John McDonnell holds a plank of wood at one of those politician meet-n-greets at a start up hub. Photo by Stefan Rousseau / PA Wire

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.

In the UK, the Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell is interested in implementing a universal basic income. This would see a fixed amount of money being paid unconditionally to all citizens of the UK on a monthly basis. It sounds like a radical idea, but it's not something that McDonnell has conjured up from nowhere; the Finnish government will be running a trial for 8,000 of its poorest families, Utrecht in the Netherlands will be doing something similar for its population during 2017, and Austria last week asked its citizens to vote on whether they found such a prospect appealing—they didn't, with 77 percent of Austrians rejecting the proposal.

One of the key philosophies behind this payment is to allow for greater social mobility through the removal of the benefits trap. While it's undeniably an expensive policy, in theory it should prove economically beneficial in the longer term, as more people return to work and put money back into the economy. I teach in a prison, and I put the prospect of a universal basic income to a group of men in the Introduction to IT class (read: Introduction to Solitaire and Bejewelled) that I'm covering this week.

JASON, 37

Jason is serving the last few weeks of a sentence for breaking a police officer's nose after an argument with a traffic warden became very heated very quickly. "Mad thing is, I didn't even get the chance to stick one on the him , and it was all his fucking fault in the first place."

Jason has worked as an electrician since he was 20 and has some pretty clear ideas about the prospect of a basic universal income. "Absolute joke, mate. Shit idea. It's like rewarding people for sitting on their arses all day. You think someone on a grand a month of free money is going to bother looking for a bit of graft?"

I point out that the income would be for everyone, including people who work. "You what? Nah, doesn't make sense. I'll earn my own money thanks. I've never signed on or had any benefits, and this is just that but with another name."

I try explaining a little more about how a universal income could help people who feel trapped on benefits. "Typical leftie thinking, mate. Pie in the fucking sky."

TODD, 35

Todd is deliberating whether or not to plead guilty to stealing lawnmowers from a local garden center. "I didn't do it, but if I plead guilty I'll be out on tag in a few weeks. Run trial and get guilty and it'll be closer to Christmas. Fuck it, guilty it is," Todd laughs. I've met Todd before on one of his many previous sentences—he's a funny, personable man, always popular with other prisoners. He has three kids with his childhood sweetheart and has previously spoken of his fears for them living on an estate well known for its nefarious activity.

I ask Todd whether he thinks a family like his would benefit from a universal basic income. "Yeah, because not all work gets recognized. I mean, my missus looks after her mum, does all her shopping, cleaning, takes her out in the car to visit her brother. Doesn't get a penny for it, but it's harder work than sitting in a call center, phoning people about PPI all day like a dull cunt."

Some people can see how caring, or voluntary work in general, is as legitimate as traditional employment. Others are more skeptical, making reference to Todd's traveller heritage. Todd takes this in good humor, but goes on to talk about how a universal income could go some way to fostering a lost sense of community. "If everyone gets a little slice, enough to keep them going, then there'll be less reason to feel angry and try to steal or cheat to get what you want," he says.

I ask Todd whether he thinks he and his family will live to experience a universal income? "No, not unless we all move to Finland—and I'm not sure they'd be that keen on having us over there!"

DAVID, 24

David is waiting to go to trial over his involvement in a drug conspiracy. Having convinced himself that I'm related to one of the prison governors (I'm not), he's reluctant to get involved in any kind of discussion with me. He becomes increasingly disruptive when other prisoners join the discussion, so I decide to change tack.

Instead of asking David about the potential benefits or barriers to implementing such a radical change to UK society, I ask how he would view a universal basic income from his position as a drug dealer. "Put my prices up bro," he says. I ask whether it might convince him to think about doing something else to make money, now that there's no real reason to have to resort to selling drugs for survival. "Nah, I make bare money. I'd just use the extra to buy more food , and the customer just buy extra from me innit."

But wouldn't the basic income give people a bit of hope and encourage them to come off drugs perhaps? "You ain't met my customers bro," David says.

Not everyone agrees with this somewhat bleak analysis, with several prisoners claiming that a regular guaranteed payment, and the anticipated reduction in stress, would probably make them less likely to binge on drugs and alcohol, and less likely to commit impulsive criminal acts for financial gain.

Related: Watch our documentary on Jeremy Corbyn, 'The Outsider'

NICK, 28

Nick is in prison for the first time; having pleaded guilty for possession of cannabis with the intent to supply, he's now facing a new charge of failure to pay outstanding council fines. "The weed was fair enough, even though it was just selling to mates and that," he says. "But I've literally got no idea what these fines are about, I think they're just doing it to get me out of my flat so they can give it to some immigrant." Nick continues to say that he thinks as long as the UK is part of Europe, any kind of universal income would be "like begging even more immigrants to come to our country."

I try and change the emphasis of the question and ask Nick whether a regular basic payment might help him work out what he'd like to do with his life, perhaps let him find a job that he finds enjoyable rather than having to worry too much over hours or the pay packet he'll bring home each week. "What, so some Romanians can have all the proper jobs? Fuck that right off. Anyway, what's the point in getting excited about something that rich people would never let happen anyway?" he says.

§

To hear prisoners reject the policy on principle as a "shit idea" is baffling given how it could at least offer hope for them and their families to live less chaotic, far more stable lives. But if John McDonnell is concerned about persuading the rich to vote for something like this, he evidently also needs to consider how the less well off will respond, too.

Hillary Clinton. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

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

US News

Sanders Rejects Claims Clinton Has Secured Nomination
Hillary Clinton has reportedly secured her party's presidential nomination ahead of five Democratic primaries today. However, a Bernie Sanders campaign spokesman said the media was guilty of "a rush to judgement," after the Associated Press declared victory for Clinton on Monday evening based on a survey of superdelegates.—CBC News

Obama Meets Indian Prime Minister in DC
President Obama welcomes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Washington DC today, the start of a three-day visit focused on improving ties between the world's two biggest democracies. Modi, who was banned from entering the US just a decade ago, will address a joint session of Congress tomorrow.—Bloomberg

Stanford Rapist's Mugshot Released
The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office has finally released the mugshot of Brock Turner, the 20-year-old Stanford University student sentenced to six months in jail for raping an unconscious woman. Police had been criticized for failing to release the photo and sparked the #NoMugShot hashtag on Twitter and Instagram.—NBC News

Black Students Nearly Four Times as Likely to be Suspended
African-American students are 3.8 times as likely as their white classmates to be suspended from school, according to new government data. US Education Secretary John King said it showed the nation's "systemic failure" to educate all students equally. "We still fall far short of that ideal."—USA Today

International News

Istanbul Bus Explosion Kills 11
At least 11 people have been killed and 36 wounded in a bomb attack on a police bus in the Turkish capital Istanbul. A remote-controlled device was reportedly detonated as the bus passed through the Vezneciler district during morning rush hour. No group has yet claimed responsibility.—Reuters

North Korea Reactivates Nuclear Facility
North Korea has restarted a nuclear facility at Yongbyon which processes plutonium for nuclear weapons, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA said satellite images show "activities related to reprocessing". The reactor was shut down in 2007, but in 2015 Pyongyang claimed it was operational again.—The Guardian

Air Strike Hits Syrian Market
At least 26 people have been killed in regime air strikes on a busy market in Syria's Deir ez-Zor, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Civilian children were among those killed. The town is held by the Islamic State, and Syrian government and Russian planes are thought to have carried out the strikes.—Al Jazeera

Abandoned Japanese Boy Forgives Parents
The Japanese boy lost for six days in dense forests after his parents left him behind has been discharged from hospital, and has reportedly forgiven his parents. Yamato Tanooka's father Takayuki said: "My son said, 'You are a good dad. I forgive you'." Police will not be pressing any charges against the parents.—BBC News

Axl Rose. Photo via Flickr.

Everything Else

MMA Fighter Kimbo Slice Dies at 42
Kimbo Slice, the mixed martial arts fighter who rose to prominence for his popular YouTube street fighting videos, has died at the age of 42. Bellator MMA CEO Scott Coker paid tribute to the "friendly, gentle giant and a devoted family man."—CNN

Hugh Hefner Sells Playboy Mansion
Daren Metropoulos, a billionaire private equity banker who co-owns Twinkies, has signed a deal to buy Hefner's LA property for an undisclosed sum. Metropoulos called it a "true privilege" to take over the famous mansion.—TIME

Male Politician Quits to Make Room for Women
An Ontario cabinet minister has announced he will be stepping aside in order to make room for women and help the government of the Canadian province find gender parity. Ted McMeekin said: "I've never been afraid to call myself a feminist.".—VICE News

Axl Rose Wants 'Fat' Photos Removed
The Guns n' Roses singer is trying to wipe unflattering images of himself from the internet through takedown requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The requests relate to a 2010 concert photo used to create "Axl Rose is fat" memes.—Motherboard

Done with reading today? Watch our new film 'Talking Art, Acid, and Architecture with Filmmaker Jonathan Meades'

Image by Adam Mignanelli

In 2013, when he was 24 years old, Nathan Fernandez was arrested for possession of child pornography. To hear him tell it, he was a member of a Deep Web anti-child porn vigilante task force when he developed an attraction to minors. When he was arrested, police found a few dozen child porn files on his computer. "I immediately owned up to it and said I would welcome the chance to go to therapy," Fernandez, now 27, told VICE.

Because he was a first-time offender, the court put him in a halfway house, where he was told he would have to undergo a penile plethysmograph, or a PPG. A few weeks after arriving, he was placed in a small room with a mercury-filled band around the head of his penis and asked to listen to a series of audio narratives detailing a range of scenarios—as he remembers it, an adult couple meeting at a bar and having sex, followed by a teenage girl coming onto an adult man, followed by an adult man violently raping an eight-year-old girl—to see how he would react.

"I was furious," he said. "I had to sit there and listen to all these awful things... I understood why it was all there, but that didn't make it any less degrading."

