Earlier this year I unexpectedly found myself in Thailand on a luxury hotel chain press trip. It was a sharp (though not unwelcome) departure from the way I usually travel. As I watched an American woman stick a fork in and send back an omelette no less than five times, I made a passing comment about American tourists to one of my fellow journalists. Unfortunately, she was also American, and told me that everyone should cut them some slack because the people in the rest of the world wouldn’t be able to survive without the money her compatriots spend while on holiday. It did not seem to occur to her that this power dynamic, and the mindset behind it, is why half the planet now resembles a giant strip mall.

Almost every time I encounter an American abroad, I am torn between two opposing thoughts: wishing they would travel more so they might understand their way of life is an anomaly that’s destroying the rest of the world, and wishing they would stay in their godforsaken air-con unit of a country and spare the rest of us from having to interact with them. In my ten-plus years of interrailing, backpacking, sofa-surfing, petsitting, remote working, press-tripping, and holidaying across Earth, I’ve done enough boots-on-the-ground research to say this: Contrary to what you may have been led to believe by “wanderlust aesthetic” Instagram accounts, some of the worst people you’ll ever meet are those you come across while following the road less traveled. And it’s not just Americans.

Before I go any further, let me clarify for those of you who are already getting angry that it is obviously OK to go traveling. It can even be good—for example when I, the world’s only good and perfect tourist, do it. The point is that stamps in your passport don’t make you a better person, that frequent flyer miles and photos of you in front of waterfalls are not a substitute for a personality (sorry to 80 percent of the men on Hinge), and that, rather than being curious and open-minded, a lot of people who pride themselves on how many countries they have “checked off” have zero curiosity about the countries they are visiting. Others have a little too much curiosity, jet-setting from one ancestral healing practice to which they have no ancestral ties to another, until they finally find one they can repackage and sell to other spiritually bereft Westerners. Basically, what I’m saying is that while it is possible to travel like the late, great Anthony Bourdain, a lot of people are doing it in a way that is actually closer to Christopher Columbus if he had a smartphone.

Long-term travel was once the reserve of hippies with bad hygiene practices, students on their gap year, and wealthy bohemians, but the rise of remote working has birthed a new modern-day travel monster: the digital nomad. Almost always working in tech or helming a pyramid scheme, this demographic is driven to travel entirely by a desire to do exactly what they would at home but for cheaper, with better weather, and higher prospects of casual sex with anti-vax somatic healers. I once shared a living space with one such man in Mexico, who I could only surmise had been sent as a test from God to teach me something about my own endurance abilities. He spent every day working on his Burning Man-inspired luxury “festival fashion” startup at the local expat-owned co-working space (none of these words are in the Bible, etc), returning in the evenings to cook himself a big bowl of foul-smelling protein slop and tell me about how the best bet for America’s future was a presidential ticket featuring Mark Cuban and Tulsi Gabbard. His approach to “experiencing” Mexico was by no means unique. Where once free spirits journeyed to foreign lands in order to spend months taking heroin and writing era-defining literature, the modern travel landscape consists mostly of aspirational entrepreneurs who have little interest in their surroundings beyond whether the WiFi connection is strong enough for Claude to optimize their intermittent fasting plan.

In my time in the wanderlust mines, I have met a white Canadian who referred to jazz and blues as “N-word music”—with a hard R—when asked what kind of music he liked; a British couple in Marrakech annoyed that people were trying to sell them things in the bazaar; a Belgian coder / life coach who framed her silence on social justice issues as “choosing to ignore low vibrational topics”; Canadian techbros on $150k salaries arguing with Mexican waiters over a $2 tip; an American offended by the sight of a Hindu swastika on a temple in Thailand; an Arab man who said feminism was bullshit for weak, lazy women because his own mummy did everything in the house and never once complained (oh I bet); Swedish reggae lovers who’d come to Jamaica and were annoyed that the country had moved on from Bob Marley to dancehall; a Dutch boy who “joked” about spiking my drink; and too many kinds of fascist neo-hippie to name. I won’t even begin to list the things I’ve seen Israelis do and say.

The worst offenders in this crowded field of dickheads are those who also perceive themselves to be “spiritual” while actively spending their days leaving the world a worse place than they found it, while training AI models to use even more of the earth’s dwindling fresh water resources. Due to the fact that many of these people are coincidentally also highly sensitive empaths, they unfortunately cannot engage with politics or any of the negative impacts of their lifestyle, which is why they must instead release their trauma through ecstatic dance and being rude to service staff who make less money in a year than they spend on nootropic supplements.

Perhaps the problem is that travel has been culturally depoliticized and turned into an aesthetic while remaining inherently political

Perhaps the problem is that travel has been culturally depoliticized and turned into an aesthetic while remaining inherently political. Who gets to travel, who gets to share their narrative, who has the freedom to explore the world until they “find themselves,” and who has to feed their family by serving the self-actualization of foreigners are all subjects that are easier to ignore when making free-spirit content. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t travel, but that you should try and bring some self-awareness to it, which means paying up instead of arguing when the local taxi driver charges you tourist fares because you are a tourist.

Despite ostensibly traveling for the purpose of new and exciting experiences, a huge proportion of tourists—from lobster-hued Brits tucking into full English breakfasts at Irish pubs in Malaga, to the Australian reiki healer eating avocado toast on gluten-free bread in a millennial-branded coffee shop in Bali—now expects everywhere on Earth to function the same way it does back home, leading to exasperated temper tantrums when the market in Guatemala doesn’t accept Apple Pay. Over time, this has the flattening effect of turning the whole world into an architectural rendering of what constitutes a “good life” under ouroboros-capitalism, and destroying all the things that made somewhere worth visiting in the first place.

At the tail end of my recent trip, I spent an afternoon wandering through the streets of one of Thailand’s beautiful islands. The main strip was overlooked by a backdrop of lush forest and mountainside, which had been hacked into to make space for a lurid drag of sports bars, strip clubs, weed shops, and other places for tourists to get hammered for cheap somewhere exotic without experiencing any kind of culture shock. As I walked past another construction site, I was reminded of the scene in First Reformed where the protagonist, haunted by the weight of human environmental destruction, asks “Will God forgive us for what we’ve done to this world?” The more I travel, and the more people I meet who define themselves by doing so in the most self-serving way possible, the more unsure I become that he will.

Follow Niloufar Haidari on Instagram @niluthedamaja

The post The Worst People On Earth Are the Ones You Meet Traveling appeared first on VICE.

Reincarnation doesn’t seem like it’s a supernatural phenomenon that’s going to be definitively proven anytime soon with scientific research or study of any kind. But the descriptions in people’s reports of memories of past lives can be studied, and recently were. A study published in Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice that peered into 1,600 stories of reincarnation found a weird recurring pattern in the tales.

Researchers at the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies went through an extensive archive of over 1,600 cases where kids allegedly recalled the life of a specific, identifiable dead person.

First, let’s define a term: Intermission Time, which is the kind of temporal waiting period between a person dying and getting recycled back into a newborn baby. That time, according to the pattern uncovered by the researchers, is roughly 16 months among the cases that actually had a timetable attached to them.

People Who Died Suddenly or Violently Were Reportedly Reincarnated Faster, Study Finds

There were some exceptions that also yielded some fascinating patterns. Whenever a person died a sudden, unexpected death, or if it was violent, their soul was apparently moved further up the respawn queue, taking only 12 months to reincarnate, a 40 percent reduction compared to people who had died slowly from natural causes.

Lead author Saeedeh Sadeghi and her team tested for every logical explanation imaginable, trying to find some connective thread that can explain why so many of these very specific timelines are cropping up.

Things like parental involvement or religious beliefs or maybe some lightly shared cultural folklore might help explain… Some aspect of this. It didn’t. Researchers admit they don’t really know how to explain any of this. They admit that the accelerated rebirth pattern among people who died unexpectedly was even stronger in families whose religions didn’t believe in reincarnation.

None of this is definitive proof of an afterlife or of reincarnation. It’s more likely that all of this could be chalked up to coincidence, a statistical quirk. But it is a weird correlation that’s difficult to explain, and may never have a neat and tidy explanation. But, hey, feel free to use this as the basis of your next horror novel. It seems ripe for spooky supernatural narratives.

The post Scientists Found a Disturbing Pattern in Reincarnation Stories, and They Can’t Explain Why appeared first on VICE.

