This article originally appeared on VICE Romania

If you're in Europe and you're reading this, there's a big chance that you are sweating your shirt off in a heatwave. For a lot of countries this is pretty bad news, because even though you have lakes and rivers going through most major cities, you're not really allowed to go swim in them, for safety reasons or simply because the authorities are too lazy to supervise that area. In some countries you aren't even allowed to relax on the grass in the parks, which only leaves you with air-conditioned apartments and expensive swimming pool memberships.

In Berlin, however, things are a little different. Coyness is not held in high esteem in the birthplace of Free Body Culture—to the point that in many parks it's generally allowed to sunbathe naked. Photographer Ana Topoleanu took a stroll around the city's parks and took some beautiful analog shots of naked Berliners on their lunch breaks.

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"The Survivors" expo in central Bucharest

This article originally appeared on VICE Romania

Earlier this month, the Romanian police launched an eerie awareness campaign about the life-saving qualities of the seat belt. 15 car seats were placed in central Bucharest, all taken from wrecks of cars in which people lost their lives because they weren't wearing a seat belt. The seats are still stained, but the passengers sitting in them at the time of the accident survived because they did remember to wear their seat belts.

The aim of the exhibition is to reduce the number of traffic-related deaths—Romania has the second highest number of deadly traffic accidents in the European Union. According to the police, about eight lives are lost on the Romanian roads every day because people can't be bothered to wear a belt, forget about it, or actually tie it behind the seat to fool the car's sensors.

Each seat in the exhibition comes with a corny title celebrating the virtues of the seat belt, and a heartbreaking story from the survivor of the crash. Like this one:

"I wish it had been me instead of Cristi and his brother Vali. They were young and full of life. Cristi had just moved to Bucharest and his brother was living with their parents in another city. They had hung out together over the weekend at Christi's, and then we drove Vali back to their parents. They were both tired. Traffic was pretty slow, so Cristi told Vali to relax and leave his seat belt. Suddenly we went off-road, I still don't know why. I yelled at them, but there was no one left to hear me—we hit a concrete wall."

Depending on how decent your Romanian is, you can read more stories here.

Image by Rodney Hazard

"Everything I ride original, no kits on them chops," Pimp C proudly declares on "Pinky Ring," a thick slice of Curtis Mayfield-sampling funk from UGK's 1996 opus, Ridin Dirty. The Port Arthur, Texas duo managed to make waves 90 miles down the road in Houston by applying to their music the same virtue that was paramount to the city's auto aficionados: originality. For decades, H-Town's car culture has revolved around "slabs"—slow, low, and bangin' riders outfitted with candy paint, a fifth wheel mounted on the trunk, and rare rims outfitted with protruding spears called "pokes," "swangas," or "elbows." These aftermarket details required imaginative customization from any number of the city's experts. In 1996, Houston already had a well-established hip-hop scene. Geto Boys put the city on the map with their unadulterated realness, and by the mid-90s, the Screwed Up Click's pitched-down, glacially-paced sound came to define the region. But by the time Pimp C and Bun B hit their stride on Ridin Dirty, they, like H-Town's custom car artists, injected even more vibrant originality into the city's culture.

Similarly to Atlanta's Organized Noize, who Pimp actually shouts out in the outro of "Pinky Ring," Ridin Dirty's production team (primarily comprised of Pimp and Scarface confidant N.O. Joe) breathed life into their beats with a heavy use of live instrumentation, hiring a number of keyboard, bass, and guitar players to bolster samples of golden-era funk. The result was a vivid document of both the good and bad—from the crystalline laments of mortality on "One Day" to the sun-kissed glory of "Hi Life"—that was to the increasingly stagnant Houston sound as slabs are to factory-made car models.

Of course, Ridin Dirty was tied to slab culture in much more than a metaphorical sense, too. References to Fleetwood 'Lacs, Mercedes Benz 600 Ss, AMG and Lorenzo rims, Yokohama tires, candy paint, and trunk-popping jump off the page as colorful scene-setting devices, as well as aspirational luxuries for the listener. Cars are so central to the album that Bun and Pimp actually appear in one on the cover, looking over their shoulders in a perfect distillation of Ridin Dirty's intoxicating blend of paranoia and pursuit of wealth.

As Bun B tells it today, he and Pimp were just like any other auto-obsessed Houstonites in '96. "Comparing, showcasing, and talking about the newest car innovations is a way to bond between Southern men and I think car men in general," he told VICE over email, going on to explain the importance of the city's car washes that offered detailing services. "The car wash is the common communal area for car people in the South. Meet up, get clean, and show your sound. The detailing took an hour tops, but guys hung out for two or three times that."

Unlike, say, the stretch Hummer in Juvenile and Lil Wayne's "Bling Bling" video, or the prohibitively expensive (starting at only $189,350!) Maybachs immortalized in the name of Rick Ross's record label, the cars UGK touted were more competitive on the street level. They actually required some work on the owner's part. Constructing slabs has become a much more attainable pursuit in the years since the album's release, thanks to specialized auto parts businesses popping up in response to fierce demand that sometimes proved violent in Houston. UGK's impact on this culture still reverberates through South Texas's custom shops today. So in celebration of Ridin Dirty's 20th anniversary, we hopped on the phone with some of the region's longtime slab artists to get their thoughts on the landmark album.

EDDIE KENNEDY, OWNER OF 3RD COAST CUSTOMS

Bun, Pimp, and I, we're all from the same area. I'm originally from Beaumont, they're from Port Arthur and put it in everybody's face. And a lot of people for a long time never knew what a slab was, but it started to get major exposure and people actually started to accept the slab scene. People in Canada, New Zealand, Tokyo— we ship swangas everywhere. There's people everywhere that want to be down with it now, it's crazy.

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For this week's First-Person Shooter, we handed off two disposable cameras to Nigel Peligree, a desk clerk at the 11th Avenue Hostel located in the middle of Denver's downtown. As a longtime hostel employee, Nigel has seen a variety of unique characters crash at the space—from 20-somethings passing through town on holiday to Vietnam veterans looking for a comfortable bed for a reasonable price.

On top of snapping a few pics of some regular guests, Nigel also burned through a few exposures during the hostel's Fourth of July party—during which he passed out blue and red jello shots that were "gross as hell." Here's what else happened during the weekend he shot the following photos.

VICE: What'd you get up to during the day you took photos?
Nigel Peligree: I woke up, drank two giant cups of coffee, and drove to work. There isn't a specific order of tasks that I follow every day. I'm responsible for making reservations, doing laundry, helping guests with any advice or recommendations they need, security (when needed), and keeping a nice environment for our guests.

What's your usual hotel patron like? In the photos there seem to be lots of old men.
Our patrons range quite a bit from person to person. We often have retired military guys who come to Denver to see family and friends, but aren't in town long enough to get an apartment lease. We have international travelers looking to save a couple dollars on lodging while they road trip across the country with their friends. We have extreme stoners who come to Denver to get as high as possible on our legal marijuana and marijuana products for a few days. We have guests from Denver who are in between housing and need somewhere to stay while they wait on their apartment or house to be ready. We have bands playing local venues who need a room that can fit at least four people and doesn't cost an outrageous amount of money. We bring in a diverse crowd.

What's the worst thing you've ever had to clean up?
Overflowing sewer and rain water in the basement during an extremely bad storm.

Can you tell me about your regulars?
They're generally a little older and have interesting life stories. There's a girl in her late 20s who just got a job in Denver's financial district but hasn't found an apartment because of the extremely competitive housing market. We have another guy who lives in the mountains, rents his house out on Airbnb, and comes down to the city every few weekends to hang out with his friends in the city. We have a bluegrass musician who's been coming to the 11th Ave Hotel once a summer for over ten years to play shows. We also have regular partiers who come to the hostel every few weeks from the suburbs or neighboring cities such as Fort Collins, Boulder, and Colorado Springs. They usually stay because they don't want to make the drive home after going out clubbing for a night or two. I like our regulars.

How can people book some time to stay there?
People can book with us online or by calling us. See our website for more details.

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

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

It should have been a standard Saturday night. On November 2, 1996, gangly teenager Damien Nettles headed out in Cowes on the Isle of Wight with his good friend Chris Boon. They'd been out at a party earlier in the evening. Nothing special. Bored, they'd bought ciders, taken the ferry to west Cowes, and then tried to get served at a couple of pubs, underage, before giving up and going their separate ways on the high street. Chris would be the last person close to Damien to see him alive. Damien was 16.

