instead, they'll have a Trump-sized albatross around their necks, and they fear he's going to pull all of them down, giving control of the Senate back to Democrats. On the other hand, the GOP base seems to love the guy, so many incumbents fear getting punished by Republican voters if they dismiss the party's nominee out of hand.

It's an opening that Democrats are trying to exploit. The party sees the refusal of these more moderate Republicans to disavow Trump as the chance to tie their opponents to the inflammatory Republican nominee—and to cast the GOP as a party of sexists, racists and xenophobia. By the end of the 2016 cycle, it seems likely that Democrats will have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to fill the ballots with mini-Donald Trumps.

"Even as Donald Trump makes these really offensive, really bombastic, really divisive comments, you have senators who are inclined to fall in line and say, 'We'll support the nominee, we'll support the nominee,'" said Lauren Passalacqua, press secretary for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "We're making the point that they have actively contributed to allowing Donald Trump to take over the Republican Party. He's now their standard bearer, and now they have to answer for him."

In a speech from the Senate floor last week, Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid gave a preview of what these attacks might look like, targeting Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for saying he would back his party's presidential nominee.

"Since Senator McConnell has so enthusiastically embraced Trump, we can only assume he agrees with Trump's view that women are dogs and pigs," Reid said. "We can only assume that the Republican Leader is not repulsed by Trump's vulgar behavior towards women."

It's a strategy the DSCC has been rolling out for months, even before Trump had locked up the Republican nomination. The committee's website now leads with a video, titled the "Party of Trump," targeting 12 Republican senators up for reelection in battleground states for saying they'll support the party's nominee. In the web spot, clips of the senators saying as much, and even praising Trump, are juxtaposed with footage of Trump cursing and talking about the size of his penis. It ends with a final message, scrolled in text: "Well, if you're any of these folks, you're running for Senate in lockstep with Donald Trump,"

"It's the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it," US Representative Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat and Hillary Clinton ally, said of his Republican counterparts. "You endorse this guy for whatever reason, at whatever level, you now have to explain those positions to your constituents back home: women, minorities, the disabled, ethnic groups of various kinds—good luck in explaining all of that."

Many Republicans—most notably House Speaker Paul Ryan—have indicated that they would rather not spend this election cycle explaining away Trump's various incendiary comments, and are privately urging the nominee to tone his shit down. After meeting last Thursday, Ryan and Trump penned a joint statement calling for the GOP to "unite" and "unify" around the shared goal of keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House. But it's clear that Trump has the upper hand: A poll released this week shows that around six in 10 Republican voters see Trump, rather than Ryan, as the leader of their party.

"The establishment, they're very afraid of Donald Trump, but they're terrified of the American people who are voting for him," said US Representative Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican who was an early backer of Trump. Marino argued that Republican incumbents, including those in battleground states, should fear Trump's supporters, who are energized and focused on shaking up the status quo.

"He has the largest number of votes in a primary in the history of this country in the Republican Party," Marino said. "So people say, 'He should change this,' or, 'He should change that.' Back in Pennsylvania we say, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'"

The polling numbers illustrate the quandary facing Republicans this year as they try to tap into the energy that Trump has stirred up among the conservative base, while also distancing themselves from the real-estate mogul's more incendiary rhetoric. While some prominent conservatives have denounced Trump, most Republicans in Congress feel pressure to back their party's presumptive nominee.

"No one would confuse my personality with his or his personality with mine, and I hope, moving forward, he is respectful of the views of others," said US Representative Leonard Lance, a New Jersey Republican. Lance added that he believes Trump is helping to expand the GOP base. "I think he has brought many new voters into the process and I think he will continue to do that."

Watch Hot Air in the Deep South: Bun B Talks God, Guns, and Politics in South Carolina:

That doesn't mean Republicans wouldn't like Trump to soften his tone. "His rhetoric is pretty anti-woman," said US Representative Cynthia Lummis. "I'm uncomfortable with the way that he confronts women, talks about women, deals with women with whom he's not related."Nevertheless, Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, says she'll support Trump, citing the need for a Republican president to appoint conservative justices the Supreme Court.

"If I had to name six words that describe why I'm going to support Donald Trump, its Supreme Court, Supreme Court, Supreme Court," she explained. It's an argument that several Republican lawmakers have made in recent weeks, and one that Trump has apparently taken seriously. On Wednesday, the candidate released a list of 11 conservative-approved jurists he might nominate to the Supreme Court.

Still, Republicans who attempt to cherry-pick their support for Trump could open themselves up to attacks from both sides. "How many times have I heard one of my colleagues who say they endorsed Donald Trump say 'But I disagree with what he says on X, Y, Z'? That's a tough spot to be in," US Representative Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican, told reporters recently. Dent has chosen a different approach, withholding any endorsement while also insisting that he is not in the #NeverTrump camp and sees room for the nominee to win his support.

It's the type of equivocation that Democrats are looking to expose. "I think it's naïve to say that they can run races where Trump is just another thing that lives in the same place but we don't have to talk about it all the time," Passalacqua, of the DSCC, told VICE. "He's running for president and these are the folks that would work with him to enact his agenda."

Follow Matt Laslo on Twitter.

Image by Alex Reyes

I got out of prison in January 2015 after serving 21 years of a 25-year sentence. The first thing I did on the outside was eat an entire meat lover's pizza. I'd been thinking about how that pizza would taste for years, and I had no qualms about broadcasting that desire to my cellmates and convicted colleagues. When I was locked up, I wanted everyone to know I planned on getting out, and that I also had a reasonable goal I'd make good on. And I did just that.

