Regina King believes that the many different textures and styles of black women's hair is truly phenomenal. 

The Emmy Award-winning actress made this declaration in the latest episode of "The Hair Tales," an online show where successful black women in Hollywood share their hair stories. 

The show was created by cultural critic Michaela Angela Davis who believes there is a story in every curl, coil and kink -- so she invited King to share her own story in the show's final episode in the series. Watch it below:

In the video, which has previously featured stars like Mara Brock Akil and Tasha Smith, King discusses her breakout role on the NBC show "227." She said joining the sitcom in the late '80s marked the first time she applied a relaxer to her hair to help make it straight. 

"When I started '227' is when I got my first relaxer. It burned," King admitted. "My scalp didn't like me liking the relaxer." 

King reflects on that moment and how getting a relaxer at such a young age was part of a popular trend among black women, at the time. She went on to question the cultural influences imposed on her and to talk about how her roles in the 1991 cult classic "Boyz In The Hood" and the 1993 film "Poetic Justice" also marked defining moments for her and her hair journey. King starred in both films as separate characters who rocked beautiful brown braids. 

"[They] represented so many girls I knew in high school," King said. "The braids represented that regular beautiful black girl."  

King credits black women for creating styles in ways she says has set the bar high for all women of all races. Through it all, she says hair among women, regardless of style, will always hold special meaning. 

"It all starts with your hair," King said. "A lot of your confidence lies in your tresses." 

Davis said the video was inspired by King's role as Shalika in "Boyz In The Hood" and it is dedicated to every “'regular beautiful black girl' that ever was and always will be," she told The Huffington Post.

To mark the closing episode of her premiere series, Davis also wanted to celebrate King for her outstanding portrayals over the years and highlight the power she believes King's work represents. 

"For decades, Regina has been bringing black girl realness to a Hollywood hostile to that notion," Davis said. "From a precocious little girl on the block, to a ballers wife, to a complex American Muslim, we’ve seen her bring an easy beauty and honesty to every rich and 'regular' character she’s ever embodied."

"We trust her, completely," Davis added. "She is that beautiful black girl we all know. She is a great American actress."

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Since "Broad City" first aired on Comedy Central in early 2014, you may have wondered if the actors smoke as much weed on set as the characters do on screen. Last year (on 4/20, of course), Digg even made an almost two-minute video featuring short snippets of all the pot that had been featured on the show up to that point.

But according to one of the actors, smoking weed while on the job is a habit only the characters share.

"That's the only time I've ever been high on camera," comedian Hannibal Buress told The Huffington Post, referring to an episode of "Broad City" from the show's first season. The scene Buress is talking about comes from the third episode of the series, "Working Girls," where Ilana (Ilana Glazer) takes on a dog-walking gig with middling success. Early on, Buress essentially realized weed and the show didn't actually go as perfectly together as fans would assume.

The conversation with Buress was part of promotion for the home entertainment release of "Daddy's Home," in which Buress stars alongside Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. HuffPost previously shared an exclusive deleted scene from the movie.

Read on if you mariwanna get more details about that time Buress smoked weed before a "Broad City" scene.

Here's the moment where Buress was "high on camera."

The comedian's character, Lincoln, shows up around the 35-second mark screaming, "Oh, my God!"

Then, he becomes fascinated with petting dogs and gives them nicknames like "Dumbface."

According to Buress, smoking "diminished" his acting abilities.

Buress seems to have mentioned this poticular moment only once before. During a Reddit AMA in March 2014, he said, "I was high for one episode. My acting skills were diminished." At the time, Buress didn't answer follow-up questions about which episode he was referring to. Aside from revealing the scene to HuffPost, Buress also elaborated on how his acting suffered.

"The scene required a lot of different things for me to do," he said. To accomplish his part, he had to wait a ways away from where characters Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) and Ilana were sitting and clock the moment he was supposed to run into the scene. Then once on camera, he had to get excited about the dogs, pet the dogs, pull out his phone and deliver various lines.

"I was stoned, so I was messing that up, man," said Buress. "It was not working out, so that was the first time I ever smoked and went on camera and the last time."

Buress told High Times in 2015 that smoking weed is not typically a part of his creative process, but he has occasionally written jokes while high. "I don’t like it that much when I’m out and about; I like smoking at home," Buress said to the magazine. "I like it to be one of the last things I do that day."

Despite the weed culture of the show, the other actors don't smoke before shooting scenes.

"Nobody smokes there," Buress said with a laugh while on the phone with HuffPost. "I've been on other sets where people smoke or whatever, but no, nobody [smokes weed on the 'Broad City' set]."

Buress said that the cast members of "Broad City" are too focused to be smoking weed before filming. He also clarified that he actually smoked at his own place before the scene, rather than doing so on the actual set. 

You can likely get a look at the real-life apartment where Buress smoked in his excellent episode of "High Maintenance," where he played a comedian who becomes depressed after an audience member pulls out a gun and shoots. Parts of the episode were filmed in Buress' apartment at the time and debuted around the same period as the first season of "Broad City."

The actors didn't even need the weed featured in a recent rat-themed episode because the hired rodent was a "chill-ass, regular professional rat."

In the Season 3 episode "Rat Pack," Ilana's apartment is infested with rats. Since she can't afford the extermination bill, she throws a party at her apartment and offers various types of weed to guests for a fee. The opening of the episode shows a rat sneaking up on her during various day-to-day activities, including hooking up with Lincoln, which causes the two characters to scream.

Buress said that, in real life, that rat wasn't actually scary to work with. "It's a trained rat," Buress said with a laugh. "It's not a rat that'd destroy your household. I mean, it's a pet almost." According to Buress, the rat would complete its role in the scene and then get out of the way, just like a typical actor.

