The impulse to share our daily experiences on social media, to follow our friends' vacations and musical festival excursions and happy hour sunsets, is much of what this generation will be remembered for.

We're so absorbed in Instagram culture that scrolling through our feeds to pass the time in elevators or at the bar has become second nature. Even while writing this, two Huffington Post editors nearby discussed a photo as one suggested, "You should post that to Instagram! I'll share it on Snapchat."

But it would be ignorant to think this obsessive visual documentation is something born out of the 2010s. Andy Warhol was snapping photos of his surroundings long before Instagram's creators were even born.

"Andy was probably the original Instagrammer, in a way," Reuel Golden, editor of Andy Warhol Polaroids 1958–1987, told The Huffington Post over the phone. While the artist is well known for consorting with his own posse of Factory kids and superstars, as his films and photographs from the era reveal, he was also socializing with big-name actors, musicians, fashion designers and artists -- and documenting every bit of it. This intersection of the private and the public in Warhol's daily life came to light thanks to the Polaroid camera, which Golden called the "perfect tool for moving between capturing all those different facets." 

Andy was probably the original Instagrammer, in a way.

Golden's book features Warhol's polaroids of everyone from Jack Nicholson to Audrey Hepburn, Divine to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Grace Jones to Yves Saint Laurent, and beyond. His collection of instant photos -- which amounted to over 20,000 Polaroids between the 1950s and his death in 1987 -- provided an intimate look at celebrities outside of their normal spotlight; an unpolished, impromptu glimpse at the lives of the rich, the famous and the pariahs revolving around him. If Instagram did exist in the 1960s and '70s, Warhol was the one account you'd be sure to follow.  

"These portraits signify who was welcome into Warhol’s club," arts critic Richard B. Woodward writes in the book's introduction, "a place at once private, snobbish and hostile to middle-class squares and yet open to scores of outcasts, the prodigiously talented or the merely sensational and anyone making news on the front page or the gossip section of the tabloids."

There's hardly any working artist today who spends as much time socializing with as diverse an array of celebs, and who documents his time in such a spontaneous fashion void of blunt narcissism. That's precisely what separates Warhol's Polaroids from the famous Instagram accounts we follow today. Warhol's shots weren't taken with the intention of going viral or garnering massive, instantaneous attention -- at the time, such phenomena didn't exist in the public sphere. Instead, Warhol's unquenchable curiosity led him to snapping more shots, many of which radiate an intimacy and closeness to his subjects. The ubiquity of the Polaroid camera allowed Warhol to condense such bloated statuses of fame, success and glamour into the confines of a tiny white frame on a piece of inexpensive film. Somehow, figures like Debbie Harry and Audrey Hepburn became more human, more accessible when placed in front of Warhol's lens.

"With this celebrity culture these days, a lot of these celebrities have professional retouchers who work on their Instagram account," Golden told HuffPost. "I think to Warhol that was the very antithesis of what Warhol and his Polaroids in particular represent." It's the rawness in his instant photos that separates them from the filtered images of today; the flash bouncing off a slightly out-of-focus Nicholson in mid-sentence; a naked couple in the shower modestly smiling at the camera; Warhol's mother, Julia Warhola, holding a knife and apple in a messy bedroom wearing only a nightgown and rolled-down leggings. 

This unabashed rawness is also present in his selfies. While the concept of a selfie, in and of itself, is wrapped up in pure self-promotion with an inherent air of vanity, Warhol's were ripe with vulnerability as he posed shirtless, content with exposing his imperfections.

"They show him getting older, they show him sometimes not looking his absolute best," Golden said. "But he wasn’t afraid to expose himself in that way."

Looking through these selfies alongside the instant portraits Warhol took of celebs and friends, it seems the artist was on a unending mission to capture people in their most natural states, as he viewed them. And if he couldn't capture it the first time, he'd take more and more shots until he got it right. Repetition: Warhol's modus operandi.

"In the book [subjects] appear multiple times," Golden explained, as he recalled unearthing hundreds of photos of Warhol's dog Archie in the Andy Warhol Foundation's archives. The book features multiple shots of Yves Saint Laurent, Dennis Hopper, landscapes and a quartet of test shots for Billy Name's famous Rolling Stones "Sticky Fingers" album cover. "This idea of repetition was a very essential part of his ethos. The Polaroids helped him to realize that," Golden added.

What better way to replicate an image quickly with such instantaneous satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) than with a Polaroid camera? 

These portraits signify who was welcome into Warhol’s club, a place at once private, snobbish and hostile to middle-class squares and yet open to scores of outcasts, the prodigiously talented or the merely sensational.