In truth, most prisoners talk about reentry during their incarceration. It's something to look forward to; something that keeps you going. The real world is the carrot dangling in front of you, preventing you from going off the rails and doing something that adds to your sentence. When prisoners talk about reentry, the conversation can get very animated, very fast. Many prisoners talk about what girls they're going to sleep with, how fucked up they're going to get on drugs, and the money they're going to get when they hit the streets.

Of course prisoners know what they should do when they get out, but VICE talked to a selection of prisoners and former prisoners about what they want or wanted to do before reality set in.

Prisoner One
40-Year-Old Former Hells Angels from San Francisco
Currently Serving Ten Years at Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Sheridan in Oregon for Possessing a Homemade Bomb and Explosive Materials
Scheduled for Release in 2017

Of course there's the joke of what will be the first thing you do when you get out, but that's on the surface. Deep down people who've done a chunk of time are more afraid of what they're gonna do, in the sense of not being ready for it mentally. It's a drastic change to re-enter the real world. It can be more nerve wracking than anything I've seen. It's weird and it's almost like a fear of going home.

Then you got other cats who are just stuck on the wrong things: drugs, robbing, stealing, the next hustle... To me, that's ridiculous. But it's not like many prisoners can talk about going home and starting a healthy lifestyle or whatnot because so many around you are just starting their sentence, are in the middle of it, or are never going home. There's nothing more disrespectful than to talk or whine about going home to a guy who will never see the streets again.

Prisoner Two
43-Year-Old from Waterloo, Iowa
Served Ten Years for Possessing 36.1 Grams of Marijuana
Released in June 2013

I believe that inmates tend to have many fruitless conversations. The average, hour-long prison conversation is like this: I lie for 20 minutes, you lie for 20 minutes, and for 20 minutes we discuss each other lies. A lot of reentry talk among inmates is just talk because they have not formulated a plan to accomplish their goals. A goal without a plan is just a wish, and there is a lot of wishing and hoping in prison.

Prisoners talked a lot about coming home [when I was incarcerated], but few talked about positive reentry. These discussions happen everywhere, but are often just hopes. The dream of going home consume prisoners, especially those with an impending release date, but few of them are actually prepared. It was like they thought they'd just play it by ear. Not a lot of thought or effort went into . There are those whose reentry plan is to go back out and do the same thing that got them arrested for in the first place. I would dismiss these inmates as unintelligent and try not to pay attention to them.

When an inmate is programming and crafting his plan and actively preparing for his release, he is more inclined to be successful. When he has made plans with his people on the street to provide rides to find jobs and get to work, he has planned. When he has picked up a trade that he can utilize, he is successful. I had a job already lined up [before I was released]. I knew I would finish school and eventually do public speaking. It's still a struggle, but I have done more than what I talked about doing.

Prisoner Three
31-Year-Old from Ohio
Currently Serving Ten Years at FCI Beckley in West Virginia on a Meth Conspiracy Charge
Scheduled for Release in 2017

The small percentage of people here who are talking about the right things are basically outcasts and don't talk about these things in front of their "homeboys" because it is not the cool thing to do. These dudes don't ever grasp the concept of right or wrong, or what a true man does. They're barely even comprehensive of the principles or standards of society. After about 13 years of living in this shit, I am pretty tired of listening to people bullshit about the outside, and hoping to learn a better way to .

Prisoners are focused on bitches, money, cars, or their status in the hood. They focus on what their dudes are going to throw them once they hit the street in order to get back on their feet. They're not understanding the long-term of their situation. They live for the very moment and don't give a fuck about their future. These inmates think it's not "cool" to discuss anything positive (or even normal) in an open environment such as the chow hall or on the rec yard when all the homies are around. A lot of these dudes are planning their next come up.

After being away so long I realize what's truly important in life: family and true friends. That's what I want to talk about when I'm thinking about my release.

Prisoner Four
32-Year-Old from Memphis, Tennessee
Serving Ten Years at FCI Memphis for Selling Marijuana
Scheduled for Release Later This Year

I would guess about 85 to 90 percent of people in prison spend their time watching TV, playing games or sports, hanging out with their buddies, and sleeping their time away—all while bullshitting about the outside. Their conversations are always frivolous, talking about the Benz they had, the clubs they went to, and the dime pieces they fucked.

Imagine a guy who got locked up at age 30 with a 30-year sentence. He's starting over in a strange new place with limited contacts and resources. To survive, he develops the mind and skill set of a convict, including the ability to talk about gangs, prison politics, and smuggling in drugs, tobacco, and cell phones into his new home. He gets caught up in it and never thinks about his future.

This whole experience is overwhelming for a lot of guys and they just give up and focus on the wrong stuff. Thank God they only gave me a ten piece—I can't listen to the others bullshit for much longer.

Follow Seth on Twitter

Say what, now? (via)

What the actual bloody hell is this? As reported on Nintendo Life, Pokémon Apex is a (totally unofficial, fan-made) Pokémon game that wants to lend the famous series about small monsters twatting other small monsters about the chops in a variety of appealing ways a properly grown-up twist. Which is another way of saying: there'll be swearing. "Bum"s, and "Damn"s, and "Fuck You, Pikachu"s. That sort of thing.

Apex is being slowly put together by Nate. Who's Nate? "iamvishnu", apparently, according to the game's development blog; and that information doesn't help me in the slightest. What does, however, is this explanation, from Nate/iamvishnu, regarding the improvements Apex will bring to the regular, child-friendly Pokémon games:

"Pokémon Apex is developed with an adult Pokémon fan in mind. The game contains some adult dialogue (some swearing) and themes (death, abandonment), and some minor horror elements."