"It was fine, man," Buress said. "It was just a chill-ass, regular professional rat."

"Broad City" airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EST on Comedy Central. And "Daddy's Home" is now available on Blu-ray and Digital HD. 

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Could this be a new chapter in the way we interact with one another?

Shaheryar Malik has left stacks of books from his own library at popular destinations all over New York City. He doesn't stick around to see if anyone takes one of his books, nor does he re-visit his stacks. Instead he leaves a bookmark with his email address printed on it inside each book, in the hopes that he'll hear back from whomever decided to pick that book up.

“If I stuck around or revisited the stacks then it would be very close to how we live 'digitally,'” Malik told The Huffington Post. “Nowadays we can go back and look at something we posted whenever we want. We can just hang around on social networks for hours [watching a post].”

So, instead he decided to leave the books to “live their own lives.”

“I felt much calmer, relaxed and yet more excited when I walked away from them,” he said.

Malik’s novel idea, called The Reading Project, started last spring when he was on a walk near Brooklyn Bridge and felt the impulse to take a selfie. But right before he snapped the photo, he realized something:

“I've been on that bridge so many times and every time everyone takes the same picture and does the same thing. I wanted to try something different.”

So, instead of sharing yet another selfie of someone on The Brooklyn Bridge, he decided to share something physical instead of digital.

He went to his home library, selected a variety of titles and left a stack on New York’s iconic bridge.

Malik says he’s left eight stacks through out the city at locations like Central Park and Grand Central Station, and aside from one small stack, each consisted of about 45 to 55 books, which he typically transports from his home by car and then from the car with a trolley.  

Each stack has a note that reads: "Take a book. Any book. When you finish, email the artist.”

When someone sends him an email, Malik asks the person which book they took and where they live. 

He's received about 70 emails from over 30 countries around the globe.

“Not all the books have been read which means this could keep going,” said Malik. “That's one of the things that I really love about this project -- it may never end.” 

Malik has given away all of his books, except for three that he's currently reading. When he's finished with those, he'll keep them on his bookshelf until he’s accumulated about 40 or 50 more to create a new stack. He says he plans to leave stacks outside of New York City and mentions Malaysia and Brazil as two places he has in mind.

“Words in a book sitting on my shelf are meaningless and lifeless to me until they are read again,” he said. “The people who've taken part in the project are now connected to me in this weird [but good] way. I've never seen or met them, but I know what they have read and vice versa. That's pretty personal. Strange thing is that I've given a total stranger a part of me and yet, I still have it.”

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Photographer Eva Szombat photographs happy people. Or, rather, people doing what makes them happy. But don't expect a stream of stock photos full of people passively basking in the sunlight, cuddling in bed or intently smelling a cup of coffee.

With her series "Practitioners," Szombat visualizes the reality that making yourself happy isn't just a matter of repeating your mantra, it involves some serious hard work -- and oftentimes, some wonderfully unorthodox methods. Szombat shared a quote from her friend in an email to The Huffington Post: "Happiness is like math, you have to learn it."

The Hungarian artist's diverse array of subjects, including friends and strangers, explores the infinite ways people make their days worth living, whether overcoming some severe personal trauma or simply the banality of everyday life. For example, a woman named Mária surrounds herself with frogs, from stuffed animals to figurines to the shower cap atop her head. Although she'd long had a soft spot for the amphibian creatures, Mária's passion strengthened after she was diagnosed with cancer, and began depending on her collectibles for the strength to survive. In her photo, she, appropriately clad in a frog-covered tee, smiles away from the camera, alluding to the cosmic significance of her trove of green tchotchkes. 

Another one of Szombat's subjects is Erika, whose obsession involves intricately twisted balloon sculptures. In one photograph, Erika's daughter, Noncsi, lies before a cluster of buoyant characters floating off a bed, her arms outspread to welcome them. 

"When I met Erika, she was a delightful woman who twisted incredible balloon-sculptures for an event," Szombat explained. "I asked her to participate in my happiness project. She was surprised, but said yes." Two years prior, Erika and her husband lost their 5-year-old son, Norbika, and Erika subsequently suffered from deep depression. She decided to purchase a balloon twisting set for her 3-year-old daughter, who loved balloons. "But Erika ended up enjoying the twisting, and she was able to divert her thoughts and shake off her profound sadness. She left her job and is making a living off balloons since."

Other subjects include Gergő, who loves to play basketball despite the fact that he was born with open neural tube defects that prevent him from walking. There's also Zoli, who goes by the DJ alias Galactic Jackson, and supplements his job at a Budapest luxury hotel by collecting synthesizers and LPs, having amassed the largest collection of synths in Hungary. 

The wide range of subjects speak to the singular nature of happiness, and that one person's inspirational quote is another person's obscure toy collection. There's no right answer, no path to the happy place too conventional or taboo. Some of Szombat's photos depict monumental changes such as gender confirmation surgery, while others illuminate the small and strange pleasures that get you through the day, revealing the importance of both grand gestures as well as the tiny daily victories in the search for inner wellness. 

The series, Szombat believes, also suggests that the happiest people are those who've had to fight for their happiness, to figure out from scratch what happy means to them. "I think that people who've had everything aren't actually so happy. They always want more," the artist explained to Vice.

"Making this project made me realize that people who've had problems tend to appreciate life a lot more. I wanted to show that you don't have to think, 'What should I have?' Or, 'I want more of this.' The people in 'Practitioners' have something in common in that they think differently about happiness. They know it's about appreciating the little things. I really appreciate these people; they give me a lot of inspiration, and I want them to inspire others too."