Fernandez says his test results were "inconclusive," meaning he didn't exhibit a response to any of the scenarios. But the experience of sitting in a room and having his penis hooked up to a monitor nonetheless left him shaken.

Fernandez is one of thousands of sex offenders to undergo PPG, a method of measuring patterns of sexual arousal in response to audio or visual stimuli. Earlier this year, the practice made headlines when it was rumored to have been used in the post-conviction treatment of former NFL safety Darren Sharper, who pleaded guilty to multiple rape charges.

PPG was initially developed by Czech psychologist Kurt Freund in the 1950s as a way to identify heterosexual men who claimed to be gay in order to avoid the Czech military draft. Today, it's most commonly used as a way for forensic psychologists to identify deviant sexual desires, such as pedophilia or violent sexual urges.

"When males get sexually aroused, their penis changes in volume and size. The biology is sound, the physiology is sound," said Dr. Joseph J. Plaud, a clinical and forensic psychologist, in an interview with VICE. Plaud says he's personally administered thousands of PPG exams during his 30-year career. "This is basic biology. There's no interpretation needed, there's no extrapolation needed."

Other experts, however, argue that much like a polygraph, PPG is a form of junk science—an inaccurate, inconsistent way to measure something as complex, amorphous, and subjective as sexual desire.

For one thing, there are ways to stifle an erection. "If you can find a way to keep yourself from being aroused by thinking about your grandmother or puppies or something that's not sexually arousing to you, then you can trick it," Dr. AJ Marston, a psychology professor at Beacon College in Florida, told VICE.

There's also the issue of what PPG actually measures. While a test subject might be aroused by, say, descriptions of violent, non-consensual sex, that doesn't mean they necessarily have a desire to act on such impulses in real life.

Plus, Marston added, "a lot of therapists think not the best measure to prove if they are really attracted to the images they show them."

Related: Inside Miracle Village, Florida's Isolated Community of Sex Offenders

For these reasons, PPG is most often used in the context of treatment, rather than as evidence of guilt or innocence in a sex crime case. Most (but not all) courts reject the admissibility of PPG in court, and in a landmark 2006 case, an appeals court ruled that use of PPG on a man charged with possession of child porn was unconstitutional, as it was "an unreasonable and unnecessary deprivation of a defendant's liberty."

Even still, PPGs can be used both as a post-conviction therapy and in sentencing someone who has committed a sex crime.

In 1991, Ron (not his real name), a 59-year-old in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was in the process of divorcing his wife when he was arrested for molesting their daughter. While in police custody, he was asked to take a PPG exam.

"I told them I didn't want to take the test," Ron told VICE. "My attorney said I didn't have a choice. He said if I didn't, the judge would give me a max sentence anyway. It seemed very invasive and demeaning."

Like Fernandez, Ron's test results were inconclusive. Even still, a judge sentenced him to the maximum penalty of 12 years in jail, seven years and 11 months of which he served.

"We're sex offenders," Ron said. "We don't have civil rights."

Related: Virtual Reality Can Help Us Understand What Arouses Sex Offenders

A PPG can also be used in the private clinical setting, sometimes as a condition of parole. Plaud said the test can be a gauge for the efficacy of a particular treatment, as well as a tool "to try to change or punish that deviant arousal." Marston sees it more as aversion therapy for sex offender: "It's a degrading type of thing," she told VICE. "Over time, it kind of associate that this is wrong, I shouldn't do this, this is not acceptable behavior."

Yet failing a PPG can have disastrous consequences for offenders in therapy. "Treatment program people hold sticks and carrots. They say, 'If you don't do this test, that may have negative implications for your progress and treatment and it may hold you back or we may hold certain privileges for you," Plaud said.

"The PPG wouldn't alter your sentence, but you could indirectly extend your time," Fernandez said. "Every month of therapy comes at a huge cost to your wallet and to your time."

In January 2016, Fernandez was released from his halfway house. Shortly before he left, he took a second PPG test, during which he says he did not show significant patterns of deviant sexual interest. He's now living at home with his fiancée and two-year-old son, but he says he regularly grapples with symptoms of anxiety, PTSD, and suicidal thoughts—conditions he's struggled with his entire life that he says were exacerbated during his time in treatment.

For Fernandez, PPG was not the most humiliating aspect of his treatment. It was merely symptomatic of a larger issue: that, during his time in treatment, he and his fellow offenders were treated as scientific experiments rather than human beings.

"I felt like I was a test subject for some science experiment that if I fail, I have to stay at this horrible place longer," Fernandez said. "When you're in confinement even though it's not a jail, it's very similar—when it depends on you succeeding or failing at something like that, then that's so much pressure.

"It does not feel like a therapeutic place," Fernandez added. "It feels like a place of torture."

Follow EJ Dickson on Twitter.

The dream kitchen of a Vancouver pot entrepeneur. Screenshot via Youtube.

From Liberal Party insiders to pharmacists, many Canadians stand to gain from the legalization of pot. But one group of hard-working entrepreneurs is posed to be left in the cold when the $5-billion recreational pot market goes above ground: your everyday weed dealers.

And there isn't likely to be a federally supported job transition program for the many, many people who depend on a steady stream of potheads to pay the rent.

Follow Jessica Barrett on Twitter.

Jordan Sears, editor in chief of the newspaper. Screenshot via YouTube

There are a lot of shitty, racist, sexist, why-the-fuck-does-this-exist things out there: Donald Trump, the internet, your uncle. The world would probably be better if these things went away—disappeared into the ether—but we often tend to tolerate them out of a stoic sense of democracy and free speech.

The author and his father. All photos courtesy of the author

This article originally appeared on VICE Romania.

During the Communist dictatorship in Romania, a lot of people willingly became informants for Securitate—the Romanian secret police, which was one of the largest secret police forces in Eastern Europe. At one point, it had half a million informants in a country of 22 million at the time. Securitate had secret files on many of our parents. My father, Alexandru Tocilescu—also known as Toca—was a theatre director from around 1973 until his death in 2011. The file they had on him was extensive.

My dad got to read his own file back in 2008. In order to become a member of the Romanian Association of Theatre Artists, he needed an official confirmation from the state that he had not been an agent of the secret police. When he made the request for this confirmation, he was invited to go and see the information Securitate had on him for himself.

He told me about some of it—about who he thought the snitches were, about how he had known about them even back then, and about why he didn't resent them for it. He hadn't been shocked by the sheer amount of information they had on him—but he had been shocked by how mundane it all was.

For instance, he told me that there was a copy of a postcard in his file. "We're in Rome. It's gorgeous. Kisses," it said. Or a note listing the contents of a package from my uncle, who lived in Germany: "2 pairs women's stockings. 2 packs of sausages. 3 packs of Maoam chewing gum. 2 Toblerone chocolate bars. 1 bottle Multi-Sanostol."

I wanted to see all that for myself, so I made a request. I was at work one morning, when an unknown number rang me. "Mr. Tocilescu?" asked a friendly female voice. "Yes," I said. "This is the National Council for the Study of Secret Police Archives. You've asked to see your father's file. I'd like to inform you that it will be at your disposal at our headquarters, next Wednesday, from nine in the morning," she said.

That day, I entered a reading room filled with files scattered around tables, and I was told that I wasn't allowed to take pictures with my phone. I decided to write down whatever I found important or funny. A man handed me the documents—the first folder had "Traian" written on it with capital letters and green felt pen. That was my dad's code name—I have no idea why. Here's what I found out:

MY DAD WAS A COMMUTER, WHICH WAS BAD

The year is 1973, and my dad is a fresh-faced university graduate in the Romanian city of Brăila, where he is directing a production of August Strindberg's Swanewit. A note from a nameless informant indicates that my dad doesn't live in Brăila—where he'd been assigned by the Communist government—but was actually commuting between Brăila and Bucharest. It mentions that he doesn't entertain much of a relationship with his fellow workers, and that the manager of the theatre where Swanewit ran asked him to stop commuting—which he ignored.

Another note says that his brother lives in Germany, where the man had fled to in 1967. It also reveals my dad's family situation: father, Alexandru, former railroad company doctor, now retired. Mother, Elena, also retired.

MY DAD DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE CIVIC DUTIES OF THE WORKING CLASS

Following the success of Swanewit, my dad lands in the city of Pitești, where he puts on a Japanese play. He then goes to Piatra Neamț, where he stages The Merry Wives of Windsor—another success. A rat reports:

"His ideas are generally very modernist, influenced by the West. This is reflected in the hippie way he dresses and presents himself (long hair, beard, beads, bracelets, amulets, flared jeans, brightly coloured shirts, etc.)"

With the growing success of my father's shows, the number of informants also grows. Some of them are close friends who tell on him because certain circumstances force them to, and never say anything bad about him. Others are extras or members of the theatre's technical staff.

"He lacks respect and politeness in his communication with people, drinks a lot—if possible on other people's tabs—and only cares about himself," someone notes.

"He doesn't understand, or refuses to understand, the civic duties of each member of the working class," someone else explains. A summary of the secret police officer who has been assigned the file states:

"Tocilescu Al. has had an Information and Investigation File opened in his name and has been noted as acting with enmity."

Toca goes on to stage more plays at several Bucharest theatres: Ion Vasilescu, Giulești, and Comedy. They are modern, contemporary plays that subtly criticize those in power at the time.

That's when his struggles with censorship begin, according to the second file. It contains the transcripts of several intercepted phone calls, which show him asking people to intervene with the censors at the Ministry of Culture, or to complain to their supervisors. He gets vague answers, and there are more calls—a fierce battle over a costume detail, the colour of a suitcase, the tone of a line, the use of a prop, the hairstyle of an actor. There is frustration, there are arguments and explanations.

At the same time, the notes on my dad go on: "other than that, same as always: vulgar, sarcastic, spews obscenities with every mention of the state's leadership, the ministry of his field, etc."

A neighbour informs: "At home, the subject under investigation is well-known for the frequent noisey parties he hosts, which bother those around him and which bereave him of positive assessments." Mr. Cilianu lived above us and hated my dad's guts.