Go on:

"Furthermore, the game is intended to be somewhat difficult, meaning that you will need to think about your strategies and make conscientious choices about your team in order to progress. Playing through the game haphazardly will get you into trouble."

I'm still listening:

"Also, this game is for people who prefer to take their time in games to explore their environment and uncover hidden details. There are lots of small details hidden throughout the game, as well as secret areas and items that reward meticulous players."

It's Pokémon with a potty mouth, basically. Right? Yes, but also no, as Nate/iamvishnu explains, identifying everything that's wrong with the mainstream Pokémon series, set to continue later in 2016 with Sun and Moon editions.

Related, on Noisey: What Do You Get When You Mix Pokémon Cards and Grime?

"Here are the list of problems with core Pokémon games that I intend to solve: low difficulty; poor balance; bland characters; and formulaic game structure." Nate/iamvishnu adds: "Forget everything you know about Pokémon games. Apex aims to redefine what it means to be a Pokémon game."

At least, it will do until Game Freak, the primary developers of the Pokémon series, throw a cease-and-desist order at Apex so fast it'd make a Boldore cry. (I say that, but Apex has been in development since December 2014, so maybe not.) Meantime, you can actually play a work-in-progress alpha version of Pokémon Apex right now – click here to do so. It's the weekend, and tomorrow, for all any of us know, Apex might be gone forever.

Read more articles about video games on VICE here, and follow VICE Gaming on Twitter at @VICEGaming.

Blessing Day. All photos courtesy of Amanda Bentley James

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Amanda James was 28 when her whole life changed. And frustratingly, it was in the most banal way possible: she became a mom. Having grown up in a Mormon community of Latter-Day Saints, she'd been anticipating having kids, and was kind of excited about the whole thing. Then her son, now five years old, was born.

She realized that motherhood, for all its joys and rewards, was really fucking difficult. So she picked up her camera and started taking photos of her surroundings in picturesque Utah, all blue skies and mountains looming over the home that she could barely leave because her baby was still too small to walk on his own.

When she first took the photos, while working towards a fine art Master's degree, she didn't think they would amount to much, let alone lead to her winning one of this year's LensCulture portrait awards for her "Sweet Little Lies" series. Her pictures are on display this week in London, so I decided to give her a call. "I'm actually breastfeeding right now," she said, as her month-old son gurgled from over the line. While she multi-tasked, we talked about taking creepy photos of your own kids, feeling guilty for finding downsides to motherhood, and the religious pressures of devoting yourself to your family.

VICE: Hi Amanda. From what I've understood, you didn't set out to shoot a series specifically looking at motherhood in this way, right?
Amanda James Bentley: This project came out of my time in school, though before grad school I'd been doing more staged scenes and performance photography. I wanted to do something different, so I started shooting spontaneously at home, or walking down the street. I started photographing my home and my oldest son, who was about two, but there was something haunting in the pictures to me. I started exploring that.

Cutting Carrots. "Motherhood is very monotonous, and repetitive. Everyday feels the same with things like preparing meals, napping schedules, dishes, laundry, etc."

What did you start to notice?
It was hard to look at the pictures in the beginning, because there was a darkness about them. I would put the pictures up and wonder, What is this about? Why are these pictures of my kids coming out... a little bit creepy? What is wrong with me? I love my kids, but why is this coming out like this? A lot of these pictures aren't included in this series, but I found myself photographing this sharp, huge mountain outside my window over and over again.

And looking back, I was mourning my freedom. My freedom was gone. The second your firstborn comes, your freedom's snatched from you overnight. It's such a weird feeling, and I know all women experience it differently, but having a baby, for me, felt so scary. I'm a free spirit, so even committing to the stability of marriage or buying a house was hard for me . I wasn't scared at all until my baby came out, then there's all this responsibility, this fear. I felt trapped.

It's interesting you say that, because the photos have this lightness.
It's conflicting, because once you have a child you have a love for them that's crazy. But at the same time, my identity was snatched from me. I'm an identical twin, so I've had to share my identity my whole life.

I read that you had your sister pose in what looks like a self-portrait.
The picture of the girl on the green couch? That's her. So I've grappled with identity my whole life, with sharing an identity with someone. I share a birthday, we look exactly the same, we married brothers. We share the same everything, so I've always not had my own identity, in a weird way. She's a painter and I'm a photographer, which is the only thing that separates us. We live next door to each other . But when I had a baby it was a like a completely different loss of identity, and your whole life is timewarped into being "just another mom." It was so weird.

Woman. "This is a portrait I did of my twin sister to stand in for me as a self portrait. This photograph is a metaphor for the identity that was lost as I became a mother."

At what point did you start to fold that weirdness into your work?
This series came out of a lot of frustration. I saw all the work my peers could put into their projects, and they were progressing really fast, but I just couldn't put everything into it all the time. I couldn't. And that frustration came out in the pictures. The critiques were really hard. I felt guilty for taking these pictures of my son, I felt a lot of shame. Like, 'why is motherhood not good enough?'

Did you speak to your husband about it?
I really didn't know what the project was about until I'd reflected on it a bit, so he understands. He's really stable, and was cool with me photographing him a bunch too. But he's not an artist so it's harder for him to understand why I need to do this.