See the smiling faces of Szombat's "Practitioners" below, doing what they do best, whether hugging inflatable alligators, collecting rare synthesizers, or getting a puppy. 

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Australia, which has accepted thousands of migrants from Afghanistan in recent years, is pressing ahead with a controversial plan to use a movie to persuade others from seeking refuge.

Australia’s Immigration Department has commissioned a television movie that shows the hardships of Afghans attempting to reach Australia. The film aims to deter potential migrants by showing them difficulties they may experience during the journey.

The movie, called "Journey," was filmed in Afghanistan, Malaysia and Indonesia. It follows a group of Afghan asylum-seekers as they encounter smugglers, dangerous waters and inhumane detention conditions while trying to reach Australia.

The film was shown in Afghanistan for the first time on Friday. It had previously been screened in Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran, and will be shown in a number of languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and Urdu.  

Afghans make up the largest percentage of asylum-seekers arriving in Australia by boat. According to data published by Australia’s Parliament, many Afghans’ asylum application is approved. More than 7,200 Afghans resettled in Australia from 2008 to 2013.

Australia in recent years has tightened asylum policies to discourage migrants. The government also has distributed ads carrying harsh warnings.

The Australian Department of Immigration has argued that “telemovies are a proven way to reach and influence the target audience.”

But the idea has received fierce criticism. The president of The Refugee Council of Australia, Phil Glendenning, said last year, after the film was announced: “I don't think the government understands why people are on the move if they think a TV drama will be a deterrent.”

The project has also been criticized for its cost. The Age reports that the department paid more than $4 million to have the movie produced, and an additional $1.6 million to have it promoted and advertised.

Put It Out Pictures, the production company behind "Journey," said on its website that the film “aimed to educate and inform audiences in source countries about the futility of investing in people smugglers, the perils of the trip, and the hard line policies that await them if they do reach Australian waters.”

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How do you capture the mood of America?

In the age of #OscarsSoWhite and #MakeAmericaGreatAgain, the answer is: head to Twitter. In all its forms, social media is an omnipresent and ever-accessible gauge of human emotions. Juan Felipe Herrera, however, would like to suggest a barometer cozier in the 18th century than the 21st. And that is a very long, crowdsourced poem.

You might not know his name, but Herrera, the writer of poems like "Half-Mexican" and "Poem by Poem," is the current poet laureate of the United States. At 67 years old, his official title includes the words "Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress," but could easily be supplanted by "Chief Resident of the Poetry's-Not-Dead Camp."

He's not singlehandedly keeping the genre alive, but he's getting modestly paid -- a $35,000-stipend plus $5,000 in travel expenses, privately funded through a gift from the estate of philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington -- to help out. He's following in the footsteps of Robert Frost and Gwendolyn Brooks, all laureates tasked with a broad swath of duties (lecturing, reading and welcoming new writers to the LoC) all the while hypothetically having time to work on their projects. "Several recent poets laureate have undertaken large-scale poetry projects designed to raise awareness and appreciation of poetry on a national level," the LoC writes in its FAQ. But "there is no such requirement."

Herrera has one, housed on a portion of the library's website dubbed "La Casa de Colores," which he describes as "a house for all voices." There, each month, he welcomes everyone and anyone to contribute to "La Familia," a crowdsourced catalogue of words divided into themes like "peace," "migrants" and "veterans." You need only be at least 13 years old and willing to surrender your original work (a maximum of 200 words) to the whims of public domain, and voila, you're part of the family.

The resulting epic poem spans languages, topics, structures, tones; a stream of consciousness that echoes the vast yet connected fears and joys of people in America. Of course, like any comments section or open forum, Herrera's poem is vulnerable to the anger we bring to public places; the frustration we have with politicians and policies. The laureate doesn't select all the words submitted for inclusion in "La Familia," and perhaps that is why the crowdsourced work hews more abstractly woeful than furious.

"Hurry with your luggage," someone wrote. "For nothing, they will shoot the center of your forehead. What is crammed so crucial?"

"A poem must have half a cup of humanity in it,” Herrera, the child of Mexican migrant farmworkers, told the California Sunday Magazine. “If you’re just attacking, if that’s all it is, you’ve killed the poem. We want the roots of the tree that was chopped and singed and burned. We want your story, not just your rage. We want to get ahold of this thing.”

Peace is freedom from worry and fear,
knowing I won't lose the things I hold dear.
That I may live in a calm, orderly way,
peace is the blessing for which I pray.

A future for those with hungry pasts.
Sunken eyes and blank stares.
They can look to the sun and accept its warmth.
Smile and they will never have their souls dies again.
Speak and they will do so with one heart.

When pistols become plowshares we will plant gardens
that feed the world.
The hungry will flourish and become leaders
of this brave, new planet.

Six poets under a grey sky in Harlem
will contemplate peace
and change a tiny corner of the world.

Outlaw ownership and share everything
(said the poets).
For without masters there are no slaves.
Our currency is love and seeds.

-From "Let me tell you what peace can bring" -- Theme for December 15, 2015 - January 14, 2016

Herrera is not the first to embark on a crowdsourced poem. The tradition of communal writing is varied, from David Lehman to apps like HaikuJAM and hashtags like #CSPoetry. As the "the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans," part of the laureate's job description, a crowdsourced poem aimed at capturing the voice of a nation just seems apt.

Like Percey Shelley said, poets "measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age."

Read "La Familia" in its entirety, and contribute to the epic if you wish.

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For her "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" audition, Daisy Ridley mastered one of Rey's most difficult scenes: Kylo Ren's interrogation on Starkiller Base. The evil dictator uses Jedi mind-reading tactics in an attempt to retrieve information about the map that discloses Luke Skywalker's whereabouts, but it turns out the Force is too strong with Rey for him to succeed. 

