Sure, you love dogs, but there are some things that people who aren't dog owners will just never experience. 

Artist Kelly Angel's comic captures the difference between being someone who loves dogs as opposed to being a true dog parent, whose very being is completely consumed by the affection they have for their furry friend. 

While dog lovers have the luxury of having an entire bed to themselves, dog owners are used to scooting over so that bae can have some space. And while dog lovers gush over pretty much every dog, dog parents know for a fact that their pup is the best pup. Period. 

Angel, who created the comic for BarkPost, told The Huffington Post that she's grown up with dogs and was inspired by their quirks and behavior. It's clear that she totally gets the dog parent's point of view. 

"Dogs are just so great," she told HuffPost. "I'll stop myself before I go on a rant and make myself look like a crazy dog lady."

Check out Angel's comic below. 

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Navigating a list of self-help books aimed at diminishing your anxiety can be, well, anxiety-inducing. Reading a tome, under the assumption that said tome will help quell any lingering sense of panic, is a gamble. What if the panic is still there when you flip the last page? What if the advice contained within just doesn't click, ever? Was it all for naught?

Probably not.

Studies have shown that reading in itself -- even just six minutes worth of SSR -- can help slow heart rates and ease muscle tension, thereby alleviating stress. For those of us who suffer from anxiety on a regular basis, this is good news. It's also enough reason for us to reach for fiction, and less conventional nonfiction, to help tackle feelings of worry, panic and restlessness. Perhaps you don't need a book that's explicitly meant to teach you about the intricacies of anxiety disorders; instead, you could use a story that lets you investigate the complexities of emotion, empathize with characters you can relate to, or even just escape the difficulties of everyday life for a moment.

Behold, 12 less obvious books that can help you deal with anxiety, according to five editors and writers who deal with it themselves.

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore’s Self-Help is anxiety-reducing in the way a Bloody Mary eases a hangover. Sometimes the only way to deal with angst is to crawl deeper into the rabbit hole, only to see you’re not alone. The hilarious short story collection is a dark and dirty take on the classic self-help book, with stories entitled "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)" and "How to Become a Writer." But instead of trite and sunny advice, Moore delivers brutal tales of modern women being their own worst enemies, making their way through work, love and family hurdles though potentially moving backward. The bitter and beautiful prose will make you want to savor your personal rough patches, if only to one day turn them into a story of your own. -- Priscilla Frank

Drinking at the Movies by Julia Wertz

I read this book in the years of wandering right after college. In this memoir, the author is also wandering, but she doesn’t get caught up in a quarter-life crisis. I laughed out loud so many times following Julia, who is hilarious, self-deprecating and genuine in this autobiographical story about her move to Brooklyn from San Francisco. Her detailed accounts of post-grad life with all the crappy apartments (including an illegal basement studio which was actually the best option) and even crappier jobs (such as a restaurant delivery person via bike, even when snowing) eased my own anxiety about not knowing what I wanted to do with my life and helped me to not take it all too seriously. -- Tricia Tongco

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

If you don’t want to be cheered up or encouraged -- and sometimes those approaches only antagonize the truly stressed -- you might just want to be understood. No one understood soul-crushing angst like Woolf, and The Waves, one of her more avant-garde books, captures that horror of the world in a contradictorily soothing form. The Waves, a prose poem following six characters from childhood to adulthood in looping, geometric sections, lulls you with a submerged refrain of “I know, I know, I know, I know.” The Waves knows it’s hard, that the world is terrifying and that you might feel scattered, afraid, lonely, anxious, depressed, ready to give up, but it also caresses you with poetic rises and falls, a rhythmic structure that leads you into a state of almost content mindfulness. -- Claire Fallon

