Cat people of the world, meet your new favorite rapper.

Moshow -- whose real name is Dwayne Molock -- is a Portland, Oregon-based artist who raps mostly about felines.

Our purrrrsonal favorite of his songs is “Cat World,” (above) which includes the lyrics, “I’m chilling in a cat world, I got cats in my house man, cats on the floor.” (We can relate.)

In an interview published Wednesday by Portland alt weekly Willamette Week, Moshow explained that he wasn’t always creating music about his kitty friends. Instead, he started out rapping about more traditional topics.

"I grew up in the projects, so I was rapping gangster stuff and pretending a life that I didn't really live,” he told the paper. But he stopped rapping because he “just didn’t feel comfortable rapping about things I didn’t do."

Moshow says he never interacted with cats much before college, when he really clicked with a friend’s sphynx -- a nearly hairless cat breed. These days, the friend is his girlfriend, and he has four sphinxes.

He told Oregon Live last year that he likes sphynx cats in particular, since they remind him of himself. (He’s bald.) But he’s a fan of all felines.

“They’re agile and they’re funny,” he told the site. “They do quirky things all the time.”

Unsurprisingly, Moshow doesn’t have any hangups about the “cat lady” stereotype. In fact, he regularly celebrates #BeautifulCatLadyWednesdays on his Instagram account, sharing photos of women and their beloved pets. But he’s not discriminatory -- he also hosts #YesMenLoveCatsMonday.

But the real draw to Moshow is his music, so we’re going to conclude with Moshow’s newest video -- and some great advice -- “Love Your Cats.”

Visit Moshow's YouTube channel here. 

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For every diehard adult coloring book lover, there is a challenge: do I color inside the lines, thus respecting tradition and the wisdom of those who came before me? Or, do I dare color outside the pesky black-and-white prisons, letting my wild creativity fly free like a rare bird?

Thanks to the zen trend of "blind contouring," you may not need choose. For the uninitiated, to blind contour is to draw without looking at your paper, and actively engage with your subject matter without worrying about what will come out of it. The technique is often used in art school to make budding artists break with old habits and self-conscious doubt, allowing their artwork to grow freely and organically. 

"The goal of blind drawing," Sam Anderson explained in New York Times Magazine, "is to really see the thing you’re looking at, to almost spiritually merge with it, rather than retreat into your mental image of it. Our brains are designed to simplify -- to reduce the tumult of the world into order. Blind drawing trains us to stare at the chaos, to honor it. It is an act of meditation, as much as it is an artistic practice -- a gateway to pure being. It forces us to study the world as it actually is."

Of course, you don't have to be in art school to play around with blind contouring. For example, artist Ian Sklarsky is bringing the mindful methodology to the masses with his coloring book Yotel. Its black-and-white skeleton was created without eyes ever meeting paper. 

Sklarsky's motivations are similar: to communicate that art is not about straight lines or exact replications, but presence, creativity and exploration. "My art simply shows that there aren’t any wrongs," the artist said in a statement. "It’s the enjoyment of figuring out how to get from point A to point B with one line without looking and creating what you see." As a colorer, you will be relieved of the burden of coloring precisely within perfectly straight lines, and it might prompt you to close your own eyes and see where your colors lead you. 

Sklarsky's coloring book was made in collaboration with Yotel, a New York hotel, and iconic NYC imagery runs throughout the pages in drippy, skittish ink. Taxi cabs, subway riders, skyscrapers and tourists are among the standard tropes, all in jagged black-and-white lines just waiting for your coloring touch. 

Blind contouring adds an additional layer of mindfulness to the already meditative practice of adult coloring, a ritual which continues to gain momentum. "There is a long history of people coloring for mental health reasons," clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis said in an earlier interview. "Carl Jung used to try to get his patients to color in mandalas at the turn of the last century, as a way of getting people to focus and to allow the subconscious to let go. Now we know it has a lot of other stress-busting qualities as well." 

Artists and human balls of stress, I'm talking to you. Get out your colors, close your eyes and see what happens when you create from a place of pure presence. 

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A woman stands proudly, chin-up, facing the camera head-on. She wears a bursting, sunny crown, vibrant and a little daunting. It looks like the baldly admiring depictions of Jesus painted during the Renaissance era; “this is a person you should admire,” the portrait seems to say.

But the subject in the portrait is not Jesus, or Sebastian, or David, or any of the other Saints so often given face-time in famous historical paintings. She’s a woman who identifies as queer, as evidenced by the self-reflective scrawl that frames her image. “Strength. Vulnerability. Community. Chola politics. Crimson lips, hoops and jet back liner.... as femme armor,” she writes.

It’s part of a series by artist Gabriel García Román called “Queer Icons,” where he uses the reverent style of Renaissance painters, but applies it to underrepresented groups -- namely artists and activists who identify as queer.

Much of his work is concerned with the descriptors we attach to ourselves -- for Román, these include “queer,” “Mexican,” “American,” “immigrant,” “secular,” and “Catholic.” Even when these identity markers aren’t included verbally in his work, each of Román’s portraits reflects the constructed and internalized identities of its subjects, and treats these identities with the sort of reverence typically reserved for saints.

"The subjects in 'Queer Icons' are people of color, who maintain separate, individual identities within the queer community," García Román writes in a statement on his website. "These explorations of the edges of genders take place in the nuances of the contemporary urban world. A simple eye shape, an angle of a mouth, the tilt of the head -- indicate a queering of conventional forms and roles ... Much like traditional religious paintings conferred a sense of safety, calm and meditation into a home, the works in this series aspire to a similar sense of refuge, drawn from the inner grace of the subjects out onto a world that might not always be safe."

Check out images from Román's "Queer Icons" and "For My Father" series, on view at Gallery Aferro from March 30-May 21, below.

Also on HuffPost:

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Along with more recognizable genres such as soul, R&B and psychedelia, SassyBlack describes her sound as hologram funk. "It's something that is so present but totally fantasy at the same time," she explained in an interview with The Huffington Post. "It’s super space age, funk in the future."

SassyBlack, born Catherine "Cat" Harris­-White​, is one half of the queer AfroFuturist hip hop dream duo known as THEESatisfaction. Harris-White is the singer, whose jazzy sound mixes the warm comfort of a silky robe with the futuristic mystery of an alien whisper. Stasia "Stas" Irons raps and lays the beats. The two used to date but are now friends and artistic collaborators. 

With her newest project, "No More Lame Dates," Harris-White embarks on her first full-length solo album. It's been a long time coming, given the fact that she's been making music since she can remember. As a kid growing up in Hawaii, Harris­-White​ was homeschooled, with a fluid and open curriculum that included museum visits and family dance parties. "I was able to be super free and creative," she said. "I was probably walking around singing all the time." 

It wasn't until the age of ten, however, when her family relocated to Seattle, that Harris-White was compelled to actually put words to paper. "Seattle was such a culture shock for me," she explained. "I didn’t know it even existed for real. I thought it was just the funny place in 'Sleepless in Seattle.' The weather was different, the diversity factor was way different."

Harris-White also switched from home schooling to public schooling, a transition she wasn't particularly fond of. The idea of waking up early to spend all day, exhausted and nervous and frazzled, around teachers who themselves seemed constantly flustered, was baffling. "The whole structure of it didn’t make sense to me."