An excerpt of Ridley's audition is included in the hourlong documentary about the making of "The Force Awakens," which is part of the special features included on the forthcoming DVD/Blu-ray. BuzzFeed has a clip from the doc that includes the actress' screen test.

J.J. Abrams was seeking a newcomer who could capture Rey as "vulnerable and tough, sweet and terrified." It wasn't an easy search, but then along came Ridley. See for yourself below.

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As a kid, artist Austin English was surrounded by comic books and modern art. "Some people have divisions in their mind between art and comics," English explained in an interview with The Huffington Post, "but I always had them in my mind as equal -- they were pictures and books."

In his new graphic novel Gulag Casual, English presents the glorious aftermath of a lifetime of artistic cross-pollination. Featuring work made between 2010 and 2015, the unorthodox comic compilation eschews sharp lines and mythical narrative in favor of protean, mangled figures that mutate from one frame to the next, engaged in narratives that are just as unstable. 

Throughout his childhood, English's mom collected art monographs and had images by Matisse, Kandinsky, Hopper and Miro hung around the house. While Kandinsky's abstract color constellations and Hopper's stark moments of loneliness might seem beyond the intellectual grasp of your average elementary schooler, English recalls feeling at home amidst the flood of carefully composed colors and shapes. "My mom would get art magazines and tear images out of them and hang them up around the house," English said. "She wasn’t precious about them, so they were really accessible. They just seemed like part of day to day life."

And then there was English's early fascination with comics, specifically, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi's "The Adventures of Tintin," about a relatable reporter whose research leads him to a variety of mysteries and misadventures. "I looked at them so much, I had them read to me before I could read," English said. The visuals are very classic Belgian cartooning -- clean line, no shading. They almost looks like little animation cells, they're so tightly drawn. They virtually read themselves to you; your mind interprets them as a really clear sentence. I would read through them over and over." 

Looking back, Tintin's crisp lines and Miro's spontaneous spurts of color seem to have become enmeshed in English's mind. Without the context to denote one art form as "high" and the other "low," English explored the space between, however gnarled. 

English has been drawing ever since he could remember, however, when he took his first drawing class his introductory year of high school he almost failed. Luckily, he quickly abandoned the notion of making art the right way instead of making it at all. "I was precocious -- even as an early teenager I felt like I could express [my]self in any way I wanted," he recounted. "Like, I don’t care about math, but I would still learn the correct way to do it. Art felt like the one thing you could just do however you wanted. Of course, it’s not as simple as that. You want to learn how the artists you respond to solve certain problems."

So English kept drawing. At the time, he loved comic books, but he couldn't see himself ever actually making one. "Comics seemed inaccessible," he said. "They were always professionally printed, on this glossy paper, in color. It was like seeing a movie." It wasn't until he discovered the underground world of zines that English saw a culture he could imagine himself in.

"Seeing people self-publish zines was really powerful," he said. "I was like, 'Oh, instead of approaching people and submitting my work for publication, I can just take it to a local copy shop and make it into a final product.'"

His junior year of high school, English embarked on his first comic endeavor, a biography of Thelonious Monk. He had been reading a book on the jazz composer and adapted the material into five issues of comic content. 

From the start, it was clear to English that his style diverted greatly from the classic comic book formula. The artist explained to me that the first rule of cartooning, to his understanding, is that the characters must look consistent from panel to panel, from beginning to end. When making his own images, though, English couldn't resist changing figures from one panel to the next, turning over the visual guidelines he'd just established. "The urge to break the rules is completely irresistible," he added. "When I draw the comic for a second time I want to make a larger stomach or bigger feet."

Following no principles but his own, English continued to create disorderly stories, yielding paneled images with the deformity of Francis Bacon, the sweet nastiness of Philip Guston, the aggressive instinct of Willem de Kooning, and the quick pace of a "South Park" episode. The drawings also allude heavily to outsider art or art brut, a favorite subject of English's, with their raw sense of urgency and ambivalence of rules. 

There is one protocol, however, that English adheres to, even if it too is arbitrary, by his own omission. Although many of his comics are created in different media -- including colored pencil, graphite, ink and collage, glue and cloth -- he would never switch medium within a single comic. "I do think one story should be told in a consistent medium," he said. "My work is arbitrary, but that’s one rule that I have for myself."

Gulag Casual is made up of five unrelated comics over the course of five years. Not too surprisingly, they don't quite stick to the standard comic tropes of superhero tales or noir mysteries, but rather, melting and slowly decomposing narratives loosely strung around a simple scenario, such as a disgusting room or his friend Perry. Each in its own materials, moving at its own speed, the comics are like stories just as an ambiguous stew is like meat. It's like the characters and plot have been cooked to the point of softness, fallen off the bone and mixed with flavors to the edge of recognition. 

Looking back on his oeuvre, English notices the way his work has changed over time -- not just from one story to the next, but even from panel to panel, left foot to right. "Comics, they take so long to do," he said. "They’re so intimate in this way. You see the artist’s way of making images change as the images go on. At the end of each story, I’d be working in a different way than I started, and carry that into the next. It’s like a map or a diary; you see the terrain changing. It feels really personal. You see someone’s attitude and relationship to their own art changing in this little condensed passage of pages."

Now, English feels no compulsion to choose between comics and art. "I feel more healthy as an artist and as a person trying to do both, not being exclusively married to one kind of making." Furthermore, the two fields balance each other out, each assuaging frustrating aspects of the other. While in the comic world the rules and culture can be restrictive, the art world sometimes experimental purely for the sake of it. 