It's natural to wonder whether Warhol would've taken a liking to the iPhone and social media today. While Woodward writes in his intro that Warhol was "never one to run with a crowd," it's not hard to imagine the artist carrying a selfie stick wherever he went, snapping Polaroids backstage at award shows, or devouring the bursting concoctions of fame at events like the Met Gala. Kim Kardashian would've undoubtedly titillated Warhol's fascination with pop culture and vanity. But in front of his lens, the Kardashian would've been stripped of her well-manicured persona, wiped of Photoshopped filters and likely shown in a way we've never seen her before.

In his art, Warhol wanted people to see things as they were, as the Polaroids in Golden's book exemplify. Flipping through its pages feels like the closest we'll ever get to Warhol's daily life at the time, closer than any Instagram account can make us feel to today's celebs.

"If you want to know all about Andy Warhol," the artist once said of himself in a 1966  interview, "just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it."

Andy Warhol Polaroids 1958–1987 is now available at TASCHEN.com.  

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In the image above, taken in the 1910s or 1920s, an nameless woman from Senegal stares defiantly into the camera, her hands placed gently on her stomach as if to signal she's pregnant. Her gaze is haloed by a traditional hairstyle, woven together with black wool as was the style in West Africa at the time, and punctuated by an array of carefully placed jewelry.

To sum up the portrait in a few words, an onlooker might toss out adjectives like chic and classic, describing the subject as confident or elegantly proud. The photograph, snapped by an artist as anonymous as the picture's star, is part of a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art titled "In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa." On view in New York City now, the show offers a peek into a century's worth of image-making across the Atlantic Ocean, and a glimpse into life outside of European purview in countries like Senegal, Cameroon, Mali, Gabon and beyond.

"In and Out of the Studio" is the Met's chance to study the techniques and subject matter popular in West and Central African portraiture. In the spotlight are artists like Seydou Keïta, J. D. 'Okhai Ojeikere and Samuel Fosso, along with lesser known and entirely anonymous photographers who helped to develop a style and aesthetic in the region.

Instead of focusing on the European photojournalists and documentarians who visited the countries throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the show celebrates the local studios and artists who made the medium their own.

The exhibition, curated by Yaëlle Biro with research from specialist Giulia Paoletti, explores how photographic technologies -- which became available on the continent in the 1840s -- evolved in local communities as a way of mining identity in an ever-changing space.

Starting in the 1880s, studios popped up along the Atlantic coast, founded by West African, African-American and European photographers looking for wealthy clientele. By the 1920s, photography had become a popular practice in urban centers, and as the cities and rural areas gained independence in the decades to come, photographers avidly captured the growing middle class, made up of art consumers, producers and patrons.

While bits of Western culture surely influenced the medium by way of films and magazines, the photographs that emerged in West Africa show a diverse world captured in everything from self-portraits and staged scenes to landscapes and candids. Indigenous and European cultures mix into stunning tableaux, many of which are being shown for the first time, that showcase how complex a time period it was -- and still is -- in cities like Bamako, Dakar and Libreville.

Check out a preview of the exhibition below. "In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa" will be on view at the Met until Jan. 3, 2016.

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Josh Gad will portray beloved film critic Roger Ebert.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the "Frozen" actor will reportedly play Ebert in the comedy biopic "Russ & Roger." The film will tell the story behind the 1970 cult satire "Behind the Valley of the Dolls," which was co-written by Ebert and directed by Russ Meyer. Will Ferrell is on board to portray Meyer, who was known for sexploitation films such as "Faster, Pussy Cat! Kill! Kill!" and "Wild Gals of the Naked West," before signing on to make "Behind the Valley of the Dolls."

The 1970 film, which was initially given an X rating upon release, was originally conceived as a sequel to 1967's "Valley of the Dolls," but became a parody of the film. "Russ & Roger" will be written by Chris Cluess ("MADtv") and directed by Michael Winterbottom.

For more, head to THR.

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Anna Binkovitz wants the world to know that women do not need someone else in bed to have a good time. 

In her spoken word poem, "Masturbation," Binkovitz reminds everyone that she can find pleasure -- all on her own. The Minnesota-native performed the poem at the Individual World Poetry Slam last year.  

Binkovitz describes a time after she had performed a poem loving blow jobs when a man told her "he wishes more women shared [her] attitude."

She reminds everyone that women's sex positivity is not in service to men. "So the reward of my struggle to finally enjoy sex after violence, after self-hate is instead of a man completely tuning me out he heard one word," she says. "The one that involves his body and listened for nothing else."

"As if when I come for a lover it is only something they can make me do," Binkovitz says, adding, "But let me tell you, when the tree of me falls in orgasm it does not matter if there is no one else there to hear it. I make a goddamn sound."