I know you were raised in a very religious household, too, where tradition took priority. Wouldn't your project have slightly gone against what you were brought up to believe about a woman's role?
I love my culture, my background, I love my religion but the culture of it is hard. Where I live, most women stay home and watch kids, and they love it. And I wondered what was wrong with me, I felt like I was going crazy just staying home.

How different is this community to the one from your childhood?
I grew up in Salt Lake, not far from here, so it's similar. People here are so nice and I love that family's top priority. I've always wanted to have kids—I came from a family of nine—so me having three kids is nothing. But after I started talking to moms, I found out a lot of women felt the way I did. There's just that expected pressure put on women in religious communities, I guess. I love working, and it was hard for me that looking after the baby was automatically my job. I wanted to be a mom, but when the first was born I craved to work.

That's why you brought the Bible scriptures in, from the Book of Genesis?
It felt like an unfairness. Like... why?

Had you noticed that gendered double standard when you were younger?
No, never. Reading Genesis—I'd never really read the Bible, I grew up hearing stories—the actual text felt so harsh. It just seemed kind of unfair for women. And really this project came out of the feminist photographers I've been into—people like Hannah Wilke, whose work I love—shooting my family, and relating it to where I come from. Now that my kids are older, I have help if I feel trapped but in those early years, you don't even know what's coming. It just happens. And there are a lot of conflicting feelings.

This interview has been condensed for clarity and length. Here are some more photos from the series.

Cursed. "In this scripture, Adam was cursed because of Eve. This seemed the perfect ending for the book '...for dust though art, and unto dust shalt thou return'. The beginning being life with my baby, and the ending being with death and returning to the ground."

Man

Creation. "There is a trail I like to walk on where you have to cross a log to get to the other side of a huge river. In the springtime, this river rages with lots of fresh water from the snow melting off of the mountains. I photographed it as a part of the creation of earth in my book."

The Fall

"I loved the vulnerability coupled with the tension in this photograph. A tender moment of a boy and his mother turns into more of a delicate fright of the little boy."

God Formed Man. "I found the story of Adam and Eve so relatable to my life. I felt like an extension of my husband, at home working in the house and taking care of the children. I also felt like my identity was lost."

"The delicate tension is what got me to take this picture. There is also something commanding with a mans hand holding something so delicate. It made me feel powerless, like I was the balloon."

"I was watching my niece swim and she kept trying to hold her breath underwater. From this photograph it looks terrifying, of a little girl facedown in the water. It made me think of the fear I constantly have of something happening to my children. There is a constant nagging of fear attached to being a mother."

"Sweet Little Lies" is on at Somerset House, London as part of Photo London photography fair until Sunday May 22.

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Drake vs. Meek Mill. Image via Noisey

When I used be an editor at a hip hop site, articles tagged with "beef" attracted roughly three times as many readers as the average news post. Most beef-related stories boiled down to "X said this-and-that about Y; Y responded to X." These articles didn't require much in the way of investigative reporting. Still, people ate that shit up.

In particular, rivalries between musicians are usually not analyzed beyond deciding who's the victor, and maybe exploring the degree to which the beef plays out across pop culture (remember all the thinkpieces that popped up about Drake's weaponization of memes against Meek Mill after last summer's OVO Fest). Finding deeper meaning in diss tracks and incendiary TMZ clips often seems like a fool's errand.

Former Grantland writer Steven Hydens's new book 'Your Favorite Band is Killing Me' (out May 17 from Back Bay Books) comes with the provocative subtitle "What Pop Music Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life." Initially, it seems like a lofty claim, akin to finding a hidden philosophical lesson in the lyrics of "My Humps." Surprisingly though, it's one that holds true through 16 chapters that discuss both the minutiae and overarching themes at play in some of the biggest beefs in music history. Hyden told VICE that he looked "at these rivalries as metaphors for other discussions that happen in pop culture, and really the culture at large."

Each chapter is devoted to one famous rivalry—Beatles vs. Stones, Oasis vs. Blur, Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West, etc.—and, in around 20 pages apiece, Hyden digs into his own music experiences, the surrounding cultural climate, and broader socio-political discussions, revealing that these beefs were about something more than drunken VMA speeches or Noel Gallagher's big mouth.

The music writer explains how beefs come to represent more than just aesthetic differences. Fandom, and taking sides during petty, media-perpetuated pop rivalries isn't just meaningless chest-puffing; it's defining "yourself against what you assume other people are like." Speaking with VICE over the phone, Hyden explained the intricacies of his theory about music rivalries, and how it led him to use criticism as a means to connect rather than alienate.

VICE: Have you always been drawn to tabloid drama between musicians, or is it a subject you've only recently begun closely examining for deeper meaning?
Steven Hyden: I guess I must have been more interested in it than I realized. I wanted to write a book that worked on a straightforward level, where you could read about these rivalries and be entertained by them and learn about the artists involved, but I also wanted to take it to another level with a broader perspective and look at these rivalries as metaphors for other discussions that happen in pop culture, and really the culture at large. The idea of the book is that the reason people are drawn to these conflicts is that they use them as proxy battles to work out various issues, whether they be aesthetic, political, all the way down the line.

I decided pretty early on that I didn't want to write a book where I would be deciding which artists are better than other artists. I think some people who have heard about the book assume that's what I'm doing, but I thought that rather than trying to resolve these conflicts, it'd be more interesting to look at why they existed and why they resonated with people.