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

In Parable of the Sower, an American tale that toes the line of utopia-dystopia, Lauren Olamina suffers from a genetic condition called "hyperempathy" -- caused by a mother's contact with a toxic prescription drug during pregnancy -- which causes her to experience the pain of others as intensely as her own. In the course of the story (and the second book in the series, Parable of the Talents), Lauren founds a spiritual community called Earthseed and her curious ability to feel like few others can turns darker. If you're partial to speculative fiction and its knack for tackling real emotions and scenarios under the guise of imagination, Butler's work provides an opportunity for you to explore your own feelings alongside Lauren and the characters of her universe. -- Katherine Brooks

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

It’s a slim novel about romance, marriage, family, infidelity, and the prospect of separation -- all of which is to say it doesn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary. But Offill manages to write a book that deftly explores deep, universal emotions, while gracing them with tenderness and quirky observations. She weaves together scientific theories and quiet moments, fusing big ideas with small, personal details. Waffling between the two creates a feeling of peace and centeredness while reading, even if the plot is at times tragic. -- Maddie Crum

The World of Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse

It’s hard to write a truly LOL-inducing novel. On the page, so many of the subtle cues that go into sparking laughter are absent or easily misinterpreted, such as a deadpan delivery, withering sarcasm, or broad slapstick. But if you like British drollery, Wodehouse will do it. He has the gift. And it’s more than the laughs that’ll soothe the savage beast of anxiety: His eternally sunny, pre- or post- or between-war upper-class idylls lie so far outside the realm of reality they’re basically fantasy. His lovably dimwitted noblemen and his lovably enterprising secretaries all end up just as happy as they deserve to be, even the most absurd escapades end in tea and biscuits, and best of all, if you’ve already enjoyed the more well-known Jeeves and Wooster chronicles, these three Blandings Castle novels will be (ahem) Something Fresh. -- Claire Fallon

Women in Clothes by Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton, Sheila Heti

Oftentimes anxiety can be all the more crippling as anxious thoughts are coupled with the self-hating voice whispering how trivial and petty your myriad worries are. Women in Clothes, a stunning compilation about the complex relationship between women and what they wear, shows that what can appear to the outside as superficial can be deeply significant, profound and transformative. Over 600 women contribute their heartfelt words, exploring the relationships between clothing and memory, love, identity and tradition. Reading it feels like talking in a circle with your most badass, brilliant friends, on those endless nights when gossip and chatter leads to life changing revelations. -- Priscilla Frank

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

Sugar, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, is like the cool, kind older sister I never had. She’s been through a lot and just "gets it.” Her insights and advice to readers have eased my own anxiety about all the things in life no one thinks to teach you: how to be creative, how to be vulnerable in relationships, how to not be ravaged by inevitable loss and so much more. Her approach of “radical empathy” can help ease any kind of conflict with other people, whether it’s a friend, lover or family member. I'm sure I'll reread parts of this book for years and years to come and thrust it upon friends and family, too. -- Tricia Tongco

Friendship by Emily Gould

If you've ever worried about the state of your friendships -- whether you come off to your best friends as attentive or selfish, compassionate or unsympathetic, altruistic or a little conniving -- you're not alone. Many of us pore over the platonic relationships in our lives, anxiously calculating our perceptions, wondering if we are the protagonists or the antagonists in the yet-to-be-written stories of our lives. While Gould's book is not going to assuage your worries, it will help illuminate why the "good and evil" binary just doesn't explain the complexities of friendship. Philia can be as messy as Eros, and it's comforting to know that's true. -- Katherine Brooks

I’ll Be Right There by Kyung-Sook Shin

The plot of Shin’s novel isn’t a calming one by any means; set in South Korea amid violent political uprisings, the story follows three students, each trying to heal from his or her own version of loss. They confide in each other, eat hearty meals, keep diaries, and take long, therapeutic walks around Seoul. As they explore their city, they discuss their own unique vantage points, and work together to understand it better. It’s a quiet reflection on the power of intimate relationships, and the process of recovering from grief. -- Maddie Crum