But this isn't the story of a horrifying murder on an island that most Brits barely think about beyond planning their Bestival fancy dress. It's the bizarre tale of a boy who just disappeared. About 25 minutes before midnight, Damien walked into a chippy and stumbled his way through an order. From what we can piece together courtesy of the chip shop's CCTV footage, he bought his food, briefly chatted to a few men at the counter, and walked outside into the darkness.

His story has crept back into the news now, almost 20 years later, as the subject of BBC Three serialized documentary Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared. It's an attempt at a British take on Making a Murderer or Serial—where a quick Google search could tell all about how the story's unfolded so far—and fronted by Panorama investigative journalists Bronagh Munro and Alys Harte.

"Quite quickly we came to Damien's story as this remarkable case that had thousands of people involved in the police investigation, hundreds of witness statements taken, and then... nothing," Harte says, speaking over the phone on the day Unsolved debuted online. "They made eight arrests, there was a massive effort over 20 years, and yet still nothing. Other people had tried before so we thought, we should give this a go." The results of she and Munro's yearlong investigation is an eight-part show, split into bite-sized episodes that each run to about 15 minutes long. You're taken onto the island, introduced to a score of characters believed to be linked to Damien, and left fumbling in the dark after quiet whispers of leads, bumping into one dead end after the next.

Damien's mother, Valerie Nettles, shows up early as a key resource. She flies back to the Isle of Wight from her Dallas home to meet Munro and Harte, sending them all the information she's gathered on the case to date. Watching her walk along the streets that somehow snatched her son away, it's hard not to feel moved by how calm she seems. How composed.

I ask Harte what it felt like to work with Valerie, no doubt opening up old wounds about the night that changed her life for good. "The kind of grief that Valerie's dealing with is a really complicated, heartbreaking one," Harte says. "She's ... pretty sure that her son is dead but she's not 100 percent sure. And she doesn't have anywhere to grieve him—she doesn't have a grave—so it's really difficult." You see that written on Valerie's face, first when she video chats with the two reporters and later when they meet in person.

Surely, after years of speaking to the press about a story that's barely progressed, Valerie would feel drained at the prospect of dredging everything up again, this time for the BBC. How did it feel to be back on the island during filming? "Going back after Damien went missing is bittersweet," she says, speaking from her home in Texas, "because I love it, but something terrible happened to us there. Something ripped our family apart and caused us to spiral off in a direction we would have never had to go in our lives."

Valerie, with Damien as a baby. Photo courtesy of Valerie Nettles

She goes on: "I knew it wasn't going to be easy, going into this program, and that we may not get all the answers we would hope for. But I think it's highlighted more questions surrounding the case—it's been a hard slog for nearly 20 years to make some sense out of all of this."

She's right. You can go through all eight episodes of Unsolved and walk away as confused as you started. Harte and Munro present plenty of leads, and most of the evidence they uncover seems to point in the direction of a couple of drug houses run by some of the town's dealers. One in particular, Nicky McNamara, stands out as a prime source of potential knowledge. That sounds promising, you might think, until you learn that he's dead. He was found in 2003, reportedly after taking an overdose at a friend's house—and obviously "dead men can't talk," as Valerie tells me.

By the time you meet Shirley Barrett—who used to live in the house where McNamara died and is doorstepped extraordinarily by Munro and Harte in episode six—then encounter Dan Spencer, another former drug sidekick, you can't tell who is or isn't telling the truth when questioned. "With hindsight I've found out so much," Valerie says, "not just about Shirley Barrett, in the film, but about young people—the age of my kids then—who've come forward now." From them she's learned that drugs featured more heavily in local teenagers' lives than she was aware at the time.

The people who served Damien on that November night—known only as Rob and Sharon—remember him acting strangely, in an account shared second-hand by the former chip shop owner. "It wasn't drink, was Rob's opinion, and Sharon agreed with that," says Denis Welsh in the show. "She said we can recognize drink—it was a 'drugs effect,' if you like."

The Nettles family: father Ed, Damien holding Valerie, and siblings James and Melissa

According to the show, the Hampshire constabulary police lost a few crucial surveillance tapes that could have shown where else Damien walked after midnight; that's just one of a few reasons Valerie has for deeming their handling of the ongoing and open case "lackluster, shoddy, and pitiful." From the police force's perspective, they've spent 20 years involving 1,134 people in the investigation—"either as investigators, witnesses, or people of interest," they say—taking 357 witness statements and reviewing more than 2,500 documents.

But really, it's the banality of Damien's last known whereabouts that make this story so frustrating. Everyone's been on those nights, where you wander from one place to the next in the vague hopes of landing on something entertaining for a few hours. But most of us make it home. Damien never again saw his parents and three siblings—Sarah, now 38, James, 32, and 28-year-old Melissa. To be clear, Unsolved doesn't quite match Making a Murderer or season one of Serial in terms of production value and intrigue, but puts in a valiant effort at digging around for reasons why things turned out the way they did.

"Up until a few minutes after midnight," Harte says, "it's almost minute-by-minute, the eye-witness accounts of where Damien was and who he was speaking to. And then"—she pauses—"it stops. How did a 16-year-old boy disappear? Even if there are great leaps forward in the coming months, I feel there will always be unanswered questions about this case." For Valerie, those questions give her a sense of purpose. "I'm not the only mother of a missing child to feel desperate, but we go out there rattling cages," she says. "That's what we do."

Unsolved: the Boy Who Disappeared is on now available for UK-based viewers to stream on BBC iPlayer

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All photos by the author and Thomas McCarty

When I met Pup Scrubs at the Cleveland Leather Annual Weekend (CLAW), he was non-verbal, only speaking in barks, and he sported full football pads as well as a custom-made sports jersey that read "Raptor Pups" on the front and "Pup Scrubs" on the back. At the convention, the pup carried a dog bed stuffed with plush toys, and I saw him curled up for a dognap during one of the lectures at the event. Days later, on the eve of the convention's closing, Pup Scrubs hopped on to the couch I was seated in before proceeding to nuzzle my lap. We cuddle in silence for a half hour before he popped his head up and asked me about my column, Pupdates.

After a lengthy conversation about the extremes he went through researching and purchasing his gear and the time he went to Alaska to live out a cold weather gear fetish, I knew Scrubs was a truly a good boy and wanted to get to acquainted with him outside of the convention setting.

After talking online at length, Pup Scrubs invited me to upstate New York for a visit at his one-of-a-kind kennel. Most pups in the community only know Scrubs as a non-verbal puppy who's always masked, so it was a rare privilege to be invited up to his home and learn about his lifestyle. We stayed the weekend in the sprawling, cobalt blue estate, tucked into the countryside along the coast of Lake Ontario. The secluded lake and forest allow the pup to don his functional fetish gear in the environments where he enjoys the equipment best.

In other words, it's a dream playpen for a pup to live in year round. After Pup Scrubs picked me up at the Greyhound bus, we spent the weekend learning about the functions and applications of different pieces of fetish gear, as well as ways to ride out the inevitable collapse of industrial civilization, a hot-button issue for Scrubs. As we ran on all fours through the forest and doggy paddled in the lake, I got an up-close look at the home life of a pup who was truly dedicated to the lifestyle. Below is an edited transcript of our conversations, as well as photos from my visit to Pup Scrubs' pup haven.

VICE: Who's a good boy! Tell me about your pup name and how you decided on it?
Pup Scrubs: My pup name is Pup Scrubs, and I didn't decide it. No self-respecting pup gives themselves a name—a handler or an alpha has to give you a name.

How did your handler decide on your name?
Because scrubs are my favorite thing to wear, and it's probably the gear I wear most often. I'm wearing them now, of course!

You have a lot of different kinds of gear looks as a pup. Can you remember the pup gear you were first infatuated by?
The first gear I was infatuated by, and always will be infatuated by, was football gear. A complete set of football gear was the first I ever bought with my first credit card when I was 18. When I'd see football on TV, or see football players in the locker room at school, I just knew I always liked big, padded football gear. I always will enjoy football gear, but it's not very practical to wear around the house on a daily basis. Scrubs are practical.