She follows up with an even stronger point, telling the crowd, "I am damn good in bed. That fact does not change just because you are not there to be good for."

Can we get an amen?

Head over to Button Poetry's YouTube or Kickstarter pages to learn more about them.

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Finland hosted the 20th edition of the Air Guitar World Championships last week, a contest that spotlights the most awesome invisible guitar playing.

This edition brought 17 contestants to a rain-slicked stage and the weather didn't seem to put a damper on the crazy acrobatics or righteous "guitar" solos. 

Kereel "Your Daddy" Blumenkrants was the first Russian ever to win the competition.

Check out the contestants' sick moves in the photos and video below.  

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Some artists get a kick out of painting. but Bart van Polanen Petel gets a punch.

Petel, a former student of boxer Joe Frasier, owns a boxing gym in Tilburg, Netherlands, that he has turned into an art studio. 

He starts by wrapping a canvas around a punching bag. Then, he dips his gloves into paint and punches until — voila! — he's got another knockout piece of art. 

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Reginald Dwayne Betts Jr. goes by the name Dwayne. But for the majority of the nine years he spent in prison, he gave himself the name Shahid. It means "the witness" in Arabic.

At 16, Betts pled guilty to carjacking in Virginia and was in prison until he was 24. For many years, cultivating his identity -- hard stuff for any teenager -- was a mostly solitary endeavor. Books, and later poetry, became his teacher, his classroom and his peer.

“I read anything I could find. Poetry makes you reflect. Joseph Brodsky once wrote: ‘I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages.’ That shit says everything that I would ever want to say about mass incarceration,” he told The Huffington Post in an interview last week.

In the decade since his release from prison, Betts, now 34, has published an award-winning memoir about coming of age in prison, written two books of poetry, received undergraduate and MFA degrees and is currently in his final year at Yale Law School.

His upcoming book of poetry, Bastards of the Reagan Era, will be released in October.

I don’t have any illusions that the penitentiary is going to help you, but you can get something out of it if you want to."

Learning has always been deeply important to Betts. He dreamed of playing point guard at Georgia Tech and becoming an engineer. He says numbers came easily to him and that as he grew, the two most important things to him were math and philosophy.

He started hanging out with a bad crew in his hometown of Suitland, Maryland and sneaking out of class at 16. At the time, he was taking a full load of challenging classes, including Physics, French 4 and AP U.S. History.

Everything changed on December 7, 1996. On a visit to the Springfield Mall in suburban Virginia about 20 miles from their hometown, Betts and a friend came across a man asleep in his car in the parking lot. They impulsively carjacked him and took off on what would prove to be one of the quickest roads to stalling one’s life as a teen.

At the time, carjacking in Virginia carried a maximum penalty of life in prison and the state had done away with parole. On December 8, one day after the carjacking, Betts stood before a judge and was charged with six felonies and nine years in prison.

The presiding judge had wise words for Betts, who recalled what he was told in a 2010 New Yorker article. The words are seared in his mind: “I don’t have any illusions that the penitentiary is going to help you, but you can get something out of it if you want to,” the judge said to the 16-year-old.

Due to lack of space for incoming juveniles, Betts was thrown into solitary confinement without a mattress, blanket or pillow. When he was pulled out 10 days later and moved to his cell block, Betts carried the only thing he had shown up with: a book by James Baldwin.

Betts poured himself into reading. He turned page after page of The Confessions of Nat Turner, Go Tell It on the Mountain and A Lesson Before Dying. He read George Orwell and every book by Charles Dickens. He inhaled classics like Of Mice and Men, The Grapes Of Wrath and The Jungle. He read the philosophy of Max Weber, Franz Fanon and C.L.R. James.

The first time he read William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice was by mistake. He was looking for a lesser-known philosophy book called Sophie’s World, but Sophie’s Choice ended up striking a profound chord within him. It wasn’t until someone slipped him a book of poetry that his purpose suddenly became clearer.

Over the course of his sentence, Betts served time in five different prisons. He was sent to solitary confinement three separate times. One of the only things he did was read. On one trip to "the hole," as he calls it, prisoners were allowed to bring a book with them. When they finished reading, they came up with a system for passing the books along.

“Someone would ask for it and you would either give it to the houseman -- the prisoner who is back there cleaning up and helping the guards -- or depending on where the person’s cell was, you could get it directly to them by lying on the ground and sliding it under your door into their door,” Betts said.

I had never thought about poetry as a way to communicate. I never thought about it as a way to talk about things other than love."

One day when Betts was 18, The Black Poets by Dudley Randall came sliding under his door in solitary. “I had read poetry before in school and I had written some for girls. I liked poetry. Or at least I liked the stuff I was writing to girls,” he said, chuckling.