You still do let us know where you personally stand on many of the rivalries though, especially in the chapter focusing on all of the mud-slinging between Oasis and Blur during the peak of their popularity battle in the UK press.
I come out as a pretty strong Oasis fan, but the point of that isn't so much to make a case for Oasis, but to illustrate how insane I was as a teenager for caring about this rivalry. An American caring about the rivalry between these two British bands, it didn't have a lot of relevance for me in the real world. In America, they weren't even on the same playing field; Oasis was much more popular. It just illustrates that I was looking for conflict, for an excuse to make this an important thing in my life, a way to define who I was because it doesn't reflect the reality of why people like what they like. It's messy, complicated, and I tried to get that across in my writing because I feel like that is a more accurate representation of how people listen to music and why they respond to it. So the book's loaded with tangents, and to me that represents how people think and talk about music.

I think all the tangents work because the book's larger organization is so neat, with each rivalry confined to one chapter. Was that always the structural approach you had in mind?
Writing a book like this, it's a lot like making a record. In this day and age, you know that people are going to go on some streaming service, listen to each song for a second, and then pick out a few that they really like and listen to them out of order. You hope that they eventually come to love all the songs, but you can't really expect them to listen in the right order. This book is kind of structured similarly.

If you just want to read them as self-contained chapters, they work and they're entertaining, but I definitely see a narrative thread talking about the ideas of identity, and how people define themselves by what they're not. That's an idea that we associate with high school in a way, but it continues into adulthood.

Were there any rivalries that didn't fit into the book? Or recent ones that you think could make great chapters in a few years?
I would have loved to write about Drake and Meek Mill. It was great rivalry, and I think it says a lot about where music culture is right now, where celebrity is the new authenticity. You had Meek making these charges against Drake that he isn't writing his own songs, and in a different time, that would have been devastating. But Drake essentially wins that rivalry because he's so much more famous than Meek, and if he releases a diss track, or two consecutively, that's going to take up so much of the oxygen that even if Meek came back right away, I don't think there was any way he was going to win that... I ultimately decided to focus just on rivalries where the artists interacted in some way, where it wasn't just fans arguing about who was better. That helped narrow the field down significantly.

With lots of the rivalries, you seem to suggest that some aspects of fandom are almost predetermined by age, location, or political alignment. For instance, Sinead O'Connor's generation's generally negative view of Miley Cyrus' sexually-charged VMA performance.
What I thought was fascinating about the Miley Cyrus VMA performance is it started out as a standard backlash against a sexually provocative performance, but quickly evolved into a different conversation about racial imagery and misogyny. It was interesting to me how quickly sex became an afterthought; in a previous era there would have been endless gnashing of teeth about Miley wearing a nightie and grinding on Robin Thicke. People had a very postmodern view of her performance that if you were shocked by it, you were being suckered into being shocked by it. The point of her doing this is to be shocking, so therefore it's not shocking.

You conclude the book with the line, "I'm better now, and I hope to be better still." Does being able to question these pillars of musical opinion make you a better critic?
Yeah, and it's about being a better person too. The book starts when I'm in high school and I'm really preoccupied with the idea of drawing lines in the sand between me and people who I perceive to be not like me, and the rest of the book is about exploring the ramifications of that. When you're younger, it's really important to make it clear where you stand, but as you get older, it starts to shift from what separates you from other people to what unites you. I think that's what I meant with that last line. That chapter's about Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith and how there was a huge cultural gulf between those two, but at the end of the day, there was a lot more uniting them than there was separating them.

At this point in my life, I'm more interested in that. Where are the hidden bonds? It's just about growing up and learning that what separates people is less important than what unites them, because I think people have a lot more in common than they tend to believe, or want to believe.

'Your Favorite Band is Killing Me' is out May 17 on Back Bay Books. Pre-order it here.

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Leaf Fielding, back when he was at the centre of the UK's LSD network. Photo courtesy of Leaf Fielding.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Last month, I spoke to Stephen Bentley, one of the undercover police officers involved in the UK's biggest LSD bust. I wanted to find about the ins and outs of the operation, and the psychological impact of working undercover. I expected him to get a bit of stick, given the absolute state of the fumbling and scattershot war on drugs, but was still surprised at the level of intense, almost seething hatred in the comments.

One poster on this site described Bentley as a "total waste of existence," another as a "crazy fuck." To be honest, although I disagree with LSD being illegal, I thought Bentley seemed like a pretty decent guy who was just doing his job. At the end of the day, if you're a policeman, you can't pick and choose which laws you uphold on a day to day.

Bentley mentioned in the piece that he was wracked with guilt, and that he wondered if those he put behind bars held it against him. After reading the comments, I was also curious about this. Were the hippies who received long jail sentences as a result of the operation as angry towards him as the people in the comments section? Had they remained true to their 'peace and love' ethos and forgiven him?

I contacted Leaf Fielding, one of the key players who has written about his role in the drug ring, to find out. I also asked him about his role in the LSD network, not wanting to miss a chance to get an inside account of the UK's largest acid distribution gang.

VICE: Hi Leaf, can you tell me how you first got involved with the network?
Leaf Fielding: I was 18 when I first took LSD. I'd never taken any drugs before, and didn't have a clue what I was doing. A couple of hours later, I was convinced I'd found the elixir of life—the substance that would thaw the Cold War and bring peace and harmony to mankind. Acid changed my life forever; my world had suddenly switched from black and white to color. I saw that all creation is a shimmering dance of energy, and at the highest level, we're all one.

That's quite the trip. What was your next step?
I dropped out of university and became a hippy. Then, a batch of liquid acid turned up in Reading, and I was one of two dealers who distributed it. When the supply dried up, I decided to go on the road, inspired by Kerouac. I took the ferry to Calais, walked and hitched to the Mediterranean, and spent a couple of years traveling, mostly in Asia. I was offered a position as the "tabletter" for the London-based wing of the LSD organization after carrying out a successful trip to Thailand, during which I sent back several kilos of the strongest grass in the world.