How do you see the different looks playing into Pup Scrubs as a fleshed-out character?
I would say that they're all expressions of the same character. They're just different flavors and that's often how I'll refer to them—football Pup Scrubs, camo Pup Scrubs, or even proximity Pup Scrubs, which is firefighting proximity gear, like what firefighters would use during a high-intensity fire. There are many different flavors, and they're all variations on the theme that is Pup Scrubs. They're all different ways of highlighting certain aspects of my personality.

What do you do when you're not a pup?
I work. It's not really fun to talk about. Unless I'm on a video conference call, I have my collar on at all times. I always keep a little bit of pup with me. And when I write to my employees, we use puppy terms, bonuses are called Scooby Snacks, we do wags, we don't hold people's hands, we hold their paws. In very small, modest ways, I try to bring my pup-ness into my work.

What brought you into the pup lifestyle?
I was looking through the catalog of hoods. While browsing, I saw a puppy hood available to buy. I remember distinctly thinking, That must be the stupidest thing I've ever seen! Who would ever want to wear a hood like that and make themselves look like a puppy? This was before I met a pup. I always liked dogs. I always liked the simplicity of interacting with them, but it wasn't until I actually put a pup hood on and got into puppy head-space for the first time that something clicked. I realized it was just who I was. In 2004, I met my first handler, the one who gave me my pup name, and that really helped awaken my inner pup.

One of the outfits we photographed you in was this big red-down coat that you acquired as part of a cold-weather pup outfit. Can you tell me about your cold-weather gear fetish and how that plays out during the actual winter?
It's the ultimate kind of gear. It's big, fluffy, and extremely comfortable. Cold weather can be a magical time to explore nature and interact with people in really special ways. Once, I went to northern Alaska to commune with the Inupiat Eskimo population and find my inner pup spirit. I got myself kitted up with the finest down gear before going to the northernmost city in the entire US. I timed it to be the coldest time of the year and I spent 34 days in Alaska during their 30 days of darkness. It was a real magical time.

Can you tell me about the float pod you keep at the kennel, as well as your two different sleeping methods?
Recently, I've acquired my aqua crate, which is a float pod . What a life-changing experience floating is! It allows me to enter a state of zen and really bring my inner pup to the surface. I also have an outdoor crate on my patio that's really nice. I can put a big, fluffy sleeping bag in it. The colder it gets, the more comfortable I am out there because I can actually cocoon myself in a big down sleeping bag, and I have a powered respirator that injects air into a gas mask that I wear all night while I'm sleeping.

You've told me that you want to impart lessons of wisdom to younger pups. Do you have a pearl of wisdom that you could give to the pups reading this?
People will want to marginalize your puppy personality. It's easy to be dismissive of it, and to say, "Well, this is just you being silly." But don't be afraid to be yourself. Don't be afraid to change sometimes, even if that means the people you're hanging around with. The pack that you're with can make all the difference.

Right now, I'm happy, but I had to take a few years away from the pup lifestyle because my husband actually really isn't that into puppy play. His disinterest almost beat the pup out of me because he just wasn't willing to engage in it. But then I met the right group of people, and my inner pup just woke right up, stronger than ever. I've been contacted by people who're having a hard time communing with their inner pup, and the most important thing is to believe in yourself and get your pup on. If the people in your life can't accept you for who you are, you need to find different people who will. You can suppress it all you want, but you're still gonna be a pup. It's a beautiful thing, it's one of the best parts of my life, and I wouldn't give it up for anything.

Visit Zak's website for more of his work, and see more photos of his visit to Pup Scrubs' kennel below.

My nightmare. Illustration by Adam Waito

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Last weekend was my first (and last) attempt at festival camping.

I've been to music festivals before, but they were either day-long events or I wussed out and chose to stay at nearby accommodations instead of slumming it on the campgrounds with general pop.

Still, even though I hate camping, I kind of felt like I was missing out on a rite of passage. Most of my friends have camped at festivals and they all had great war stories about late night E-fueled dance parties and disgusting tent sex. This being the last year of my 20s, I figured it was now or never.

So I headed to WayHome, a three-day festival a couple hours north of Toronto, with a few dudes from work. I was pumped on the lineup—in particular LCD Soundsystem, who were headlining the first night. But even before we arrived, there were red flags. The temperature was slated to be in the high-80s—literally the hottest weekend of the summer—and in that heat, my colleague, who is the approximate size of a baby giraffe, and I would be sharing a tiny "three man" tent.

As soon as we got to the grounds, I remembered that almost everyone who works at music festivals is a teenager who is just there for the free admission—a.k.a. completely useless when it comes to being helpful. We set up the tent and asked one guy to point us in the direction of the stages. He responded by giving us a blank stare. "Where's the music?" we clarified, to which he shook his head and said, "I have no idea. Not gonna lie." I laughed passive aggressively and felt myself brace for a weekend of being annoyed.

Eventually, we got to the right place and seeing as it was hot as balls, I beelined for the drink stand, passing by girls attempting to Snapchat themselves doing cartwheels and one bro who came up right behind me and screaming "HIGH FIVE!? HIGH FIVE!?" while en route. I hate everyone here, I thought to myself, followed by, Maybe I'm just a bitch? Both of those statements are in fact true, but I digress.

Once I got to the drink station, I asked for a Perrier water, but when I reached to hand the clerk cash, she shook her head. "We're cash free," she said. "You need to download the app and load money onto your wristband." Awesome. I'm in the middle of a massive field in Oro-Medonte, Ontario, with shit cell service, and my only hope of not passing out from heat exhaustion is downloading a fucking app. Forty minutes later, the app had been downloaded but still wasn't processing my payment. That's when I ran into my friend and he told me I could just go see a "top up station"—there was one a few feet away from me— and use my credit card to put money on my wristband, something I wish the drink lady would have mentioned. All told it took me more than an hour to get a 250-ml can of Perrier that carried an $8 price tag.

This cost me $8 and an hour of my life.

Unfortunately for me, I have a tiny bladder and a phobia of port-a-potties. My dad was OCD about cleanliness growing up. He made us wash our butts every time we went number two and take two showers a day. My mom had to ban him from giving our dog a bath because he would aggressively soap her entire face, giving her this weird recurring eye irritation. Anyway, it wasn't long before I had to go pee, so I headed over to one of the blue boxes of hell. Positioned directly in the sunlight, it was hot and smelly inside, like being in a microwave after someone had warmed up a bowl of shit. I did my business and got out of there as quickly as I could. (I packed a Shenis—a dick-shaped funnel chicks can use to pee—but it was about a foot longer than I expected it to be, resulting in difficulties aiming. I ditched it after I almost pissed on my leg.)

The first show my friend and I ended up watching was Metric. During the last song, there was a nice moment when the entire crowd was singing the chorus to "Breathing Underwater." I couldn't really enjoy it because the bro next to me, clearly rolling out of his mind at 7 PM, kept screaming, "SING ONE MORE!" and accidentally hitting me in the tit.

It was time to get drunk. I hustled back to the car to chug down some of the $50 worth of alcohol I'd purchased. I was in a rush because I wanted to get a good spot to see LCD, so I quickly unscrewed the cap off my two-six of vodka and poured some down my throat. Bad call. It had been baking for hours at that point and was roughly the temperature of freshly brewed cup of coffee, the nastiest coffee you could imagine. Instantly, I puked it back up. Still, I packed a little in a water bottle to take back to the show. Desperate times, you know.

LCD was awesome, so I won't bore you with the details of that. It was the shining moment of the weekend. Because I was wasted, falling asleep that night was pretty easy. But that's where my luck ran out.

Read more: We Asked Friends At LCD Soundsystem's Reunion Show When They Started Losing Their Edge

I awoke to unbearable heat at 9 AM to discover that I'd gotten my period. Surprise. Being a dumbass, I hadn't packed any tampons, so I had to use the really old one that had been sitting in my backpack, unwrapped and stained with pen ink. I spent an hour charging my phone at the media tent so that I could coordinate meeting up with friends. As it turned out, I wouldn't need to do that anyway because I was too hot to care about anything. It seemed no matter how much water I consumed, I couldn't stay hydrated. I had told myself that unlike every other festival I'd attended, I would actually take advantage of the stacked lineup this time. Instead, I found myself being shaken awake by a security guard who found me passed out on a viewing platform during Third Eye Blind's set.

Heat stroke selfie.