"I was very weird," Harris-White continued. She dabbled in various extracurricular activities without feeling particularly at home in any single one -- sports, choir, acting, activism. She began to get involved in trainings about institutional racism and speaking out against it. 

One of her greatest passions growing up, something her family had instilled in her since a young age, was science fiction. From "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" to the work of Octavia Butler, Harris-White found herself drawn to stories that revolved around embracing the other. 

"I felt alienated in so many ways growing up," she said. "To watch 'Stark Trek' and see a black woman on the show each week -- that was a place I could identify with. There was an understanding that there are so many beings and spirits and types of energies in the universe."

Another major fascination: Michael Jackson. "Ridiculously obsessed," in Harris-White's words. She recalls sitting glued to the screen as VH1 and MTV played all-day marathons of Jackson's videos, watching "Thriller" over and over again despite being scared out of her wits. Jackson gets a shoutout in SassyBlack's first single off the upcoming album, "New Boo," when she refers to a "pretty young thing." As Harris-White and Irons explained in an earlier interview with Bitch Magazine: "We're openly queer and we like women and we want women to know that we like them."

Harris-White started writing songs and poems when she was ten, but it wasn't until much later that she gathered the courage to show her music to other people. "I was so nervous about my singing voice," she said. "I went to school for music but I was terrified just thinking about people thinking about my voice." Eventually Irons saw Harris-White perform at an open mic and the two began to experiment together on GarageBand. They debuted their joint sound at Harris-White's senior recital in college. In the past eight years they've released 11 projects together.

On the cover of their most recent album, "EarthEE," the two sit naked on a golden geometric throne set agains a purple galaxy twinkling with stars. White netting partially covers their faces and bodies, reminiscent of tribal body paint or Bjork's crystalline masks. The project is a breakup album, but to an unwitting listener it sounds more like a trippy tour through the cosmos, looking down at the planet like it's a singular detail of an expansive tapestry. 

Numerology, horoscopes, spirituality -- all play a role in Harris-White's otherworldly worldview, and her music."I believe in the universe. I believe in God on Earth," Harris-White said. "We’re a part of the universe and we’re our own universes as humans and as beings in bodies. We have nervous systems that look like galaxies. We emulate each other and look like each other. We’re all energies in sync with one another, and also have energies within ourselves." 

SassyBlack sounds like she was birthed from the same futuristic womb as THEESatisfaction, but perhaps raised on a sister planet. "Collaborating with anyone, you have a different energy going in," Harris-White said. "We both have our own vibes, our own plans, our own process. That’s going to naturally come out in whatever we create together. For me, working by myself has allowed me access to more of my thoughts. The only person I have to compromise with is myself. There is way more space for me to exist. I’m in my own little spaceship."

Harris-White thinks of her alter-ego Sassy Black as both a character and an extension of herself, and ultimately something in between. "Me in a Blacksploitation movie," she described. She's rambunctious, feisty, sensitive, loving, jittery and bossy -- all of which plays out in the music, from the fluid lyrics to the coincidentally skittish drum kit. "SassyBlack is me going into my adult self; it’s an evolution of me. Maybe in years past I’ve only seen little bits of her." 

SassyBlack's past projects include "Personal Sunlight," a six-song album celebrating the artist's actualizing of her full potential, and "Blackest Winter," an awesome rebuttal to the many years spent dreaming of a white Christmas. "May your holiday and winter be black," the album website reads. 

The new album is called "No More Lame Dates," a plea the best of us can wholeheartedly understand and relate to. The idea was inspired by Harris-White's recent adventures in online dating, and the all too familiar feeling that, despite pushing 30, you're suddenly as awkward as a preteen. "It was like 'Oh god, I’m 13 again,'" Harris-White lamented. "I felt like I was in a Yahoo chatroom."

Obviously, dating has been a dominant theme in pop culture storytelling long before Tinder came into the picture. But even growing up on sitcoms like "Saved by the Bell" and "Martin" and comics like Archie, Harris-White felt like the popular depictions of dating didn't quite hit home. In her own life, dating didn't involve a string of meet-cutes, hilarious misunderstandings and blowup heartbreaks. It's more, in Harris-White's words, "awkward and all over the place."

In music, the conversations about dating are also pretty one-dimensional. "It's all 'Oh girl, you're gonna get it tonight,'" Harris-White joked. "It’s very extreme -- either I love you, I hate you, or we're going to have sex. What about the middle ground? I felt like releasing that. What if you have a weird conversation and you feel terrible afterwards but you keep dating them?"

With "No More Lame Dates," Harris-White explores the range of emotions you experience while dating. It's not based on any one person, but various memories remixed into digestible clusters. And, in true hologram funk fashion, the album includes some memories that exist in the realm of pure fantasy, like, for example going to Comic-Con. 

"Tonight we’re going to the Comic-Con / And we’re dressing like Klingons / Participate in my sci-fi fantasy / I bet you didn’t think you were chillin’ with a sexy Trekky" 

Other memorable songs include "Mysterious Calls," a modern day "Bugaboo," in which SassyBlack begs a creepy caller to take a hint before she flips out. And there's the lead single "New Boo," in which Harris-White schools a potential new beau on the fact that although she gives off the vibes of a "PYT" (pretty young thing), she's grown and sexy and, ostensibly, not looking to play games.

"Sensing the hesitation in your voice / I'm here for pleasure / remember it's your choice / Waiting on your consent / People say I'm intense / I guess it makes sense / I'm a fierce lioness / So why pretend?" 

You could call it unusual to have an R&B jam about a budding love affair between two women. But what's more radical is SassyBlack's ability to navigate the eternally fluid ambivalence of dating with confidence and swagger, dancing between the mixed messages and disappointing encounters. With "New Boo" SassyBlack harnesses the all too real struggle of trying to read a potential hookup's vibe, without ever once doubting herself or her magical lioness powers. It's a song about budding love that emphasizes the importance of consent, andcelebrates SassyBlack's independent badassery, regardless of what goes down with this sexy stranger. It sounds almost too good -- at once too cool and progressive and positive and raw.

But alas, it's not just a hologram. It's real.

Listen to "New Boo" here and click here for SassyBlack's upcoming album "No More Lame Dates," available May 17. You can pre-order the digital album by following the link.

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There are places in the world many of us will never have a chance to visit. Photographs, often, present an alternative mode of traveling, showing visions of people, places and things around the globe. While a camera can capture life exactly as it is seen, other modes of art-making excel at depicting life how it is felt. 

For example, for West Bengali artist Nakul Mondal, pen and ink are best suited to capture daily life in the small village of Gangpur. For Mondal, the town is often silent save for the sounds of trains moving throughout the village, and the smooth flow of ink echoed that momentum. "I want to give my work a tempo and a meaning, just like train tracks which are straight but have their own rhythm," the artist explained in an interview with The Huffington Post. 

Mondal, who primarily works in watercolor, completed his MFA in painting from Kala Bhavana in India. But for his most recent series, titled "Gangpur," the artist opted for black and white to depict a radically simple way of life, and all the joys and paints that accompany it. I reached out to the artist to learn more about the series. His answers are translated from Bengali by Nilanjana Kar.