“But I had never thought about poetry as a way to communicate. I never thought about it as a way to talk about things other than love,” he added. 

The Black Poets introduced Betts to famous African-American writers like Etheridge Knight (who had also spent time in prison), Robert Hayden, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka and Lucille Clifton. Clifton especially blew Betts’ mind with the sheer devastation in her writing.

“From that point on, I decided that I was going to be a poet. I had models and an understanding of what I wanted my writing to look like,” he said. Betts figured that he couldn’t train himself to be an engineer, but he could train himself to be a writer.

That’s what writers do. They pay witness to the world."

Changing his name was part of his reinvention. According to Betts, the prisoners who were most deeply engaged in thinking and talking about education were Muslims or members of the Nation of Islam -- and that most of them changed their names. “They had a desire to know more than what they walked into prison with. Knowledge was important,” he said.

As a teenager locked up, he looked for a way to identify himself. “In a way, this was like the 1960s. All of the young men were basically abandoning their birth names. Part of it was wanting to re-imagine who we were. And part of it was that people were becoming Muslim or joining the Nation of Islam," he explained. "I never ended up joining anything -- but I liked naming myself.”

He called himself Shahid. “I thought that was perfect. I was in a situation where I was seeing things that I never had any expectation of seeing. That’s what writers do. They pay witness to the world.”

By the time Betts was released from Coffeewood Correctional Center in 2005, he was 24-years-old and had already published two poems.

He received his high school diploma at 17 in prison; once he was released, he started community college. By this point, he already identified as a writer.

He attended some of the most prestigious writing workshops in the country -- including the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Workshop in Vermont and Cave Canem in New York.

While working as an intern at The Atlantic in 2007, he found out that he got his first book deal for A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison. He had a year to write it. His first book of poems, Shahid Reads His Own Palm, was accepted for publication that same year. 

Betts applied to the University of Maryland to finish his undergrad degree and simultaneously applied to the MFA writing program at Warren Wilson College. Both schools offered him full scholarships and he said yes to both.

It was nice to be in a space where the way you garnered recognition was really just based on what you had in your head.”

Working hard was the only option for Betts. In some ways, his drive was a direct result of his incarceration, but in other ways, it was a reflection of his love of learning. He wanted the classroom to define him more than the jail cell had.

“I only took classes that I liked. I had professors I respected and who I wanted to impress,” he said. “It was nice to be in a space where the way you garnered recognition was really just based on what you had in your head.”

Poetry has been his vehicle. “I think about myself as a poet because there’s a kind of freedom in it. I get to do more things at once. I like the brevity of it. I like the compactness of it,” he said.

Now everyone calls him Dwayne again. “But Shahid is still here,” he said. “It’s in that first book of poems, Shahid Reads His Own Palm. But Dwayne never left -- and I realized that my name has always been more than I understood it to be.” 

He chooses to use his father's name when he publishes anything -- Reginald Dwayne Betts.  He leaves out the Junior on purpose. He says it’s his way of acknowledging his father.

“We aren’t book publishing people,” Betts said. “By publishing under the name we share, it's a nod to what I've accomplished in my life.”

His upcoming book of poetry, Bastards of the Reagan Era, was recently described as “elegy after elegy” and “devastatingly beautiful” in a Publisher’s Weekly review. Betts says that he gave the book its title because it “captures all that was lost and all that disintegrated in the chaos of drug laws and violence in the 1980s.”

He also says it’s the story of what happens when a generation of men are displaced. “Displaced by crack cocaine, by prison, by the grave. These poems are about what happened to the children of my father’s generation and to a large degree what still happens to the children of my son’s generation. It is about loss and hurt,” he said.

He applied to law school, in part, to do the same thing he has done with his writing: to understand the predicament he ended up in as a teen. After being released from prison, he spoke on many panels about his experience and was appointed to the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention by President Obama in 2012. He is also a national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice.

But after a while, he realized that speaking about these issues didn’t allow him to have the kind of impact he wanted. “I wasn’t able to develop strategy, wasn’t about to represent people -- whether at the front end or at the back end in parole hearings,” he said. “I had little say in what kind of policy changes people pursued. And I felt that my value hinged too much on my experience.”

He got into law schools all around the country, including Harvard, Columbia and Georgetown. He chose Yale. Today he lives in New Haven, Connecticut with his wife and two sons.

There always just seems to be more possibilities for change, forgiveness and redemption."

Back in 2007, at the end of his summer internship at The Atlantic in Washington D.C., one of the managing editors invited Betts to lunch. The editor told Betts that he had been carjacked at gunpoint in his driveway. They spoke about both of their experiences -- true flip sides of a coin -- for a long while.