By the time Arcade Fire came on, I was a bit better, in that I was conscious, but still barely able to stand. The second it was over, I rushed back to my tent to crash. In sharp contrast to the blistering daytime heat, it had suddenly become very cold, which coincided nicely with the fever and flu I felt settling in. No matter what I did, I couldn't get warm, and it didn't help that I was using a lumpy towel as my pillow and stuffed toilet paper as a de facto tampon at this point. My coworker and tent mate, whom I had barely seen all day due to how little I gave a fuck about anything that was going on around me, lumbered into the tent and almost immediately passed out. I remember staring at him angrily—he was blissfully unaware of how I uncomfortable I was—sick, cold, dehydrated, and bleeding through my pants.

This is the most uncomfortable night of my life, I thought, then scolded myself for being dramatic. I quickly mentally scanned through all of my memories backpacking through Southeast Asia, taking 24-hour bus rides seated in the aisle. No yeah, this is worse, I concluded.

The next morning I made the long trek to use the "fancy" flush washroom in the media area to freshen up. Haggard af, my coworkers and I rode back in silence—when the baby giraffe tried to start a singalong to "All My Friends" by LCD, I quickly turned around and snapped "Shut up!"

At home, I threw out my favorite pair of white sweat pants. And with it, any foolish notion that I would ever be able to stomach another music festival.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

My journey to the plains of Kyrgyzstan comes from a bit of an odd story. I read in the papers that Kazakhstan was scrapping its tourist visa fees and an unpopular, tedious sign-in process for foreigners, to try make the country more "tourist friendly." It didn't take much persuading for my friend Henry and I to book flights to Almaty via Istanbul.

I'd heard Kyrgyzstan was worth visiting and not impossible to get to from Almaty, so we spontaneously decided to give that a go too. We didn't have much knowledge at all of the local area, as we crossed the border from Kazakhstan to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. There is a proper "Soviet meets Silk Road" feel about the place, but we quickly realized we'd need to head out of the city to see more of the area's traditions.

After paying a fee to a fixer who spoke English, he took us out to the countryside and recommended two activities: Ulak Tartysh—more commonly known as dead goat polo—and Kyz Kumay, a game where a group of men on horses chase a woman, who can protect herself with a whip, from a "match-winning kiss."

There was a game of Ulak Tartysh taking place the following day, so we agreed a time and a place and met our fixer the next morning. We had no idea which direction we were heading in, but two and a half hours later we arrived at a small rural village in the Kyrgyz mountains.

The name "dead goat polo" seems to tell you just about everything you'd expect to see but I didn't really understand how you could format rules around a group of 20 guys on horses chasing a carcass. As I soon discovered, I was very wrong. There aren't just rules to Ulak Tartysh, there are full-on international championships that take place, mainly across central Asia and the Middle East. Countries like Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan play against each other in test matches to sell-out crowds.

The field we stood in was around the size of a cricket pitch, surrounded by mountains and sealed off with bulky rocks rather than a rope boundary. Spectators stood in a small watchtower made of scrap metal parts and worn-out tires functioned as 'goals' on the end of the pitch.

Once the 20-odd players arrived on horseback, they picked teams and put on the corresponding red or blue T-shirts before a group of about 13 arrived on a smaller horse, carrying the goat's carcass. Then things kicked off, with the men wrestling for possession of the dead goat before galloping down the field and chucking it in the tire goal. The horses sometimes lost control and ran off the field, right at us spectators, and the game came eventually to a premature end when one of the players fell off his horse and landed awkwardly on his hip. He was eventually OK, though. An occupational hazard.

See more of Stevie's photos from the Kyrgyz mountains below, and his other photography work on his website.

Snooki's back as the new face of MILFs. Photo via Yung Mommy.

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada

Everyone's favorite alcoholic smurf, Snooki, is back in the spotlight with a new "music" video about being a sexy, yung mommy. Having rebranded herself post Jersey Shore from an orange trainwreck to a slightly less bronzed lifestyle blogger, Snooki is the latest pop culture icon to capitalize on Motherhood ™.

While Snooki does manage to shout out stretch marks and saggy nipples in her video, keeping it somewhat "real," the song is a rally call to fit, fabulous, young mothers who breastfeed but still wear four inch pumps and leopard print bustiers. I had the same feeling watching this as I did when I saw Fergie's "M.I.L.F $" last month. Her first video since giving birth a couple of years ago, Ferg's new song is a very confusing ode to hot moms and features a bevy of supermodel mothers who I think are fucking the milk man. I have no idea what the song is about or what M.I.L.F. money is and why it's different from normal money.

But confusion about sexual milk aside (please someone tell me what a milkshake is in this context), what bothers me about both of these videos is the sell that all new moms now have to be MILFs.

All photos by the author

Part of what makes writing graffiti an exciting challenge in the the US and Europe is the fact that it's illegal. The threat of arrest makes for pounding hearts and breathless adventures. It dictates how much time a graffiti writer will spend painting a spot and forces writers to make stylistic choices. It turns graffiti from a creative pastime into a lifestyle choice and it weeds out the weak. So what if you could paint graffiti on the side of a busy street in broad daylight without permission, and no one cared?

Following my visits to Seoul and Hong Kong, I traveled to Bangkok to learn more about the history and current state of its graffiti culture. During my stay, I met up with CHIP7, a New Jersey native and founder of the illustrious MAYHEM crew (which included, among others, the late SACE, a.k.a. Dash Snow). CHIP has Thai ancestry and has been living in Bangkok full time for several years. When we sat down for coffee in the bustling Siam Square area of Bangkok, he told me,"In Thailand they have an adjective—is it suay as art. It doesn't have that criminal element that it has in other places, where somebody's house got tagged or something. In America somebody would probably call the cops in two seconds. Here, you don't really see that kind of thing. When people see you painting, they usually give a thumbs up." While I heard rumors about plans for increased police enforcement, getting caught in the act, like other police encounters, is still likely to be resolved with a few baht, the local currency, rather than official consequences. Though I asked several writers and locals about graffiti's de jure legal status in Thailand, no one could confirm an answer, as it's handled differently on a case-by-case basis.

Like most graff scenes in Asia, the Thai scene is still fairly young, but it has very distinctive roots. In part, its origins can be traced to the long-running practice by students of competing colleges to mark their territory with spray paint. "We call it institutional graffiti," explained COZ, a young Thai writer who picked up writing graffiti while studying abroad as a young teen and who has since made a name for himself as one of the most talented bombers in the region. "It looks like the LA cholo letters, but it's in Thai. They write their school names and then they beef with other schools." While these students are not graffiti writers, they introduced the use of graffiti tools in their city.

Graffiti from more developed scenes is another major influence in Bangkok, and COZ is not the only Thai artist who got turned on to it abroad. An older writer called CIDER, known for his piecing skills as much as his bubbly throw-ups, lived in California for several years in the 90s where he got connected with MSK, one of the most established graffiti crews in the US, joining the ranks of prominent members such as REVOK, SABER, and RIME, to name just a few. He returned to Thailand in the late 90s and influenced a new generation of graffiti writers who were already looking at American pop culture for inspiration.

"The graff scene really started when CIDER came back from SF," recalled COZ. "At the time, people started noticing it more—from skateboard magazines and music videos and whatnot." While a few, such as local artists CETRU and LOBATT, had been illegally painting cartoonish characters on the street, CIDER introduced the concept of primarily painting letter-based graffiti as it's done in the States. Said COZ, "He brought the modern graffiti back to Thailand and then it started developing."

Yet just as the Bangkok graff scene was starting to bloom, it suffered a serious setback about three years ago. What happened is so complicated and layered that the whole story could take up the length of a book, so we'll only provide the basic details. According to a variety of sources, Thai graff writers got swept up in beef between several warring factions of high-profile vandals from the US, some of whom had spent time in Bangkok. A few locals decided to take sides, and others got drawn into it by association. As a result, the graff scene in Bangkok became stifled by division, distrust, and tough-guy posturing that imitated the attitudes of American writers. The most visible outgrowth was that writers dissed each other's work all over the city. It was ugly, literally, and according to comments I heard from one writer who asked not to be mentioned by his name, it set back the scene by as much as five years.

Fortunately, as the dust gradually cleared over the last year or two, a distinct new crop of relatively young writers saw an opportunity to distinguish themselves with solid work. And while a few kids still play tough guys and war over imaginary turf and other beef, some young Thai writers—among them COZ, FLORE, BEKOS and ROMES—are followingin CIDER's path and painting graffiti that would look at home in New York's Lower East Side as much as on Bangkok's streets, where graffiti has become ubiquitous in the city's central shopping districts and along some of its canals.