E-bike rental company Lime has had enough. They’re sick of it. They’re not taking it anymore. They’re being loud and clear in their warning: their bikes are not to be used for jousting, under any circumstances, you hear? No! Not even if you need to slay a real dragon that’s for some reason within the vicinity of a real lance and a Lime e-bike rental. But more specifically and realistically, you should not use the bikes at any e-bike jousting tournament held in London.

According to reports from the BBC, the warning comes after footage blew up online showing artist Jack Carden and actor “Camtholomew the First” throwing a medieval jousting tournament; just instead of horses and knights, it’s rental bikes and regular dudes.

The dudes, dressed head to toe in suits of armor and chainmail, pedal as hard as they can on lime e-bikes through London Fields, Hackney, in East London, raising their lances, charging at one another as hundreds of spectators chanted “joust, joust, joust!”

Footage of the event racked up millions of views on Instagram, and Carden framed it all as “performance art,” which, if we’re being honest, is just a bit of highfalutin speak trying to dress up what is clearly a collection of guys being dudes as they demonstrate one of the many non-toxic ways dudes rock.

A Viral E-Bike Jousting Tournament Has Forced Lime to Issue a Very Strange Warning

Executives at Lime did not see it that way, probably because their minds were instantly filled with all of the lawsuits they could probably be privy to should something go wrong, even though their e-bikes were not intended to be joust’ed upon. Or because they don’t want this to become a thing and suddenly their bikes are being wrecked by dudes slamming them into each other across the world.

Whatever the reason, company higher-ups felt inclined to release an official statement reminding everyone that their fleet of mental e- bikes is meant for pleasant and convenient urban commuting and not medieval violence.

In the statement, the company says that it appreciates the “medieval spirit, safety must always come first,” which is why they remind everyone involved that anyone might want to do their own e- bike jousting tournament and that Lime bikes “are not for jousting.”

I guess it ultimately is a good thing they came out against it. They could have stood idly by and raked in all that jousting rental money as people collided into one another over and over again. That would have been evil, but it’s hard to deny it would’ve been lucrative.

The post People Are Jousting on Rental E-Bikes in London, and Lime Is Not Happy appeared first on VICE.

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A hotel room with unexplained noises, strange figures at the foot of the bed, and a history of violent deaths sounds like a nightmare. Unless you’re specifically looking for that kind of thing.

A new analysis from ACE.com, a free-to-play social gaming site, looked at more than 90,000 TripAdvisor reviews across 34 U.S. hotels to find out which ones had the most ghost-related chatter. Researchers searched for eight terms, including “ghost,” “haunting,” and “spooky,” then calculated how many appeared per 100 reviews. Since a single review could contain multiple terms, scores could exceed 100.

And people are definitely interested. “There are an average of over 11,000 Google searches for ‘haunted hotels’ every month in the US, with searches rising by 98% in October in the run-up to Halloween,” an ACE.com spokesperson said.

Here are the five hotels that received the most paranormal mentions.

1. The Haunted Shanley Hotel, Napanoch, New York

With a name like that, paranormal seekers would be pretty bummed if nothing strange happened. The Shanley topped the list with 120 paranormal mentions per 100 reviews, making it the only property to reach triple digits. Local stories claim children connected to the hotel’s former owners still haunt the building. Despite its reputation, guests gave it a respectable 4.5 Tripadvisor rating.

2. Jefferson Palace Hotel, Jefferson, Texas

The Jefferson Palace Hotel earned 65 paranormal mentions per 100 reviews, with guests describing everything from footsteps in empty hallways to unexplained cold spots. There’s also a room full of dolls you can sleep in, if you want to take the creepy factor up a notch. The hotel has a 3.6 Tripadvisor rating.

3. The Historic Lizzie Borden House, Fall River, Massachusetts

In 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally murdered inside this house, and the infamous Lizzie Borden was later acquitted of the crime. Now a bed and breakfast, guests report strange sensations, including dizziness and the feeling that someone is watching them. It earned 61 paranormal mentions per 100 reviews and a 4.7 TripAdvisor rating.

4. The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, Colorado

A 1974 stay at the Stanley helped give Stephen King the idea for The Shining, and the hotel has been enjoying its creepy reputation ever since. Guests still report strange experiences, giving the property 43 paranormal mentions per 100 reviews. It also has a 3.6 Tripadvisor rating, so the actual accommodations are questionable.

5. 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, Eureka Springs, Arkansas

The Crescent has quite the disturbing history. In the 1930s, a con man named Norman Baker turned the hotel into a cancer hospital despite having no medical training. He charged desperate patients for bogus treatments, and many died there. The building even had a morgue in its basement, where guests now report ghostly encounters. The hotel earned 38 paranormal mentions per 100 reviews and a 4.2 rating.

Savannah’s Kehoe House earned a 4.9 Tripadvisor rating, the highest in the study, without making the paranormal top five. Although if you’ve ever spent time in Savannah, you know the city isn’t exactly short on ghost stories. It is the “most haunted city in America,” after all. 

The post The 5 Most Haunted Hotels in America, According to People Who Actually Stayed There appeared first on VICE.

Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. Let’s get into it.

One thing I’m thinking about: Electability and identity are intertwined 

On Sunday, former President Barack Obama did something most others seemed to avoid: He called out the Trump administration’s targeting of Rep. Ilhan Omar.

The administration, Obama wrote, is “actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar” over a theory he called unsubstantiated: that she was 18, not 17, when her father was naturalized. The effort, he said, “should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views.” 

The statement stands in contrast to the mixed response of Democrats on the campaign trail and the relative silence of the mainstream press. House leadership put out a statement condemning the raid — but there’s been nothing from Senate Democratic leadership and little from the crop of elected officials expected to run for president in 2028. 

As The Intercept’s Adam Johnson pointed out, the August 2025 raid on former Trump adviser John Bolton drew scathing editorials from the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal within days. The same goes for other ways Trump has weaponized the federal government against his political enemies, from the cases against James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James to the pursuit of Federal Reserve officials (Obama named all three in his statement). Omar’s raid has drawn much less intense coverage. Last week, I got three requests from cable outlets to discuss “news of the day” — each mentioned fired White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, new midterms polling, and some combination of Pete Hegseth and the war with Iran. None mentioned Omar.  

The entire episode has reminded me of Trump’s targeting of Black journalists like Don Lemon and Georgia Fort. Earlier this year, they were indicted after covering an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, and both have pleaded not guilty. In that case, there was also a muted reaction from the establishment press, possibly because of mixed feelings about Lemon personally or the lack of solidarity with independent Black media. Still, that silence was shortsighted, as the Trump administration used the incident as a stepping stone to target the wider media apparatus (See: Trump’s September attempt to bar CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House).

With that in mind, I don’t think it’s hard to guess why Omar hasn’t received the fulsome backing of her party. I don’t think it’s the merits of the case: She hasn’t been charged with a crime, and the theory depends on a decades-old immigration filing by a father who died in 2020. It’s likely the fact that the Minnesota progressive has herself had a tense relationship with the Democratic establishment. That dates back to the 2019 fight over comments Omar made about the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in Congress, which some took to be antisemitic. In recent weeks, Minnesota Democrats, including Rep. Angie Craig and Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s office, criticized Omar’s plans to appear at an October 26 event hosted by state Sen. Omar Fateh with Hasan Piker, the controversial leftist Twitch streamer who has become a lightning rod in this year’s primaries.

But there’s another factor that we should also name in this episode: Islamophobia. As I discussed with Mehdi Hasan on Substack Live a couple weeks ago, the rise of the progressive left cannot be untangled from Muslim elected officials who have become its face: Omar in Minnesota, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and Zohran Mamdani in New York City. And in each case, these candidates have faced attacks that explicitly seek to frame their religion and identity as inherently anti-American, a threat not only to our national values but our democracy itself.

Asked on CBS whether he believed El-Sayed was a terrorist, Republican Mike Rogers said to “look at the data — it’s pretty clear.” In a recent television ad (a seven-figure buy titled “Threat”) launched by Rogers and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, its narrator says, “Abdul raises money from dangerous people who finance terrorist networks,” tying the candidate to the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. The NRSC’s ads also notably use his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.