SOME OF THE INFORMANTS DID NOT UNDERSTAND THEATre VERY WELL

Around that time—I think it was 1982—my parents apply for a visa to go see my uncle in Germany. The answer comes back negative. A set of passport photos were removed from an envelope my dad sent my uncle. Toca moves to the Bulandra theatre in Bucharest. It's interesting to see that most of the informants who report on my father did find him exceptionally talented—if not the best in his generation.

There is no end to the information on my father: He came to rehearsals reeking of alcohol!; He uses foul language!; He yells at the actors!; He drinks during rehearsals!; The theatre's agent from Securitate complains to theatre manager Ion Besoiu that Tocilescu is an undesirable element, but Besoiu tells him to mind his own business. The agent complains again. Besoiu ignores him again.

A note mentions that Toca has befriended folk singer Florian Pittiș, who wears T-shirts with foreign band logos like "The Beatels" and is followed by several female fans "aged 14 to 15" on his tours around the country.

In another note, an informant complains that after having rehearsed for Molière's Tartuffe for nine months, Toca has started working on Mikhail Bulgakov's The Cabal of Hypocrites—a play about Molière having written Tartuffe. The informant concludes from this that Toca is unable to finish anything. Toca's explanation—that the two plays will be performed on consecutive nights, somehow making up a whole—makes no sense to the informant: "If a play is ready, you go to opening night and then start working on the next one."

The informant is happy to report that rehearsals are going poorly and that Toca isn't getting along with some of the actors. He's actually triumphant when, on one morning in winter, Toca calls the theatre to let them know he's not coming in for rehearsals because the room is too cold. The actors, who are already there, get upset. Toca doesn't care that they're upset. He says he's not coming into the theatre until it's warm. In all fairness: The heaters aren't working because they've cracked from the cold. Eventually, two guys in the technical staff steal a working heater for the theatre, and Toca makes up with his team. Life goes on.

MY FAMILY APPARENTLY FELT THE SYSTEM WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR US

The author

Our phone was under surveillance and all of our phone conversations were written down. The most boring and mundane things appear on record:

"12/09/82, 18:22 hours.

Called by 123454, friend Denis says hello to little Alex (kindergarten), then talks with Valeria. He lets her know he's moved to Romană Square the previous day and tells her his new phone number. Valeria writes it down. She says Toca (husband) is not home. She and Alex might stop by later."

In 1983, Toca is invited to direct the play Titanic Waltz in Budapest. After applying multiple times for a visa to go to Hungary, he's allowed to go. My mother asks to be allowed to visit him and take me along. A note from an informant warns that the Tocilescus "are a wild family, from all points of view. In private circles, they make all sorts of jokes about the party, about our socialist order. Nothing is good enough for them anymore, it's all lies and unfairness." My mom and I are not given permission to visit my dad in Hungary.

When my dad returns, the company at Bulandra is assigned the task of producing a patriotic show to celebrate X years of one of Communism's many triumphs. But there's a small mutiny during a workers' council meeting: Toca, actor Victor Rebengiuc, and some others don't want to get the Bulandra theatre involved in something like this. Another actor, Marcel Iureș, states he won't recite any patriotic poems. The staff basically refuses to pay homage to the socialist order, and manager Ion Besoiu doesn't waste his breath trying to convince them to act otherwise—or so the informant insinuates.

A year later, Toca is directing Hamlet. There are tons of notes on this period: Tocilescu and the actors are putting on a show that's hitting a little too close to home, it's too clearly making a statement against the system. Some of the cast think the text has been modified too much and Rebengiuc abandons the part of Claudius because he doesn't like the changes to the text. The notes underline that Tocilescu is losing the actors' trust—but of course, the show eventually ends up being a huge hit. You can't really censor Shakespeare, after all.

WHEN YOU TURN A STAGE INTO A CHURCH, NO ONE NOTICES

Toca requests permission to visit my uncle again—he's turned down again. He gets upset, argues, pressures. A good friend writes, as an informant, that he doesn't think Toca would remain in Germany if he'd visit: Because he'd miss the theatre in Romania too much, because it would be far harder for him to become a star over there, because he cares too much about his circle of friends and acquaintances to leave them. The friend thinks he should be allowed to make the journey. The Romanian government says no.

Toca writes a letter to a cousin in Paris, who had also invited him to come over. In the letter, he explains how much he misses news of what's going on in the world of Western theatre. He has no access to articles, essays, interviews—all he occasionally gets to see are pictures of a set or some costumes. But the ideas never reach him, never reach us, in Romania. A copy of the letter is filed neatly in his folder.

Toca stays in Romania. The phone keeps being tapped, one call after the other, one mundane thing after another. Toca directs Io Mircea Voievod, a historic play by Dan Tărchilă. He doesn't change the text, doesn't insert any mean remarks, doesn't criticize anything. The only rather unusual thing is that the set is made up of stained glass portraits of Romanian princes. He virtually turns the set into a church. At that time religion was officially forbidden but unofficially tolerated by the government. Using images of sanctified princess at a state-owned theatre was an affront to the regime, but tired or careless, the censors choose to ignore this small detail.

AND LIKE THAT, YOU CAN CLOSE AN INVESTIGATION OF YEARS

There isn't much more to the file. At some point, a secret police officer suggests that they should cease investigating this director, because he seems to have cleaned up his act. Or maybe it dawns on someone that there isn't much damage a theatre director can do. His plays are stuck here, between the borders of his country. Let Romanians watch them, hear some subversive messages, and laugh. What difference do 400, 500, 5,000 people make? They can't go anywhere, can't tell anyone anyway. So what if he's being a bit subversive? What is he going to change with that attitude? Nothing. The investigation closes in the spring of 1987.

§

I closed the files and returned them to the gentleman who brought them to me. He asked me if I wanted any photocopies. I didn't. My dad didn't want them either. I left the building and headed toward Unirii Square in the rain.

I was left with Toca in 1987, seen through the eyes of informants like Bernardo, Georgescu, Valentina, Constantinescu, and Iosif—people who thought that the regime would never fall, and so they tried to build a life in it.

They were wrong.

A young person holds a 'Legal High' chemical pill on February 26, 2015 in Manchester, England. But is being high always as dangerous and irrational as lawmakers (and some stock photo illustrators) think? (Photo Illustration by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Last month, selling almost any substance that gets people high became illegal in the United Kingdom. Lawmakers made exceptions for alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, traditional foods like spices, and existing prescription drugs, but the blanket ban on psychoactive substances is apparently intended to end the arms race between prohibitionists and black market chemists, who create new "legal highs" as soon as any specific substance is criminalized.

What the new ban really does, though, is illustrate the incoherence of international drug laws and the religious concepts of morality that lie at their heart. If we want better policies, we need to understand why this approach cannot possibly succeed, as well as its roots in a Puritan strain of Western culture.

Ireland's adoption of similar legislation in 2010 did shut down many head shops and obvious online stores. But it apparently did not reduce use of the most dangerous formerly "legal highs" or related deaths, and appears to have driven many users underground and to the dark web. Using the law to win convictions has also proved extremely difficult.

In fact, the United States has long had what is known as an "analogue" drug law, which attempts to preemptively ban drugs similar to existing illegal drugs—and here, too, prosecution has proved challenging. As a result, Congress has held hearings on synthetic drugs like K2 (or "Spice")—which we know can have bizarre and even dangerous effects, unlike actual pot—including one in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

These laws assume unearned pleasure is harmful in and of itself—not a position often voiced by secular officials in a capitalist society.

Let's just hope they don't use the new UK law as their model: As British psychologist Vaughn Bell put it, the government "is pretending that one of the most difficult problems in neuroscience—and one of the deep mysteries of consciousness—doesn't apply to them."

The problem is that it's extremely tricky to delineate what "getting high" actually means—which is to say whether a substance is actually "psychoactive." When you try to get precise, it rapidly becomes obvious that the nature of "highs" is a matter of values and culture, not hard science. Stoners' apparently silly musings about their mental state and the nature of reality actually reflect a surprisingly intractable philosophical problem.

The new British law defines a substance as psychoactive if "by stimulating or depressing the person's central nervous system, it affects the person's mental functioning or emotional state." And prosecutions are supposed to be based on whether, as in the US, the drugs are pharmacologically similar to illegal substances, and traditional foods are exempted.

But the broad definition arguably leaves even florists and vendors of incense at potential risk: Scent can certainly change mood, and can only do so by affecting the brain. Now, British supermarkets are essentially supposed to discriminate against scruffy young men buying only whipped cream who might be using its nitrous oxide to get high, while letting more innocent geezers do their thing, according to guidance recently issued by the government.

What's missing here is any attempt to determine whether a substance is actually harmful: Blanket bans on psychoactive drugs simply presume that chemical pleasure is inherently shady, whether or not it has health risks.

Craig Reinarman is a professor of sociology at the University of California in Santa Cruz and the co-author most recently of Expanding Addiction: Critical Essays . Describing how most previous drug laws were introduced after fears were stirred up about particular groups and their use of the demonized substance to harm themselves or others, he tells VICE, "In this case, they're being more explicit than they normally are that, 'We don't want anyone having fun.' In that sense, it's perversely a little more candid than things you hear coming out of in Vienna, for example."

These laws assume unearned pleasure is harmful in and of itself—not a position often voiced by secular officials in a capitalist society. In every other area, advertisers and marketers constantly urge people to indulge. But unless a psychoactive substance is blessed by a history of being used recreationally by European colonialists, it is typically viewed as dangerous by default.

Reinarman says that if you really took the idea seriously that consciousness alteration is bad, you'd have to ban meditation, music, art, dancing, sex, sports, and amusement parks. From this list—much of which, it's important to note, has been targeted by religious fundamentalists of various types over the years—it is clear that the idea of "psychoactive" is more of a spiritual concept than one that can be quantified.

So what about defining potentially problematic substances by their pharmacological brain activity? Here, too, science is not especially helpful.