What does a "tabletter" do?
I'd receive ten grams of pure acid crystal from the acid lab. My job was to turn that into 50,000 microdots of equal strength. I'd dissolve the crystal in a measured amount of water, add an inert powder and a little dye, and mix it thoroughly into a stiff paste. Wearing gloves, I'd rub the paste across 50 plastic boards, each of which had 1,000 holes drilled in them, until all the holes were filled. I'd then put them in a rack to dry.

The pills would shrink slightly, making it easier for the matching 51st board—which didn't have holes, but spikes—to push the microdots out of the board and into a small plastic bag. A run of 50,000 would usually take a couple of hours. Following an accidental massive overdose while tabletting, I ended up switching with one of my friends. He tabletted, and I became the distributor.

Did you have any suspicions that you were being infiltrated?
Not until close to the end. In fact, I was one of the last people to be identified as a member of the conspiracy. I was only caught up in the net through telephone tapping. Though the main thrust of the police operation was directed towards the Mid Wales branch of the network, it was the London group that produced the bulk of the acid.

WATCH: Meet One of Britain's Most Notorious Reformed Criminals

Do you harbor any resentment against Bentley and his pals for busting you?Bentley was one of my interrogators, and I have no complaints about him. His fundamental problem was that, by joining the police, he had handed over responsibility for his life. In the police and the military, you have to do as you're ordered, and must live with the consequences.

What do you make of the fact that he took drugs himself as part of the operation? Some people responding to his piece seem pretty angry about that.
Unsurprisingly, I think that busting people for something you yourself are doing is totally hypocritical. I understand that it was considered necessary by the people running Operation Julie, but that made them lose any moral high ground they might have thought they had. We all have to live with the consequences of our actions. Personally, I couldn't countenance acting the way they did.

People were also mad at him because there was a lot of stuff in the media about the operation kick-starting the war on drugs. What's your take on that?
The war on drugs had already begun. The operation gave it a lot of publicity, but didn't inaugurate it.

You ended up spending five years in prison. How did you find it?
It was horrible, of course, though mitigated somewhat by us being a large group of people who had been successful big-timers. That gave us status, and none of the other cons gave us a hard time, but the simple fact that we were locked away for years had an effect on us.

Leaf, hanging out nowadays

What have you been doing with your life since your release?
I came to terms with my incarceration by traveling in India for a year. This helped clean the emotional poisons from my system. I also trained as a language teacher and moved to Spain, where I ran a language school for a number of years.

After winning £8,000 on my first lottery ticket, I went on holiday to Malawi with a friend, and returned there for the new millennium. Seeing the visible deterioration in the country and the ravages of AIDS, I returned to Europe determined to build an orphanage for some of the homeless orphans. We raised over £10,000, and used it to build the Warm Heart hostel for homeless girls. It opened in 2003. Our effort was a drop in the ocean, but at least we felt we'd done something.

Do you still take psychedelics, or did your imprisonment put you off them for life?
I've eaten magic mushrooms a number of times since my release. I think I've come to the end of my long and fruitful journey with psychedelics now though, but you never know for sure.

Thanks, Leaf.

You can read about Leaf's involvement with the acid distribution network in his book 'To Live Outside the Law.' He's also got a second book on the way, called 'Leaf by Leaf: Adventures on Four Continents.'

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Despite first-hand experience, Calgarians care the least about floods. Photo by Flickr user Raymond Wong

"Water is the scarce resource that will define the 21st century, much like plentiful oil defined the last century."

Twenty-two percent of those surveyed aged 18 to 34 said oil and gas is Canada's top resource, while only 20 percent of people aged 35 to 55 said the same. The crowd over 55 years ranked oil even lower at 18 percent.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Hello. My name Is Nick Gazin and I am VICE's frozen food editor. And the art editor too, I guess. All my life I've hated eating food, and then one day I started liking food and immediately turned into the blob I see every time I mistakenly pass by a mirror. Now I show the food who is boss with my review column. It's my revenge on the food for making me fat. Fuck you, food. Suck my dick, food!

The most easily-prepared foods are breakfast foods. Hot cereal, cold cereal, fried eggs, hard boiled eggs, soft boiled eggs, omelettes, quiche, poached eggs, eggs benedict, tostadas, scrambles, french toast, pancakes, coffee, other types of eggs, juice, fresh fruit, grits, biscuits, and yogurt are all prepared with minimal fuss. All frozen breakfast foods seem like a bad, impractical idea to me. But I'm not here to avoid the food mistakes, I'm here to eat them.

Aunt Jemima Croissant Sandwiches

The package came with two sandwiches. I microwaved the first for a minute and fifteen seconds. It was not unlike the similarly-prepared sandwiches you get at Dunkin' Donuts. The croissants are chewier than you might expect, but that's fine. The cost and time investment are low, so I wasn't expecting some miracle sandwich. It was good.

I cooked the second sandwich in the oven which involves waiting for the oven to preheat, disassembling the sandwich and then cooking it at 350 degrees for 25 minutes on a sheet of tinfoil. Then I had to put the top croissant half back on and cook it for five more minutes. This seems nuts to me. I could make a fresh version of this sandwich in maybe fifteen minutes. But I'm a professional, so I indulged the box's directions.

After taking a half hour to make this retarded sandwich, the croissant was too crunchy. If you buy these, just microwave them.