As I discovered, painting missions in Bangkok are often more relaxed than in other places. One afternoon, I climbed aboard one of the boats that serve as an important transportation method on the city's many canals along with SADUE 907, another American transplant who now calls Bangkok home, in order to meet up with CHIP at a painting spot further out.

It was the middle of a heat wave, and a rain storm had temporarily cleared the air. We found CHIP and, armed with ice-cold cans of Thai beer, which we drank through straws, according to local custom, proceeded to a spot right on the canal. As the sun slowly set, CHIP and SADUE worked on their pieces, inviting curious glances from pedestrians and passing boats. CHIP painted his distinctive letter-based moniker, filled with wild colors and tricked out with spacey patterns and a tribute to the recently-deceased Prince.

Inspired as much by traditional Thai art as futuristic fantasyscapes conjured by his restless mind, CHIP's graffiti is a cultural hybrid that has become his trademark style in recent years, opening doors to other creative and commercial projects. He is currently working on a short live action film that will accompany a mixtape of music he composed, and he's also produced artwork for global brands such as Red Bull. That said, his ethos remains grounded in the illegal bombing sprees of his youth.

CHIP was positive overall about the prospects for Thai graff culture. As in other Asian countries, there is a temptation to turn short-lived graffiti careers into more lucrative endeavors. Nonetheless, he told me, "there are a lot of really talented artists here! All the temple murals, all this intricate stuff is quite ingrained in the culture, and it's part of the national identity." With time, the Thai graff scene has a unique opportunity to take advantage of lax law enforcement and inject color and creativity into the vibrant urban fabric of Bangkok, forging a distinct legacy in an increasingly internationalized outlaw culture.

See more photos from Ray's visit to Bangkok below.

Ray Mock is the founder of Carnage NYC and has been documenting graffiti in New York and around the world for ten years, publishing more than two dozen limited edition zines and books. Follow him on Instagram.

Christie Wilcox examining a bullet ant at the Tambopata Research Center in the Peruvian Amazon. Photo by Aaron Pomerantz

A large dose from the dreaded Australian box jelly, a.k.a. Chironex fleckeri, can kill a grown adult in a matter of minutes. Even small jellyfish can pack potent toxin, such as the matchstick-sized Irukandji box Jelly, whose venom can kill a human in as little as four hours, though its immediate effects sometimes go unnoticed. As a species, human beings have an inborn and intrinsic fear of jellyfish, spiders, snakes, and all things poisonous. From a young age, we are conditioned to avoid these creatures like the plague, but venom and poison are more than just an organic weapon found in nature, and studying toxins can reveal a lot about life and evolution.

In her new book, 'Venomous: How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry' (out August 9 on Scientific American/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), molecular biologist Christie Wilcox explores the culture and history of venom. Weaving together research, personal narratives, photos, and diagrams, the author paints a vast portrait of poison, including descriptions of the venom found in spiders, snakes, octopi, urchins, Komodo dragons, duck-billed platypuses, ants, cone snails, as well as in-depth explanations on how each defense tool affects victims. Wilcox goes on to argue that the animals we grew up fearing now hold the key to life. She details how venom can be used to treat numerous ailments, such as high blood pressure and erectile dysfunction, plus illnesses that currently do not have cures.

No stranger to encounters with these poisonous creatures, Wilcox brings years of personal insight to her research and analysis. She's cataloged the venom of a myriad of creatures in locations as disparate as the beaches of Indonesia and the rainforests of Peru. By studying the evolution, adaptation, and immunity of poisonous creatures, Wilcox hopes Venomous will both lead the conversation about the groundbreaking research in the scientific community involving venom, as well as enrapture the average zoology enthusiast curious about snake bites. VICE sat down with her for a chat about her interest in venomous creatures, the medical benefits of venom, and how some cultures use venom to get high.

Christie Wilcox, photo by Aaron Pomerantz

VICE: How did you first get interested in venomous creatures?

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

In case you were wondering, if you send a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey to an inmate and also happen to be a nurse who worked in the prison where they're incarcerated, you could wind up banned. This week, 40-year-old nurse Kimberly Hinde picked up a one-year ban for misconduct in public office for doing as much. Of course it wasn't just the book that ended up costing Hinde her job, but the fact she'd been found engaging in a relationship with the inmate in question, back in October 2013.

It seems Hinde isn't the only one: even the most cursory glance online can open up pages worth of stories featuring prison staff getting romantically involved with inmates—and often paying the price for it by ending up on the other side of the cell.

Power can be intoxicating in the right situations, but what actually seems to be behind the ubiquity of these cases? In normal circumstances, a murderer doesn't seem that attractive a partner—we have a tendency to base our perceptions of people's personalities on their past behavior, and, as a recent Invisibilia podcast episode explored, that can often entail a quiet revulsion towards convicted violent criminals. It doesn't seem like the prime situation in which to feel turned on.

Elie Godsi, a consultant clinical psychologist and author of Violence and Society: Making Sense of Madness and Badness, disagrees. "You've got to understand that people aren't murderers all the time, they do things under certain circumstances. They aren't always like that. So they won't see them in the circumstances under which they were violent."

Could that be the case for Anita Whittaker? The 53-year-old prison officer was sentenced to 15 months in jail last May after having an affair with an inmate incarcerated at HM Wormwood Scrubs in London. Whittaker was caught exchanging love letters and amorous texts with Kazadi Kongolo, 35, who'd been jailed in 1999 when he was found guilty of stabbing a teenager to death.

But Godsi also attributes some of this sort of attraction it to "forbidden fruit." "It's really about being excited or attracted by the fact that something is forbidden so it becomes their little secret, something only they know about and which no one else could possibly understand. A 'we love each other against all obstacles' kind of thing."

But what makes staff—guards, nurses—actually invest in these relationships? A lot of the effort is rooted in fantasy, according to Godsi. You can see his point. After all, these couples don't have to contend with the libido-wreckers that ordinary ones have to. They exist in what he calls a "suspended-reality environment, at one level."

He goes on: "You don't live with them, you don't watch them pick their nose, you don't watch them go to the toilet, you don't argue about who does the dishes. It's completely unreal. They're seeing each other in a very limited environment so they can be at their best because what they see of each other is limited."

It's a relationship formed in a completely different boundary-setting that can't survive in the real world. Almost invariably, it's going to end in tears.

It's for this reason that Godsi's skeptical that these sorts of couples couldn't necessarily thrive in the 'real' world. That's not to say that all don't, though—just take this female prison guard who says she married an inmate convicted of second-degree manslaughter. They first got together in 2002, before getting married about three years later. That case feels more like an anomaly, as far as Godsi's concerned.

"When people come out and try and have a relationship, it's extremely unlikely it's going to be successful because the strains of being in the real world kicks in. It's a relationship formed in a completely different boundary-setting that can't survive in the real world. Almost invariably, it's going to end in tears."

Obviously, a skewed power dynamic can play its part too, and can often vary depending on the gender of those in the relationship. A 2012 Ministry of Justice study on the family backgrounds of 1,435 newly sentenced prisoners—of whom 1,303 were male—found that 24 percent had been in care at some point in their childhood.

The study also found that 41 percent of the convicts surveyed had observed violence at home while 29 percent had experienced abuse. For male inmates at least, that represents the opportunity for straight female officers to fill an emotional void, as per Godsi's reasoning. "A female prison officer may sense that and may want to make that better in a maternal way," he says. "They sense the vulnerabilities and distress and difficulties the inmate has. They want to mother them. They want to heal them. But I don't think they're setting themselves up as a savior."

Perhaps that's why the majority of cases that hit the headlines more often than not seem to be female prison staff. Prisoner officer Dawn Sheard was jailed for 10 months in May after being found to be sexually involved with an inmate while on duty, while in 2012, newspapers reported that prison officer Zanib Khan had juggled exchanging sexually charged calls and letters with four convicts.