David Nichols, emeritus professor of pharmacology at Purdue University, was the first to synthesize some of the chemicals that others have marketed as "legal highs." As he put it in testimony he gave to Congress in May, "No one can predict the potential of a new, untested molecule. It may have effects in humans similar to other structures, it may have completely novel effects, or it could be completely inactive." He adds that changing a single molecule in the structure of LSD can render it inert—and small alterations to the structure of morphine create an antidote to it.

The only way to find out is to try it.

It's time to stop letting hidden moral values determine what people can put into their bodies.

Nichols is most concerned about the effects these bans can have on medicine. "There are often serendipitous discoveries made with "misused" drugs," he tells me. "Psilocybin [best known as the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms"] is now being shown to have efficacy in treating depression, anxiety, and some addictions. There are many other drugs with effects similar to psilocybin, and maybe some of them are better than psilocybin. We may never know."

Nichols says his son, also a professor, accidentally discovered a psychedelic was a potent anti-inflammatory agent and might even block asthma. But he could only work with the compound because it hadn't been made illegal.

The paperwork to research controlled substances is onerous, and sometimes hundreds of drugs need to be screened to find one that works. But for each drug that is illegal under the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)'s "Schedule I" classification (for example, weed), a separate license is required, and the DEA needs to know what the researcher wants to do with it in advance. Since scientists often don't know what they might find, this classification deters them from working with these substances. And that could mean that cures for anything from Alzheimer's to Zika might be delayed or never discovered.

It's time to stop letting hidden moral values determine what people can put into their bodies. People who want to get high will always find a way. Some American teens have apparently taken to playing the potentially deadly "choking game" to alter their consciousness—legal, but way more dangerous than pot.

Drugs should be regulated based on their potential to do harm—not their potential to be fun. Pleasure is not a poison, and what we need to worry about is addiction, organ damage, disease, behavioural dis-inhibition, impaired driving, and other genuine dangers. Politicians can turn their attention to ending excess joy after they solve actual problems, like inequality, poverty, and pain.

Note: For those interested in learning more about this topic, the author is participating in a panel on Thursday, June 9, that is part of a free conference in New York City about new psychoactive substances held by the Drug Policy Alliance.

Follow Maia Szalavitz on Twitter.

Look at Anna Haifisch's art and comics on her website and Twitter.

This man wants to die. Image via Mayor Wertz

Read: The Horrible Things the Stanford Rapist's Friends and Family Said in His Defence

We now know what they say to you at the exact point of brain death, when you have floated through a long, grey corridor up through the clouds, through to purgatory, through to the wispy place where heaven and hell intersect, where your fate is decided, where you are condemned or elevated, blessed or cursed. When you die, Guy Fieri leans forward to you, closer, no closer than that, closer, and takes one deep breath before howling:

"WELCOME TO THE CULINARY DOJO AND FLAVOURTOWN!"

Here is a video of death, or of Guy Fieri eating various foods in quick succession to the tune of "Hurt"' by Johnny Cash. Look at this video, and tell me this isn't death. That Guy Fieri isn't dead, here, emotionally at least if not in body. Guy Fieri—cursed by a hundred, a thousand different gods, Guy Fieri cursed in some way by every single god, the god of wearing wraparound shades on the back of your head, the god of frosted tips, the god of looking like a rejected character sketch for pre-concept Shrek—Guy Fieri condemned to live a life as some sort of bar snack Sisyphus, pushing battered shrimp after battered shrimp into his creaking, aching body until he dies and is reborn, and does it all again with a burrito. Guy Fieri, with his nose deep red with sunburn, trying to eat an entire two-hander burger in one bite; Guy Fieri, wearing a T-shirt that says "SPIRITUAL GANGSTER," wriggling his eyebrows while sucking spaghetti; Guy Fieri, with his eyes like an innocent cow, pauses with a fork for just a second, just a second; Guy Fieri, with his face and body like a flame effect shirt came to life, making you wonder how often he dyes his soul patch; Guy Fieri, the troll pencil-topper in a rejected Goosebumps short story, trying to crawl down to hell by eating mac 'n' cheese with his hot bare hands. Guy Fieri eats like a man trying to die. Guy Fieri eats like he has a death wish. Guy Fieri eats food like he's trying to fight it.

There is no photo of Guy Fieri where he doesn't look like he's somehow emitting a three-chord waa-waa guitar solo. Imagine being on like that, all the time. Imagine not being able to turn that off. Guy Fieri can't take his soul patch off every night and just be "Guy." He can't deflate on the sofa with a beer and watch sports. Guy Fieri is always Guy Fieri, every second of every day. Except, that is, here: except in that exquisite moment just before he takes a bite of food—when his body is hunched, primed, his hands gripped round an egg roll or spiralized frankfurter, his body flinching like yours might before you take a punch—and in that moment, he sighs and succumbs, you can barely see it, but it's there, a tiny moment of relaxation, the lid just sliding off the box, the tourniquet loosening, and there, for a moment, he is true being: Take a breath, Guy Fieri, for in this moment, you are alive. Welcome to the culinary dojo. Welcome to flavourtown.

Follow Joel Golby on Twitter.

Donald Trump's campaign is built around a simple, yet profound idea: Donald Trump is great. Arrogance isn't unusual in a presidential candidate—it's pretty much a prerequisite—but Trump is different because he doesn't really have any other ideas beyond his own greatness. His foreign policy is vague at best, his healthcare proposal is mostly Republican boilerplate, and he tosses out promises both big and small like other 70-year-old men toss breadcrumbs to pigeons.

Specifics and concrete plans are for politicians, and Trump is no politician. He's a winner who's going to make America great again. This is explicitly why his supporters like him. After speaking to some of Trump's richest backers, the New York Times Magazine's Adam Davidson summarized what they told him like so: "The specifics of his plans were beside the point, because Trump's proven instincts as a businessman were all that mattered." Basically, Trump will be a good president because he is good at everything he does.

The counterargument? The job Trump is currently doing most publicly—running for president—is a job that he appears to be doing very, very badly.

Trump is, of course, very popular, and many people come to hear him speak, though fewer people than generally show up for a Kevin Hart show. He's charismatic, he's beloved, he has a lot of nice suits, but those are traits—like an inflated ego and a few million dollars in cash—that all presidential candidates have. The actual work is duller, the way actual work always is: the hiring of staff, the managing of an operation that stretches across states, the coordination of an ever-growing organization as it responds to conditions that can change daily, if not hourly. This is stuff all politicians are required to do, or hire people to do, regardless of party or ideology. Stuff that, a successful businessperson like Trump should, in fact, be good at.

Well, turns out Trump is fucking up all that stuff pretty royally. On Monday, an MSNBC report quoted sources from inside his campaign who described the operation as "dysfunctional" and unable to perform basic tasks like announcing endorsements through press releases and issuing timely rebuttals of Hillary Clinton's speeches. Instead of having whole teams of people managing Trump's message, as most candidates do, MSNBC reported, it was just Trump and his Twitter account beefing with CNN and saying that Clinton was bad because she used a teleprompter.

This lack of organization really shone through in the case of Trump University. The problem isn't that Trump ran a business that seemed to be based off of persuading students to go into credit card debt so they could attend dubious real estate seminars. The problem isn't even that some of those students are suing Trump. Hey, these things happen—sometimes your business is accused of being a fraud, sometimes the FBI is investigating you because you kept some classified documents on your home server. The problem is that Trump's response has been to fall into a hole of his own devising, then keep digging.

Instead of some kind of coordinated media blitz from his supporters defending Trump University or at least maintaining that the suits were baseless, the candidate himself went around saying that the judge presiding over one case was biased because of his Mexican heritage. While Republicans criticized Trump's comments, he went a step further, saying that a Muslim judge would be biased against him too.

Then, after his own campaign sent out a memo to his top supporters telling them to stop talking about the lawsuit, Trump got on the phone and overruled it, saying that instead they should go after reporters asking those questions as the real racists. Then, not one but two of the people on that presumably fairly exclusive conference call told the whole embarrassing story to Bloomberg.

This sort of inside baseball story isn't likely to push voters, who I can't imagine care about the minutiae of messaging, to vote one way or another. Certainly, none of Trump's supporters give a shit—to many of them, no doubt, his lack of a communications staff just shows that Trump is his own man, virtuously untethered from elite DC BS. But it's telling that Trump managed to turn a story about how he was a fraud into a story about how he was a racist, and that his campaign is not just disorganized, but filled with people who will go to the press and complain about how disorganized it is.

It's clear Trump is bad at hiring people. He's also bad at reaching out to donors, a regrettable but necessary part of running for president. He's bad, too, at tailoring a message that appeals to anyone who isn't white, male, and angry. He's got conservative Latinos publicly complaining about the campaign's lack of outreach and minority staffers leaving the Republican National Committee en masse. All of that may not currently be hurting him in the polls (he is still enormously popular among white men), but it raises questions about how he's going to win. Is his campaign really going to succeed in getting disaffected first-time voters out to the polls in swing states? Is he going to get to a place where prominent members of his own party aren't denouncing the things he says as racist?

Clinton has her own obvious blind spots and scandals, and there will certainly be days and weeks ahead when Trump is on the attack, and she's on the defensive. But campaigns are about more than just the figureheads at the front. They're about the massive machinery behind them that moves voters to the polls. If that isn't well put together, Trump can say anything he likes, and he'll wind up a loser come November.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

In Seattle and Calgary, venue staff are training up in case of attacks. Photo via Flickr user Avarty

Obviously, it's not the kind of advice and planning anyone wants to think about.

VICE reached out to about a dozen mid-size and large arts venues in both Vancouver and Toronto, but did not hear back.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

An album cover for the indie band Good English. Photo via Bandcamp

UPDATE 6/7/16: Good English has reinstated its Facebook page and Leslie has responded to the controversy with a statement. Read it here.