The Brief Wondrous Lifeof Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

The titular charcacter of Díaz's book derives his college-era nickname from the Spanglish pronunciation of Oscar Wilde. He is the cornerstone of the coming-of-age tale that weaves its way through The Brief Wondrous Life; a boy obsessed with science fiction and finding a girlfriend, who at first glance might seem like a YA trope but throughout Díaz's plot transforms into a stereotype-busting character who tackles gender expectations and the intricacies of growing up in an American immigrant family. Oscar's story runs parallel to the chapters outlining his mother and sister's lives, filled with allusions to punk culture and feminism. Sometimes, when your own life seems chaotic and incomprehensible, it's reassuring to read another person's tale, filled with seemingly insurmountable obstacles that, in the end, give depth to personal history. -- Katherine Brooks

Beloved Dog by Maira Kalman

Cat books are all the rage, and rightly so. But dog lovers, or animal lovers in general, will delight in Maira Kalman’s short reflection on her own experience of pet-ownership, and on dogs as the recurring subjects of her work. She illustrates artists with their dogs -- E.B. White and Kafka, to name a few -- and sketches her own (late) pooch with heart. Her writing, like her sketches, is spare, expressive, honest and fun. -- Maddie Crum

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New York is one of the wealthiest cities in the world, yet every day thousands of New Yorkers have to line up -- in the rain, heat or blistering cold -- to get food from a pantry, because they can’t afford to feed themselves or their family.

Joey O’Loughlin, a Brooklyn-based photographer, spent the last three years documenting food lines, aiming to put a face to hunger in the city today. What she found surprised her.

“I was taken aback by the food lines,” she said to The Huffington Post. “I understood that there were soup kitchens, for homeless people -- but that there are working people today who still needed to line up for food? I thought that was a thing of the past -- like the Dust Bowl era, or the Depression.”

O’Loughlin’s photo series, on exhibit now at the Brooklyn Historical Society, aims to debunk people's preconceptions around those who are struggling in the city.

Around 50 million Americans live in food insecure households today -- around one in six -- according to a report from Bread For The World. More shocking perhaps, is that one in five New Yorkers lining up for food at pantries has a job. 

“When you look at the people [in lines], they look like everyone else,” O’Loughlin said. “I’m hoping we won’t be so willing to label people in need as other.”

These 5 photos show just how diverse and widespread the problem of keeping a family well-fed in New York City really is.  

1. Residents Line Up To Collect Groceries At A Food Pantry In Queens

"Each month, more than a thousand people collect groceries at this pantry in Jamaica, Queens, and the number keeps rising. The food distribution is a community service provided by Honor House. Homes in this middle-class neighborhood sell in the $400,000 range." -- Joey O'Loughlin

2. An Exhausted Little Boy Naps After A Four-Mile Trip To Get Food At Two Food Pantries

"On Saturday mornings, four year-old Brandon and his family make a four-mile round trip to collect food at two Queens food pantries. Running, laughing and teasing his brother and cousins, he trails along in high spirits, sometimes catching a ride in the shopping cart." -- Joey O'Loughlin

3. Families Line Up At One Of The Few Pantries With Kosher Food

"In Midwood, families line up on Fridays for bread for Sabbath dinner.Keeping Kosher is hard for families who live in poverty. The food tends to be more expensive and the number of Kosher pantries is limited. The majority of poor Jewish families in New York City live in Brooklyn." -- Joey O'Loughlin 

4. Two Kids Rest After Volunteering At A Pantry Their Family Depends On 

"It was a long day for Gregory and Shamar Starzman, then 12 and 14 years-old. Along with their Uncle Otto, the boys helped set up and break down two food pantries in two different boroughs since their alarm went off at 4:30 a.m.  At food pantries, much of the heavy lifting is done by volunteers, many of whom depend on the pantries to feed their own families." -- Joey O'Loughlin 

5. A Passerby Walks By A Food Line In Lower Manhattan

"The line at Father’s Heart Pantry wraps around the block on Saturday mornings. In this trendy and expensive corner of the Lower East Side/East Village, neighbors sometimes walk on by, unaware." -- Joey O'Loughlin

H/T City Labs

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A poet has perfectly captured why culturally appropriating black slang is the worst. 