Somewhere in the space between, English has found a rhythm that works for him. "We live in this moment where you can do what you want in any medium and it doesn’t mean you have to reject anything," he concludes. "When I was younger I felt this need to reject traditional comics. Now I see the value in them, the quality of having boundaries."

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Street artists are fighting back against Donald Trump.

Various murals, stencils and posters depicting the GOP front-runner in assorted unflattering ways -- comparing him to Adolf Hitler, Donald Duck and a piece of poop, among other things -- have appeared on walls and sidewalks across the world in recent weeks.

Below, we've rounded up some of the notable pieces of public art critiquing Trump, from the scathing to the scatological.

Seen any anti-Trump street art? Email the image, location and artist's name to lee.moran@huffingtonpost.com.

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther 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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"The first person to tell me I was gang-raped was a therapist, seven years after the fact."

That's how New York Times bestselling author Jessica Knoll begins her riveting essay "What I Know," published in the March 29 edition of Lenny Letter. Knoll describes how her 2015 book Luckiest Girl Alive gave her the courage to speak up about being gang-raped at 15 years old.

Knoll's dark and twisty novel centers around a 28-year-old woman named Ani, who survived a violent sexual assault at a young age. (The book was a huge success, and Reese Witherspoon is currently producing the movie version of the novel for Lionsgate.) In her essay, Knoll wrote that as the book became popular, she was increasingly asked by readers whether the storyline was based on her real life.

"I dodge left by pointing to all the ways in which my fictional protagonist and I differ," Knoll wrote. "Ani’s heritage is Italian, mine is German. Ani is planning a wedding in Nantucket, I got married in New Jersey... I’ve been running and I’ve been ducking and I’ve been dodging because I’m scared. I’m scared people won’t call what happened to me rape because for a long time, no one did."

And now, after years of burying her trauma in the more sanitized, victim-blaming narrative she felt she was "assigned," Knoll is speaking her truth -- powerfully.  

"I’ve come to a simple, powerful revelation: everyone is calling it rape now," Knoll wrote. "There’s no reason to cover my head. There’s no reason I shouldn’t say what I know."

And what she knows is both hard to read and important to absorb.

Knoll's essay recounts a party she went to when she was 15 years old, where she was gang-raped by three boys. After the assault, Knoll endured bullying and slut-shaming for the rest of high school.

"From then on, I submitted to my assigned narrative. What was the point in raising my voice when all it got me was my own lonely echo?" Knoll wrote. "Like Ani, the only way I knew to survive was to laugh loudly at my rapists’ jokes, speak softly to the mean girls, and focus on chiseling my tunnel out of there."

Her anger about the events of  that night, however, stayed with her even after she left her hometown. "My anger is carbon monoxide, binding to pain, humiliation, and hurt, rendering them powerless," Knoll wrote. "You would never know when you met me how angry I am." 

But, perhaps, speaking honestly about the trauma of rape (and the anger that almost inevitably follows) can be a part of the healing process. As Knoll wrote:

I know that I made the mistake of thinking that living well is the best revenge. That I figured out, eventually, that the appearance of living well is not the same thing as actually living well. And even if it were, revenge does not beget healing. Healing will come when I snuff out the shame, when I rip the shroud off the truth. If I were a victim of the other horrific crime in my book, I would talk about it openly. I wouldn’t pretend like it hadn’t happened to me, like I don’t still hurt about it, like I don’t still cry about it. Why should this be any different?

Knoll's essay ends on a particularly powerful note: "I’m not fine. It’s not fine. But it’s finally the truth, it’s what I know, and that’s a start."

Read Knoll's full essay over at Lenny Letter. 

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Years before the civil war, and before the Islamic State militants declared their so-called caliphate, an American punk drummer from Washington, D.C. was overcome with a wild and urgent impulse to visit Syria. 

Five years into the country's civil war, these images and sounds have taken on a new meaning. Aleppo has been ravaged by fightingsince 2012. The eastern half of the city is now controlled by opposition groups, including the al Qaeda branch Jabhat al-Nusra, and the western half is under the control of Syrian forces. 

Along with the civil war, the Syrian people are also facing threats from the Islamic State militant group, which began claiming large swaths of Syria in 2014. According to the BBC, the city of Aleppo lies just a few miles south of territory that is under control of IS. Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that IS' persecution of Christians, Yazidis, and Shi'ite Muslims in Syria amounted to genocide. 

Christianity has been part of Syria's history for two millennia, but thousands of Christians have been forcedfrom their homes since the war began.

Many of the churches Hamacher documented have been damaged in the ongoing power struggle between government forces and opposition groups. Some of the people he befriended have been kidnapped.

To remember what was lost, Hamacher is sharing images of the Christian sites he once visited. 

"The whole point of this photo essay is to illustrate or contextualize what the early church looked like and also illustrate that there's a very good chance that large portions of it are going to be wiped out," the 39-year-old told The Huffington Post. 

Hamacher says he hasn't been able to return to the country since 2010, so he doesn't have photos of what these sites look like today. But it was important to him to present an image of the city as he remembers it -- a vibrant, cosmopolitan place that was home to people of many different faiths.

"When the before and after is laid out in front of you, people tend to remember the destruction as opposed to the beauty of the place and the traditions it represents," Hamacher said. 

Scroll down to see Hamacher's images below. HuffPost Religion attempted to find the most up to date information about the current state of these sites to give our readers an idea of how the site has been touched by the war. 

Hamacher's photos will also be displayed at W83, a community center operated by New York City's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, through May 1. 

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated incorrectly that Hamacher's interest in Syria was piqued by Armenian Christian chanting. He initially traveled to the country to record Syriac Christian chanting.