How would you describe the village of Gangpur to someone who has never been there before?

Before talking about Gangpur to one who has not visited the place, I should start with an introduction. I am Indian, from the state of West Bengal, capital Kolkata. Gangpur is a small village near to Burdwan, which is located between Kolkata (by the river Ganges) and Delhi. The Burdwan rail junction is seven kilometers from this village, and many people travel via this station. We have a station bazar surrounding this area. I live beside this station bazar. Around 25 years ago this area was farmland. Today it is very civilized. I am developing my art around this place. I am inspired by the nature and people of this place.

What constitutes a typical day there for you?

People living in this village do things like farming, day labor, driving and government office work. The people around the station are mostly hawkers. All day there are noise from the trains and people moving around. People are just running around from one place to another. After sunset, almost everyone in the area gathers around tea stalls to play poker and gossip. Some people are matching numbers to find out if they won the lottery.

Around 9 p.m. the streets are silent but trains from Burdwan to Howrah (a station in Kolkata) and Howrah to Burdwan keep moving on their own pace. We can hear announcements about the trains from the station master’s cabin like "Burdwan Local is coming on platform number 2" or "Howrah Local is coming on Platform number 3." My days begin with these announcements, and my whole day goes by, getting inspiration from this practical life, observation and imaginations, which are reflected in my work.

What imprint has political and natural unrest left on the village?

In today’s world, people are worn out by politics and day-to-day life. Sometimes farmers do not get paid enough for their work or they suffer from climate conditions. Due to political influence, some people are becoming rich while others are committing suicide. There is lot of fighting because of political unrest. People have lost hope and are clueless of what to do. They are trying to survive. This is not just in Gangpur; there is a social instability around all the villages in west Bengal. This is the scenario of all workers and laborers and unemployed youth.

Why pen and ink for this series? How does the medium interact with the subject matter?

The main reason to use pen and ink was to make the work easier and lighter for me. I started to use them as a medium because it’s convenient and I wanted this to be a work of routine, that I could add every small detail of my observations, something like writing a diary. 

This medium is also related to the circumstances of the subject matter. In this series you can see plenty of human figures and nature. I tried to capture innocence and basic expressions of human emotion. I have observed nature with different perspectives, and tried to extract the simplicity out of them. I wanted to capture the unseen part from the rhythm of climatic conditions and the nature of man into my work.

What was a major challenge in creating this series?

The main challenge of this work is the simplicity. To portray with lines, the beauty of nature and the poetic beauty of the human being, and to do it artistically. Maintaining the rhythm from start to finish was a challenge.

Is there an art world in Gangpur or an appreciation of art? How do you think the people of the village will respond to the images?

You can say that there is no art world in Gangpur, and no practice of art. For that reason it is a challenging task for me. 

While I made this particular series, I ran around Gangpur station, Burdwan, crowded market places and so on. During this period, people came to know about me and my artwork was recognized, and it became quite joyful for many. This led me to make more portraits. While this joy is nice, I am of course trying to capture sorrow and the pain of these people. I have tried to create something truthful with these simple works, and it was nice for me that they became dear in the hearts of the people in and around Gangpur.

What do you hope to communicate through the series?

People are main subject of this series -- their emotions, their feelings, their silence, their helplessness and their busy lives. The series is a snapshot of my place at this time: the river bank, the empty boat on the shore, the kids playing in the village, people resting, tired from walking.

Sometimes I did paint people far away from my village -- today’s life in India, the infighting, political instability, natural calamities. I tried to capture mostly the social life of Gangpur but also to tell a story which is connected to, and greater than Gangpur.

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Artist Claudia Bicen spent two years meeting with, interviewing and drawing individuals approaching the ends of their lives. In order to answer an oft-pondered question -- "How should I live?" -- she felt strongly that the dying would have the answer. So she contacted hospices across the Bay Area in California, eventually selecting nine men and women who would become the subjects of her heart-wrenching series, "Thoughts in Passing." 

"In making this work I came to observe a profound paradox: in talking with me about dying, these people taught me how to live more meaningfully and more intensely," she writes in a statement on her website. "I found that, for most people, what mattered was how they had participated in the world and what they had created -- whether that was through connection with their children, community, work or nature. Though I spoke with people from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, nobody wished they had made more money, worked harder or bought more things."

The works in "Thoughts in Passing," nine life-size graphite pencil portraits, not only illuminate the faces of people like Daniel, Ena, Osamu and Jenny, but their words too. Scrawled within the hyperrealist images are the narratives told to Bicen, the slight text hidden in the folds of a t-shirt or the rolls of a sleeve. Bicen has collected their recorded conversations on Vimeo, where you can hear the reflections, regrets and lessons in the subjects' own voices. 

We reached out to Bicen to hear more about her provocative series:

You write online that you've always been "transfixed by the question of how we should live"? How so?

From 14 years old, I started to write to my future self each New Year’s Eve and open the letters a year later. I wanted to understand my change through time, but more broadly to create a project that documented one person throughout a lifetime. Sixteen years later I am still grappling with some of the same personal struggles as I always did, but now I can just see their persistence more clearly. 

As I grew up, I sought answers to the question of how we should live from many people and traditions across the world and through history. Formally, I have degrees in psychology, philosophy and anthropology but informally I have spent much time studying the world’s spiritual traditions and practicing meditation. Outside of the books, my journey has led me to connect with many people who have gone through and continue to go through trauma, be it suicide attempts, addiction, HIV/AIDs, abuse or homelessness.

You also note that you were convinced that the dying would have the answer -- why did you think this?

When Plato was on his deathbed, he was approached by one of his students who asked him to sum up the entirety of his life’s work. His response was: "practice dying." An awareness of our death not only reminds us of our own impermanence, but the impermanence of absolutely everything. Living with a deep experiential knowledge of this truth cannot help but have an effect on the way you interact with people and the world around you. I wanted to talk to people who were dying because I believed their imminent death would teach them lessons about life. I thought the knowledge that time was running out might make people look differently at their past, present and future. And it did ... sometimes. 

How did you decide to contact hospices in particular?

I wanted to work with people who knew they only had a short time left to live so hospices felt like the appropriate place to start. Unlike in palliative care, people who are in hospice are no longer receiving curative treatment for their illness and are thought to have less than six months to live. 

How did you decide to go about drawing them?

I decided to use graphite pencil for this project because it felt softer and more solemn than color, and I made the pieces life size because I wanted the viewer to feel like that person was really in front of them. I transcribed roughly 3000 words of my conversations with each person onto their clothing in the portraits. The thinking behind this was two fold. Firstly, the script on the clothing would serve as a metaphor for the stories we “carry” and construct our sense of self with. Secondly, I hoped the intricate text would encourage the viewer to come close and spend time with the portrait, providing a kind of intimacy with the work. The audio clips were not part of the original conception, but as soon as I started recording I knew their voices needed to be heard.

How did you choose the nine subjects you interviewed and drew for the project?

I contacted 10 hospices across the Bay Area and word was put out to social workers, nurses and chaplains that I was looking for patients to participate in an art project about confronting mortality. Initially, I decided that I would accept anyone for the project who wanted to take part, but as time went on I realized I needed to turn some people away in order to maintain space for diversity. There were also a number of people I tried to work with who died too soon, and there were others I met but were not open to talking about the fact they were dying.