At the 2016 Women of the World Poetry Slam in Brooklyn, New York, poet Taylor Steele took on the controversial topic in a performance of her poem "AAVE" (which stands for "African-American Vernacular English"). 

Steele masterfully deconstructed the way slang words that were invented by black people have been coopted by white people -- at the expense of black people -- in the video above which was published by Button Poetry on Sunday. 

"Tiffany takes a selfie, middle finger salute. Captions: 'Ghetto thug bitch in the building,'" Steele recited. "Roger fist bumps his good pal mark with an old-fashioned, 'Later, nigga.'"

For Steele, the seemingly "harmless" use of black vernacular by white people only reinforces the stereotypes and double standards that black people face on a daily basis when they use their own slang. 

"Amanda says 'it's lit,' and a million hands snap in Z formation," Steele said. "I say 'it's lit,' and I find myself burning at the stake."

It's a short but powerful poem about history, ownership and the cultural significance (and pain) that's often attached to the way black people speak to one another.

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A kimono -- literally translated as "the thing worn" -- is a traditional Japanese garment defined by its straight seams, "T" shape, and intense decorative detail. Although it's been in existence since the late eighth century, it wasn't until the late 16th century that the articles of clothing began to resemble the long, hanging ensembles we recognize today. 

A newly released massive compendium, simply titled Kimono, dives deep into the history of these lavish robes, from their earliest beginnings in the Edo period to modern iterations of the 20th century. The book features detailed photographs of the saturated surfaces and enchanting visual tapestries that have captivated outsiders for centuries.

Before they were known as kimono, Japanese robes were known primarily as kosode, or "small sleeves," and osode, "long sleeves." These distinctions did not refer to the sleeves themselves, but rather the size of the armholes. Eventually, the kosode superseded the osode as the main garment worn by the rich and powerful, and, before long, became the main item of dress for all classes and both sexes in Japanese society. 

Toward the end of the 19th century, the influence of Western culture surged into Japanese life, shaping popular clothing options to closer resemble European and American garb. However, as more and more Japanese individuals opted for Western clothes, Western cultural spheres became transfixed with traditional aspects of Japanese art, culture and style -- kimono included. Thanks to the obsession -- called Japonisme, and propelled by artists including van Gogh, Monet and Renoir -- a kimono fixation spread round the globe, and, for better or for worse, never quite died down. 

Throughout most of their history, kimonos have remained relatively consistent in their structure and silhouette. Unlike many Western fashions, kimonos pay little mind to the body of the wearer, instead hanging loosely and masking the figure beneath. This shape rarely changes, regardless of the wearer's class, gender or position. All personal details and identifying factors occur on the dress' surface, in the fabrics, colors, patterns and details adorning the kimono's rich surface. 

As explained in depth in the book, the kimono evolved to become a three-dimensional work of art, a vibrant canvas draped over the wearer that is as integral to her persona as her own physical attributes. "A woman would not be judged by her physical appearance, but by her dress," author Anna Jackson writes, "as is evident in paintings and prints, where it is the detailed depiction of the kimono, not the face, that gives the viewer a sense of personality." 

Read on for a (very) brief history of the iconic Japanese garment. 

1. In Edo Japan, from 1603 to 1868, social order and class distinction was of the utmost importance. Dressing out of your designated code was cause for alarm. As Japanese poet Ihara Saikaku said: "because they forget their proper place, extravagant women should be in fear of divine punishment."

2. Also during the Edo period, red kimonos were forbidden. But fashion provocateurs would skirt the rules, wearing red undergarments or lining that they could flash to capture the attention of a passerby.