Indie band Good English has been kicked off five concert bills at four venues in Brooklyn after its drummer wrote a now-notorious letter defending convicted sexual assailant and former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner's character, as Gothamist reports.

In her letter, Leslie Rasmussen essentially attributed Turner being found thrusting on top of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster to "clouded judgment." She also implicitly criticized the sexual assault victim, who she wrote "doesn't remember anything but the amount she drank."

Rasmussen also took pains to call out political correctness on college campuses and suggested the whole thing was just a "huge misunderstanding."

The musician—who plays drums in the Ohio-born band with her sisters Elizabeth and Celia—was set to play shows Friday through Sunday at Brooklyn venues Matchless, Rock Shop, Indie City Distillery, and Gold Sounds. (Rasmussen and Turner apparently graduated from the same Oakwood, Ohio, high school together in 2014.)

After the wave of backlash and the show cancelations, Good English deleted its Facebook page, and while the band's tour may continue, it's hard to see how the group can get the focus back on the music and away from its drummer's odd choice of friends.

Read: The Horrible Things the Stanford Rapist's Friends and Family Said in His Defense

Photo via Jennifer Mulford's Facebook account, appropriately captioned 'My baby!!'

On Tuesday, Jennifer Mulford, 36, told the Sun that she's taking a little time off work to focus on love and maintaining the nurturing bond she shares with her boyfriend Brad Leeson, 36—a bond fueled by breast milk.

After reading all about Adult Breastfeeding Relationships (ABR) online and the "pure joy it brought others," Mulford said she set out to find the man of her dreams—one that'd be down to drink her breast milk—on dating sites, ABR forums, and even Craigslist. After coming up dry, she floated the idea by her former boyfriend Brad, who decided he was down with the idea.

"We were talking, and Brad told me he had a thing for big-breasted women, and that size had always been a factor in his relationships," Mulford told the Sun. "We both wanted the same thing out of the relationship—a magical bond that only breastfeeding can achieve."

Since embarking on their modern journey of love, Mulford decided to take some time off from her bartending job since breastfeeding a grown man can become a bit of a time suck. Because she gave birth more than 20 years ago, the two have to engage in "dry feeding" for two hours every day to fool her body into thinking she's feeding a baby, which the couple achieves through suckling and using breast pumps.

But the erotic aspect of breastfeeding isn't the main reason behind their new relationship, Mulford says. "It's been difficult to distinguish the difference between nurturing and sex," she told the Sun.

"Although it's so beautiful and peaceful, it's also erotic. It's been hard to get through the first few nursing sessions without being tempted to have sex, but each time it's getting easier."

Read: Why Are Breast Pumps Disappearing from New Jersey Burlington Coat Factories?

For more than a year, since even before Bernie Sanders even announced he was running for president, Gustavo Ramirez has been evangelizing on behalf of the Vermont senator, building up a grassroots network of California lefties and activists to get behind the unlikely White House bid. His efforts started small, as a single Meetup group in Pomona, and spread quickly, across Southern California's Inland Empire and out to the coastal counties, collecting new Bernie diehards who watched for months as their candidate racked up surprising wins in the race against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, eagerly preparing for the campaign's eventual arrival in their own state.

So when Sanders finally showed up at a rally in Carson last month, and promised to make California his last stand against Clinton and the Establishment she represents, Ramirez was overwhelmed. "Hang on a second, I gotta catch my breath," he said, interrupting himself mid-sentence to collect himself during an interview with VICE. "Oh my god, I'm so excited. I'm just so hyped!"

At 44, Ramirez is older than most of the supporters who flooded the StubHub Arena for Sanders's first California primary that evening, and unlike many of his fellow Sanderistas, he has worked on long-shot campaigns before. A longtime member of the Green Party, Ramirez graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in social justice, and his business card identifies him as the founder of U.P.W.A.R.D. (Uniting Peace With Actions, Respect, and Dignity), a San Bernardino-based organization that mobilizes for various left-wing causes.

After the candidate had left the arena, Ramirez flitted among lingering groups of Bernie fans, introducing campaign organizers and convention delegate hopefuls and collecting email addresses for down-ballot "Berniecrats." If he had any doubts about his candidate's chances of winning the Democratic nomination, it didn't show.

"We're serious when we say we want a political revolution," Ramirez told VICE. "We need to truly break down barriers. And it's not just Bernie who can do it—it's us." When asked if he would consider returning to the Green Party if Sanders loses the Democratic nomination, he hesitated. "No," he answered, eventually. "I'll put Bernie as a write-in candidate if I have to. I'm Bernie or Bust."

At this point, a group of kids in black "Compton for Bernie" T-shirts called Ramirez over to take their picture behind Sanders's campaign podium. But as I turned to walk away, he called me back. "One last thing," he added, throwing his arm around another companion. "We're trying to get Bernie to come to San Bernardino. We need him in San Bernardino—we desperately need a revolution there."

People listen to Sanders speak during a get-out-the-vote concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Ramirez got his revolution—at least in part. Although Sanders effectively lost the Democratic race, he did make it to San Bernardino ("It was electric," Ramirez told me later, his voice almost completely gone at that point). In fact, by the time his campaign wrapped out of California, the candidate had made dozens of stops throughout the state, approaching the last major primary of the 2016 cycle the way most presidential candidates approach a 99-county bus tour before the Iowa caucuses.

"If we can win, and win big here in California and in the other states, and in Washington DC, we are going to go into the Democratic convention with enormous momentum," Sanders told thousands of young fans gathered at the gates of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Saturday night. "With your help, I believe, we will come out with the nomination."

The promise, which he's repeated across the state, hints at the alternate reality increasingly embraced by the Vermont senator and his Bernie or Bust fans, one in which a win in California would inspire unpledged superdelegates—the vast majority of whom have declared they support Clinton—to defect from the presumptive nominee and hand the prize to Sanders instead.

The logic has always been a little confusing, given Sanders's professed desire to get rid of superdelegates entirely, and the fact that he would be asking those superdelegates to overturn the will of Democratic primary voters. And after Tuesday primary results, the argument is essentially dead.

By the time Sanders left the stage at his primary night rally in Santa Monica Tuesday night, it still wasn't clear who would win California's Democratic primary. But at that point, the results were largely superfluous: With her decisive wins in New Jersey and New Mexico, Clinton had effectively won the Democratic nomination, locking up the majority of the 4,051 pledged delegates at stake in the race.

But though his justifications for staying in the race had mostly vanished, Sanders promised that he would stay in the race. "Next Tuesday, we continue the fight in the final primary in Washington, DC," he told supporters gathered in Santa Monica. "And then we take our fight for economic, social, racial justice to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania!"

"Im pretty good at arithmetic and I know that the fight in front of us is a very very steep fight," he said. "We will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate we can get." Concluding his brief remarks, he added, "Thank you all. The struggle continues.

Sanders supporters drown out the candidate during his primary night party in Santa Monica on Tuesday, June 7. Photo by John Locher/AP

As the primary cycle reaches its predictable conclusion, this ongoing denial of the mathematical realities of the race—coupled with Sanders's apparent determination to derail Clinton's nomination—raises a pressing question for both his movement and the Democratic Party: What exactly does Bernie Sanders want?

On the surface, the answer seems obvious. As anyone with an internet connection can tell you, Sanders wants a "political revolution"—one that will get money out of politics, overturn Citizens United, punish Wall Street, ban fracking, and install a system of Scandinavian socialism with free public education and health care. It's a platform that Sanders has crusaded for during his 25 years in Congress, and has remained devoted to during his unexpectedly competitive campaign, with a message consistency that borders on zealotry.

In California, though, Sanders was focused on a new goal: He wanted to win. Barnstorming the state over the weekend, his speeches veered away from the economic injustice, focusing instead on the injustices done to him and his campaign by the political-industrial complex.

"It is extremely unlikely that Secretary Clinton will have the requisite number of pledged delegates to claim victory on Tuesday night," Sanders told reporters at a news conference in LA on Saturday. "Now I have heard reports that Secretary Clinton has said it's all going to be over on Tuesday night. I have reports that the media, after the New Jersey results come in, are going to declare that it is all over. That simply is not accurate."

"In other words," he said, "the Democratic National Convention will be a contested convention." In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday, he added that the current Democratic primary is "an anointment process, not a nomination process."

Bernie or Busters wait for the candidate in Santa Monica. Photo by Grace Wyler

The message—that the Democratic primaries, like the rest of the political system, are fundamentally rigged—is one Sanders has repeated frequently in recent weeks, turning the angry enthusiasm previously reserved for his left-wing policies against the Democratic Establishment and its "corporate media" lackeys.

"The Democratic Party is going to have to make a very, very, profound and important decision," Sanders said in Carson last month. "It can do the right thing and open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change." The other option, Sanders explained over a chorus of "Bernie of Bust" chants, "is to choose and maintain its status quo structure, remain dependent on big money campaign contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited energy."

As Clinton edged closer to the nomination, Sanders's campaign responded by accusing party officials in Kentucky and Puerto Rico of unfairly suppressing the vote. Over the weekend, the campaign went so far as to accuse a Los Angeles city council member of interfering with plans to host a get-out-the-vote concert at a city-owned venue where Clinton was scheduled to host her own rally Monday night.

At rallies in California, the inevitability of what many of Sanders supporters refer to as the "quote unquote math" of the primary race clashes sharply with the overwhelming feeling that their candidate is actually winning. The contrast has left supporters alternately ecstatic and on edge, consumed by the suspicion that Democratic Party has been gaslighting their movement.

"There's a little bit of quiet—or not-so-quiet—desperation," said Danny Baraz, a Sanders supporter and the editor-in-chief of Janky Smooth, an LA-based music and culture website that recently hosted a punk rock fundraiser for Bernie's campaign. "People seem a little bit more angry, a little bit more desperate, a little bit like we could be letting something slip through our fingers."

"I've been a registered Democrat my whole life, until maybe after this year," Baraz told VICE. "The DNC has been very dismissive of Sanders supporters—I think that's going to be the straw that broke the camel's back." He added, "I fully expect widely reported and widespread voter fraud in California. I would bet my house on it."