In the description online, you conclude that, "in short, [the subjects] were not concerned with what they consumed and took into themselves" and that meaning, for them, came from creation and not consumption. Did the subjects express regret at all?

A lot of my subjects expressed regret, but not all. In particular, regret is a strong theme in the portraits of Harlan, Osamu and Ena. Both Harlan and Osamu regretted how much time they spent working and its impact on the quality of their lives. Harlan lamented that he had worked so much overtime to earn more money, and wished instead that he had been with his family. Osamu regretted making a career choice in order to be the provider, and wished he had more time for his family, education and creativity. In contrast, Ena dedicated her professional and personal life to helping people, and wished that she had made more time to follow her own dreams. She felt she sacrificed opportunities in order to support her husband, parents, brother, etc. I think the regrets of Harlan, Osamu and Ena are in part a reflection of the gender paradigms of our culture that impact the lives of both women and men. 

Now that you've finished the project, are you using the lessons you learned in this project in concrete ways? Are you actively trying to live more meaningfully and intensely?

Working on this project has reminded me of the difference between living and being alive, which is, in a sense, like the difference between loving and being in love. I feel in life more. I find myself lost in gratitude much more frequently, whether with my family and friends, out in nature or simply just being alive. I also have found myself much more committed to my life as it is. Not imagining ways in which it could be different or better, but deeply committing to my life and the gifts I have been given.

Part of the intention behind "Thoughts in Passing" was to shine a light onto the darkness that covers death and dying in our culture, and in doing so take away some of the fear surrounding it. This project taught me to shine that same compassionate light onto areas of myself that I have avoided, and in doing so I have been able to be kinder and more accepting of myself. 

I don’t mean to suggest that my work will necessarily change you, or even that confronting death necessarily makes people wiser, but I do believe that if you really sit with the messages this work is trying to share, you will find yourself living more deeply. 

Finally -- Will you continue to stay in touch with your subjects?

Five of the nine people I interviewed for this project have since died. Of the remaining four, I have stayed in touch with either the subjects themselves, their families or social workers. I just found out from Ena’s son that she passed away a couple of week ago, just days before her piece was finished. I regret not being able to share her portrait with her.

The portrait of "Jenny Miller" will be exhibited at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery from March 2016 until June 2017.

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 This article originally appeared on artnet News.

The Art Newspaper reports that the painting is being examined in a conservation studio "to keep it in better condition for future generations," according to a statement from the institution. They are scheduled to return to public view on March 24.

The 1889 canvas is a repetition of the fourth version of "Sunflowers." The work was painted while van Gogh was living in Arles,  just a month after he cut off his ear. The original version can be found at London's National Gallery, while versions of three other similar compositions belong to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Sompo Japan Museum of Art in Tokyo, and Munich's Neue Pinakothek. A fifth version was destroyed during World War II.

The museum is hoping to remove a discoloring coat of varnish and several retouched areas, which give the canvas a muted orange tone, and were likely added in 1927.

Another issue is van Gogh's choice of cadmium yellow pigment. Scientists recently confirmed that the variety of yellow paint favored by many Impressionist, post-Impressionist, and early modernist artists will oxidize in the light, turning from bright yellow to a dull greenish-brown.

The altered appearance of his work would likely come as no surprise to the artist. "Paintings fade like flowers," wrote van Gogh in one of his many letters to his brother Theo.

The famed painting is on permanent loan from the Vincent van Gogh Foundation (which opened its own museum in Arles in 2014) and is a star attraction at the Amsterdam institution.

This past February, the museum began selling high-quality replicas of "Sunflowers" and other van Gogh masterpieces in its collection, created in conjunction with Fujifilm Belgium using 3-D scanning and high-resolution printing. In September, the institution created a maze of 125,000 sunflowers to celebrate the opening of its new entrance hall.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson might be giving Morgan Freeman a run for his money when it comes to the voice-over game. 

The famed astrophysicist, cosmologist and author narrates a video for Dance Theatre of Harlem's "Power. On Pointe." performances which will take place from April 6 to April 9, and it's absolutely mesmerizing. Tyson's words move harmoniously with the ballet dancers as they twirl and glide across celestial backdrops. 

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The next time Grandma criticizes your multiple tattoos, tell her they might just be a sign that you're healthy.

A new study published in the American Journal of Human Biology last week -- and getting lots of ink since then -- suggests that people with multiple tattoos have a better immune response to new tattoos than people who are getting tattooed for the first time.

According to the research, "Tattooing may stimulate the immune system in a manner similar to a vaccination to be less susceptible to future pathogenic infiltration." While the study has a small sample size and is not yet conclusive, it provides fascinating evidence of how well the body can be "trained" to respond to stresses over time.

For the study, researchers at the University of Alabama collected saliva samples from 29 volunteers before and after they were given tattoos. Nine of those participants were receiving tattoos for the first time. They then analyzed the participants' saliva samples for levels of immunoglobulin A, an antibody that lines portions of our gastrointestinal and respiratory systems, and cortisol, a stress hormone known to suppress immune response.

“Immunoglobulin A is a front line of defense against some of the common infections we encounter, like colds,” Christopher Lynn, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama who co-authored the study, wrote in a press release.

According to the researchers, the saliva samples from first-time tattoo recipients showed their levels of immunoglobulin A declined much more dramatically than they did for the people who already had multiple tattoos, suggesting that people with more "tattoo experience" had immune systems that were more habituated to that kind of stress.

Lynn isn't suggesting people go out and get full sleeve tattoos to ward off colds and the flu just yet. In fact, he said, a person's first tattoo can make them more, not less, susceptible to illness.

“They don’t just hurt while you get the tattoo, but they can exhaust you,” he said in the release. “It’s easier to get sick. You can catch a cold because your defenses are lowered from the stress of getting a tattoo.”

Lynn compares the body's response to getting a tattoo for the first time to an out-of-shape person exercising in the gym: Muscles are sore at first, but the pain fades with repeated workouts.

“After the stress response, your body returns to an equilibrium,” Lynn said. “However, if you continue to stress your body over and over again, instead of returning to the same set point, it adjusts its internal set points and moves higher.” 

But other experts are poking holes in the findings. Dr. Sylvie Stacy, an Alabama physician who specializes in preventive medicine, points out the study used a small sample of subjects and investigated only a couple of the many substances involved in immune response in the body.

"I would not encourage anyone to get a tattoo for the sake of immune system benefit," she told HuffPost. "Getting a tattoo carries significant risks -- including infection, scarring, and potential adverse psychological effects. It’s very unlikely that these risks are outweighed by any boost in immune system response."

Lynn acknowledges that the study's findings could also mean that people who are already in good health are more likely to get multiple tattoos, because their immune systems are better at recovering from them and their past tattoo experiences have been more satisfactory. 

"They probably already had good immune systems, and we think the tattoos draw attention to this," he told HuffPost. "We also think that, among those with good immune systems who are into tattooing culture and get tattoos, the quick healing and positive reaction may reinforce an interest in getting more."