Fans of my frozen food reviews often make jokes about how they feel bad for my guts, or pity my toilet. For the most part, I don't have tummy distress from the frozen things I consume in the name of journalism. These sandwiches made me pretty ill though.

GRADE: C

Kellogg's Eggo Breakfast Sandwiches - Ham, Egg & Cheese

The "waffle-style bread" had the consistency of warmed Play-Doh. The egg disc was OK. The cheese was terrible. The ham was the only element that wasn't mushy, but it still resisted the bite of my teeth. Ultimately, this doesn't seem like food. It's more like a thing a small child would construct, and you should just pretend to eat in profile while you pass it behind your face.

GRADE: C-

Aunt Jemima - Scrambled Eggs and Sausage with Hash Brown Potato

The scrambled eggs had the consistency of styrofoam pebbles. I accidentally flipped them all over my living room with my fork because they're so dry and pellet-like. The sausages aren't the best I've had, but I was able to eat them. The hash brown was soft and resembled greasy potato waste, pressed into the approximate size of an iPhone—similar to the kind I get at my corner deli. Making this actual breakfast the normal way would take most people ten minutes. Has anyone bought this thing twice? A banana is an OK breakfast, and cheaper.

GRADE: D-

Aunt Jemima - Homestyle French Toast

I liked eating this very much, but I had covered them in butter and maple syrup. It's hard not to enjoy some fat and sugar and gluten and hydrogenated oils. The centre of the toasts were soft like a new catcher's mitt. The crust remained tough and chewy like an old catcher's mitt. But you shouldn't start the day with a ton of sugar. My normal breakfast (when off duty) typically includes three boiled eggs, coffee, and a banana. It is stupid easy to make, and is definitely way healthier than this thing I ate.

GRADE: B-

Those are my reviews of frozen breakfast foods. I feel awful. Follow me on Instagram and check back next week—my review column will probably be about chicken nuggets, or some other thing that's poisoning my body.

Photo by Jackson Krule via

After the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida and the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the Black Lives Matter movement successfully pushed police brutality to the forefront of the national conversation. Naturally, there was some pushback from conservatives and cops who said they were the real victims—that police are put in more danger every year by their jobs, and that the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter isn't helping keep them safe. The sentiment, most experts pointed out, ran counter to the facts: People of Colour really are disproportionately killed by police; and violence against police seems to be at a multi-decade low.

But that hasn't stopped "Blue Lives Matter," which apparently began as a hashtag in response to the popularity of #BlackLivesMatter, from swelling into a veritable cause of its own. There are dozens of Blue Lives Matter support groups across the internet, and a seemingly official organization based in NYC. Perhaps most important, over the last few months, at least two Blue Lives Matter bills have been introduced around the country which, if passed into law, would treat cops as a protected class vulnerable to hate crimes. The measures would make anyone who assaults, kills, or otherwise harms a cop subject to the same strict sentencing rules as those tried for assaulting or killing someone because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender. Some police unions have been pushing for a similar law for over a decade, but these two bills appear to be the first to heed to that call.

One of the proposals is a federal one, the Blue Lives Matter Act, introduced by US Representative Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado. It would add law enforcement officers to the national hate crime statute and has been introduced to the House but has not yet been scheduled for a vote. Another bill in the Louisiana state legislature is largely the same, but would also cover firefighters and other first responders. That bill will likely become law after clearing the State Senate on Tuesday, assuming Governor John Bel Edwards signs it.

Supporters of both bills say they're absolutely necessary to keep cops safe.

"If you're terrorizing a police officer because they're wearing a uniform, you should be charged with a hate crime," Louisiana Rep. Lance Harris, sponsor of the state's bill, told VICE over the phone. "In lieu of all the attacks of officers around the country, I feel like it would be necessary to add that to our hate crimes statute."

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

When it comes to designing a dream office, most companies can't seem to get more creative than bean bags, a pool table, and a few potted plants. Things get more complicated when it comes to sex work. "We'd have a brothel cat," one sex worker told me. "Maybe a hot tub?" said Kate, who works in London. "That might be a little decadent but can you imagine how much more fun the sacred act of complaining about your last client would be if you were in a hot tub?"

How you'd organize a workplace—safety, support, hot-tubs for bitching sessions, cake—is a conversation I've heard many times as sex workers discuss the fact that, in the UK, working together is illegal. While selling sex is legal, brothel-keeping is not, thanks to the archaic and poorly designed laws that govern the industry.

So before you even get to the hot-tubs and cake, there's the crucial issue of safety. Nowadays, most UK sex workers make their livings indoors, either working for agencies or independently. That's a lot of women routinely working alone, in hotels or flats or strangers' homes. Surely there's a better, safer way. I asked some sex workers what their ideal workplace would look like, if we lived in a country that actually embraced decriminalization.

Leanne
19 years old
The south-west

I often talk about this. My ideal brothel would be a co-op situation with me and a bunch of friends, with us not necessarily all doing the same sort of work. We could have a BDSM floor and vanilla floor. We'd have a chocolate fountain, and cake, and tea and coffee. There'd be a big kitchen so we could cook.

You'd have the freedom to work whenever you want, knowing you had friends there. After you'd had a booking you could debrief with each other. It would be about the camaraderie; that's a really attractive aspect of decriminalization. I'm sick of being stuck in a hotel room or traveling to someone's house on my own. I can communicate with sex-working friends but it's not the same as working together and I still feel isolated.