The meme and the movement. Photo by Grace Wyler

The sentiment—driven, in part, by the Democratic Party's bizarrely heavy-handed opposition to the Sanders's campaign—has run through almost every conversation I've had with Bernie supporters, many of which began with the question, "Are you good media?"

"If you look at what's happened with the closing of polling places, the problems with voter registration—that's just the stuff we've heard about," Steve Stokes, a self-described "Berniecrat" making a long-shot bid for US Senate in California, told VICE outside a rally in Orange County. "Imagine what's happening that we don't know about." Nearby, a guy in stars-and-stripes pants led a "Never Hillary!" chant through a megaphone.

Ramirez was more matter-of-fact. "The Democratic Party," he declared, "is corrupt to the core."

All this has been the source of predictable handwringing among Democrats, undermining their desperate calls for "party unity." But the insistence that Sanders can actually win the nomination presents perhaps a bigger quandary for the Bernie Movement itself. Sanders's campaign has earned real victories and overachieved on a vast scale—the question now is whether his final battle willovershadow the policy goals he set out to accomplish in the first place.

Sanders will enter the Democratic National Convention as the most successful socialist candidate ever to run for president in the US, and with more leverage than any runner-up in recent memory—but short of stealing the nomination from Clinton, Sanders has yet to make it clear what exactly he wants to do with that power.

"I think he's made some huge mistakes," Baraz said. "If he pivoted away from free healthcare and free education, and focused on the money in politics, I think his message would resonate a lot more, and with a wider audience."

"I think the most important question," he added, "is what's going to happen to the movement if and when Bernie loses the nomination. There's no exact plan."

"Where are the transcripts?" Photo by Grace Wyler

Behind the scenes, Sanders has managed to exact big concessions from the Democrats heading into the national convention, including several seats on the platform committee that will decide the party's national policy agenda for the next four years. And his endorsement of Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Shulz's opponent in her Florida congressional race was a sign that the senator will continue to hold the party accountable to the progressive movement, even after he's exited the race.

"There are a number of different ways that Bernie Sanders could continue to have an influence in 2016, whether he's the president, or a leader in the US Senate with an incredibly large grassroots movement behind him," said Neil Sroka, communications director for Democracy for America, a progressive group allied with the Sanders campaign.

"A lot of people," Sroka added, "seem to forget, because he's this wild-haired socialist from Vermont, that this is the guy who has been a master legislator, in terms of deal-making, and figuring out how to get his way, despite the fact that the other side is against him almost every time."

But while Sanders himself has been effective at getting what he wants from his adopted party, he has so far seemed reluctant to instruct his movement on how they can best help him achieve his goals. "The idea that I can snap my fingers and have millions of supporters kind of march in line, that is not what our effort is about," he told CNN Sunday.

So for now, at least, in the absence of an increasingly unlikely Sanders's victory, the candidate's supporters have been left to determine how best to advance their revolution. This has already lead to some unfortunate outcomes, like the doxxing of the Nevada Democratic Party chair last month, and the attacks on Trump supporters in San Jose, which were reportedly carried out in part by Sanders fans.

Young Bernie fans in Santa Monica. Photo by Grace Wyler

Despite these incidents, Sroka thinks that by and large, the Sanders movement will do just fine without more concrete guidance from the candidate himself.

"There is always a challenge when you get into difficult moments like the one we're in right now, closer and closer to the end of the campaign, especially for the kind of grass roots movement that Bernie has built, because you're bringing in a lot of people into the political process who never were involved in politics before," he said.

But, Sroka added, "one of the reasons why Bernie Sanders's campaign has been so surprisingly strong is, because he is so on message all of the time. Most of the time, the movement is saying exactly what he's saying because it's what he's been saying for 30 years."

Still, as Sanders fans face the prospect of actually having to make good on their Bernie or Bust promise, many of the movement's activists seem to be looking to the candidate for guidance on how to continue to achieve his goals after he has exited the race.

"He wants us to raise our level of commitment in whatever way we can," Ramirez said, when I asked how he planned to support Sanders after the California primary. "To inspire people who have not been active, or who haven't supported Sanders, to join the movement, to volunteer, to become more effective in campaigning."

But just what they will be campaigning for in the post-Bernie revolution is much less clear.

Follow Grace Wyler on Twitter.

Photo by Jake Kivanç

As a writer covering the weed beat, I hear about lots of quirky ideas and concerns, some of which I've affectionately characterized as "cannabispiracies."

The latest involves a backlash over words that have long been a part of the weed lexicon—"weed" being one of them.

"Can you stop using the word 'weed' and replace it with cannabis. Especially within the context of law and medicine. It sounds awful not edgy," wrote one commenter in reference to a recent story of mine about the Toronto dispensary raids in which I'd written, "In February, the MMPR program was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, who said patients should be able to grow their own weed." Another added, "It's cannabis people.. Let's be grown ups about this shit." I was informed that saying "weed" invokes a negative connotation.

Instinctively, it struck me as uptight that a word as banal as "weed"—akin, in my mind, to describing alcohol as "booze"—is now considered offensive. But a survey of activists in the cannabis community revealed there is a legitimate debate over the term, as well as words like "dope," "stoner," and "pothead."

"I say weed all the time and people are offended," said Lisa Campbell, chairwoman of Women Grow Toronto. "Apparently words like 'weed' and 'pothead' have stigma associated with them. I like to reclaim them."

Medical cannabis patient advocate Tracy Curley, who goes by the moniker "Weed Woman Canada" said the concern over the term "weed" comes from the "Reefer Madness" prohibition era, when marijuana was dubbed "Mexican locoweed."

"That propaganda is part of our history, a long fought one," she said. Still, she personally embraces the term "stiletto stoner" and, as for pothead, "I don't find pothead to be any more derogatory than drinker... I know which one will get home safely at the end of the night."

Others feel much more strongly about it.

"My issue is your use of 'stoner' as a rather pejorative term, whether derogatory or not, like the words 'faggot' or 'queer,'" one reader wrote me in an email, while accusing me of "painting all enjoyers with the abuser paint brush" and setting back the legalization movement.

Vancouver-based advocate Dana Larsen, who recently gave away two million pot seeds on a cross-country tour, told VICE the media does often "denigrate" cannabis users with these terms.

"We don't see regular beer drinkers being called 'drunkards' or wine drinkers being called 'winos' in media stories, but cannabis users get called 'stoners' and 'potheads' regularly," he said, noting he'd prefer to be called a "cannabis enthusiast."

But he's admitted he gets heat from "purists" who object to the word "marijuana" over "cannabis." He uses both, but said the former is more widely recognized.

That sentiment was echoed by Cannabis Culture owner Jodie Emery, who recently opened two fully recreational dispensaries in Toronto. She pointed to a recent Toronto Star article, in which marijuana was referred to as "dope" as offensive.

"'Dope' is a term straight from the Reefer Madness era, equivalent in ridiculousness to calling cannabis 'the reefer'."

Emery herself has likely offended people with some of the analogies she's used to describe the plight of the cannabis community.

In a recent police press conference about the dispensary raids, she responded to a complaint about dispensaries breaking the law by referencing civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who refused to give her seat on a public bus to a white guy. Emery's husband, Marc, was later quoted in an article comparing the dispensary raids to Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when tens of thousands of Jews were moved to concentration camps. When asked by VICE if those comparisons were not insulting, Emery said, "I want to make it very clear that I'm not comparing the experience of the two oppressed groups, but I am comparing the strategy used—that of civil disobedience." She said her husband was likening the Toronto police's "smash-and-grab" tactics to the government-sanctioned strategies used during Kristallnacht.

On a personal level, she said she's been called a "pothead in pearls" and "weed princess," neither of which bother her.

A few years ago, when cannabis culture was still very much underground, this debate probably would have been laughable. But as the movement gains momentum, conversations we'd once dismiss as "stoner talk" are likely to become a part of the mainstream.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Twenty-nine years ago in Cincinnati's West End, a black neighborhood notoriously sawed in half following the construction of the I-71 highway, a resident named Marquicia Jones-Woods founded the Q-Kidz dance team. Called "Ms. Quicy" by generations of members, she wanted to find an outlet for the often-impoverished neighborhood children's talents at an age when they are especially vulnerable to the allure of the streets.

Based out of the Lincoln Community Center, the Q-Kidz walk down the hallways with intention and purpose. For these glorious few hours after school, they have agency over their lives, which are too-often governed by the difficulties associated with having few resources and coming of age amidst crime.

Today, Ms. Quicy's idea has blossomed into a lasting institution, one that she and her identical 22-year-old twin daughters Mariah and Chariah devote most of their time and energy toward. "Ms. Quicy has taught me everything that I need to know, about drill, about dance, and about being myself—respecting myself as a young woman," said Makyla Burnam, team captain, in an interview she gave at Rooftop Films for the new film, The Fits, which features the troupe and is now in theaters.

The film's 11-year-old star, Royalty Hightower, was joined by 42 of her dance-team companions, most of whom appear in the remarkable new film from debut director Anna Rose Holmer. As Toni, a loner who gravitates from boxing toward dance, Hightower is as captivating as the film's elusive narrative, which begins just before a mysterious series of epileptic episodes begins to afflict members of the Q-Kidz.

"The fits is mass psychotronic illness, sometimes called hysteria. That was the seed, exploring that idea, and that trend, through movement," Holmer told me recently over coffee in Brooklyn.

Already interested in making a movie about "movement," Holmer, who has produced work in the dance world for cinematographer and director Jody Lee Lipes (Ballet 422), discovered the Q-Kidz on YouTube and immediately had a desire to make a film with them.

"I got in touch with Ms. Quicy after work at the Housing Authority. It was her last day of work—she had just gotten this Congressional Award—and she thought she was being punked because it was her last day at the office," recalled Holmer.