Looking back, Betts sees the meal as a symbol. “It reminded me that, one, you don’t really run away from harm that you’ve done. It’s always there,” he said. “But two, the world isn’t as bad as it seems. I imagine that my victim will probably never see me. In some vicarious way, maybe I got to be a stand-in for him. There always just seems to be more possibilities for change, forgiveness and redemption.”

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Comedy group Garlic Jackson introduces you to an entirely new clubbing experience. It's literally literary. (Read: Books.)

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Ellen Degeneres just reached a new level of awesome. The comedian and talk show host teamed up with Gap to launch GapKids x ED, which is described on the company's site as "a collaboration dedicated to supporting girls just as they are, whether they skateboard or dance, wear dresses or jeans, build forts or paint rainbows, or everything in between. We encourage girls everywhere to take pride in what makes them unique."

The clothing line includes fun T-shirts with empowering messages, comfy pants, dresses and fierce jackets, as well as accessories like hats, bags and decorative patches. An ad campaign features “inspiring real-life girls” like the Pink Helmet Posse skateboarders, a professional drummer and a 9-year-old prosthetic hand engineer.

"We focus so much on our differences, and that is creating a lot of chaos and negativity and bullying in the world," Degeneres says in a promotional video. "And I think that if we focus on what we all have in common which is ‘we all just want to be happy’ that would be a lot better."

In an interview with British Vogue, Ellen spoke about the message behind the clothing collection. "I know from my own experience that nothing makes you feel better than being who you are and celebrating what makes you unique," she said, adding, "I think if we shine a light on real girls doing incredible things, that'll encourage other girls and boys to do incredible things, and that'll encourage even more people to do incredible things, and eventually the world will be a more incredibler place."

Right on!

H/T The Advocate

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Getting a tattoo can be a monumental undertaking. It is permanent, after all.

So imagine having ink done without having any choice in the design or location.

Elite Daily's "Tattoo Roulette" features people playing Plinko, a game from "The Price is Right," to determine the cheesy tattoo they will bear -- and where.

An Elite Daily spokeswoman assured The Huffington Post that this is all on the level. Of the 12 people selected to play the game from a casting call on Craigslist and Facebook, only five backed out, she said.

Watch above to see who gets the Donald Trump hair tramp stamp ... forever.

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America needs more symbols memorializing slavery and John Cummings, a white southerner, has helped to make that happen.  

He's opened a museum at the Whitney Plantation, the first and only museum in the country dedicated solely to slavery.  The Atlantic spoke with Cummings and produced a short video about his involvement with the museum and the stories it highlights. 

“This isn’t black history we’re talking about, this is our national history. It's my history, it's your history,” Cummings told The Atlantic. "I would try my best to present the facts of slavery to all of the people I could find so that everyone would understand how strong the deck was stacked against the Africans here." 

Cummings spent about 16 years and more than $8 million on the project. He opened the museum last December with Ibrahima Seck, the museum's director of research. In the video, Cummings admitted that he initially bought the plantation thinking of it only as an investment. He said that, like many white people, he was "living in ignorance" when it came to slavery.

"You got two sides, and blacks are screaming prejudice to the white side and the white side is looking and saying 'Why don’t they get over it? Why can’t they get over it?'" Cummings said. "And the blacks don’t understand that the whites don’t know what the “it” is. We’re trying somehow, here, to define what the 'it' is."

Learn more about the plantation and its history at The Atlantic.

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“Green Eggs and Ham” has never been so melodramatic.

In this video, be prepared to be taken on an emotional roller coaster ride as actor Ray Stevenson passionately recites the Dr. Seuss classic, going from enraged to creepy to effusively grateful in under two minutes.

You’ll be terrified, you’ll be moved, you’ll feel all kinds of confused.

Stevenson, who starred in “Thor” and “Divergent,” is currently promoting his latest film, “The Transporter: Refueled.” The movie will be released on Sep. 4.

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The cover of Susan Herbert's new book features a pretty familiar scene -- a woman with a blue and gold turban is peering over her shoulder, a single pearl earring catching the light otherwise swallowed by a black backdrop. You know the painting. 

Except, wait. Herbert's painted woman isn't a woman. This "Girl with a Pearl Earring" has whiskers and fur and the marked complexion of an orange tabby.

That's because she's a cat. And this is Cats Galore.

What can be said of Cats Galore, described as "a compendium of cultured cats," that hasn't already been said before? In it, Herbert continues her penchant for unabashedly forcing cats into art history, replacing the people in Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" and Diego Velázquez's "Las Meninas" with, yeah, kittehs. Imagine an I Can Has Cheezburger? for the artsy set, that just never, ever ends.