Conversely, people who had a bad immune reaction to their first tattoo aren't as likely to come back for more. The study points out that historically, tattoos appeared to be a way for healthy, "attractive" people to differentiate themselves from less-healthy peers, and that could still be the case -- multiple tattoos mean you can handle the pain.

Of course, the research didn't involve people who chose not to get any tattoos at all. "We did not collect biomarkers (saliva) from non-tattooed [people] because we were comparing the pre-post tattoo session change, not absolute values related to immunity," Lynn said. "It would be difficult to come up with a scenario that is similar to tattooing to do pre-post testing of non-tattooed."

While the University of Alabama study takes a specific look at immune responses to tattoos, however, it also contributes to existing research on different techniques that could sharpen the effectiveness of vaccines, such as injecting them in a way that's similar to how tattoo artists inject ink under the skin.

"There is ... evidence suggesting that applying a vaccine with a tattoo approach -- several small punctures, not one big shot -- may increase the effectiveness," Lynn said.

The research is piquing the interest of medical experts like Dr. Amesh Adalia, a board-certified infectious disease physician at the University of Pittsburgh.

"Such a finding is provocative and future studies are required that assess other arms of the immune system, reproduce the results, and gauge the real-world effects in terms of vaccine responses as well as frequency of infections in tattoo recipients," Adalia said by email.

If anything, Lynn hopes the study reduces the stigma associated with getting inked up. "We'd like to take tattoos out of the negative subcultural niche of bikers, sailors and risky behavior," he said.

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In celebration of Women’s History Month, we've decided to honor women writers of the past and present who have written fearlessly about sex.

Today, women are still fighting for their reproductive rights, but these writers remind us of the essence of what we’re fighting for -- the freedom to pursue our sexual fantasies, to control our own bodies, and to express our sexuality according to our own desires. 

Before 50 Shades of Grey, these 11 women charted new territory:

Sappho

Sappho is commonly regarded as one of the greatest Greek lyric poets in antiquity. Probably born around 620 B.C., little is known about her life, but we can gather a sense of who she was from her poetry. Her poems expressed passion and love for people of both sexes, with the word “lesbian” derived from her island of her birth, Lesbos, and her name being the origin of “sapphic.” Her work, with its emphasis on emotion, on subjective experience, and on the individual, significantly influenced the evolution of poetry. The remnant of one of her poems, “fragment 31,” is one of her best, imitated and revised by many other poets. Known as a “poem of jealousy,” it describes the physical symptoms of love and longing while the poet watches her beloved speaking to a man.

When I glance at you / I can no longer speak / My tongue is broken and / A subtle flame is creeping into my skin / My eyes can see nothing more

Daphne Du Maurier 

Novelist and playwright Daphne du Maurier, born in 1907, wrote the 1938 book Rebecca, a spooky, gothic tale of suspense and romance. In this classic, our heroine gets swept off her feet by a dashing widower and his sudden proposal of marriage. When she arrives at his massive country estate, she realizes the large shadow his late wife will cast over their lives and the potential threat it poses to her marriage. Full of mystery and secrets, sex in this classic was not always overt but still potent.

She looked beautiful in this velvet. Put it against your face. It's soft, isn't it? You can feel it, can't you? The scent is still fresh, isn't it? You could almost imagine she had only just taken it off. I would always know when she had been before me in a room. There would be a little whiff of her scent in the room.

Colette

Born in 1873, French novelist Colette, otherwise known as Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, was best known for her 1944 novella Gigi, which became a Broadway play starring Audrey Hepburn. It’s about a young Parisian girl being groomed for a career as a courtesan and her relationship with a wealthy man who falls in love with her and eventually proposes to her. Another one of her famous works Cheri centers on an aging, once-famous courtesan nearing the end of her sexual career as well as facing the end of her most intense love affair.

“Do I have a separate room? Don’t I make love to you well?”

She hesitated, smiling with exquisite suspicion. “Do you call that love, Fred?”

“There are other words for it, but you wouldn’t appreciate them.”

Anaïs Nin

Memoirist Anaïs Nin, born in 1903, is one of the finest writers of female erotica and one of the first women to fully explore the realm of erotic writing. Her diaries spanned more than 60 years, starting from when she was 11 years old, and hold an intimate account of her sexual awakening and liberation. She also wrote fictional erotic short stories intended for a private collector in the 1940s, published as the collections Delta of Venus and Little Birds.

When she closed her eyes she felt he had many hands, which touched her everywhere, and many mouths, which passed so swiftly over her, and with a wolflike sharpness, his teeth sank into her fleshiest parts. Naked now, he lay his full length over her. She enjoyed his weight on her, enjoyed being crushed under his body. She wanted him soldered to her, from mouth to feet. Shivers passed through her body.

Ursula K. Le Guin

American author Ursula K. Le Guin, born in 1929, has explored sexuality in the futuristic, imaginary worlds of her science fiction, namely in her novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Published in 1969, the book featured Gethenians, a humanoid alien race with no inherent gender. Instead, their male or female sexual organs are activated in monthly cycles, constantly switching genders.

A man wants his virility regarded. A woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. [Here] one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.

Erica Jong

American author Erica Jong is best known for Fear of Flying, published in 1973, famously controversial for its attitude toward female sexuality. The narrator indulges in sexual fantasies with another man besides her husband. In the novel, Jong coined the term “zipless fuck,” which is a sexual encounter for its own sake, without emotional involvement, commitment or ulterior motive between two strangers.

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.

Ingeborg Day

Born in 1940, Ingeborg Day was an Austrian-American author, who wrote the semi-autobiographical 1978 erotic memoir 9½ Weeks which she published under the pseudonym Elizabeth McNeill, and which was later made into a film starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke. The slim book is an intense, condensed presentation of S&M told with a cool detachment, creating a world that’s both mesmerizing and dangerous.

There was no mistaking the power this man had over me. Like a well-made windup toy, whenever he set me in motion I came.

Anne Rice

American author Anne Rice, born in 1941, might be best known for Interview with the Vampire, but she also wrote The Sleeping Beauty Quartet. The series, mostly published in the 1980s, consists of erotic BDSM stories set in a medieval fantasy world, loosely based on the fairy tale of the same name. They describe explicit sexual adventures of the female protagonist and male characters, featuring everything from bisexuality to femdom scenarios.

This was the real world then -- Beauty and I free to have each other and all the others gone. Just the two of us in my bedchamber, where I should envelop her naked soul in rituals and ordeals beyond our past experiences, our dreams. No one to save her from me. No one to save me from her. My slave, my poor helpless slave ...

Octavia E. Butler

American author Octavia E. Butler was the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship (also known as the “Genius Grant”). In her 1984 short story “Bloodchild,” she depicts the complex dynamics between human beings and an alien race, whose only chance at survival in the face of extinction is to plant their larvae into human hosts. Also known as her “pregnant man” story, Butler obliterates the gender binary in her detailed writing of biological processes of sex and pregnancy.

I had been told all my life that this was a good and necessary thing ... a kind of birth. I had believed it until now ... this was ... something worse.

Catherine Millet

French writer and art critic Catherine Millet wrote the 2002 memoir The Sexual Life of Catherine M., which details her sexual history from masturbating as a child to her fascination with group sex as an adult. The narrator details her active and free sexual life, from al fresco sexual encounters in the Italian countryside to a high-class orgy at a Parisian restaurant.