But importantly, it’s not just Republicans engaging in overt bigotry. They have also been aided by moderate Democrats and the press, who have used the guise of “electability” to beat the same drum. Think back to the New York City mayoral race, where (Democrat!) Andrew Cuomo spent the final weeks running a campaign virtually indistinguishable from the tactics of the MAGA right. On a radio show, host Sid Rosenberg said Mamdani would cheer if another 9/11 happened, and Cuomo laughed, seeming to agree. Cuomo’s X account even posted, then deleted, an AI-generated ad called “Criminals for Zohran Mamdani,” which opens with a fake Mamdani eating rice with his hands. The campaign blamed a “junior staffer.”

The worst part: In following Republicans down the road of interrogating the Scary Muslims, we perpetrate a form of hate that has real costs. Just this May, two teenagers opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three people, and left behind a manifesto invoking the Christchurch mosque shooter. Analysts at the Anti-Defamation League found it expressed sweeping hatred of Muslims, Jews, Black and Hispanic people, and the LGBTQ+ community.

And journalistically, we avoid a more nuanced conversation that is the one worth having: the connection between identity and electability.

And journalistically, we avoid a more nuanced conversation that is the one worth having: the connection between identity and electability. The discussion about candidates El-Sayed and Mamdani, to this point, has focused on whether their progressive policy stances can play well in a general election. However, research shows that while candidates of marginalized backgrounds (women, Black and Latinos, Arabs, etc.) face an electoral penalty from voters regardless of ideology or political party, that’s especially true for Muslim candidates. A study of state legislative races in Politics and Religion this year found Muslim candidates were roughly 16 percentage points less likely to win general elections than non-Muslim candidates, and 10–15 points behind other racial minorities. Experiments by the political scientist Nazita Lajevardi, cited in that paper, found voters about 10 percent less likely to pick a Muslim candidate over a white one, with religion rather than race as the trigger.

This would seem to explain some of the reason El-Sayed seems to be running behind other Senate Democrats (if we believe the polling). But you rarely hear that reasoning given by the electability crowd, who more than often cites his progressive beliefs, and are we just supposed to nominate Christian white guys forever?

Here’s what is undeniable: Republicans have become quite adept at putting minority communities against each other in the Trump era, and they’re running that playbook in Michigan. Whether it’s telling Black communities that emerging immigrant populations are taking their jobs or telling immigrant communities that Democrats are too focused on Black issues, the strategy has been to exploit the racial tension at the heart of the Democratic base. And to some degree — it’s working.

In an August interview with Clay Cane at The Grio, a Black-focused outlet, El-Sayed said “mistrust among Black folk in Metro Detroit is well-founded,” pointing to what he described as tensions between some Arab and Muslim business owners. And the skepticism runs the other way too — as part of the difficulty El-Sayed has faced in Black communities is tied to the Islamophobia among that voting block. One example: At a July campaign event for Haley Stevens, a Farmington school board trustee told a Michigan Chronicle reporter, “Don’t just come in here speaking Arabic,” remarks the Council on American Islamic Relations condemned as anti-Arab racism and many read as aimed at El-Sayed. At an August 19 press conference, an older Black man in Detroit shouted at El-Sayed, “He’s an Arab — he don’t care nothing about Black folks.”

The layered nature of this issue should not be hard to grasp. Ask liberals about the 2024 election, and they are quick to point out the racism and sexism faced by candidates like Kamala Harris, and rightly argue that impacted her “electability” just as much as her refusal to break from President Joe Biden or embrace a clear ideological lane. But they conveniently leave out the importance of identity when it comes to Omar, El-Sayed, Mamdani, or even candidates like Francesca Hong in Wisconsin or Angie Nixon in Florida. As Zaid Jilani wrote recently, establishment Democrats are “effectively denying that prejudice exists in the United States if they’re really going to argue that Abdul El-Sayed will perform a few points behind other Democrats because of his PolIcY ViEwS rather than the GOP hating Muslims for 25 years.”

But we should be clear: “Hating Muslims” is not a prejudice that’s limited to the GOP, just as issues like racism, sexism, or antisemitism aren’t housed on one side of the aisle either. And in selectively ignoring the central role that prejudice plays in electoral politics — yes, even with progressive candidates — electability-focused Democrats aid the GOP’s desire to sow discord among their base.

The main reason for Democrats to stand up for Omar or El-Sayed is because it’s right, and they, too, have a place in American democracy. But at minimum, Democrats should see that in ignoring explicit Islamophobia — on the campaign trail or in the White House — they are being rather shortsighted. Trump’s campaign of retribution is unlikely to spare any enemy. Muslims may be the focus right now. But there’s no telling who’s next. You’re either for a multiracial, multifaith coalition — or you’re not.

One thing I’m hearing 

This week, we talked to Christian Paz, a Vox correspondent covering national politics and American religion. He’s been reporting from Kansas for an upcoming story on pastor and Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton, whose race has emerged as a major campaign battleground in the final stretch. I wanted to ask him how Hamilton’s faith is shaping his campaign, what he is hearing from voters, and what the race could tell us about the Democrats’ ability to compete in long held Republican states. 

How is Adam Hamilton’s background as a pastor shaping his pitch, and what is he doing differently from other Democrats?

Watching Hamilton on the trail, it was remarkable to me how much his Methodist faith was at the heart of everything he talked about: about healthcare, climate, immigration, and foreign policy, about how his personal views either conflict with or bolster his policy stance, about how Trump and the GOP have failed Kansans, and about why he even decided to run (after he spent time dwelling on the Sermon on the Mount). He tailors his stump speech to different audiences, of course: At a progressive book shop, he leaned into a more anti-Trump speech; at a senior center he talked up his more conservative viewpoints on immigration and climate; at a Republicans for Hamilton rally he talked about the political center and why he wants to build a big tent; at a chapel, he led the audience in singing a hymn and quoted extensively from the Gospels as he shared his personally “pro-life” views — but it was all not just tinged, but immersed in Christianity.

“The race already tells us a few things, regardless of who wins or loses: Democrats should be creating opportunities to elevate religious people or clergy who want to run for office.”

It’s something I’ve only seen people like Rev. Raphael Warnock do, when speaking at churches on the campaign trail in 2020 and 2021. And it was different from James Talarico too — this guy leads a megachurch, and at times can slip into a kind of evangelical tone. That’s all pretty different than any other Democrat I’ve watched this cycle.

Hamilton needs to win over Kansans outside his party to have a shot. What were you hearing on the ground talking to voters?

The faith pitch is a huge part of why it does seem like he has a shot at winning: It doesn’t seem like he’s adopting or borrowing the language of the faithful, or their aesthetics, to talk politics, or just pitching the political center as a way to persuade voters. It’s that he’s adopting the tone and language of politics to talk about his faith — not the other way around. And the result is that when he talks about building a big tent, holding heterodox views, coexisting with people you disagree with — people trust and believe him.

I think I talked to more actual independents and Republicans who are backing Hamilton than actual die-hard Democrats over the days I was in Kansas. Some of these folks have voted at the local level for Democrats before, but tended to vote Republican at the national level. What unified those conversations was the sense that they think Hamilton is authentic, is a moral man with good character, and seems to be truly independent.

Others, including Democrats, said they appreciated how much time Hamilton spent talking about freedom of religion and diversity of thought — they liked that he would preface his religious talk with assurances that he wasn’t trying to convert anyone or force religion into people’s lives, but would also say he wasn’t going to compromise on it because of how genuinely he believes those things.

What could this race tell us about Democrats’ ability to reach religious voters in other Republican states?

The race already tells us a few things, regardless of who wins or loses: Democrats should be creating opportunities to elevate religious people or clergy who want to run for office. Those who aspire to run for office should also feel more comfortable talking about their faith if it’s actually a part of their lives. And Democrats shouldn’t feel beholden to the secular/atheist/none of the above/nothing in particular segment of their base because that isn’t big enough to actually win elections.

Christina Applegate has been battling what she thought was multiple sclerosis since her diagnosis back in 2021. Now, she found out that she was misdiagnosed; she does not have MS, and whatever has been plaguing her remains a mystery. At first, that sounds like a horrible bit of doctoring by the medical professionals she’s been working with, but MS is a tricky thing to diagnose.

To be clear, it’s not like she’s been magically cured overnight just because she knows she doesn’t have MS. As she explained on her podcast “MeSsy,” she’s “back at square one” with the same debilitating health issues and no clue what’s causing it.