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Revolutionary activist Angela Davis is not impressed with the current roster of candidates running for president. 

Davis -- whose work has always taken a critical look at issues of race, gender, prisons and politics -- spoke with Democracy Now! in an interview posted Monday and explained why she is not endorsing a candidate. 

"I don’t endorse," Davis told Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman. "I believe in independent politics. I still think that we need a new party, a party that is grounded in labor, a party that can speak to all of the issues around racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, what is happening in the world. We don’t yet have that party." Watch a full video clip below: 

Davis condemned the "fascist appeal" of Donald Trump as well as his failure to outright denounce the endorsement of David Duke, the white supremacist and former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. 

"The Ku Klux Klan, of course, evokes the racist, terrorist, violent history of—associated with the era following slavery up to the present," Davis said. "The extent to which Donald Trump was beating around the bush, seemingly in an effort not to alienate those who might support the Klan today, is an indication that he is helping."  

For decades, Davis has been regarded as a radical activist, freedom fighter and feminist icon who has consistently spoken out against many of America's ills. Davis has always been passionate about ending oppression in all its forms and fighting for the abolition of prisons. It is a position fueled by her own experience spending 16 months incarcerated after being placed on FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List on false charges 50 years ago. 

Davis' profound activism has helped to distinguish her as leading black revolutionary figure. Many present-day Black Lives Matter activists are inspired by her accomplishments and she said she shares a strong appreciation for their work, too. 

"I think it’s really wonderful that Black Lives Matter activists are participating in this electoral period in this way, forcing candidates to speak on issues about which they might not speak," Davis said.

Davis said she admires the ways in which activists today have demanded attention in the current election cycle, particularly as it involves calling out candidate Hillary Clinton on past comments she made referring to at-risk youth as "superpredators" and demanding she acknowledge the repercussions of her support for the 1994 Crime Bill, which sent a disproportionate number of black men and women to jail.  

"It seems to me that if she’s interested in the votes of not only African Americans and people of color, but of all people who are progressive and attempting to speak out against the racism of over incarceration, she would simply say, 'I was wrong then,' that 'superpredator' is a racially coded term,'" Davis said. "It’s so interesting that she tends to rely on a kind of universalism that prevents her from acknowledging the extent to which racism is so much a force and an influence in this country."

While Davis said Clinton is reluctant to address racism, she said she also believes her opponent Bernie Sanders suffers from certain limitations, too. When it comes to Sanders, Davis said she believes he engages in "a kind of economic reductionism" that prevents him from fully understanding and relaying information that will "enlighten us about the persistence of racism, racist violence, state violence," Davis said. 

"It seems that he does not have the vocabulary that allows him to acknowledge the role and the influence that racism has played historically," she added. "He thinks that economic justice will automatically lead us to racial justice."

Despite having little enthusiasm for the current presidential election cycle, Davis said she has hope that America's future elections will pursue a more progressive agenda.  

"I think we need to be looking ahead toward a very different kind of political process. At the same time, we put pressure on whoever is running," Davis said. "So I’m actually more interested in helping to develop mass movements that can create the kind of pressure that will force whoever is elected or whoever becomes the candidate to move in more progressive directions." 

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Thursday, March 31 will mark the 21st anniversary of Selena Quintanilla's tragic death in 1995. At just 23, the Tejano singer built an astoundingly impressive career. She won "Best Female Vocalist" at the Tejano Music Awards nine years in a row, became the first Latino singer to debut at number one on U.S. Billboard 200 and released the best-selling Latin album of all-time (Amor Prohibido).

In addition to her countless hits and broken records, Selena was the first artist to reveal the power of the Latino audience. In many ways, her success and the outpour of love after her death formed the catalyst for the "Latin invasion" in the late '90s that saw artists like Shakira, Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez (who owes her own stardom to her breakout role in the biopic "Selena") find crossover success. 

She's been marked as inspiration for artists in all genres, from traditional Tejano music to hip-hop to pop. Whether artists have cited her as a direct influence or have paid homage to her spirit and talent in other ways, there's no denying that her legacy as a performer and style icon will continue to live on. 

Below are 17 artists who have all been inspired by Selena's glorious career.

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There are home items you're going to replace every so often, and then there are home items you're going to keep FOREVER. 

Some of the best items to invest in have a dual purpose, like a handy tray for both serving and organizing, or a double mirror that lets you dress like a pro and makes the room look bigger to boot.

And of course, key investments don't have to be pricey: You've just got to know where to look, and what you're looking for.

Curate your most elegant space yet with the above suggestions from Elle Decor.

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“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her... wherever," Donald Trump said in August 2015, referring to Fox News' Megyn Kelly after the two had a heated back-and-forth during a GOP debate. 

Well, Trump is about to find out exactly where that "wherever" is.

Created by Cute Fruit Undies, a new line of period panties called "Bloody Marys" feature familiar political faces, including Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, on the inside of the underwear crotch.

Cute Fruit Undies founder Sarah Palatnik dubbed these politicians "Blood Dumpsters" who are "primed and ready for you to bleed all over them!" On her website, Palatnik defines a Blood Dumpster as "a politician who has tried in the past or who is currently trying to pass legislation that hinders women's reproductive rights." 

Other Blood Dumpsters include gems like Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Rand Paul and Jeb Bush. Cute Fruit Undies' website offers a thorough breakdown of each Blood Dumpster's anti-woman history. 

Each high-waisted panty comes with a detachable heating pad and is created with leak-proof, anti-bacterial material. For every period panty sold, three dollars of the proceeds are donated to Planned Parenthood.