It sounds like a hilarious construct, but the results are often -- even more comically -- fairly serious. Herbert barely alters her style as she recreates scenes from Vermeer and Manet, blurring the lines between Baroque and Impressionist painting because... well... who's really noticing the aesthetic when there's a cat acting out the wry smile of "Mona Lisa"?

From the cover of Tutankhamun's coffin to, like, every painting ever created by Renoir, Herbert is leaving no prisoners. She even reenvisioned John Everett Millais' "Ophelia." All we can say is: Susan, your devotion to feline-modified art history is amazing. May you never run out of obscure paintings (or, in the case of Cats Galore, random scenes from famous plays and movies). 

Cats Galore is available through Thames & Hudson.

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"It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population," Hillary Clinton said in a criminal justice speech in April 2015. "The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago despite the fact that crime is at historic lows."

When discussing the contemporary state of the prison industrial complex in America, the numbers are frightening. The personal stories, however, are far more horrific. In the month of July alone, at least five black women were found dead in jail. There are numerous tales of grisly murders, suicides, rapes, beatings, and prisoners being denied medication and proper medical treatment, dying as a result. Each story is more chilling than the last. 

Since 2008, editor and curator Pete Brook has cultivated and written about the various images that capture the brutal realities of American prisons. In 2013, he began touring the images he'd acquired in the form of an exhibition titled "Prison Obscura." 

Brook's goal is simple yet staggeringly ambitious: open the eyes of the American public to the atrocities that occur behind prison walls. "No society in the history of mankind has incarcerated so many of its citizens than the U.S. today, now," Brook said to The Huffington Post. "We need to disassemble the notion that prisoners are different. They are us and prisons are ours. It might not seem like prisons are part of our society, but they are. So we need to be conscientious consumers of images."

For his exhibition, Brook collected together images of various origins and perspectives. Josh Begley's "Facility 492," from his Prison Map series, featured on top, offers a bird's eye view of a prison facility, with all the human struggle packed inside it abstracted into geometric tranquility. Then there's the anonymous untitled photo above, which presents a stark, close-up image of a singular moment inside a facility that hints at the immense pain housed inside prison walls. An inmate cowers in the corner of his cell, as the viewer hovers over, almost as if playing the aggressor. Some of Brook's selected images are also snapped by prisoners themselves, allowing inmates to reclaim agency over their personal narratives and the way their experiences are archived and dispersed. 

Brook is aware of what's at stake in his photographic endeavor, as well as the dangers and pitfalls that too often accompany the medium. "I want to point out that photography is not a neutral agent," Brook clarified. "Photography has, at times, played its role in demonizing prisoners and perpetuating negative stereotypes. I wanted to consider how the medium has dealt with closed systems like prisons. We think photography is revelatory, but images can only be made where cameras exist."

"If cameras are in prisons, who operates them? To see is to wield power. I want to ask gallery goers not only to consider the images seen in 'Prison Obscura,' but also consider the images they never see; consider the images that are never made. What happens when there is no witness?" --Pete Brook

Through the selected photographs, Brook hopes to collage a complex portrait of the prison industrial complex today, taking into account the overwhelming inequality, dread, suffering and occasional moments of hope. His exhibition does not have one single message to convey. The photographs are not all hopeful, nor grim. Some depict dark realities, others fantastical means of escape. Many simply capture and convey the landscape and architecture. 

Overall, Brook hopes to communicate, through the power of the image, that prisons are not just representative of the outskirts of America, rather they are emblematic of American society as a whole. "The prison crisis is symptomatic of a society that isn’t helping out its most marginalized, economically disadvantaged communities," Brook explained. "Prisons are the result of fear, vengeance and division, they are not of common-understanding, community or unity. I want audiences to understand that prisons are the result of decisions, policies and laws. It is a system that has been man-made. It can be unmade by us. If so, we’ll all be better off."

If there's one overarching idea Brook hopes to communicate to viewers, it's "the brutal size of the prison industrial complex," he concluded. "I hope the show gives people the opportunity to hear just a few concentrated stories of the millions shuttered in lock-ups. I hope the different types of images shift perceptions of who prisoners are ... Let’s get informed and discuss the issues at the dinner table. Think about this stuff at the ballot box."

"Prison Obscura" is presented by Haverford College’s John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities with support from the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. The exhibit will run from Sept. 10-24 at the Duderstadt Center Gallery, University of Michigan. 

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Good writing is like running water; it’s easy to take for granted, but when it’s not present, you really miss it. These days, however, it feels like we're mostly taking it for granted.

Leave it to 826 Valencia, the original chapter of the national nonprofit founded by Dave Eggers to promote writing skills, to bring sexy back to the under-appreciated art of putting words on the page. After all, they’re the brilliant people behind those quirky storefronts that double as homes for writing workshops and classes, like San Francisco’s Pirate Supply Store.