The fundamental issue with diagnosing MS is that no single, all-encompassing test exists. Doctors must follow a high-stakes neurological process of elimination. The autoimmune disease causes the body to attack its own nerve linings, which results in brain lesions, mobility loss, severe pain, blurred vision, numbness and tingling, bladder and bowel issues, muscle spasms; the list goes on and on… and just so happens to line up with a laundry list of other conditions including neuropathy and a variety of spinal issues.

To make things even trickier, many of these alternative ailments show up the same way on MRI: as a series of white spots.

Christina Applegate Says She Was Misdiagnosed With MS After Five Years of Treatment

Research has shown how easy it is to misdiagnose MS. A 2019 study found that about 18 percent of patients who were referred to specialist centers with an MS diagnosis didn’t actually have the disease at all. It wasn’t until 2024 that diagnostic guidelines began incorporating more advanced imaging techniques, such as searching for a “central vein sign,” a tiny blood vessel structure inside lesions that helps doctors differentiate MS from its lookalikes.

Women are statistically more likely to develop autoimmune conditions that are hard to diagnose, and that’s on top of the common and frustrating phenomenon of women having their physical symptoms brushed off as imagined, even by trained medical professionals. Without a single, unifying, definitive test to officially label someone as having MS, people like Applegate may find themselves spending years battling an illness it turns out they don’t even have.

The post Christina Applegate Doesn’t Have Multiple Sclerosis After All, and Doctors Still Don’t Know What’s Wrong appeared first on VICE.

Trading cards are hot right now. Both content creators who have found wildly creative ways to open card packs in hopes of unwrapping a rare card and thieves who have turned to fairly uncomplicated but still daring Pokémon card heists.

We’ve covered several of them. My favorite is the guy who scaled a six-story building in Japan to steal $9,120 worth of Pokémon cards, which could be several cards or could just be one rare, high-graded Charizard.

Well, it happened again. And this one was big, though not strictly Pokémon cards: a FedEx truck carrying two pallets full of graded collectibles, including Pokémon cards, collectively valued at nearly $1 million, was stolen in Santa Ana, California.

Pokémon Cards, Rare Sports Memorabilia Stolen in Nearly $1 Million California Heist

According to NBC News, officers responded to Professional Sports Authenticator after two pallets of graded collectibles were stolen. The stolen merchandise includes Pokémon cards, sports cards, and a 2024 One Piece set—all swiped from a FedEx delivery truck, leaving a third pallet “disrupted.” Initial damages totaled $963,000, though police warn that number could climb once they tally the full inventory.

Many of the memorabilia were already owned by private collectors, some of whom have taken to social media to reveal that some of their cards were part of the theft. Card collector and pack-ripper SKY-B announced on his YouTube channel that 104 of his cards were a part of the theft, and as a result, he will be “absolutely financially destroyed.”

The heist has left collectors completely destroyed. Social media collector “Sky-B” revealed he lost 104 rare cards worth $156,000 that were heading back to Michigan after he dropped $8,000 just to get them graded. Other stolen grails included a 1995 Upper Deck gold Michael Jordan card. Collector Nick Andrews, better known online as Boston card Hunter, said that he had 383, potentially more, cards stolen in the heist, one of which was a rare Michael Jordan card from 1995.

Much of the stolen memorabilia is specific and graded, and likely has some kind of serial number attached, meaning some of it will have to be fenced on the black market. This kind of stuff can get traced pretty quickly if sold to a legit hobby store.

The post Nearly $1 Million in Pokémon and Sports Cards Stolen From FedEx Truck in California appeared first on VICE.

Modern tech like AI has made it easy, nearly effortless, to scam people. Some of the most vulnerable Americans who are 60 and older become easy prey for scammers using a range of techniques, including romance scams and celebrity scams, wherein a con artist digitally masks themselves as someone else entirely to trick someone into thinking they need money.

A new Federal Trade Commission report digs into the numbers and found that fraud targeting older adults blew up from $600 million in 2020 to a massive $3 billion reported in 2025, with total unrecorded damages potentially reaching $119.5 billion.

Older Americans are an easy target because of unfamiliarity with modern tech and the sophistication of modern scams. That, combined with the vast majority of American wealth tied up among the baby boomers and members of the silent generation, and you’ve got a demographic right before scams.

Scammers Stole $3 Billion From Older Americans in 2025, New FTC Report Reveals

Investment scams topped the chart with over $1 billion swiped, more often than not initiated through social media traps. But good old-fashioned phone calls yielded some of the highest individual losses. Older consumers were “over four times (324%) more likely than younger people to report losing money on a tech support scam; (2) over two times (112%) more likely to report a loss on a prize,” according to the report.

Bank transfers served as the primary pipeline for high-dollar thefts, though credit cards were the most frequent payment method overall. The FTC report doesn’t quantify how much of this is happening through AI, but given how rapidly the tech has infiltrated modern society, one could assume AI is used frequently, making digital extortion schemes harder to spot.

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The world has changed. Everything we know is backwards now that women are getting arrested for traditionally male crimes.

According to local reporting from ABC4 Utah, 44-year-old Christine Chao of Rosemead, California, has been charged with automobile homicide while allegedly using a handheld device to watch porn, causing a fatal three-car wreck on Interstate 15 in Juab County, Utah.

Construction slowed traffic near Levan. Chao, driving a blue SUV, allegedly failed to hit the brakes, slamming directly into the back of a white sedan, shoving it into a black SUV. The impact forced all three vehicles off the highway. The passenger in the white sedan suffered a severe head injury and died at the scene despite a medical helicopter landing to deliver emergency care.

Woman Accused of Watching Porn While Driving, Causing Fatal Three-Car Crash

When Utah Highway Patrol troopers investigated the crash site, they noticed something was missing: brake marks on the asphalt that would’ve suggested that Chao hit the brakes. No marks meant she plowed straight into the white sedan at full speed. She admitted it to first responders, prompting investigators to check her phone.

A search warrant that pried open her phone records showed that she was actively browsing a porn video site less than two minutes before the crash. Chao is now facing a second-degree felony charge.

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A raise feels great for a paycheck or two. Then it becomes your regular salary, and somehow you can’t imagine surviving on what you made six months ago.

Your personality might change a little, too. In a new study, researchers led by Wen-Dong Li of the Chinese University of Hong Kong analyzed data from 11 long-term studies involving up to 134,515 working adults across five countries. They examined how people’s incomes and personalities changed over periods ranging from four to 20 years.

People who started earning more money generally became a little more conscientious and emotionally stable afterward. They were also slightly less agreeable and less outgoing. In other words, a bigger paycheck might help you get your sh*t together while making you a little less interested in everyone else’s.

A New Study Suggests Getting Richer Might Change Your Personality in Unexpected Ways

There are a few possible explanations. Higher-paying positions typically come with greater responsibility, so people have to become more organized and better at handling stress. At the same time, demanding jobs can eat into your social life, and having more authority might make you less concerned about what other people think.

Psychologist Paul Piff has explored how money influences behavior, including an experiment involving a rigged game of Monopoly. One player started with twice the money, and the wealthier players became increasingly pushy as the game went on. Even better, they started crediting their success to their own abilities, despite having an unfair advantage from the beginning.

Piff’s research has also found that drivers of more expensive cars were more likely to cut off pedestrians at crosswalks. “The more wealth you have, the less attentive to other people you become,” he told Marketplace.

The relationship between income and personality also goes the other way. People who became more conscientious and emotionally stable were also more likely to earn higher salaries down the road. Oddly enough, becoming more outgoing was associated with slightly lower future income, although Li suggested that could depend on how much social interaction someone’s job requires. The strongest associations appeared a little over a year after a change and weakened over time.

The effects were small, and the researchers relied on self-reported surveys, so they couldn’t establish that earning more actually caused the personality changes. Still, Li told PsyPost that “personality traits are not set in stone.”

By all means, ask for that raise. Just remember to be nice to the people who knew you when you were broke.

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Getting ghosted used to be the worst thing that could happen after a decent first date. The bar has dropped since then.

And dating wasn’t exactly going great to begin with. A 2023 Pew Research Center report found that 46% of Americans who had used dating apps or websites described their experiences as negative. Between people disappearing without explanation and others keeping you interested with absolutely no intention of dating you, it’s easy to see why. Here are six dating behaviors you might recognize, even if you’ve never heard their ridiculous names.

1. Breadcrumbing

A breadcrumber gives you just enough attention to keep you interested, usually a random “hey stranger” or an Instagram like at a questionable hour, without ever making actual plans.