"The thing that inspired me is the idea of voting with your dollar," Palatnik told The Huffington Post. "That is often the most powerful form of activism, whether we like it or not... I was already making undies with a feminist twist, so undies with a very political element was a natural progression."

"Underwear, especially women's underwear, can be so risqué or even a bit taboo, and this gives them just enough potential to make a statement and have it be relatively jarring, but not so radical that it isn't heard," Palatnik said. 

Well done, Sarah. Well freaking done. 

Head over to Cute Fruit Undies' homepage, Etsy page or Instagram to see more from the Bloody Marys line.  

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther 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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It's #MuseumWeek, an occasion that happens mostly on Twitter, but also in the very real hallways of institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Bilbao.

From March 28 to April 3, 2016, a regiment of hashtags is meant to raise awareness of the people, places and things that make art go 'round in the 21st century. Curators are sharing stories, famous havens are revealing secrets, audiences are recommending new ideas. All the conversations happening online, though, are aimed at directing you from your computer screen to the front lines of exhibitions. Get thee to an art museum!

So far, 45,000-plus tweets have mentioned at least one of the eight hashtags designated for this year's Museum Week. Our favorite -- and the first to be deployed -- is probably #SecretsMW, for which museums have been airing their deep, not-so-dark private affairs. Did you know Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to name the Guggenheim building in New York City the "Archeseum"? Neither did we.

Art nerds, here are some random facts you never knew you need in your life:

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When it comes to his shows, Jack Johnson is something of a diva.

Before agreeing to play somewhere, his team hands the venue a detailed rider -- a list of demands that need to be met for him to play the show.

But while more infamous riders from well-known artists might allegedly ask for hand-carved balls of ice or imported Versace towels, Johnson's reads more like an environmental bill of rights.

"RECYCLING MUST NOT BE THROWN AWAY WITH THE TRASH," one rider agreement warns in all caps, along with a request for energy-efficient light bulbs installed throughout the facility and an order for the venue to purchase carbon dioxide offsets to cover all the energy used during the show.

"You hear all these horror stories of people's riders requesting one color of M&Ms or super fancy champagne," the 40-year-old singer recently told The Huffington Post. "We just figured, all right, let's be demanding with these, because we know they're not going to switch back to those energy-draining bulbs once the show is over."

For Johnson, the riders are a way to chip away at the huge impact the concert industry has on the planet.

According to Pollstar, a concert industry trade magazine, the top 100 tours in 2015 sold an estimated 60 million plastic water bottles (the equivalent of 48,000 barrels of oil) while 130 million paper goods (about 160,000 trees) were used.

But the biggest hit the planet takes from these tours comes from how people get to the shows: 80 to 90 percent of concerts' carbon emissions come from fans driving en masse to get there.

"I didn't know if I needed to keep touring, especially when I considered the environmental impact of what I was doing."
Jack Johnson

For Johnson, witnessing all that pollution on a regular basis was discouraging. After shows, he'd look out from the stage and see a sea of plastic bottles and wonder about the pristine, blue waves back at home in Hawaii. He often dreamed of going back to his first job as a surf film cameraman, even though he barely broke even back then.

"I didn't know if I needed to keep touring, especially when I considered the environmental impact of what I was doing," Johnson told HuffPost, adding that the record sales made him enough to live off of.

After releasing "Sleep Through the Static" in early 2008, Johnson started to question if touring was even worth it.

"There's a great song [by Elvis Presley] that I always think of," he told HuffPost, "because one of the lines sums up the way I feel: 'If my friends could see me now in this fancy hotel room, they’d ask me, 'What on earth are you trying to prove?'"

So in 2008, he and his wife decided that he'd only continue to tour if they could turn the tours into fundraisers and make sure they were as green as they could possibly be.

For the next five years, they used environmentally focused riders to force venues into "greening" up their spaces with reusable beer pints, water refill stations and energy-saving equipment. They traveled on tour buses and used generators that were powered by biodiesel fuel. He insisted on using caterers who use locally sourced, organic foods and encouraged fans to take alternative transportation to the shows by setting up bike valets or promoting mobile carpool apps. 

He even designated specific areas called "Village Green" and invited local nonprofits to set up during the show and educate fans about environmental issues.

And for those five years, 100 percent of the profits generated by the tour went back to nonprofit organizations around the world.

If I'm going to keep doing this, I have to help keep the industry I'm a part of be more responsible.
Jack Johnson

Johnson's greening efforts don't just benefit the planet, they can also usher in better business for the venues.

After receiving Johnson's rider request in 2014, the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland was inspired to revamp their whole facility, eventually leading the local county council to offer the venue $9.5 million for an eco-friendly renovation.

Upgrades like these, Johnson says, bring in good press and can attract better artists for more profitable shows. Sometimes, venues find that the greener options also end up being the cheaper option too.

"The thing we keep hearing from venues, which we think is cool, is that they realize [the changes they made] were more cost-effective," Johnson said. "Or, they just realize they had great feedback from the patrons and they get so much good press that they start doing everything they can [to green up the venue]."

The Santa Barbara Bowl, for example, asked its pizza vendor to forgo the cardboard pizza boxes when delivering food to the Bowl's in-house kitchen before a show, cutting out the use of the disposable good entirely for both the Bowl and the vendor while increasing the venue's profits by $1.60 per pizza.

It also sells reusable pints so that customers can buy a beer in a stainless steel souvenir cup and get a $1 discount on beer every time they bring it back to the venue. It saves the customer money and cuts down the venue's cleanup and plastic cup costs. 

All these measures are part of the Santa Barbara Bowl's larger "Greening the Bowl" program, which requires the venue to review its environmental impact every year and update its procedures accordingly. Last summer, Johnson presented the Bowl with his All At Once Sustainability Award as well as a custom water refill station for their greening efforts.