I heard André’s voice saying his girlfriend wouldn’t be bashful in coming forwards, and his words sounded a little muffled because I did indeed already have my T-shirt over my head.

Tamara Faith Berger

Canadian author Tamara Faith Berger wrote the 2012 divisive and controversial novel Maidenhead. In it, the 16-year-old female protagonist Myra goes on a vacation to Florida with her family, where her sexual awakening begins when an older man tries to masturbate in front of her. Myra then starts to explore porn and discovers she enjoys masochism and the slave-master dynamic.

My essay had evolved into thinking about fucking. You could be raped a thousand times and still be a virgin. I was writing about fucking by a master and fucking as a slave, about Hegel, the comfort women and teenage porno stars. Ms. Bain and Mr. Rotowsky could fail me, I didn’t care.

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The Gowanus Canal is a Brooklyn waterway that, during the Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century and beyond, served as a receptacle of waste for the various companies that fueled the way.

Specifically, the canal served as a dumping ground for coal tar, a thick, black liquid containing benzene, naphthalene, phenols, aniline and a bunch of other hazardous chemical compounds. After it was no longer needed, the canal was left to fester, and the tar substance seeped underground, floated to the surface, and interspersed itself throughout the fetid body of water, yielding a virulent stench and strangely stunning visuals. 

Today, the Gowanus Canal is one of the most polluted bodies of water in the country, and was declared a Superfund site in 2010. In 2013, a dolphin even died in its toxic grip.

When photographer Steven Hirsch, a Brooklyn native, saw the channel for the first time in 2010, he was enthralled. During his initial visit, an eruption of oil started bubbling and erupting on the water's surface with a bizarre cocktail of centuries-old pollutants. Hirsch pulled out his camera and braved the nauseating smell to capture the strange visual effect, like a metallic Impressionist artwork. 

"It became a giant painting and I’d study it and pick out pieces, segments to photograph," Hirsch explained to The Wall Street Journal. "It was mesmerizing -- and when the tide would start to come in and the water would move -- it would create a kaleidoscope, an explosion of colors, shapes and designs. Its intensity is mind-boggling, and I tried to capture that in the images I made."

Hirsch returned to the Superfund site again and again, capturing various permutations and combinations of oil, water, junk and tar in harmony. He compiled the images into a photography book titled Gowanus Waters. 

The images are at once haunting and oddly hypnotic, illuminating the disastrous results of unchecked contamination left out to rot, and the strange visual complexity that arises from such hazardous destruction. In the images, emerald green, metallic gold and electric aquamarine dance in abstract patterns that seem brewed from the imagination. It's hard to believe these organic-looking shapes are the result of human waste and carelessness. 

The photos were recently at the center of a conflict between the publisher of Gowanus Waters, powerHouse Books, and The New York Daily News.

The Daily News removed a multimedia piece on Hirsch's work from their website after learning he was also a photographer for The New York Post, and thus, as The Daily News claimed, in competition with their employees. A nasty email exchange ensued between CEO of powerHouse Books Daniel Power, Daily News DP Kevin Macdonald and Editor-in-Chief Jim Rich, which powerHouse Books then distributed to the press to publicize The Daily News' allegedly "unethical" and "spineless" behavior. 

As of now, powerHouse Books is demanding an apology from The Daily News. But, yeah, we'd rather just look at the images. 

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At this year's South by Southwest film festival, you'll spot Pee-wee Herman, Han Solo, and Key and Peele's missing cat. Look a little closer, and there are LSD dealers, the "Wizard of Oz" slippers, an HBO series and hip-hop pioneers among the motley crew descending upon Austin, Texas, for the 10-day conference that kicks off Friday.  

Founded in 1987, South by Southwest brings together tech, music and movie lovers for premieres from both established and emerging media fixtures. (Hanson, Fred Armisen, John Mayer and Foursquare all got their start at the festival.) The Huffington Post will be on hand to cover the film portion, which, in addition to several splashy world premieres, will feature screenings of hits from other festivals, including "Midnight Special," "Hardcore Henry," "Demolition" and "Sing Street." 

There's no way to see it all, but we'll do our best to bring you the best SXSW buzz over the next several days. For now, here's a handful of movies that seem likely to distract from the mounds of Texas barbecue that will be consumed.

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What -- and where -- is home? For Korean-American transracial adoptees, the answer isn't simple.

In his new photography series, the KAD Diaries, Zeke Anders, the creator of the award-winning vlog series "American Seoul," is exploring the in-between space that people adopted from South Korea and raised by white American families exist in.

Transracial adoptees often have cultural/self-identity issues. We feel many times that we don't fit in either culture.

"Transracial adoptees often have cultural/self-identity issues," Anders said to HuffPost. "We feel many times that we don't fit in either culture. In many cases we grow up in white suburbia and people judge us by the color of our skin and assume that we're right of the boat. But if we were to go over to Korea, we wouldn't fit necessarily in that culture either."

Anders' photos feature two flags hanging behind his subjects, the American stars and bars and the flag of South Korea. He lets the adoptees choose which flag they want to stand in front of. "There is no wrong answer," he explains. It just depends on which feels right for the person being photographed.

After he photographs them, Anders interviews his subjects about their experiences growing up in America. He considers it more of a sharing that lets the other adoptees learn about each other and their similar hardships navigating through "the murky waters of self-identity."

The history of American adoption of Korean orphans is long and complicated, often influenced by war and military influence in South Korea, and, at one point, even the Olympics held in Seoul in 1988. According to census reports from the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, around 100,000 Korean orphans have been adopted by American families between the years 1951-2001 alone. 

In many cases we grow up in white suburbia and people judge us by the color of our skin and assume that we're right of the boat. But if we were to go over to Korea, we wouldn't fit necessarily in that culture either

Despite being part of the community, Anders said he had no idea the Korean-American adoptee community was so large. It was only when he started doing his vlog series that he was able to meet others like him.

After a few years of soaking in his new world, the idea for the KAD Diaries came to him, spurred on by a street photography class in Los Angeles. Inspired by the rawness of film, Anders only uses 120 Medium Format Black & White for the KAD Diaries. 

"Film is organic, raw, and imperfect - a perfect metaphor for us adoptees, the issues surrounding adoption, and self identity," Anders said. "If there are answers, it's not black and white, but rather a spectrum of grey."

The KAD Diaries is still in its early stages and Anders hopes to soon travel to cities like Minneapolis and Portland which have large populations of Korean-American adoptees to expand his series. 

If you are a Korean-American adoptee and would like to submit your stories or photos to the KAD Diaries, please send them here.

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Keith Emerson, the legendary keyboard player in Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP), died Thursday night at the age of 71.

Fellow band member Carl Palmer broke the news on his Facebook page, calling Emerson's death, whom he described as a "good friend and brother-in-music," "deeply saddening."

Police said late Friday that the death is being investigated as a suicide, the AP reported.

"Keith was a gentle soul whose love for music and passion for his performance as a keyboard player will remain unmatched for many years to come," Palmer wrote. "He was a pioneer and an innovator whose musical genius touched all of us in the worlds of rock, classical and jazz. I will always remember his warm smile, good sense of humor, compelling showmanship, and dedication to his musical craft. I am very lucky to have known him and to have made the music we did, together. Rest in peace, Keith."