In a study of 626 adults, researchers found that people who’d been breadcrumbed reported greater loneliness and lower life satisfaction. Ghosting, meanwhile, had no statistically significant association with those outcomes. At least when someone disappears, you eventually stop expecting a text.

2. Monkey Branching

Monkey branching is when someone starts pursuing their next relationship before ending the one they’re already in. They want another person lined up before breaking things off, presumably because spending a few Friday nights by themselves is simply too much to ask.

Dyllan Watkins, a Neuroscience BSc holder, in collaboration with poly dating platform Sister Wives, told Body+Soul that this behavior “could stem from an insecurity around trust or fear of abandonment.” Unfortunately, the person they’re currently dating gets to deal with the consequences.

3. Phubbing

Phubbing is short for phone snubbing, and it’s when someone scrolls through their phone while you’re attempting to have a conversation.

Baylor University researcher James Roberts found that people who experienced more phubbing from their partners reported greater conflict and lower relationship satisfaction. It’s hard to feel appreciated when you’re competing with someone’s Instagram feed or fantasy football league.

4. Floodlighting

Floodlighting is when someone unloads deeply personal information before you’ve had hardly any time to get to know each other. You’re 20 minutes into a first date and already know all about their childhood trauma and the ex who ruined their life.

Brené Brown has described this behavior as a way of protecting yourself from vulnerability. If the other person backs away, the floodlighter can convince themselves that opening up was a mistake.

5. Orbiting

Orbiting is when someone stops texting you but continues watching everything you post on social media. They might even like a photo once in a while. You haven’t had an actual conversation in weeks, but they’re still keeping up with your life on Instagram.

6. Cloaking

Cloaking takes ghosting a step further. Someone you’ve been talking to or dating disappears and blocks you everywhere, including the dating app where you originally matched. They’ve cut off every possible way to contact them, leaving you with no explanation and no opportunity to even ask what happened.

It’s pretty incredible how much effort some people will put into avoiding a conversation that could be over in two minutes.

The post 6 Dating Trends That Could Be Secretly Ruining Your Love Life appeared first on VICE.

The neck doesn’t get much credit as a sexy body part. It probably should.

Men on Reddit have been discussing this for years. In an r/AskMen thread, guys admitted there’s something incredibly attractive about a woman putting her hair up or sweeping it over one shoulder to expose her neck. One called the move “so f***ing attractive,” while another described the neck as “a really intimate spot on the body.” A third guy said he liked it because it’s “right above the boobs.” Okay, Beavis.

There’s some research to back up the neck’s reputation as an erogenous zone. Bangor University neuroscientist Oliver Turnbull and his colleagues asked nearly 800 people to rate 41 body areas according to how sexually stimulating they found them. The neck ranked near the top, with women rating it slightly higher than men. Feet didn’t get much love.

Men Say This Overlooked Female Body Part Is Incredibly Attractive

Turnbull was interested in why certain places feel good when touched sexually, while others…not so much. After all, your neck and forehead both contain sensory receptors, but most people would probably prefer a kiss on the neck.

There’s also something intimate about letting another person get that close. “Letting someone touch the neck is a major act of trust, so, understandably, some people hate it,” sex and relationship therapist Cate Campbell told Metro. Some people love having their neck kissed, while others would prefer their partner keep their mouth elsewhere.

And there’s an important difference between kissing someone’s neck and putting pressure on it. Sexual choking has become increasingly common, especially among younger adults, and Indiana University sex researcher Debby Herbenick has spent years studying the risks.

“There is truly no safe way to choke someone,” she told Savage Love. Even relatively light pressure can restrict blood flow to the brain, with potentially serious consequences. Her research has also raised concerns about people experiencing choking during otherwise consensual sex without being asked first.

If you happen to find someone’s neck incredibly attractive, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to give it some attention. Just make sure they’re interested in that attention, too. And keep your hands away from their throat.

The post This Is the Most Underrated Body Part on a Woman, According to Men appeared first on VICE.

True crime fans know all about the love letters Ted Bundy received while sitting in prison. It’s a bizarre piece of history, especially considering the man was responsible for murdering numerous young women. And somehow, he still had women lining up to date him.

Bundy even married Carole Ann Boone during his murder trial. But forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland told HuffPost that these women aren’t necessarily attracted to the crimes themselves. For some, a man serving a life sentence can be “the perfect boyfriend”—after all, you know exactly where he is at all times. 

The fascination with Bundy got University of São Paulo researcher Katharina da Silva wondering what draws people to partners with less-than-lovely personalities. Is there something about certain people that makes narcissism or manipulation attractive, even when everyone else can see the warning signs? To investigate, she and her colleagues surveyed 400 Brazilian adults for a study examining personality traits and romantic preferences.

Scientists Found Something Interesting About People Who Date Manipulative Partners

Participants answered questions about their own levels of narcissism, manipulation, and psychopathy, collectively known as the Dark Triad. They also rated how attractive they found those qualities in a potential partner. According to PsyPost, people who scored higher in these traits were generally more interested in dating someone similar. Narcissists preferred narcissists, and manipulators were drawn to other manipulators.

The researchers also asked participants to rate hypothetical partners on a scale of 1 to 7, and the difference was quite substantial. A kind, considerate person scored nearly 6, while someone described as calculating and willing to do whatever it takes scored about 2.4. Add a history of physical assault, and that number dropped to 1.5.

And money couldn’t save them either. Neither could fame or being ridiculously good-looking. Even when researchers gave the violent hypothetical partner a fortune, celebrity status or an attractive appearance, people still weren’t interested. Da Silva suspects the assault was enough to put people off, regardless of the other qualities.

“Prosociality still remains a far more desirable trait in the context of mate choice,” she told PsyPost.

There are limitations, of course. The partners were fictional descriptions without photos, and the participants were mostly educated adults recruited online. Since every hypothetical partner with appealing qualities also had a history of violence, the researchers couldn’t determine how people might respond to a wealthy, attractive manipulator without an assault charge.

So if a friend’s exes all seem cut from the same cloth, the common thread might be the friend.

The post The Surprising Reason Some People Keep Dating Narcissists, According to Science appeared first on VICE.

In the late-night/early-morning hours of Monday, October 26, October’s full moon will peak at 12:12 a.m. EDT. Known as the Hunter’s Moon, it will appear bright and nearly full in the sky for the day or two before and after its peak. The best time to spot it in all its glory is Sunday evening, weather permitting.

Here’s what you should know about the Hunter’s Moon, including its historical context and spiritual meaning.

What Is the Hunter’s Moon?

According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, “October’s Full Moon is traditionally known as the Hunter’s Moon—a name that reflects the seasonal shift from gathering crops to preparing meat for winter. Following the Harvest Moon, fields are typically cleared, leaves have fallen, and animals are easier to spot in open landscapes. At the same time, game such as deer and other wildlife have fattened up over the summer and early fall, making this an ideal time for hunting.”

Historically, moonlight has helped hunters spot wildlife during the autumn season.

“The bright Moon rising soon after sunset provided extra evening light, allowing hunters to track game longer into the night,” The Old Farmer’s Almanac states on its website. “For generations, this was the season to hunt, preserve meat, and lay in a store of provisions to sustain families through the long winter months ahead.”

According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, some alternative names for this full moon include: Drying Rice Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Freezing Moon, Ice Moon, and Migrating Moon.

Spiritual Meaning of Hunter’s Moon

The Hunter’s Moon holds deep spiritual symbolism, representing the following themes:

Introspection

Both autumn and full moons mark wonderful times to reflect and dig deeper within ourselves. As the Hunter’s Moon sheds light for hunters to track their game, it might also highlight ways you can improve yourself or your life. Don’t be afraid of the personal truths you uncover during this full moon.

Release

Most full moons are associated with release, and the Hunter’s Moon is no different. Just as the trees shed their dead leaves during this month, you too must let go of what no longer serves you.

Many people engage in releasing rituals during the Hunter’s Moon, writing down their insecurities or fears and safely burning or ripping up the paper. Follow what feels right to you.

Action

Autumn is associated with both endings and beginnings, and many view October as a time to take action on your goals. If you feel inspired during the Hunter’s Moon, allow that energy to guide your progress. Don’t delay your plans or contemplate the best course of action; rather, take the appropriate steps toward your dreams and watch them flourish. 