WATCH: Jailed for Life for Minor Crimes – the UK's Forgotten Prisoners

For women inmates, though, the power imbalance can be fraught with feeling pressure to create a transactional relationship based on the inmate earning perks and privileges. An inmate speaking anonymously to the Guardian in 2009 said that she'd regularly perform blow jobs in exchange for 'rewards"—namely vodka and drugs. When asked if the relationship was consensual, she replied: "In a way, I suppose. I knew what I was doing; but I wouldn't have looked at him on the outside and only did it for the burn and the vodka. He was a bit arrogant and there were times when I fantasized about biting his cock off."

Another woman interviewed in the piece suggested that by not giving in to the staff's advances, she could scupper her chances of an being let out earlier. "It was part and parcel of prison life," she said. "If you are not going to buy into the approaches made by staff, you will not progress, you will not get the good jobs, or get on the courses that will help you get early release." Essentially, it's as Godsi says: "You can't give consent properly in a relationship where there's a power imbalance."

As for Hinde, she'll be able to return to nursing in a year's time, but rest assured, there'll be more like her: high on power, fueled by fantasy, and in a complex emotional web that will endlessly make for red-top newspaper fodder.

Follow Salma on Twitter

All images courtesy of Hello Games.

No Man's Sky—the space exploration game coming to PS4 and PC in just over a week's time—has a strange sort of energy around it right now. Look at forums, subreddits, and social media and you'll find a mix of messianic hype and joyfully vocal disdain. The game's fans tout its scale: NMS offers a universe of planets to explore and lifeforms to catalogue, and it does this with a technique called procedural generation, which uses algorithms to instantly create content that would've previously taken an artist hours to build.

But thanks to Reddit user daymeeuhn (who bought a leaked copy of No Man's Sky from eBay for $1250 plus shipping), we now know that while the game's universe may be "nearly infinite," the game itself can be beaten in about 30 hours. At least that's how long it took him to reach the center of the galaxy—which NMS developer Hello Games has stated is the game's de facto objective.

It's a little harder to nail down the promised length of the game, though. Back in December 2014, studio founder Sean Murray said that it would take between 40 and 100 hours to "reach the center," but this past March he told Gamespot that it would take players hundreds of hours of gameplay to reach "the center of the universe." in both cases, he underscored that those figures would reflect a single-minded strategy, with players "doing absolutely nothing else but traveling forward and ... min-maxing it."

Between these statements and the marketing-fueled (and fandom-sustained) hype about the game's size, some players expected No Man's Sky to be a daunting epic. The reality is more restrained, especially since daymeeuhn reports (in a pretty spoiler-heavy series of posts) that he made his sprint to the center after completing many of the other tasks in the game, implying that Murray's insistence on a single-minded travel strategy doesn't necessarily hold up.

But when you read his posts, daymeeuhn doesn't seem as obsessed with the question of scale as the rest of the internet is. He's more interested in talking about the cool sounds he's heard, the frustrating bugs and design decisions he's encountered, and the disconnect between fan anticipation and reality. "Expectations on this game seem a bit over hyped," he writes, "and not because 'the game is bad' but rather because I think expectations don't necessarily match the gameplay style of what's actually here." All told, he's generally positive, but is hoping for a day one patch to fix some of his issues with the game—a possibility we should all keep in mind as we read his impressions.

There's also, of course, the question of whether or not daymeeuhn has really seen the end. I say "of course" because as with so much else to do with No Man's Sky, what counts as "the end" is nebulous. When Murray said it would take hundreds of hours to reach "the center of the universe," is he separating that claim from the one about reaching the center of the game's (first?) galaxy? Maybe daymeeuhn's only seen the final moment of the first step of a longer journey.

This vague feeling of possibility around No Man's Sky has been its greatest strength in finding fans, but also alienated people who want more specific answers about the game's structure and goals. I feel myself torn between these poles constantly. On the one hand, I think I have a pretty solid understanding of the "sort of game" NMS is—and I anticipate having a pretty good time with it once it launches. But when I see those fans who have convinced themselves that this is it, that this is the last game they'll ever need, I feel like Hello Games and Sony have lost control of their messaging.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think that Hello's intention was to make a game that could be played forever. It seems, instead, that they wanted to capture a feeling of exploration that could only be achieved by dropping the player into a sea of stars that can never be fully mapped. But that goal runs headfirst into the techno-utopian culture's desire for the "last game I'll ever need."

The Last Game: One infinite leisure product that can be a permanent, pleasurable escape from our bills and our bodies, from our politics and our pain. It is not so different from the desire milked by films like Interstellar, which promised us that while "mankind was born on Earth," with all of its dirt and hunger and difficulty, "it was never meant to die here." We want to ascend so badly; to procedurally generate an escape. But the challenging truth is that we aren't going anywhere anytime soon—and more, that wherever we go there we'll be, with all of our dirt still on us.

Rock Paper Shotgun's Graham Smith elegantly croons for a world in which No Man's Sky never releases, so that it might keep all this potential energy and never become a real, fallible, human effort that—no matter how hard the work or how ambitious the vision—can never live up to the "shared dream" it has become in these days before release. I respect that approach, but it's not for me.

Instead, I hope that No Man's Sky comes out and that it's pretty damn good, both on its own merits and in the context of the games that came before it. I hope that No Man's Sky moves me with its colors and craters and creatures. I hope that its mathematic geometries woo me, and that its endless beaches and skies seduce me. But I do not need transcendence. NMS doesn't need to be groundbreaking—we broke this ground a long time ago. Instead, I want it to be another solid brick in the wall of culture and expression that we've been building for a long time.

Follow Austin Walker on Twitter.

All photos by the author

The Rubel Castle, located in the sleepy suburb of Glendora, California, is often referred to as a poor man's version of Hearst Castle. Which makes sense, as it is exactly that: a castle constructed not out of imported tile, but of trash.

Bottles, bedsprings, typewriters, trophies, and rocks comprise its walls. It stands as a monument to the dream of its creator, Michael Rubel.

Rubel grew up in a home that buttressed the city dump, using its trash to create forts as a kid. He also used to swim in a watering hole at the Albourne Rancho, which was then owned by the heir of the Singer Sewing Company empire. Through a series of absurdly unbelievable circumstances, which space and an inability to properly comprehend prevent me from outlining ("Someone should make a movie out of this guy's life!" one old timer on the tour of Rubel Castle I recently took exclaimed, and I wondered why someone had not already done so), the Singer heir bequeathed part of the land to Rubel. At the age of 19, Rubel found himself the owner of 2.2 acres. He then moved himself and his mother, a former Follies dancer, into the property's citrus packing house. (His father, Heinz, who had the curious occupation of Episcopal minister and radio gag writer, died when Rubel was six.)

In 1968, at the age of 28, Rubel began his greatest construction project yet. Forts were Mickey Mouse stuff; now he was going to build his own castle.

This decision was made much to the chagrin of the City of Glendora. (The city is more forgiving now, since the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. It operates under the ownership of the Glendora Historical Society and offers docent-run tours on an appointment-only basis.) It's hard enough to get the city to issue the permits required to add a second story to your home, but it's downright impossible to get it to issue permits to build a castle out of garbage. Not that Rubel ever tried, mind you. He was more of an "act first, ask questions never" kind of guy.

Due to the project's overwhelming lack of legality, the city constantly tried to stop construction. Singularly devoted to his task, he always found a way around it. When the his water and power was shut off, he got generators and his own water tank. When inspectors were sent to his door, he'd send his grandfather out to talk them to death. It helped that the townspeople were on his side. They got together and wrote a letter to the city council, saying they would not continue to elect anyone who kept meddling in Rubel's affairs.

Rubel's primary occupation (secondary occupations included frog farmer and sailor) was driving a school bus. He used to make the kids bring him a rock every day in order to drive them to school. He'd also drive the bus to a nearby quarry and make the children lug rocks up the hill. "Imagine if that happened today," the docent leading my tour marveled. "The school district would be shut down, there'd be so many lawsuits."

All construction materials, except for the concrete, which was donated by a benefactor, were salvaged. Whenever Rubel heard of something unwanted, from train cars to windmills, he had it transported to the property, creating a bizarre garden of tossed-aside artifacts. The windmill still stands; a once-abandoned caboose now functions as a guest house; and a 16-ton single piston oil pump is used to operate a bird bath.

He even incorporated a number of misprinted, cast-off gravestones into the decor. His own gravestone, which is on the grounds of the castle, is one such misprint. Though the front has Rubel's name on it, the back of it memorializes "Beloved Husband-Father William Akira Nishino."