On Aug. 26, the organization asked its Instagram and Twitter followers to share posts about what writing meant to them, with #whywritingmatters. The responses powerfully captured the myriad ways in which writing can elevate our lives.

 "It was great to see how writing has touched the lives of so many people with all sorts of different paths in life, and was a powerful reminder of why we do this work," Molly Parent, programs and communications manager for 826 Valencia, explained in an email to The Huffington Post, "to make sure that all students are given the chance and the skills to express themselves and to make their voice heard." 

 At a time when our educational system seems to be geared toward promoting the advantages offered by STEM fields, the arts and humanities are too often deemed frivolous. The personal stories and testimonials shared for #whywritingmatters show they’re anything but: writing skills can be a pathway into a great career, a way to profoundly touch other people’s lives and a real tool to effect change in the world.

Meanwhile, 826 Valencia will be expanding soon to a second San Francisco location in the historically underprivileged Tenderloin district. "We're excited to be ... bringing our services where they're greatly needed," said Parent.

If you're interested in helping kids strengthen their writing skills and find confidence in their self-expression, check out volunteering opportunities with 826 Valencia. 

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Boy meets girl. Girl thinks boy is great, if distant. Boy and girl spend one fantastic day together, cutting class, running around on the beach, telling stories. It’s the makings of a cute, John Green-like love story, but there’s a supernatural twist: Boy isn’t “boy” at all, but a person who, upon waking each morning, occupies a different body, a different gender, a different race.

This is the premise of author and children’s book editor David Levithan’s Another Day, which released earlier this month as a follow-up to his 2012 novel, Every Day. In both stories, a teenage couple, Rhiannon and A, deal with complications a little less commonplace than driver’s licenses and prom dates. When A wakes up in the body of Rhiannon’s slouchy beau, the two hit it off, but A warns her that things might not be the same tomorrow. Transported into the body of a friendly Asian girl, A visits Rhiannon again, under the guise of a new student -- and again, they forge a connection. While Every Day tells the star-crossed love story from A's point of view, Another Day shares Rhiannon's thoughts.

The story was new territory for Levithan, who often writes about LGBT issues in his fiction, but has never confronted gender fluidity so directly. In an interview with The Huffington Post, he explained what motivated him to write a young adult book that handled sex, sexuality and identity as delicately as many literary fiction writers do.

“I wanted to ask the questions that are relevant to gender -- about how much is a construction and how much is inherent,” Levithan said. In so doing, he crafted a story not unlike Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, or, more recently, Anne Garreta’s genderless language experiment, Sphinx. Of course, the language and the story are aimed at young readers -- and that’s part of what makes it so powerful.

When asked how sex and sexuality should be handled in books for young readers, Levithan said simply, “I think they should be handled with the same truth that we try to bring to any subject.” He cites E. Lockhart, Ruby Oliver and Lauren Myracle as other YA authors who tackle sexuality with the honesty it requires.

“At first I thought [the character] A would focus on the differences between the bodies and lives that A inhabits,” Levithan said. “But as I wrote, I realized that A would live by the commonality instead -- and because of that would be able to observe how ridiculous so many of our norms and prejudices are.”

Though Levithan believes writing fiction that clearly works against existing gender norms can be accomplished in a number of ways, he chose to employ a supernatural element -- A’s body-hopping affliction -- to highlight the possibilities for how sexuality can be manifested. 

“I think the supernatural element makes it much easier for readers to relate, or at least for readers who’d otherwise be vexed by the notion of genderqueerness to understand it more.”

Ultimately, though, Levithan says, “I just wanted to investigate what it would be like to be someone who wasn’t defined by the body they were in.”

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Warning: These cross-stitches may not be suitable for work. 

There's a certain sheen coating the actors and scenes in 21st century pornography that real life just doesn't have. Skin glistens but doesn't drip with sweat; all attention is on the viewer. This aesthetic has persisted in spite of waves of backlash, including Rashida Jones's documentary "Hot Girls Wanted," which scrutinized the dreams promised to both actresses and viewers involved with the amateur porn industry.

Jones is decidedly not anti-porn, but what she does take issue with is our sexualization of young girls, saying in an interview with Yahoo, "It’s cast, it’s lit, it’s scripted; and most of the young girls who go into amateur porn are very young, which makes it seem like they might just be the girl next door."

Jones may be one of the most public figures to speak so actively against the shiny and potentially detrimental nature of porn, but plenty of artists use the industry as inspiration for their work. One such artist: Leah Emery, whose needlework offers a stark juxtaposition to the slick bodies from porn scenes she recreates.