Connection to the Divine

This time of year is associated with a thin veil between the physical world and the spiritual realm. As a result, many view the Hunter’s Moon as highly spiritual. Some use it as a time to connect with their loved ones or ancestors who’ve passed, while others feel closer to God or whatever higher power they believe in.

If spirituality is important to you, find ways to connect with yours during this full moon, whether through prayer, meditation, or another personal practice.

The post What Is the Hunter’s Moon? Everything to Know About October’s Full Moon. appeared first on VICE.

Elder millennials were technically alive the last time Halley’s Comet came around, though most of us were still learning to walk. And it won’t officially be back until 2061. 

But there’s a way to see pieces of it this week. NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke suggested something for anyone who doesn’t want to wait another 35 years. “For those who haven’t seen Comet Halley, if you don’t want to wait for its return, you can at least go out and see the Orionids,” he told CNN. This year’s Orionid meteor shower peaks tonight, Wednesday, Oct. 21, into Thursday morning.

Every October, Earth passes through a trail of dust and rock left behind by Halley’s Comet. Those particles burn up in our atmosphere, giving us the Orionids. The same comet debris also produces the Eta Aquariids meteor shower in May. Meanwhile, Halley’s Comet is out near Neptune’s orbit, absolutely nowhere near us.

And these things freaking move. Orionid meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere at around 41 miles per second, making them some of the fastest meteors we can see. They can produce bright streaks, the occasional fireball, and glowing trails that hang around for a few seconds afterward.

A Meteor Shower Made From Halley’s Comet Is Peaking Tonight. Here’s When to Look Up.

Unfortunately, the moon isn’t doing anyone any favors this year. A bright waxing gibbous moon will wash out many fainter meteors on Wednesday night. According to NASA, your best chance comes after it sets around 3 a.m. local time. Under ideal conditions, the Orionids can produce 10 to 20 meteors per hour, although people in suburban areas will probably see closer to three to six.

If you’re going to watch, find somewhere away from city lights and give your eyes time to adjust. Bring a blanket and something comfy to sit on, especially if you’ll be out there a while. You won’t need a telescope, and there’s no reason to stare directly at Orion. The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky.

Fun fact: Mark Twain had an interesting connection to Halley’s Comet. He was born in 1835, the year it passed, and predicted he’d die when it returned. In 1909, he wrote, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.” He died on April 21, 1910, one day after the comet reached its closest point to the Sun.

If you’re willing to get out of bed at 3 a.m., you might catch a few pieces of the same comet. At least you won’t have to wait another 35 years.

The post Pieces of Halley’s Comet Will Light Up the Night Sky Tonight. Here’s How to See Them. appeared first on VICE.

Are you mad about everything?

Another needless, endless war. Rising living costs and gas prices. The fact that the richest 1 percent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 percent combined, or the straight-up corruption happening in the White House. As the old saying goes, if you’re not mad, you’re not paying attention. 

But what does spirituality teach us about how to respond to our anger? Is it wise to try to let it go? Should we practice imagining clouds floating gently by and take a deep breath?

I don’t think so. For one, it’s not that simple! There’s way too much happening inside my heart when I’m pissed off to pretend that I’m full of calm and kindness. Plus, this kind of spiritual bypassing is as insulting as it is ineffective. When we try to force a feeling, we fundamentally misunderstand the gift that anger has to give us: a deeper insight into our pain and a genuine compassion that enables wise action for justice.

That said, I don’t want to walk around like a fire-breathing dragon or endlessly stew in my resentment either. So I reached out to some trustworthy religious voices to see what spiritual traditions can teach us about effective responses to our rage — and how it can give us insight without overwhelming us.

Underneath your anger is a broken heart

Lama Rod Owens is a Buddhist teacher in Atlanta and the author of Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger. The first thing he tells me is that we have to acknowledge our anger. “A lot of us actually don’t know what anger feels like. We’re just reacting to it,” he says. And that rings true. I’m still learning to notice the physical signs of rage: My head gets hot; my stomach tight; my throat fills with the scream that I’m only just able to contain.

That physicality is central to Owens’s definition of anger: The mental and physical tension out of which aggression arises. And that aggressive response is what gets me into trouble — when I snap at my husband or give demon eyes at those who surely have headphones but are choosing not to use them. If I’m not careful, I won’t even notice how rageful I am until my simmering pot of fury suddenly comes to a boil. 

Noticing that tension can be tricky, Owens says, because “a lot of people get gaslit around their anger, particularly women and femme folks.” It can be radical to simply admit that anger is arising in you. Owens is very careful with language here. Instead of saying that we are angry, he encourages us to say that we feel angry. “I know it’s very nuanced,” he explains, “but when people start thinking about an experience rather than being something, it really opens up space.” 

And that space gives us what we need to take the next step. Which, surely, is to move past our anger?

No, he argues. The path of liberation is through anger — not to “get over it.” Owens learned this through personal experience, as well as through the wisdom teachings of his Buddhist lineage. As a Black, queer man living in America, he’s had plenty to be angry about (while also having to navigate the harmful stereotype that as a Black man he’s inherently angry). But, he writes in his book, “I wasn’t pissed off because of racism or homophobia or something else. I was actually deeply, deeply hurt.” Through disciplined meditation, Owens realized that his anger was a secondary emotion. Meaning, there was a primary experience that sat underneath the anger. And that primary experience was pain and sadness and a deeper sense of heartbrokenness. 

“It’s like you’re not just angry, experiencing anger about the world. You’re hurt by the world, you’re saddened by the world, you’re grieving the world,” he says. 

Learning to sit with that anger shifted things over time. As Owens practiced noticing and naming his rage instead of trying to push it away or acting out in aggression, he found a way to be with it instead. 

His Buddhist lineage taught him to think of anger simply as energy. And like any energy, he learned to experience it rather than to react to it: “In Buddhism, we would consider the essence [of anger] to be empty…it’s just energy that can be shaped or misunderstood by consciousness.” 

To be clear, he says, “It’s not like the anger disappeared,” but rather that Owens experienced enough space around the anger that allowed him to name the heartbreak that was underneath it. 

And once he could do that, he noticed a completely different feeling flooding in. 

Moving through anger to tender compassion

Nate DeGroot has seen the same connection. DeGroot is a rabbi based in Detroit and the director of the Shalom Center. In his Jewish tradition, anger isn’t just something only humans experience — God gets angry, too. Think of the flood sent to punish humankind that Noah avoids by building the ark, for example. But, DeGroot explains, God’s anger only lasts a moment.

In fact, in Jewish tradition, the Talmud records people questioning exactly how long God’s anger lasts — with some claiming that it remains only for a 15,888th of an hour (which comes to just under half a second), and others saying God’s wrath lasts as long as it takes to say the word “moment” in Hebrew, a word with two syllables. Either way, it only lasts a short while, because a deeper, more enduring compassion quickly emanates from God’s being.

As the parent of two small kids, DeGroot empathizes with both God’s anger — and the love that supersedes it. When his kids mess around, he says, “I’m frustrated!…why did they fling the blue toothpaste on the white shade in the bathroom and now it’s forever stained? I’ve got to bring the rug into the rug cleaner for the fifth time in two years because they peed on it in the middle of the night!” he says, laughing. But those temporary flares of frustration sit within a wider circle of parental care. “I really relate to… this notion of the moment of anger [being] situated within a broader, more expansive, everlasting love,” he tells me.

Once we’ve properly noticed our anger and named the heartbreak it masks, what will (hopefully!) follow is waves of compassion for ourselves and everyone else that is hurting. And it is from that place that you can actually take action.  

From compassion comes a community for justice

Najeeba Syeed is the executive director of Interfaith at Augsburg in Minneapolis and has a long history of doing conflict resolution work. She explains that in Islam, too, the Prophet Muhammad experiences anger. Early in his mission as he travels from one place to another, he’s stoned by angry villagers who reject him. “He was given a choice,” she tells Vox. “Should the divine force go and destroy this community, or should this community have reprieve for what they’ve done?” 

The Prophet Muhammad chooses forgiveness over revenge. But there’s both spiritual wisdom and strategy at play in that choice: Anger can separate us from the very people we need to be connected to when seeking justice, Syeed says. “It makes us incapable of seeing the experience of others,” she says. And it is precisely the experience of other people we need to be aware of when building coalitions that will be able to solve the problems that make us angry. Inequality and corruption and rising health care costs are not going to change if we remain atomized and mad. We have to work together.