Kate
27 years old
London

Besides the scanty facilities, my main complaint about brothels is usually the management, from the services they insist you provide to the shifts they make you work. "Don't ever tell them you've got thrush," one woman warned me. "They'll make you work anyway. Say you've got food poisoning or something."

Sex workers running things themselves seems vastly preferable. When I consider it seriously though, I wonder how we'd manage things like finding ourselves passed over by clients, for not offering certain services or for charging more than other workers—or even because oppressive beauty standards affect how much business we get. I get excited about the possibilities but I'm brought back down to earth when I remember that so many of these problems with work are problems of capitalism. Still, they're more often than not exacerbated by bosses.

Sinead
37 years old
The north-east

The things I miss most are what most people take for granted: being able to chat with workmates, moan about work, that sort of thing. So my ideal would be a workers' co-op like they have in New Zealand. We would share the bills, and just be there for each other. It would also be cool if we could all pay into a fund to cover us if we were ill and unable to work.

I picture somewhere as non-stereotypical as possible. Bedrooms more like you'd find in a good Airbnb, and the biggest, most powerful washing machine money could buy. I'd put an old antique mirror in every bedroom. Clients are dull and think watching themselves is hot, but at least the mirror could look good.

The co-op would have panic buttons in all the rooms, too. It's not nice to think about the bad side, but we have to be realistic, and it would be such a relief to know if anything did happen, the police would be instantly alerted.

Vera
39 years old
The south

The thing with BDSM is that it can really work well if you have a lot of really good kit, but that can be expensive. As a pro-Domme, it'd be much easier if I could work with other people and we could share the equipment—and maybe even get business loan. I'd like to work from a big, detached house and set it up with themed rooms. There'd be a clinic, a dressing room for people who like to cross-dress, a throne room with cages, and a wet room where you could do messy play.

It would attract experts in all kinds of BDSM or fetish play so it would really be a center for learning. You could have classes there and help the public to explore their fantasies safely. Criminalization is a barrier to so many things, including the educational side of sex work. My ideal kink brothel would be a place where sex workers could learn skills from each other, and could work together in sessions legally.

Catriona
22 years old
Dublin

The dream brothel I'd like to work in would be run collectively. The workers would go in daily rotation of managing ads, taking calls from clients, and other pressing matters. The clients would look on a website and call up to choose which person they want to meet, so that the workers don't have to do a line-up.

I wouldn't want to work in too big a brothel, perhaps four or five workers together at once. The workers would be very supportive, so no competition—no matter what your body type or gender, you'd be welcome to work there.

The whole place would be decorated in vintage chic. The hallway the clients would walk in through would have a camera so that all the sex workers could see who the client was for safety. There'd also be a lovely chill out room with a bed and books.

Sam
33 years old
London

I work independently, but if I could share a flat with other workers without getting arrested, I would. We could form a co-op or just support each other informally.

Being in my 30s and trans, I'm not very marketable so I have to hustle a lot for very few bookings. Considering how little use my room gets for what it costs, splitting the rent would mean I'd be under less pressure to choose between destitution and a dodgy sounding client.

Prohibitionists talk about how we need the cops to protect us from "pimps." Clearly they don't know what cops are like. Often it's exactly the other way around. But bosses come with a lot of disadvantages: they restrict your freedom to work how you'd like, they take a cut of your earnings, they're often abusive. Under decriminalization, we'd have less need for bosses, which is why many of them are against it.

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All photos by the author

The Cleveland Leather Awareness Week (CLAW) is a yearly, volunteer-organized leather convention and nonprofit that's been running for the last 15 years. Taking place at the end of April, CLAW draws in kinksters and a wide range of leather enthusiasts to the normally-sleepy town of Independence, Ohio to socialize and engage in workshops focusing on leather, rope bondage, electro-play, flogging, power exchange, and more.

The event also has a growing number of events for Puppy Play, a subculture within BDSM wherein participants role play as either a pup or handler (or "dog owner"), and release the constraints of their human characteristics in order to adopt those of a dog. For many, this mindset carries over in varying degrees of intensity into everyday life. As a card-carrying member of NYC-PAH (NYC Pups and Handlers), I couldn't stay away from CLAW's K9-friendly happenings.

At this year's four-day convention, my days were filled with educational workshops like Human Pup Play: Where to Go From Here, Feel the Pressure (a pressure point workshop), Puppy 201: Obedience, and tutorials focused on safety tips, as well as tricks for entering and staying in the Pup headspace outside of CLAW.

This type of safe, educational fetish fun was the central theme at CLAW. Convention-goers decked out in leather and other gear spent their days in workshops and their nights putting new found knowledge to use in dedicated BDSM play-spaces, graciously hosted by Chicago's famous BDSM brotherhood, the Hellfire Club. Located in emptied-out hotel suites, these rooms feature amenities like a Saint Andrew's cross, mountable benches, and metal armatures—equipment used for flogging, rope bondage, and other blissfully masochistic activities. Also at hand was a generous supply of condoms, first-aid materials, and restraints.

One of the most anticipated events among the pups in attendance was the Puppy Pool Party where pups and handlers alike slipped into rubber and neoprene to go for a doggy paddle and chase tennis balls in an aquatic fever pitch of barks and tail wagging. Part fashion show, part pup-social, the event got all the pups in one place and gave them a chance to become better acquainted with one another. Butt sniffing is tough underwater, but the pups found other ways to get friendly.

The following photos document some of my other favorite moments from the hedonistic, educational gathering. Thank you to CLAW and its attendees, and scratches and belly rubs for all the good pups!

Visit Zak Krevitt's website to see more of his photo work.