As they got to know Hightower, the focus of the screenwriting gravitated toward the character of Toni. Holmer sees Hightower's character as a combination of herself and her closest collaborators, producer Lisa Kjerulff and editor Saela Davis, both of whom worked on the script with the 31-year-old NYU film graduate. "We're all kind of tomboys, with these formative relationship with our older brothers, still dealing with gender identity and the pressures of female spaces. That didn't go away because we grew up."

The young director, who workshopped the film in the Venice International Film Festival's prestigious Biennale College, stages the first shot in a way that lets us know we're in for an unusual experience. We see Toni doing sit-ups in a boxing gym, her body entering and exiting the frame at a distinctive rhythm, her eyes breaking the fourth wall. That intimacy with the audience doesn't abate over the course of the film's slender 72-minute runtime. As Toni grows into an increasingly significant member of Q-Kidz, she remains at an emotional remove. While burgeoning teenage sexuality and a Flint-esque poisoning crisis loom as potential avenues for the film's exploration, they remain sidelined by Holmer's interest in the young athlete's process, both as a boxer and a dancer.

"You're in this playful but serious place. Sports are taken very seriously. I love that. There's truth in that," Holmer said. "That's really what the rec center represents."

The movie skates a delicate line between a neorealist approach of using non-professional performers working in their actual environments and a heightened, polished aesthetic of long, steady tracking shots. The confident dolly moves and Steadicam shots, built for maximum glide, are combined with a remarkably dexterous sound design that holds us in Toni's experience at ground level but also cues us to the emotional contours of her journey, from ominous to genuinely uplifting.

In the tradition of much American independent cinema, the narrative remains flat, without stakes-heightening plot points. But the film's constant sense of grandeur stymies any wish for dutiful, escalatory plotting. That the film succeeds in telling a child's story on a shoestring budget without ever feeling manipulative or heavy-handed is a testament to Holmer's touch and Hightower's screen-stealing performance.

"I'm just glad I got to make Royalty Hightower's first film," Holmer told me. In the case of this child actress with magnetism to burn, filmmakers would do well to craft roles that speak the depths of Hightower's multiple gifts.

Follow Brandon Harris on Twitter.

The Fits is now playing in theaters.

Legendary music photographer Tommy Sheehan has been taking pictures of rock, pop, and rap's great and good for more than 40 years. This month he has his first book out, Aim High: Paul Weller in Photographs 1978—2015. Here, he tells John Doran the stories behind ten of his iconic shots.

People had been on at me for ages to do a book, but I hate being the center of attention. When I last shot Paul Weller in February of 2015 for the front cover of Mojo, he said, "Tom, you should do a book." And I just thought he meant a book of my work.

A couple of months down the line, a publisher approached me and asked, "Out of all of the artists you've shot, who could you do a book of?" And "ding!"—that's when the lightbulb went off. I texted Paul saying, "Hello mate, Tommy here..." And bless him, he came back within fifteen minutes: "How can I help?" He's that kind of bloke. He wrote the preface for the book, saying how he likes working with mature lensman.

I'm coming up for the fortieth anniversary of when I first worked with him. You're not best mates with the people you shoot—you have a professional relationship and hopefully a mutual respect. I wouldn't want to be the sort of person who was always getting on the nerves of musicians, trying to hang out with them and all that. Don't get me wrong, I'm friends with him in the same way I'm friends with you. Actually, he's just like you, John—except the big difference is, he's written a load of brilliant songs.

Ozzy Osbourne

It was February of 1982, and we went to America to do Ozzy for the Melody Maker. He'd just bitten the head off the bat, so I think Jonesey thought it would be a good story. Sadly, it was just one month before his guitarist Randy Rhoads died in that bizarre flying accident on the same tour. We met Ozzy in the bar of this hotel at about eleven in the morning. He was supposed to be off the juice, but he was ordering these large brandies and leaving them next to Jonesey on the table, so if Sharon walked in she wouldn't realize he was drinking.

I said, "Do you mind if we quickly go over to the Alamo for some pictures?" So he disappeared upstairs and came back down wearing these huge bell-bottomed culottes and this kind of wooly blouse top with bat wings. He went into the gift shop and bought himself a handbag and a straw stetson. We jumped in a cab to the Alamo and banged off a couple of shots, but then he said, "I've gotta have a piss." Either side of the main door ,there are these concrete urns about three-feet high, and he took a piss in one of them. I was like, "Oh, for fuck's sake..."

He shook himself dry and clambered up into this alcove over the door while I was snapping away. From behind me, I heard someone going , "Yeah, that's the guy I saw urinating on the Alamo." And this Texas Ranger goes, "Really? Get down from there, buddy." And the fella goes, "Yeah, and this one was taking pictures!" And the Texas Ranger was like, "Really? Well, we'll take him in as well." So he was taking our names and then said, "Hey, ain't you the guy who bit the head off the bat?" And Ozzy said, "Yeah, I fucking did. It was like a Crunchie wrapped in chamois leather."

While he was calling for backup, I rewound the film, replaced it and gave that to Jonesey, in case they confiscated my cameras. By this time, there were loads of rangers on the scene and one of them goes to Jonesey, "Hey buddy, are you with these guys?" And he was like , "No, I am a Swedish tourist!" Eventually they let Ozzy out of lockup, so he could do the show that night. When we saw him, he was shaken up. "They locked me up with a murderer! He was covered in blood... he'd just killed his wife..." Fucking hell.

Snoop Dogg

This was in about 1994. We got to LA on the Thursday, and we kept getting told, "It's going to happen today." Except it didn't happen on that day, or the following day, or the day after that. On Monday, the day we had to fly back to the UK, we got the call to go to his place. When we bowled up, it was at the tail end of a weekend party. There was a lot of smoking going on, there was a little kid, about 12 years old, rapping for everyone; he was great.

We'd been told we couldn't mention anything about the court case against Snoop that was going on—he was accused of being an accessory to a murder. I said to him, "Do you remember the black power salute that Tommie Smith did at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City?" And he said, "Yeah." When he was posing, I said, "Do you mind if I just clip these on?" I'd bought a pair of plastic handcuffs from a joke shop at Amen Corner in Tooting on the way to the airport. I did a few frames, and then nearby there were some steps with some bars, and I said, "Sit on those steps there, mate." I went round through the other side and shot him looking through the bars, but it wasn't a suggestion that he should be in prison—it was just a stupid visual.

Shaun Ryder

Love this guy to death. Did the very first pictures of him for Melody Maker. Shot him over a period of twenty years. But he represents the chaos that can come with the job. I was shooting him for the NME up in Manchester one time, and the journalist, who was pretty inexperienced, was asking me, "What's he like?" I said, "Well, he'll be late. He'll come in with his tail on fire. Something will have gone wrong. Something will have happened to him to stop him from getting here on time. And you're going to hear all about it. Then he'll have a drink, and everything will be OK."

He bowled into the hotel bar half an hour late, going, "Fuckin' hell, Tommy, sorry I'm late, sorry I'm late... I was in the car... I couldn't get it started... then I couldn't find anywhere to park it, so I just dumped it. And then a bus stopped and the driver said, 'You can't leave your car there. Fucking move it.' I said, 'I'm not fucking moving it. I'm leaving it there!'" And then, finally, when he stopped talking, he had a pint and a chaser, and then another pint, and he said, "Right, I'm just going to go to the loo before we do this." He went to the loo, and after a few minutes, he came back, but he was like this . Giving it all that... fucking hilarious.

Mick Jagger

What can you say to Mick Jagger, who's been shot a million times? I said, "You're probably new to this, Mick, but don't worry, you'll be fine with me." He was wearing a poncho, so we did some shots and then that came off, and he was wearing a coat, so we did some shots and then that came off, and then he had a shirt on, so we did some shots with that, and then that came off, and then he had a vest on, so we did some shots with that.

So there were four set-ups in ten minutes. What a chap. Totally professional. When you're faced with someone who has been photographed millions of times, you just have to crack on and get what you can. The second time I shot Neil Young, I'd only taken a few frames when his manager, Elliot Roberts, tried to put the ax on it. There was a bottle of water on the table, so I said to Neil, "Why not pick up that bottle of water, point it at the lens and give me the mad staring eyes?" And Elliot said, "You don't want to see the mad staring eyes." I was like, "Look, who's shaving this pig?" As in, "I've only got five minutes to do my job, but they're my five minutes, so fuck off."

Paul Weller

The first time I met Weller would have been in 1978, over at the RAK Studios in St. John's Wood. The Jam was making All Mod Cons. I hadn't paid that much attention to them because when punk came along, it wasn't for me. Even though Joe Strummer was only about two years younger than me, I was seen as an outsider with long hair. Punk didn't appeal to me at all.

I'd seen the Jam supporting the Clash at the Rainbow, a show that had its own problems. All of the punks were tearing up the iron-sided cinema seats and lobbing them over into the pit, and I got coshed on the head with one. Someone like Weller doesn't want a fuss made of him. A lot of journalists, to a certain degree, want to put words in the artist's mouths. Photographers often want to make the artist do something stupid that will haunt them until their dying day. It's not my endeavor to do that or to have the picture itself end up on an art gallery wall. What I want is to capture who that person is at a specific moment in time.

John Lydon

I first met Lydon when I was shooting his brother Jimmy Lydon, who had this punk group with Jock McDonald called 4" Be 2", and they were posing with Bananarama outside of Wormwood Scrubs prison, for some reason that has since been lost in the mists of time.

This photograph was taken around the 's already got that shot." And I was like, "Well, I ain't fucking seen it... so just do it." Strangely enough, he did, and I rattled off a few frames.

John'll strike a pose, perhaps, but you've got to be quick to get it. Normally if you try to direct people like that you're fucked. They won't do it. They'll just walk off. I was over in New York in 1981, and we went out for a drink. After hitting a few Irish bars for some Guinness, we ended up in Studio 54. It was a Monday night and quite empty. Coming back from the loo, I couldn't resist doing my Uncle Harry from Sheffield's nob dance, but yeah... I went out for a drink with Lydon and ended up dancing at Studio 54. Later on, we spent the rest of the night on the roof of his building watching the clouds roll up the Hudson. Just drinking and talking absolute rubbish.