“Okay, you’re angry,” Syeed affirms, “But who is the you? Who is in the collective? Who is impacted? If we don’t have a larger identity than our political affiliation — by that I mean the neighborliness, some sense of community that transcends that identitarian political affiliation alone — then we may actually destroy ourselves in the process.”

“If you [take action] by yourself, is it really going to change at the social level?” she asks. “You still have to be able to build allies, and you still have to be able to build connection.”

That’s what the Prophet Muhammad was doing in exhibiting restraint with the angry villagers. In leaving them unpunished, he was later able to build an alliance with them in his campaign to spread his message through the region. 

In the Muslim tradition, a judge is forbidden from making a ruling when angry because it is understood that justice cannot come from rage. Anger helps us cut through distractions and focus on the work that needs to be done — but that work for justice must come from a deeper place of love. 

So, how should we think of anger? Not as something to indulge — but nor should we try to avoid it. Anger is like an alarm bell, telling us something is wrong. When we notice it arising, we must inspect the heartbreak that lies underneath and allow for our innate compassion to emerge. And then guided by that love — and a dash of strategy — we can decide how to act. 

And act we should! Syeed shares a popular saying in the Islamic world: One must tie their own camel. It means that we humans have to intervene in the world; it isn’t just up to the divine to act for us. So: Have hard conversations guided by your morals! Vote in the midterms and in local elections! Call your electeds! Organize your neighbors and your workplace! But do it out of that deeper compassion that guides wise decision-making. 

Due to a series of unforced errors on the part of certain leaders in the federal government, gas prices have gone absolutely bonkers. Where about a year and a half ago I was paying around $2.90 a gallon in my neck of the woods, last night I paid $4.50 a gallon to fill up. It’s madness. If you see anything sub four dollars, it feels like you’re having a hallucination. Now imagine what it must have been like for folks at one Georgia intersection who saw gas at 97 cents a gallon.

According to reports from WJCL-22, a grudge match erupted on Marietta Street in Powder Springs between rival Amoco and Sunoco gas stations. Amoco management followed a strict policy of keeping its fuel five cents cheaper than the competition. Sunoco matched every price cut.

Drivers Went Wild After a Gas Station Price War Sent Prices Below $1

What followed was a petty race to the bottom that represents the true promise of American capitalism, the one that never quite came to fruition. People formed huge lines at both stations as prices went from $2.54 to $1.44 to $1.39 to eventually below a dollar, bottoming out at $0.97 per gallon. For context, Georgia state average gas price is somewhere at $3.77, while the national average, according to AAA at the time of writing, is $4.27 a gallon.

Word quickly spread, and people from all around made the trek to the rival stations. One truck driver interviewed said he normally drops $90 to fill his tank, but drove off having spent only $15.

The frenzy was so wild, both stations were so crammed with cars, that local cops had to step in and block access to the pumps to let the congestion clear. Once things died down a bit, motorists who lingered around the area came rushing back to grab gas at $1.14 a gallon. Both stations eventually ended their weird price-dropping standoff and eventually reverted to normal prices the next day.

The post A Gas Station Price War in Georgia Sent Prices Plummeting to Just 97 Cents a Gallon appeared first on VICE.

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We all need a place to ourselves where we can just let it all out. Usually, that means venting deep-seated emotional baggage, but let’s be honest: some of us just need a designated safe zone to unleash our horrid, rancid farts.

A woman who owns a hotel in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight, England, is providing just such a sanctuary, where those of us who are prone to wild fits of gastrointestinal distress can freely express ourselves. According to the Isle of Wight County Press, the Fig Tree Hotel hosted a sanctuary called “The Art of Letting Go,” tailored specifically for those cursed with the winds. From October 1 to the 5^th, the retreat invited guests to stop forcing silence upon their gastrointestinal systems and to instead release the screams within.

The event was co-facilitated by yoga therapist and energy psychologist Marion Bevington, an IBS sufferer who literally wrote the book on flatulence, a book called Afraid to Fart – And the art of following through, featuring what appears to be an AI cover of a sheep and wool clothing among angry wolves who, given the book’s subject matter, are likely more angry at the sheep for farting than they are for its devious infiltration of the pack.

People Actually Paid to Attend a Wellness Retreat Where Farting Was Encouraged

When attracting such flatulent customers, one would wonder if exhibiting that flatulence would get one booted off the premises. Bevington assured attendees that nobody would be kicked out, blacklisted, or face any consequences for stinking up the joint.

Ultimately, the core philosophy is to get over the shame of flatulence and know how to gracefully excuse yourself from a social situation when you’re about to drop a big one. A valuable lesson we should all be so privileged to learn.

Yes, the event is long over by now, but maybe the viral spread of this story will encourage Bevington and the gang to make the Fart Retreat a regular thing and possibly become the fart hotspot of the world.

The post This Hotel Hosted a Five-Day Retreat Dedicated Entirely to Farting appeared first on VICE.

Earth’s core is leaking, and it has been for a long time.

Earth’s core, frankly, sounds insane. It’s a molten ball covered in a lava ocean that spews lethal gases and occasionally ejects some of itself through volcanoes. It used to be so wild that the planet was uninhabitable, but it eventually settled down enough for humans to exist on it.

According to a study in Science Advances by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China, that core is constantly oozing chemical leftovers from the birth of our Solar System. For years, scientists have debated whether these weird deep-Earth ingredients get trapped in the mantle when the planet first cooled, or whether Earth’s core is slowly leaking material into the outer layers.

The Center of Earth Is Leaking Ancient Material, and Scientists Are Trying to Understand Why

To figure it out, scientists used computer simulations to model how hydrogen moves. Like sodas or cigarettes, hydrogen comes in a “light” version and a “heavy” version. The heavy one is called deuterium. If early Earth froze, the heavy and light versions would be mixed pretty evenly everywhere. But when scientists look at lava from volcanic hotspots in Iceland and Baffin Island, they find way more of the superlight version of hydrogen.

This means that the original cooling process couldn’t have caused this current setup. Instead, light hydrogen trapped in the planet’s metal core billions of years ago, when the Sun was forming, is actively leaking into the mantle like air from a punctured tire.

This light hydrogen, along with ancient helium and tungsten, rides hot lava streams to the planet’s surface, meaning that for the past several billion years ancient gases trapped in Earth’s core have been slowly burping their way out.

The post Scientists Just Discovered That Earth’s Core Is Leaking, and It Has Been for Billions of Years appeared first on VICE.

One of the last decade’s most consequential changes to how the Supreme Court operates is the growth of the so-called shadow docket — a process that allows the justices to decide cases unusually quickly, and often without full briefing or oral argument.

Historically, the Court would typically allow contentious legal issues to percolate in the lower courts for months or even years before the justices agreed to decide one of those issues. Then they’d spend months reading briefs, hearing arguments, and debating the case amongst themselves before they finally issued an opinion. This slow process existed because the Supreme Court is the final word on many legal questions — the Court can even override Congress if it claims a law is unconstitutional — and so it should be cautious before it hands down a decision that cannot easily be displaced.

A new case, which recently arrived on the Court’s shadow docket, embodies all the reasons why America’s highest Court should act carefully and slowly. K.M.K. v. Washington Interscholastic Activities Association involves a highly contentious issue — the plaintiffs in the case effectively want the Supreme Court to bar transgender women from women’s sports teams at high schools and universities, even in states that support trans inclusion in sports.

It also involves an appalling sexual assault allegation. One of the plaintiffs in the case is a high school women’s team wrestler who is identified only by her initials because she is a minor. She claims that one of her wrestling opponents, who is transgender, “forcefully” penetrated the plaintiff’s vagina with her fingers during a match.

As a memo from the local prosecutor’s office points out, if these allegations are true then K.M.K. is the victim of a very serious crime — rape in the third degree. The prosecutor’s office, however, decided not to prosecute because it concluded that it could not prove that a sex crime was committed beyond a reasonable doubt. Among other things, prosecutors spoke to the referee who officiated the match, and he said that “nothing stood out to him during the match” and that “after watching the video of the match, he could not say that the suspect’s hand placement was ‘anything out of the ordinary.’”

The school district, meanwhile, says that it has reviewed video of the match, interviewed both competitors, and that its investigation into the allegation is “still ongoing.”