The band's official Facebook page confirmed the news shortly after Palmer's post, saying only that he died at his home in California and asking readers to respect the family's privacy. 

The Rolling Stone called Emerson "one of the greatest keyboardists of his generation," beginning as a member of the band The Nice, then founding ELP in 1970 along with guitarist Greg Lake and drummer Carl Palmer.

In a condolence posted on Twitter shortly after the announcement, Mike Portnoy, a drummer in the progressive "prog" rock community, lamented the passing of the "Jimi Hendrix of keyboards," and one of the pioneers of the prog rock sound.

Emerson was scheduled to go on tour in Japan next month.

This article has been updated to reflect that the death is being investigated as a suicide.

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Five years ago, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck Tohoku, a region along Japan's northeastern coast. The March 11, 2011, disaster unleashed a massive tsunami, which produced waves up to 133 feet high locally and sent water surging as far away as the U.S. west coast.

The earthquake and tsunami left some 18,500 people dead or missing, according to Japan's national police agency. Experts say the Tohoku earthquake was the strongest ever measured in the earthquake-prone country.

The earthquake and tsunami also triggered the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power station over the following few days. Radioactive material was released into the surrounding atmosphere and sea, and over 160,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes.

Shortly after the disaster, the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company vowed to rebuild and restore the affected regions. The government has since been criticized for its inadequate nuclear decontamination efforts, and three former power company executives were charged last month with failing to take measures to prevent the nuclear disaster.

On Friday, people across Japan paid tribute to the victims of the Tohoku earthquake, from a moment of silence at a Shizuoka baseball stadium to candles arranged to form the 3/11 date.

Take a look at how Japan remembered the disaster in the photos below. 

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One incredible girl is giving us all a tutorial in fabulousness. 

Nikki Christou, an 11-year-old from London, has an arteriovenous malformation, or an abnormal connection between the arteries and veins, which has resulted in a facial abnormality.

But Nikki, who's a huge makeup enthusiast, doesn't let anything or anyone cramp her style. She regularly makes makeup tutorials for her YouTube page and has become a star, with more than 35,000 subscribers. Through the videos, she hopes to uplift others who may also have rare illnesses or conditions. 

"Nikki wants to inspire anyone with a rare illness and show them that beauty lies within," the preteen's father, George Christou, told The Huffington Post. "Being different should not mean being ignored or feeling that there is not real place for you in this world and you don’t have positive role to play."

In her videos, the 11-year-old shares looks for different occasions like prom, a birthday or just for every day. In addition to showing viewers different looks, she also records baking tutorials, Q&As and various other videos that give you a glimpse into her life. 

According to one of her videos, Nikki was diagnosed with AVM when she was 6 years old, but had the condition from birth. Her father told HuffPost she has been interested in makeup since that age. She used much of her time home from school to hone in on her makeup skills. 

"Due to her medical condition she was home from school a lot so she started looking at her mum's fashion magazines and makeup channels on YouTube," Christou said. "She practiced every day on her friends and cousins until she became a expert!"

While Nikki says she does get hurtful comments from people criticizing her appearance, she says that she focuses on the positive. 

"I don't let them get to me ... Focus on the happy things not the sad things because if you focus on the negative, you're not going to enjoy life," she said. "Just know if you believe in yourself and really try hard and block out all the negativity in your life, you will lead a happy life."

As if being a YouTube star wasn't enough of an achievement, the 11-year-old is also the inspiration behind the Butterfly AVM Charity, which raises money for AVM research. She's also helped raise more than 55,525.65 British pounds (about $79,876) for the foundation through a crowdfunding campaign. 

To that, we say "slay girl, slay." 

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Elif Shafak is a Turkish novelist and essayist whose celebrated works include "The Bastard of Istanbul" and "The Architect's Apprentice." The WorldPost spoke with her in the wake of the recent crackdown on media in Turkey. 

Turkey is being shaken by a number of crises at once -- from the massive influx of Syrian refugees, the fight with the Kurds and now the crackdown on free expression, including the seizure of the country's leading paper, Zaman. What is going on?

Turkey is going through a deep, dizzying, dangerous social and political transformation. So much is happening so fast there is no time to stop and think and analyze. Abnormalities have become the new normal.

Turkey's ruling elite from President [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan's AKP, or Justice [and] Development Party, has been confusing "democracy" with "majoritarianism." Democracy is not only about the ballot box and the number of votes. That's only one of the essentials. Democracy is also about rule of law, separation of powers, a free, diverse media, freedom of speech, women's rights, minority rights. In all these respects, Turkey has been sliding backwards sadly. It is a very polarized country between those who are staunch supporters of Erdoğan and those who are against him. We have become a society of anger, paranoia, intimidation. And artists, writers, academics -- people who have been trying to build bridges so as to promote coexistence and peace -- know that they have lost big time.

'Turkey is going through a deep, dizzying, dangerous social and political transformation.'

Is there a link that ties all these crises together?

Turkish society is becoming more conservative and patriarchal while the state is becoming more authoritarian and patriarchal. These two processes are deeply related. A recent Pew research [survey] showed that half of the Turkish society thinks it is not okay or legitimate to criticize the government publicly. Anyone who dares to express a critical opinion is labeled as a "traitor" or a rotten apple.

Critical-minded people are lynched on social media, demonized in pro-government newspapers, intimidated from all sides. Every journalist, academic, writer, poet or cartoonist knows that because of a book or an article or even [a] tweet we can be prosecuted, even imprisoned. The editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper, Can Dündar, wrote a powerful letter to European leaders reminding them not to forget democracy and freedom of speech in their dealings with Turkey. But at the moment these vital issues are not a priority for Europe.

Is what we are seeing in Turkey today in line with the autocratic tendencies of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia -- to root out the "contamination" that is harming what they regard as the national soul of some imagined utopian past? Is this a contest between the cosmopolitan and national soul as we see elsewhere in the world?

We are witnessing the dissolution of a unified Europe. Simultaneously, [we are witnessing] the dissolution of liberal democracy in many parts of the world. Then there are people who say the Middle East is not ready for democracy, so better have strong leaders instead. I find these trends very dangerous. In Turkey people talk about "the need for one strong leader with a group of technocrats" instead of bottom-up civil-society-based pluralism. They say [that] that way we won't lose time with multiple opinions. We in Turkey are experiencing a loss of pluralism. Nobody talks about cosmopolitanism or diversity anymore. The ideology of sameness is the motto of the day. Dangerously.

It was often said that Erdoğan and his AKP led the country's "modernization from below" by bringing the largely Islamic Anatolian population to power by democratic elections after the long decades of authoritarian modernization from above imposed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his secular descendants. These Islamic constituencies regarded themselves as the mazlum -- a term meaning victims -- who suffered exclusion under the metropolitan elites of Istanbul. Now, after 14 years of neo-Ottoman renaissance, are the tables turning? Is it those with the secular values of women's rights, free speech, lifestyle diversity or independent courts that are the new mazlum?