"We try not to implement a greening procedure without understanding its return on investment," Eric Shiflett, the Bowl's program director, told HuffPost. 

Erin Potts, co-founder of Revolutions Per Minute, a nonprofit agency that works with artists like Johnson to build strategies for philanthropy, believes that the music industry wants to catch up with these greener times.

"Sustainable practices are inevitable in any industry that you're in," Potts said during a February Pollstar conference. "I think there's momentum right now in the music industry to make this happen as easily as possible. What we're hearing over and over again is there is an opportunity to do good while doing business."

And Johnson is living proof.

During his last tour, his camp was able to offset 2.3 million pounds of CO2 emissions, divert 489 pounds of waste from landfills and prevent 18,392 single-use plastic bottles from being used, according to data collected by Johnson's nonprofit All At Once.

Now, he and his wife are working with agencies like RPM to turn their tour-planning formula into a model for other musicians to follow.

"It's just the responsible way to tour," Johnson told HuffPost. "If I'm going to keep doing music, I have to help keep the industry I'm a part of be more responsible."

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This art is so gorgeous, it'll have you drooling. 

Lauren Purnell, a 23-year-old based in London, has been taking leftover food scraps and turning them into creations she calls "Culinary Canvases." Purnell started making food art about two years ago, and has since made more than 100 incredible pieces -- one of the most recent being an Easter-themed piece. 

Honestly, it looks too pretty to eat! 

The 23-year-old has fashioned her scraps into anything from an adorable panda eating some bamboo to a cute portrait of Winnie the Pooh. And the masterpieces contain ingredients ranging from bits of eggplant skin to red pepper. The photographer told The Huffington Post in an email that she always has a container in her refrigerator filled with trimmings and peels which she can fashion into artwork.

Sometimes she comes up with an idea first and manipulates the scraps into her concept, while other times, scenes come to her after looking at the food she has leftover. Whenever she uses edible food like berries or slices of fruit in her pieces, she eats them after her artwork has been completed.

Purnell says that while she didn't start the project to make a statement about food waste, she's always been adamant about making the most of her leftovers and reusing scraps. She hopes that her work will get people to value their food more. 

"At the very least I like to think that my art has made a few people appreciate or perceive their food in a new or different way -- not just aesthetically but also in terms of finding fun and innovative ways to use up leftovers," she said.

To see more of Purnell's work, visit her Tumblr page here. 

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The colorful murals on the walls of Grajaú, the most populous district in São Paulo, speak to a vibrant graffiti movement.

Credit belongs in part to Alexandre da Hora, known as Niggaz, who was creating incredible street art by the time he was 13, in 1995. His work drew attention to this neighborhood on the outskirts of Brazil's largest city. He was also known for working with newspapers and magazines. 

By the time Niggaz accidentally drowned in a São Paulo reservoir in 2003, he had left a lasting mark on the local graffiti scene. More than a decade later, he is still celebrated.

São Paulo's street artists have gathered annually since his death to pay tribute by creating their own powerful urban art. On March 19 and 20 this year, they painted fresh murals in the Grajaú neighborhood, many of them tagged with Nigazz’s name.

The event, titled "Niggaz -- Graffiti, Memory and Youth," was sponsored by a government fund that supports black artists and producers.

Scroll down for photos from Grajaú. 

This post originally appeared on HuffPost Brazil and has been translated into English.

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Akon is making good on his lifelong goal of leveraging his celebrity to give back to Africa by resolving the continent’s energy crisis.

Last Summer, the Senegalese-American singer -- in partnership with political activist Thione Niang and entrepreneur Samba Bathily -- launched Akon Lighting Africa initiative’s “Solar Academy” to provide an affordable source of electricity to 600 million Africans.

Since its launch in Mali’s capital, Bamako, Akon says the institution has made significant progress by installing solar street lights for public lighting and home service systems for household use.

“We’ve kind of expanded since the announcement last year,"Akon said during an interview with The Huffington Post. "We’re currently in 18 countries and it’s growing really, really fast. I think we’re gonna make the deadline to be in 48 countries by the year 2020 and really achieve that goal… The lighting is the main focus right now, and once we get a firm grip on the lighting and energy side, then we’ll be able to expand it to other territories.“

According to the program’s website, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Kenya are among the 25 countries targeted for the "Solar Academy’s" mission to reach 600 million Africans.  

The solar initiative is also aiming to teach African engineers and entrepreneurs how to install and maintain solar-powered electricity systems and micro grids. Akon acknowledged some of the hurdles the initiative has faced as it moves toward its goal, but noted that many of the academy’s challenges came during the initial stages of the project launch.   

“All the challenges really were in the beginning with getting a team properly set up, and then educating myself about energy and renewable and the territories it’s gonna be installed in Africa,” he said. “And of course, dealing with some of the heads of states and making them better understand the advantages of renewable energy versus what they were doing with the grid and so forth… But we pretty much identified a majority of the challenges that we would face in a lot of these countries, so we are pretty much on cruise at this point."

To coincide with his humanitarian efforts in Africa, Akon -- a multiplatnium recording artist, who is also responsible for launching the careers of Pop stars like Lady Gaga and Colby O'Donis -- is also working on his new album, titled “Stadium,” and relaunching his Konvict Muzik label as Konvict Kartel.

The music will be his first release in seven years. “Even though I haven’t been active as an artist -- as far as putting out records -- I have been very instrumental in putting out other acts and been a part of other act’s careers,” Akon told HuffPost. Fans can expect the revamped label to release a compilation (featuring artists OG Boo Dirty, DJ Funky & Money Man) “before the end of the summer.”

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