K.M.K., in other words, is exactly the sort of case that the justices should step away from, sending it back down to the lower courts to gather more information and to fully think through the difficult legal issues presented by the case. Setting aside the horrifying allegations against her one-time opponent, K.M.K.’s lawyers — most of whom work for a Christian right law firm, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — make novel legal arguments that ask the Court to make broad pronouncements that go far beyond its previous precedents. 

One of their arguments, if taken seriously by the justices, could potentially make it impossible for any school athletes, whether cis or trans, to participate in competitive sports of any kind.

There is a very real risk, in other words, that the Supreme Court will, if it moves too quickly in this case, harm millions of school athletes throughout the country. The factual question of whether a particular wrestler committed a crime is separate from the legal question of whether federal law strips states of their authority over trans participation in women’s sports. And this legal question deserves more deliberation than the Court can give it if it decides this case on the shadow docket.

So what are the actual legal issues in K.M.K.?

In West Virginia v. B.P.J. (2026), the Supreme Court warned that judges should not be given the power to decide which athletes may compete on a women’s sports team. “The legislatures and the schools are better equipped — and under the Constitution, are the more appropriate entities,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for his Court, “to assess the competing medical and scientific considerations and draw appropriate lines.”

B.P.J., of course, was a loss for transgender rights. The Court rejected a constitutional challenge to state laws that forbid trans women from playing on school sports teams within that state. But the legal question in B.P.J. was whether laws barring trans women from women’s sports are allowed — a question that the Court’s Republican majority answered in the affirmative. A victory for the plaintiffs in K.M.K., by contrast, would likely establish that no state may permit trans women to compete on women’s sports teams, regardless of what the people of that state want.

This Court is often skeptical of claims by trans rights advocates, and it almost always resolves disputes between cultural liberals and religious conservatives in favor of the religious right. That said, this Court has thus far respected states’ rights on another contentious issue that is a high priority for the religious right: abortion. Although the Court’s Republican majority overruled Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, it has rejected some attempts to restrict abortion in blue states — including by repeatedly ruling against litigants who seek to ban the abortion medication mifepristone.

So it is, at least, possible that this Court will follow a similar path in K.M.K. and conclude that the question of which team trans women should play on should be answered by the states and not the Supreme Court.

Broadly speaking, ADF raises two legal arguments against Washington state’s policy allowing trans women to play on women’s sports teams. It claims that Title IX, a federal law that bars “sex” discrimination by most schools, implicitly requires those schools to have sports teams that only cisgender women may play on. It also claims that the Court’s recent decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta (2026), which requires public schools to out trans students to their parents even if the students wish to keep their gender identity secret, also requires those schools to exclude trans women from women’s sports.

There’s no reason for the Supreme Court to decide either of these questions now, however. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in Lux v. Rodrigues (2010), when a party that lost in the lower courts seeks an injunction from a Supreme Court justice before their case is fully litigated in those lower courts, they must demonstrate that “the legal rights at issue are ‘indisputably clear.’” This rule, like many old rules disfavoring shadow docket decisions, exists to prevent the justices from rushing into a decision that may later prove unwise.

There is no plausible argument that Title IX “indisputably” bars trans women from women’s sports. That’s because, just a few months ago in B.P.J., the Court held that it was not deciding the question of “whether, under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, schools may allow biological males who identify as female to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams.” So that’s a recent Supreme Court precedent holding that the answer to this legal question remains open.

Mirabelli, meanwhile, is an unusually thinly reasoned decision. The Court’s Republican majority held that schools must out trans students because of a judicially created doctrine saying that parents have “primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children.’” But the Court’s analysis of this issue was just a single paragraph long, it relied on the most malleable doctrine in all of US constitutional law, and it had nothing to say about sports. 

Moreover, as the school district points out in its brief, the Court has never held that a parent’s right to direct the upbringing of their child includes a right to dictate which rules will be used by school sports teams. If such a right existed, a parent might insist that a school bar players of a particular race. Or they might demand that their child be allowed to play football without being tackled.

Competitive team sports simply cannot exist if one player’s mother is allowed to demand changes to the rules that neither the league nor the other players support.

In any event, at this stage in the litigation it should be enough for the Court to say that the unique right claimed by K.M.K.’s mother — the right to dictate which rules a multischool competitive sports league will use — is not “indisputably clear” under current law. 

What should happen when the Court eventually decides whether blue states may allow trans women to play on women’s teams?

It is, to borrow from Lux, indisputably clear that the Court should not give the K.M.K. plaintiffs the sweeping policy change that they seek in a shadow docket ruling. But the justices cannot avoid, forever, the question of whether federal law forbids trans women from playing on women’s teams. So how should they resolve this question when it is more properly presented to them?

Let’s dispose of the plaintiffs’ Mirabelli argument first. While the Court has held that parents have some right to direct the education of their children, prior to Mirabelli, this right was construed narrowly. One older case held that states may not forbid parents from sending their children to private schools. Another held that the government may not bar teachers at these schools from teaching the German language.

Prior to the Court’s barely explained decision in Mirabelli, however, the Court had never held that parents may dictate how public schools operate, and the school district’s brief in K.M.K. cites several court decisions warning against giving parents too much authority over public schools. (The Court did hold, in Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), that parents who object to a school’s curriculum on religious grounds may opt their children out of certain lessons. But the K.M.K. plaintiffs do not raise a religious objection.) As the Supreme Court said in Prince v. Massachusetts (1944), states may “restrict the parent’s control by requiring school attendance, regulating or prohibiting the child’s labor and in many other ways.” 

It’s clear from Mirabelli that the Court’s Republicans do not share this caution about judicial control over public schools. But, because Mirabelli was so thinly reasoned, it’s also impossible for outside observers to determine why these justices want an unprecedented amount of control over public schooling, or whether they have good reasons for asserting this new power.

I will simply reiterate the school district’s objection that, once the Supreme Court opens the door to parents dictating which rules will be used in school sporting competitions, the lawsuits will not end with parents seeking to kick trans women out of women’s sports. The next parent may object to their child wrestling Black people. Or they may demand that their child be given protective gear that gives them a competitive advantage. Some parents may also demand rules changes that conflict with changes demanded by other parents. And there is no principled way to distinguish these requests from a request to exclude trans women.

There are myriad problems, meanwhile, with the K.M.K. plaintiffs’ Title IX argument. That statute provides that schools that receive “Federal financial assistance” may not exclude individuals from “any education program” on “the basis of sex.” This statute has long been read to require equal treatment of men’s and women’s sports by schools that receive federal funds.

But, as the school district argues in its brief, Washington schools do not discriminate on the basis of “sex” — which the Court has defined to mean sex assigned at birth in this context. Instead, they classify athletes on the basis of gender identity. There is one team for all people who identify as male, whether trans or cis, and another team for all people who identify as female. Social conservatives may object to this arrangement, but it does not classify students based on their sex assigned at birth at all.

The K.M.K. plaintiffs’ argument is also undermined by federal regulations implementing Title IX. Those regulations provide that schools generally should not separate women and men in sports, but that they “may operate or sponsor separate teams for members of each sex where selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill or the activity involved is a contact sport.” It is quite a stretch to read regulations saying that schools “may” have sex-segregated teams to say that schools must ensure that their teams are strictly sex segregated.

Finally, recall that Title IX only applies to schools that accept federal funding — schools have the option of rejecting Title IX’s requirements if they also forego federal grants. This matters because, as the Court recently held in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections (2026), “Congress must clearly and unambiguously alert a grant recipient to any condition on federal funds.”

Thus, if there is any ambiguity about whether Title IX requires schools to exclude trans women from women’s sports, that ambiguity must be resolved against imposing any requirements on public schools. Title IX may only be read to ban trans women from women’s sports if it “clearly and unambiguously” does so.

Again, there’s no reason for the justices to resolve either of these questions because, at this early stage in the litigation, the Supreme Court should simply decline to decide K.M.K. because the plaintiffs’ legal rights are not “indisputably clear.” But this Court is often impatient, especially in cases involving culture war issues. Mirabelli was also a shadow docket case, but that didn’t stop the Court’s Republicans from inventing a new legal rule compelling teachers to out their trans students.

There’s a serious risk, in other words, that this Court will rush to decide K.M.K. before it fully considers the legal arguments on either side, or even learns whether the genuinely shocking allegations raised by the plaintiffs have merit.