The AKP, as you say, has been in power for 14 years. It is a long time. Throughout this time they changed dramatically. In the beginning, the party and their rhetoric was different. Both inside Turkey and with the Western world. At the time the rhetoric was pro-EU, pro-reform, pro-civilian rule, pro-pluralistic democracy. Many liberals supported them, believing that this would be a step forward for the country. As a feminist, I empathized with young headscarved university students who were not allowed to go to college unless they took off their headscarf. I found this unfair.

'What is incredibly sad to see is how yesterday's "others" have become today's oppressors.'

What is incredibly sad to see is how yesterday's "others" have become today's oppressors. Honestly, I don't want anyone in Turkey to have too much power: the AKP, the Gulen community, the Kemalists in the past, the Turkish nationalists or the militant hawks in the Kurdish movement ... whoever gets power, desires even more power and then more power. It's never enough. It's mainly because we do not have the culture of democracy.

There is no real respect for diversity and pluralism. A society of collectivistic identities does not respect individualism. A society of collective amnesia is unable to learn anything from the mistakes of the past. As a result, Turkey keeps drawing sad circles and going backwards instead of making any progress.

Recently the president's wife, Emine Erdoğan, said the Ottoman harem was an "educational center." Do you agree?

I believe we need feminist historians to tell us more about the reality of the harem. We need scholarly, academic and non-partisan studies. It is a well-known fact that the harem was overcrowded, full of hundreds of women who were slaves of the sultan, some of whom had access to the sovereign -- and most never did. There are very sad, heartbreaking stories waiting to be told. The harem was a place of gender discrimination, segregation and the embodiment of male power. Today there is an increasing number of Turkish men marrying young Syrian women as their second wives, third wives, even though polygamy is illegal. They are forming their own little harems. Women's activists have been drawing attention to this alarming fact, to no avail. In such a patriarchal environment, I find it dangerous to romanticize the Ottoman harem. Or to romanticize the Ottoman past.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

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Troye Sivan made one mega-fan's dream come true at a concert in Washington, D.C., on Monday. 

The pop star, who is quickly establishing himself as a queer icon for the millennial set, took a moment between songs during his March 7 performance at D.C.'s 9:30 Club to address a handwritten note given to him by a 14-year-old fan named Kelly. 

Video footage of the moment, which Kelly posted to her Twitter account, showed Sivan reading from the note: “Can you announce that Kelly is bisexual, please?”

Watch video of Sivan's announcement below: 

After Sivan read the note, the crowd erupted into thunderous applause. The pop star, 20, then blew Kelly a kiss before resuming his performance. 

Kelly, who hails from Virginia, told The Huffington Post that Sivan has always been a big personal inspiration. Witnessing the openly gay star embrace his sexuality on his hit album, "Blue Neighbourhood," and in music videos like "Wild" and "Youth," she said, made her feel personally empowered. 

She said she came up with the idea of having Sivan make the announcement just minutes before she arrived at the venue with her mom and best friend, Rachel, in tow. 

"I knew coming out to my mom would be hard, but having my idol do it would make it less intimidating, and more amazing," she told HuffPost. Though she was able to deliver the note to Sivan before the show began, Kelly still "knew it was a long shot, but I figured it was a worth a try." 

Even though having your sexuality announced at a public event may seem intimidating for some, Kelly said, "I knew that the people in the venue would support me. Why would you come to a Troye Sivan concert if you're homophobic?" 

She said that when she saw Sivan reaching for the note, she grabbed her phone to capture the life-changing moment for posterity. 

"Coming out was a big deal, but having the person I look up to the most do it for me is something I wouldn't trade for the world," she said. Once the concert ended, she said her mom reacted with "nothing but positivity."

Watch her mom's reaction to her daughter's coming out below. 

A day later, she thanked Sivan for the gesture on Twitter. 

As she reflected on the experience a few days later, Kelly told HuffPost, "Everyone has their worries and doubts, but no matter where you are or who you are, people out there are going to be able to support you, you just have to reach out. ...Coming out is one of the most difficult things a person can do, but it's not impossible."  

We've always admired Troye's willingness to embrace his sexuality in his art, and witnessing the star's influence on his young fans is even more exhilarating. Bravo! 

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Matt Haig has no time for Donald Trump.

The best-selling British novelist makes his feelings for the GOP front-runner perfectly clear in a crushing Facebook post that's going viral.

The "Reasons to Stay Alive" and "The Humans: A Novel" author vented his frustrations in an appropriate 666 words on Saturday night.

While that figure is usually associated with the devil, it's unclear whether it was an intentional comment on the Republican presidential candidate. The Huffington Post has reached out for comment.

Here's the post:

London-based Haig begins by saying how "fun," "amusing" and "hilarious" the Trump roadshow may appear from the outside. But he goes on to detail its racist tones, lies and hypocrisy. 

"It might be the end of the world," he writes. "But we still can't switch to another channel." 

Editor's note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.

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For every diehard adult coloring book lover, there is a challenge: do I color inside the lines, thus respecting tradition and the wisdom of those who came before me? Or, do I dare color outside the pesky black-and-white prisons, letting my wild creativity fly free like a rare bird?

Thanks to the zen trend of "blind contouring," you may not need choose. For the uninitiated, to blind contour is to draw without looking at your paper, and actively engage with your subject matter without worrying about what will come out of it. The technique is often used in art school to make budding artists break with old habits and self-conscious doubt, allowing their artwork to grow freely and organically. 

"The goal of blind drawing," Sam Anderson explained in New York Times Magazine, "is to really see the thing you’re looking at, to almost spiritually merge with it, rather than retreat into your mental image of it. Our brains are designed to simplify -- to reduce the tumult of the world into order. Blind drawing trains us to stare at the chaos, to honor it. It is an act of meditation, as much as it is an artistic practice -- a gateway to pure being. It forces us to study the world as it actually is."

Of course, you don't have to be in art school to play around with blind contouring. For example, artist Ian Sklarsky is bringing the mindful methodology to the masses with his coloring book Yotel. Its black-and-white skeleton was created without eyes ever meeting paper. 

Sklarsky's motivations are similar: to communicate that art is not about straight lines or exact replications, but presence, creativity and exploration. "My art simply shows that there aren’t any wrongs," the artist said in a statement. "It’s the enjoyment of figuring out how to get from point A to point B with one line without looking and creating what you see." As a colorer, you will be relieved of the burden of coloring precisely within perfectly straight lines, and it might prompt you to close your own eyes and see where your colors lead you. 

Sklarsky's coloring book was made in collaboration with Yotel, a New York hotel, and iconic NYC imagery runs throughout the pages in drippy, skittish ink. Taxi cabs, subway riders, skyscrapers and tourists are among the standard tropes, all in jagged black-and-white lines just waiting for your coloring touch. 

Blind contouring adds an additional layer of mindfulness to the already meditative practice of adult coloring, a ritual which continues to gain momentum. "There is a long history of people coloring for mental health reasons," clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis said in an earlier interview. "Carl Jung used to try to get his patients to color in mandalas at the turn of the last century, as a way of getting people to focus and to allow the subconscious to let go. Now we know it has a lot of other stress-busting qualities as well." 

Artists and human balls of stress, I'm talking to you. Get out your colors, close your eyes and see what happens when you create from a place of pure presence. 

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