Richey Edwards

The Manics were supporting Suede in Paris, and the idea came up for us to go to the Catacombs. The piles of bones in the tunnels come up to about knee-high, and in the center, there's a six-foot-tall wall of bones and skulls. It's not very wide, so I couldn't do a group shot, only individual portraits. Afterward, we went back to the venue, the Bataclan, for sound check, and I shot him just by the stage door, where there was that piece of stencil graffiti that said, "I've seen the future, it is murder." I mean, it was quite a statement in itself, but in hindsight, twenty odd years later, you think, Jesus fucking Christ... It was horrible—just horrible—what happened late last year.

When you're doing these jobs, at the time, you don't really realize what's going on with the musicians psychologically—you're one step removed. The music industry is a magnet for all different kinds of people, and some of them are too fragile—they shouldn't be anywhere near it. I'm not necessarily talking about Richey specifically here, but nine times out of ten, whatever bravado you're seeing on stage, they're certainly not like that off stage. Their art comes from the heart, and it comes from the soul. These musicians are compelled to do what they do, no matter what. And those people often aren't made for the business side of the music business.

An obvious example of this would be Elliott Smith. When I first heard his music, I thought it was fantastic. I was really very pleased to have the opportunity to meet him and really wanted to discuss music with him, but he wasn't having it. A very, very shy guy. Not everyone who enters the arena is built for . What a fucking waste. Even though it's easy to say that after the event.

Liam Gallagher

Liam Gallagher is how he seems on stage, but only to a degree. I flew with Oasis on its first trip to America in May of 1994 for the CMJ. The guys were due to play their first gig in New York at Wetlands. On the flight, the rest of Oasis was up the front , but Liam came back to say hello to us and have a drink. I'd heard all the stories about him being lairy, but he came and stood with us for a chat, and then when someone was nipping into the loo, he looked after their kid for them. I was thinking, He's quite polite for a rock 'n' roll animal.

We were heading back through Times Square after shooting the "Live Forever" video. He wanted to get a New York T-shirt like Lennon used to wear. When we came out of the store, the sky went black in seconds, and raindrops the size of tennis balls started falling. We ran for it, and I rattled off two frames. There is often a dynamo of tension between members that powers these groups, but I've never actually been in a situation where it's gone completely awry apart from once. I was taking some pictures of the Cur,e and something had been going on. Something had been said, and just like that, Simon Gallup nobbed off. That was it. That's all it took, and he was gone completely...

Mark E. Smith

This photograph was taken on High Holborn in 1984. When we saw the sign for the eye hospital, it just seemed obvious for him to blink one eye because we'd been drinking. It was on my birthday. I heard him going on about this day afterward: "I couldn't believe it. Every other time he'd shot me, he'd been dead professional, but this time, he was all over the place. When we got back to the pub, the cunt told me it was his birthday." So yeah, I broke the golden rule that day and had some neck oil before the job was done. The Golden Rule: WCF. Work Comes First. But hey, once in sixty-six years ain't bad.

Notoriously, Mark doesn't get on with the majority of journalists or photographers that he meets. When it was UNCUT's hundredth issue, it had a spread of pictures of musicians holding their favorite albums. The Fall was playing in Brighton, so I went down to take his picture. We went to the venue early, but of course, he wasn't there. He doesn't do fucking sound checks. His missus said he was back at the hotel, so I went back to the hotel. I couldn't raise him there, so I went to every pub and bar on the block but still couldn't find him. So I went and sat in the bar at the hotel, and then he came out of the lift.

When I saw him, I said, "Fucking hell, Mark, I've been looking for you everywhere." And he said, "Fucking hell, Sheehan, if I'd known it was you, I would have come downstairs sooner. I presumed they'd send some cunt." Now, was that me being welcomed into the fold? I don't think so, but it's probably as close as I'm going to get. We've always got on, for whatever reason, but I couldn't tell you why.

Tom Waits

The fact that Tom Waits is playing a role is helpful to the photographer because he's acting for the camera, which is very unusual. Musicians can have an incredible presence on stage, but usually off the stage, they're not performing. They won't do that thing for you because they're not performing monkeys. You've just got to get in there somehow in that short amount of time you have.

I was fortunate enough to photograph him in 1978 in Scandinavia. He'd just gone through all of that schtick of the poet living in the Tropicana Hotel and all that malarky, so yeah, he was just starting to adopt this character. Then I had another encounter with him in the Portobello Hotel. He was pretty tight-lipped. We had a third encounter ten years ago over in Santa Rosa, just north of San Francisco, in the Flamingo Motel. I got wheeled in to do my pictures, and I said, "I want to do a couple in here, but I want to go outside..." But he said it was too bright. I told him there was a great bit of highway, just outside the hotel, but he said no. I said, "For fuck's sake! You won't remember me, but I've had two encounters with you, and if you combine the times it adds up to nine minutes, so it ain't gonna be a lot out of your life to just go and stand outside." He started laughing his head off, but the cunt still wouldn't go outside...

So you could say that it's helpful that he's acting, but the persona that he's adopted is a gruff one, so I get a bit fed up when I see those stage managed pictures of him being "in character." I'd like to see him doing something else... not something daft, but something a little bit different. The chance of anyone penetrating Waits's exterior is pretty slim. I think you'd have to be a really close chum of his.

Aim High is out now via The Flood Gallery.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives onstage during a primary night rally in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, New York. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

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

US News

Clinton Claims Nomination, Hails 'Milestone' For Women
Hillary Clinton declared victory on Tuesday night in the Democratic presidential primary, winning in New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota. Clinton hailed the "milestone" in becoming the first woman to become one of the party's nominees and said her campaign is one of "no ceilings on any of us". Sanders has yet to concede the race.—The Washington Post

FDA Says People Overdosing on Anti-Diarrhea Drugs
Federal health officials are investigating overdoses with common, over-the-counter anti-diarrhea drugs. The FDA said abusers of the drugs sometimes try to achieve "heroin-like highs" by taking massive doses, up to 300 milligrams at once. It has received 31 reports of people hospitalized due to taking too much.—ABC News

Chinese Jet Makes Unsafe Intercept of US Plane
A Chinese fighter jet pilot flew within 100 feet of a US Air Force reconnaissance plane flying over the East China Sea on Tuesday, according to US officials. The crew of the American plane described the intercept maneuver as "unsafe." It is the second close encounter in the past three weeks.—The Guardian

Five Killed as Pickup Truck Hits Cyclists
Five people were killed when a group of cyclists were struck by a pickup truck in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Police said nine people in total were struck by the pickup truck. The driver got out the car and fled on foot, but was captured a short time later. The 50-year-old man is now in police custody.—CBS News

International News

Car Bomb Attack on Turkish Police Station
A police station has been hit by a car bomb in the south eastern Turkish province of Mardin, injuring several people, according to security officials. It comes a day after 11 people were killed in a bombing in the Turkish capital Istanbul. No one has claimed responsibility for either attack.—Reuters

Police Fire on Protesting Students in Papua New Guinea
Dozens were wounded after police in Papua New Guinea opened fire on students protesting against Prime Minister Peter O'Neill. The opposition party said four were killed, but this has not been independently confirmed. The students in Port Moresby were marching towards parliament to demand O'Neill stands down.—BBC News

Bomb Threats Forces EgyptAir Plane to Land
An EgyptAir passenger plane travelling from Cairo to Beijing has been forced to make an emergency landing in Uzbekistan after a bomb hoax. All 118 passengers and 17 crew members were evacuated, but no explosives were found. The plane is now preparing to resume its journey, according to EgyptAir officials.—Al Jazeera

Monkey Causes Electricity Blackout in Kenya
A single monkey caused a nationwide blackout in Kenya after falling on a crucial piece of equipment at the Gitaru hydroelectric power station. Power was restored almost four hours later. The monkey survived its fall and has been taken in by the Kenya Wildlife Service.—CNN

Edward Snowden. Photo via Wikimedia.

Everything Else

Snowden Claims NSA Still Withholding Evidence
Edward Snowdon has alleged that there is more evidence to show that he raised concerns about the NSA's surveillance programs while he worked there, in addition to the 800 pages of NSA documents published by VICE News on June 4. Snowden tweeted that believes the NSA is still withholding documents.—VICE News

Troy Ave Raps About Concert Shooting from Jail
Troy Ave has used three new tracks recorded over the phone from jail to claim his innocence over charges of attempted murder. The rapper was arrested following a fatal shooting at a T.I concert at New York's Irving Plaza in May. The tracks feature on a new mixtape. The rapper has pled not guilty to the charge of attempted murder.—Rolling Stone

Indie Band Boycotted Because of Stanford Rapist Support
Indie band Good English has been kicked off five concert bills after drummer Leslie Rasmussen wrote a letter defending Stanford rapist Brock Turner. "Rape on campuses isn't always because people are rapists," she wrote.—VICE

US and Canada Stage Biggest-Ever Quake Simulation
Around 20,000 people from various government agencies involved in disaster preparedness in the US and Canada are staging an earthquake exercise this week. Called "Cascadia Rising" by US officials, it is a simulated 9.0-magnitude quake.—Motherboard

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Photo courtesy Uhh Yeah Dude

Uhh Yeah Dude is one of the longest running podcasts online. With over 500 hours of comedic banter between two best friends, its clan of superfan listeners have come back week after week since 2006 to hear a stoned LA hipster with a semi-famous dad (John Larroquette of Night Court fame) laugh at a shrieking, TV-addicted vegan from Massachusetts. So why aren't Jonathan Larroquette and Seth Romatelli household names?

Things are starting to make sense now. Photo by author

Ever wonder why some people are so grumpy before their daily wake and bake? A new study out of the University of Texas at Dallas may have answered that question by looking at that the reward response that long-term cannabis users have to everything that's not pot.