Today, eccentricity to Rubel's degree is excused only when the party in question is very rich. The days of people willing to facilitate his dreams or see his proclivities as charming are long gone.

Indeed, Rubel and the castle that bears his name is indicative of a simpler time, when a man could make it his life's mission to create a monument out of garbage and actually get away with it. And not only that, but could do so with full the support and assistance of his neighbors.

No one inherits plots of land they used to swim on anymore. Because, while heirs to the Singer Sewing Company fortune theoretically still exist, they're spending their time in high rises and McMansions, places where children who live next to the city dump aren't exactly invited.

Were its status as a historic landmark not in place, the only thing preventing Rubel Castle from getting demolished would be the fact that it's too costly and labor intensive to do so. Earthquake proof, and with six-feet-thick walls, it is literally too big to fail. When the ranch-style homes that surround it have been turned to dust, it will remain. As will Rubel's memory.

Follow Megan Koester on Twitter.

The Tinder profile that first sparked Zane Alchin's threatening comments. Image via Facebook

It's been more than a year since a Facebook fight landed 25-year-old laborer Zane Alchin in front of a judge, charged with "using a carriage service to harass, menace, or cause offense." His victim, Paloma Brierley Newton, was in court Friday, July 29, to watch his sentencing.

Facing three years in prison, Alchin escaped jail time with Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court putting him on 12-month probation. "We still had a huge win," Brierley Newton told VICE. "We got a conviction."

In the judgement, Magistrate William Pierce conceded Australia needs better laws around online harassment, explaining the current legislation was designed for angry ex-boyfriends over the phone. However, Brierley Newton told VICE she has serious concerns about how the judge handled the case.

She explained the magistrate went into an extended soccer metaphor, which was lost on her. "He kept saying like, 'In the grand scheme of the big game, Alchin had only made a small indiscretion,'" she said.

Some of Zane Alchin original comments via Facebook

Brierley Newton also said Magistrate Pierce had "slut shamed" Olivia Melville, the young woman whose Tinder bio first kicked off the conflict with Alchin. Back in 2015, Alchin commented on a screenshot of Melville's bio, which referenced Drake's lyrics from the track "Only." It read, "Type to wanna suck you dry and then eat some lunch with you."

" said she'd made a sexually explicit comment on her Tinder," Brierley Newton said. "That she was a woman of 'low morals' or whatever he wanted suggest with that." According to New Matilda, Magistrate Pierce referred to the lyric as "a somewhat inflammatory comment," eliciting gasps from crowd in the court, which also included Melville.

Brierley Newton said it was hard to watch Alchin's lawyer, Sophie Walsh, argue the troll was the real victim in this situation, a position she believes the judge accepted. The court was told Alchin was in counseling, that he'd had to face telling his grandparents about the charges, and his girlfriend had needed to take time off work.

Walsh argued that by going to the media, Brierley Newton was "inciting harassment" toward the 25-year-old man. The judge also told Brierley Newton she'd taken part in a "vast overreaction."

Some more of Alchin's comments. Image via Facebook

"I think it's the whole intrinsic idea that women are hysterical, emotional... I'm not emotional, I'm angry," Brierley Newtown said, rejecting the judge's criticism. "Alchin got this much attention because his comments were so disgusting."

From Brierley Newton's perspective, Alchin's comments were explicit rape threats, ranging from, "The best thing about raping a feminist is that they don't get any action so they are 100 times tighter" to "I'd rape you if you were better looking."

However, his lawyer argued that his client had been drinking during the morning of the online battle, and his comments weren't serious. "In his mind, he was defending his friend against these feminists," she told the court. "We say he was doing it to be deliberately offensive, there was no truth in his words."

Image via Facebook

"It's deflating to see that structurally we live in a world where men rape women... but our system doesn't seem to see the kind of incremental damage these attitudes toward women are having," Brierley Newton said in response.

"I think the judge had an opportunity today to make a point about the attitudes women face today, and I don't think he did that."

Brierley Newton said she plans to keep working with the group Sexual Violence Won't Be Silence, which has grown from the small organization that first launched a petition against Alchin.

Paloma Brierley Newton, left. Image supplied

While Alchin may not have received any jail time, securing a guilty verdict is a significant step for fighting online harassment law in Australia.

"It's not about punishment, it's not about retribution, it's about changes," she said. "We need to keep pushing against it. If you see something, and you don't think it's right, don't just let it slide."

Follow Maddison Connaughton on Twitter.

Mount Roskill is a listless suburb of Auckland, a collection of cul-de-sacs resting under heavy skies on the slopes of a dormant volcano. When New Orleans photographer Aubrey Edwards visited on one of her frequent trips to New Zealand, she spotted some teenagers riding the streets with huge sirens strapped to their handlebars. Within 24 hours, she had found them on social media and was back to photograph them at their unofficial headquarters, the small street of Howell Crescent.

Calling themselves "Straight Outta Roskill," the group of locals has worked out sophisticated car-battery systems to rig up pushbikes with sirens to blast music. The craze has caught on around the city, and police have accused young people of stealing sirens from local schools to attach to their bikes. But Straight Outta Roskill, the originators, insist they never steal. They're church boys.

VICE spoke to Edwards about photographing the group and their code.

VICE: So who are these guys riding around with ludicrously big sirens on their bikes?
Aubrey: They're mostly Mormon and mostly Tongan. There are other Pacific Islanders and Catholics and Christians. It's kind of an extension of their church. They're not a gang; they're very clear about that. Their rules are when they pass by someone who is elderly, they turn down their music, and they don't play their music on Sabbath. They're very wholesome kids

How did it all start, and how does it work?
When I do these projects, I'll do lots of subcultural work, and I'll trace back to who were the pioneers. The pioneer of this group is about 24. He started it when he was 16. The youngest members are about five. It came out of seeing cars that were decked out with these speakers, but they couldn't drive, so they decided to take that form of expression and strap it on to these really shitty bikes. Through different trial and error, they figured out the best way to create these platforms, figure out the best way to rig the speakers to batteries. They've got this system down. They call it strapping. They'll strap their bikes up and ride through the streets, but mostly they'll meet for these battles with other kids on bikes to see who has the loudest music.

Is the street where you shot really where it all began?
Yes, it's right on Howell Crescent. They say they're the first ones who started doing it. There's another group called the Farm Boys who started doing it and another group down south.

What do they get for winning a battle?
Street cred. They get to call themselves king, but it's always disputed who actually wins, so they'll have another battle.

What's the best music to play for a win?
They play some music from Tonga, so they're representing their homeland. Apparently the worst music has the highest treble and that's the loudest music, so the battles are really horrible music going back and forth. Maroon 5. Lady Bee. Celine Dion.

Where do they get those giant speakers?
They're . They'll get them from secondhand stores, from alarm stores. They said they don't steal any of them. Each bike has about five speakers.

What's the secret to getting the winning sound levels?
Different bikes have different ways of doing it. They all have a car battery. So everything is connected to a basket that holds a car battery. From that it feeds to a receiver and that plugs into an auxiliary cord that plugs into their phone. It's tested. It's tried and true.

They've had some negative blowback in the media. How open were they to you photographing them?
My background is in visual anthropology. There's always gaining trust and being transparent about what your intentions are. It was a tattooed American girl that found them on Instagram, so I think they were really curious. I went the first day and showed up on Howell Crescent and waited until they started coming. I talked to them, and then asked if I could come back and take photos the next day. So they had time to get their bikes ready.

Why are they called Straight Outta Roskill?
Yeah, it's from "Straight Outta Compton." It was interesting because given their Christian ideology, it's very different from what they're pulling from in American culture. I grew up in LA listening to Ice T and all that. They said it comes from that. I asked why and they said, "Well, we like it." I think it just sounds hard.

Words by Frances Morton. Follow her on Twitter.

Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / Staff via Getty

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

US News

Pence Defends Trump over Khan Family Comments
Donald Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, has attempted to defuse the row between the Republican nominee and the family of Humayun Khan, a fallen Army captain. In a statement posted on Facebook, Pence insisted, "Donald Trump and I believe that Captain Humayun Khan is an American hero."—ABC News

One Dead, Four Injured in Austin Shooting
A manhunt is underway in Austin, Texas, after a gunman opened fire on a crowded street late Sunday night, killing one person and wounding four others. Relatives identified the woman who was killed as 30-year-old Teqnika Moultrie. The suspected shooter is described as a man with long cornrows and a goatee, according to police.—USA Today

Uber to Sell China Business to Rival
Uber is to sell its China business to Didi Chuxing, the leading ride-hailing service in the country, after failing to compete with its rival for customers. The valuate of the combined business has been estimated at $35 billion, and investors in Uber China will receive a 20 percent stake in Didi Chuxing.—The Washington Post

Two Killed in Maryland Floods
Two people were killed and more than 100 had to be rescued after devastating flash floods in Maryland over the weekend. Baltimore County Police have identified the victims as Anthony Blevins, 38, and Jessica Watsula, 35. Their bodies were recovered in the Patapsco River after they were swept away by rushing water.—CBS News

International News

Taliban Targets Foreign Compound in Kabul
Three people were killed after Taliban fighters attacked a compound housing foreign contractors in the Afghan capital of Kabul. A truck bomb exploded at the entrance before two gunmen went inside. One police officer and both attackers were killed during a gun battle, according to police.—BBC News

Syrian Rebels Launch Offensive to Break Siege
Syrian rebel fighters have launched an assault on government troops in eastern Aleppo, aimed at breaking the siege. The UN estimates 300,000 people are trapped in the city with difficulty accessing food and medical supplies. Rebels and government forces have clashed along several fronts on the outskirts of the city.—Al Jazeera

Tokyo Elects First Female Governor
Former defense minister Yuriko Koike has been elected governor of Tokyo, the first female leader of the Japanese capital. Koike, an independent, received more than 2.9 million votes in Sunday's election, more than 1 million more than her nearest rival, backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.—CNN

Turkey Captures 11 Soldiers Involved in Coup Attempt
Turkish special forces have captured 11 fugitive soldiers who are suspected of being involved in a plan to seize President Tayyip Erdogan during last month's failed coup. The soldiers are part of a group accused of preparing an attack on a hotel in Marmaris where Erdogan was staying on the night of July 15.—Reuters

Jon Stewart. Photo via Flickr user Cliff

Everything Else

Beenie Man Cancels Show After Contracting Zika Virus
Beenie Man has revealed why he canceled his Saturday performance at Toronto's OVO Fest: The reggae star said he was denied a Canadian visa after contracting the Zika virus. He shared an Instagram photo of himself undergoing blood tests.—Rolling Stone

Miss Teen USA Keeps Crown Despite Racist Tweets
The Miss Universe Organization has insisted the new Miss Teen USA, Karlie Hay, will get to keep her crown despite criticism over tweets she once wrote using racist language. Hay admitted she used language she is "not proud of."—NBC News

Jon Stewart Returns with Animated Series
HBO has revealed that the former host of The Daily Show will begin releasing short-form videos and animations as early as September or October. Stewart's videos will comment on "what's happening during the day's news events."—Vanity Fair

Australian Troll Convicted of Online Abuse
Zane Alchin, the 25-year-old troll who made sexually explicit and threatening comments on Facebook, was convicted and put on a 12-month probation. His victim Paloma Brierley Newton called it a "huge win" for harassment campaigners.—VICE

French Muslims Attend Catholic Mass
Muslims across France attended Catholic mass on Sunday to show solidarity following the murder of a French priest by two teenagers. Anouar Kbibech, the head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, called for "national unity."—VICE News

Niantic Shuts Down Pokémon Tracking App
Niantic, the studio behind Pokémon Go, has shut down tracking apps like Poké Radar that help players find the rarest of Pokémon. The tracking app maker said it will no longer be available out of desire to follow "Niantic and Nintendo's wishes."—Motherboard

Government supporters burn photos of Fethullah Gulen, who they believe organized the coup. Petros Giannakouris / AP

To plan a speedy political exile from Turkey today, you need two things: a world map and the Wikipedia page on "visa entry requirements for Turkish citizens." If you get out a highlighter and start cross-referencing the two, you'll quickly see the bottom half of the map is more accessible than the top. If you can speak Spanish, the options are endless: almost every country in Latin America is happy to have you.

"It can't be that hard to learn, can it?" asked my friend, looking up Duolingo on the app store. We were sitting on a balcony in Istanbul, where we both live. From Taksim Square, just a few hundred meters away, came the sound of thousands of people singing the name of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Since an attempted military coup took place last month, Turkey has been more divided than ever. Government supporters and others who took part in the huge public effort that helped stop the coup have flocked to squares across the country every day to revel in the survival of Turkey's democratically elected government.

But others, including government critics like my friend, are not celebrating. They're terrified they'll be caught up in the huge purges that the government has ordered since the coup was thwarted, which have so far seen more than 60,000 people suspended from their jobs and 18,000-plus arrested—including 17 prominent journalists.

Dozens of institutions linked to Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who is suspected of organizing the coup, have been closed down, and 50,000 passports have been canceled—a move the ruling AKP says is aimed at stopping plotters from fleeing the country. A three-month state of emergency has been declared and the government has begun to rule by decree.

Just a week after the coup, Amnesty International published a report containing evidence it says proves the torture and rape of suspected coup plotters in detention—claims the state has denied.

The most disturbing thing is that you can't figure out what will happen, you can't even make plans.

Though the government claims that they are only targeting supporters of Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in a Pennsylvania mansion, critics say the purges are a smokescreen for an attack on any critics of the government. Many liberals, terrified they'll be detained or banned from doing their jobs, are making plans to flee the country.

"This is the first time I've started thinking maybe I should leave," said Burcu, an academic living in Istanbul. "I suffer from the termination of freedom to work, speak, and even go abroad now. It's completely unstable. That is the most disturbing thing: that you can't figure out what will happen, that you can't even make plans."

After google imaging every country in South and Central America, my friend eventually settled on Costa Rica. There are beaches and Americans there, he reasoned, and where you have beaches and Americans, there will be work in bars. But others—especially academics—want to move somewhere they can find work in their field. For most, that means Western Europe or the US—neither of which are particularly keen on handing out visas to Turks.

"I wouldn't leave Turkey for just any country whatsoever. Hungary, Russia, and Belarus are no better. I would like to go to Western Europe, possibly back to Britain," said Ali, a policy analyst at a think tank who did his master's degree in the UK. "I feel more at home there. July the 15 was a good reminder of why I'd really like to get out again. I used to criticize the government openly... but with the state of emergency and the suspension of the European Convention on Human Rights, I think the atmosphere is too intimidating."

It's a strange position to be in. On one hand, middle-class liberals in Istanbul aren't living in a war zone. Their life isn't in direct danger. But the fear of arrest and the pervasive, haunting feeling of being watched—having to constantly self-censor everything you say and write—is grinding. For most, though, it's not strong enough grounds to get political asylum in the West. They have to find another way out.

"I just feel disillusioned. I don't want to be this involved in politics," said Mert, an academic, sitting in a cafe on Istanbul's European side. "You can only fight so much. After a point, you start thinking that living your life the way you want is a political statement in itself. It's ridiculous."

For many, the desire to leave is driven by a feeling that things are about to get a lot worse. On the night of the coup, almost 300 soldiers, civilians, and policemen died. F-16 jets bombed government buildings in Ankara, and attack helicopters strafed the streets with bullets, mowing down anyone in their way. On the Bosphorus Bridge, where coup plotters had parked tanks to stop cars crossing to Europe from Asia, pro-government protesters allegedly beheaded a soldier.

Many of the army recruits who were on the streets on the night of the coup have since claimed they had no idea they were part of a plot to overthrow the government and had been told they were taking part in a military exercise.

No one knows whether the president will use this period to reconcile with his critics, or use the state of emergency to make a grab for power. Such a move could trigger a second coup attempt or even lead to civil war.

Ayhan couldn't wait to find out which way it would go. A few days after the failed coup, his name appeared on a list of journalists suspected of supporting the plotters—a claim he denies. He knew he had to get out.

Avoiding the airports for fear of detention, he managed to escape the country. "It's not safe," he said, from a secret location. "Whatever you write, they make a case against you. It's not possible for me to work any longer. It's very difficult for those who believe in democracy and for liberals who side with the standards of the EU."

Back on the balcony in Istanbul, my friend was looking on Skyscanner for flights to Costa Rica. They were expensive—more than three times the average monthly Turkish wage. The Americans on the beaches would have to wait.

Some names have been changed to protect identities

Follow Louise Callaghan on Twitter.