"Despite [sex] being such a basic human function," Emery worries that we're not able to explore sex and intimacy "with candor." But by taking a scene that would normally be viewed in private and making it a public image -- created using a traditional craft -- she hopes the conversation can be destigmatized.

"To view the work is an open invitation for the viewer to explore their own gut reaction," Emery said in an interview with The Huffington Post.

Plus, her work takes a historically functional, feminine craft and adds a bit of a kick to it. Emery, a self-proclaimed fidgiter, enjoys mediums that allow her to work with her hands: cooking, carpentry and needlework. She got the idea to create more explicit stitched scenes when she started receiving pornographic spam while working as a video game developer. 

"It was such a perfectly chaotic fit," she said, noting that the result reflected her own cringe-inducing response to being sent unsolicited pornography. "It's expanded over the last several years into a fully 'fleshed out' research project that pushes me to try to probe the limits of [...] sexual expression."

View Leah Emery's cross-stitched scenes below.

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel has unveiled an 1,800-year-old sarcophagus that workers found at a building site and initially tried to conceal.

The Antiquities Authority called the sarcophagus, which was shown to media Thursday, "one of the most important and beautiful" ever found in Israel.

 The two-ton limestone coffin features a life-size carving of a human figure wearing a toga on the lid and designs around the sides, including a Medusa head. Archaeologist Gaby Mazor says the piece dates back to the 3rd century and was likely commissioned by a wealthy Roman family.

Antiquities Authority Spokeswoman Yoli Shwartz says it was damaged when workers unearthed it at a construction site. Contractors then hid the piece, fearing it would force them to halt work. She said legal action would be taken.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- An educational video game has been edited following a social media backlash over a scene depicting slaves being packed into a ship.

The creators of "Playing History: Slave Trade" removed a level Monday which featured black slave characters being dropped into a ship similar to the video game "Tetris."

"Apologies to people who were offended by us using game mechanics to underline the point of how inhumane slavery was," read a statement posted on the game's page on Steam, an online store. "The goal was to enlighten and educate people -- not to get sidetracked discussing a small 15-second part of the game."

The scene was also removed from the official trailer for the title, which was originally released by Copenhagen-based developer Serious Games Interactive in 2013.

The game captured attention last week when it went on sale on Steam and was promptly chastised on social media for trivializing slavery with the stacking segment. Serious Games founder Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen took to Twitter to defend "Slave Trade" against the controversy before deleting his account Tuesday. He could not be immediately reached for comment.

"Slave Trade," which is intended to teach children ages 11 to 14 about slavery in the 18th century, casts players for most of the game as a young slave steward named Putij, who serves on a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

While the "Tetris"-like slave-stacking level has been excised from the game, a talking mouse character who guides players still says at one point: "Slave traders didn't look upon slaves as people but as a product. They therefore stacked the slaves on top of each other to get as many as possible shipped."

Other titles in the Serious Games' "Playing History" series include "Playing History: Vikings" and "Playing History: The Plague."

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Some strange things are happening in the Pacific Ocean. 

First, for a short period over the weekend, three -- yes, three -- powerful Category 4 hurricanes swirled simultaneously -- a meteorological first of its kind. 

Kilo, Ignacio and Jimena each had maximum sustained winds of more than 135 mph.

Now, the trio has been joined by a fourth storm, tropical depression Fourteen-E, causing weather maps and satellite images of the storms to draw comparisons to Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting.

As if that wasn't enough for the world's weather enthusiasts, one of the Pacific's storms -- Hurricane Kilo -- made the rare transformation from a hurricane to a typhoon when it crossed the international date line on Tuesday.

Hurricane, typhoon and cyclone are regional names for the same tropical weather pattern, but storms don't often last long enough to travel between regions.

Now-Typhoon Kilo has been swirling since Aug. 20 and is actually forecast to strengthen over the next several days. If that happens, it could become the longest-lived tropical cyclone this year. (The record for the longest belongs to 1994's Hurricane John, which then became a typhoon. It lasted 31 days and also crossed the dateline.)

According to meteorologists, this has been a very active hurricane season because of El Niño, which occurs when the waters of the Pacific become exceptionally warm and distort weather patterns worldwide.   

On Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization warned that the current El Niño could be one of the strongest on record. Moreover, this year's event is still strengthening, with meteorologists expecting it to peak by the end of the year.

While Hawaii has been in the middle of these storms, it has managed to avoid a direct hit so far. The Aloha State is just halfway through the hurricane season, however, and Katherine Aumer, a psychology teacher at Hawai‘i Pacific University, warns the repeated battering of storms can lead to a condition she calls "hurricane fatigue syndrome." 

“There’s a lot of stress and anxiety that can go along with receiving a lot of warnings for hurricanes," she told Hawaii Public Radio, "especially if those hurricanes actually pan out." 

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