BY: KATY WILLIS Picture a living doll. Do you see girls piling on makeup, dying their hair blonde, and trying to look like Barbie? The serial killer-possessed Chucky? The Lolita doll fetish that’s widespread among YouTube makeup tutorial instructors? Living…
Taking the Car out of the American Dream: Why Carless Living is Liberating
By: Jessica Burde I walked about two miles yesterday: half a mile to my counsellor’s office, half a mile back; a half-mile to and from the grocery store; and another half-mile between home and work. There are lots of places…
A Japanese Scientist Started A Revolution Of Robots That Look Freakishly Human
BY: KATY WILLIS On first glance, Otonaroid and Kodomoroid look like humans. As they read the news, they sound like humans. Touch their silicone skin and they even feel human. But, of course, they’re not humans. Otonaroid and Kodomoroid are…
“The Mountain That Eats Man”: The Child Miners of Bolivia
BY: JONAS WRESCH The sun begins to rise and a silver light begins to illuminate the terracotta rooftops of the city of Potosi, Bolivia. It is 5 a.m. Thousands of men, women and children make their way up narrow roads…
No Place Like Om: A Skeptic’s Guide to Yoga
BY: AYA TSINTZIRAS Everyone around me looks completely Zen as they lie on their backs and settle into the final pose of the yoga class: Savasana, or resting pose. It’s a Saturday morning in April, and what is supposed to…
Public Schools Are Failing Our Children—Through the Eyes of a Homeschooler.
BY: JESSICA BURDE According to a study by the U.S. Department of Education and National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the U.S. can’t read and 21% of American adults read below a 5th grade level. The reality is…
Telekinesis Is Here And Now. The Paralyzed Can Walk Again.
BY: KATY WILLIS Telekinesis was once a term reserved for the realm of science fiction. Today, it’s possible, and it’s becoming widely available. While there are some limitations—you can’t simply float a house, or even a pencil, with the power…
The Life of a Street Magician – Performers of Dundas Square
BY: LILITH Matthew Stewart hasn’t been around as long as some of the other performers—he only started performing in Dundas Square in April. His act also isn’t as flashy or eye-catching at first, but the 20-year-old magician, who commutes in…
Country Fictions: Maybe There Was Once A Countryside
BY: JUAN ABALLE In the rural corners of the Iberian Peninsula, Juan Aballe shows a vision of the serene country road that exists within everyone’s imagination. Forever bathed in morning sunlight, conscious breath is the only pulse by which time…
Furry Fandom Is More Than Furry Fetish
BY: KATY WILLIS The world of furry fandom is shrouded in mystery. It’s dismissed, ridiculed, and, when it does get attention, portrayed as a community of dysfunctional sex addicts: people dressed as animals having weird sex in odd places. But…
Could This Raw Food Diet Really Fight Cancer?
BY: KATY WILLIS If someone told you that you could drastically cut your chances of getting cancer just by changing what you eat, would you do it? It probably depends what the diet looks like. How’s this: no processed foods,…
There are massive cities in China where no one lives
BY: Ted Barnaby If you were to walk into a full-scale city with skyscrapers, condos, malls and shops—and there wasn’t a single person to be seen for miles, your first question would probably be: where the hell did everyone go?…
Communes Didn’t Die in the ’60s. They’re A Modern Substitute to Self-Centred City Life
BY: KATY WILLIS When people think of the British, they think of tradition, the “stiff upper lip,” and a nation that follows convention at all costs. That, of course, isn’t universally true. If you dig around, you can easily find…
Indonesia’s Modernization of The Mentawai Means Burning Down Villages To Make Room For Loggers
BY: PAOLO MESSINA Among the Indonesian rainforests of Siberut, off the coast of Sumatra live a people who maintain their age-old ways. In the comparative isolation of the Mentawai Islands they live a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle that is characterized by…
How the Aboriginal Drunk Beggar I Met Barhopping Changed Me
BY: LILITH I’d been barhopping that night in downtown Toronto with three other people, and we were trekking to the bus stop around 2 a.m. I’m not sure why, but whenever I’ve been drinking, I feel the need to be…
Hippies, Punks, Nomads, Nudists – Rainbow Gatherings are a Festival of Freedom (PHOTOS)
PHOTOS BY: BENOIT PAILLE In the isolation of the woods gather tribes of the miscellaneous and open-minded. From gays, punks, Christians, sectarians, nudists and Krishna followers, to Nomads and conspiracy theorists, like a vivid palate of paint; they meet at…
Can we justify space exploration when the Earth is in distress?
BY: ATLAS Bill Nye keeps a Canadian fiver in his wallet. Yes, that Bill Nye. The science guy. The one you—and anyone else who’s spent any time inside a North American classroom since the early ’90s—watched in science class. These…
Internet service providers want you to pay per page: Net Neutrality
BY: SARAH HOWELL On September 10, the speed of the Internet may have made you want to put your fist through the screen. The lag was more than just a test of users’ patience, an interruption in your “Orange Is…
The pioneers of cyclist journalism: An interview with Boneshaker Magazine
BY: DEXTER BROWN Boneshaker began from a desire to tell human-centric stories about bicycles and how they can change people’s lives. Accordingly, James Lucas and John Coe, the founders of the Bristol, U.K.-based magazine, took 300 copies of its first issue to London—as…
From behind bars to behind the needle: Portraits of Mexican criminals turned tattoo artists.
BY: JONATHAN MAY Riddled with bullet holes, cocaine hangovers, and wrinkle inducing prison sentences, a past life is not always a destiny foretold. Out of the furnace and onto the black tarmac ascended eight Mexican tattoo artists who united together…