3. The Meiji era, the beginning of Japanese modernity, brought many changes to the nation, including the way its citizens experienced time. The Gregorian calendar was first introduced in 1873, replacing the tradition of inaugurating a new era with every new emperor. This new calendar had implications for kimono styles, which became coordinated in sync with the changing seasons and styles.

4. Fun fact: Every time a kimono was washed, it had to be disassembled into seven basic parts, air dried, and then re-stitched back together. Even in Meiji's modernizing period in Japan's history, a married woman spent much time tending to her and her family's high maintenance clothing.

5. The obsession with domestic and sartorial duties became so intense that a woman's perceived worth was often bound up in her ability to sew. As Ushigome Chie recalls in the book, "I was bad at sewing and calligraphy as a child, and was scolded at home: 'You're not a girl.' This was not simply a judgment on skill in sewing, but a view of education that believed morality was nurtured through mastery of techniques of what one might call the Way of Sewing."

6. In the Taisho era, from 1912-1926, a new model of femininity arose in the form of the moga, the modern girl. Unlike the pure country girl of yesteryear, the moga was subversive and rebellious, albeit in a bourgeois bubble, experimenting with drinking, smoking, wearing Western clothing and exceptionally daring kimonos.

7. According to Kimono, the embellished garments became the most prominent and impactful mode of art in the early 20th century. "Through fashion, women -- and, to a much lesser degree, men -- could negotiate composite and shifting identities that referenced Japan's past, the Euro-American present or sought to link them in complex ways."

To learn way, way more on the subject of kimonos, check out Thames and Hudson's beautiful book Kimono, by Anna Jackson, Keeper of the Asian department at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and Honorary Curator of the Khalili Collection. 

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When Dutch birth photographer Marry Fermont documents labor and delivery, she likes to take photos of the placenta or "afterbirth."

"I find it so fascinating that ... without this organ, there would be no baby," Fermont told The Huffington Post, emphasizing the important role of the placenta as the source of nourishment and oxygen for the fetus. "The baby and the placenta are inseparable, and it feels weird not to photograph something so important,"she added.

The photographer said she first saw a placenta when she was studying midwifery and has been very interested in the organ ever since. "Most of them look like the tree of life, and I think that's so beautiful!"

Fermont said she hopes that people who see her photos come to learn that the placenta is "not gross but in fact a very beautiful and important organ."

Keep scrolling and visit Fermont's blog and Facebook page to see more of her placenta photography. Note that these photos may be considered NSFW. 

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A newly opened museum in Great Britain is promising to get to the bottom of bowel movements.

The National Poo Museum opened last week at the Isle of Wight Zoo.

Visitors can see excrement-oriented exhibits such as feces from more than 20 different animals, including elks, lions and a human baby, and even fossilized poo (or coprolites) dating back 140 million years, according to the BBC.

Nigel George, one of the crap curators, says the reason for doing a museum dedicated to doody is simple: "Poo provokes strong reactions."

"Small children naturally delight in it but later we learn to avoid this yucky, disease-carrying stuff, and that even talking about poo is bad," he told the Hartlepool Mail. "But for most of us, under the layers of disgust and taboo, we're still fascinated by it."

To make sure the museum's poo didn't stink, the curators had to build a special dung dryer, said co-curator Daniel Roberts.

"A stick insect poo can be desiccated completely in an hour or so, but a lion poo can take a fortnight to dry out," Roberts said, according to NDTV.com.

The National Poo Museum will be at the Isle of Wight Zoo through the summer before going on tour.

Although it's billed as the first-ever museum devoted to number two, that statement may have been made in the flush of publicity.

Turns out Italy opened one last year in the small town of Castelbosco, according to the media company Milk.

In addition, back in 2012, the city of Suwon, South Korea, opened Mr. Toilet House, a museum and park that features statues of humans and animals going to the bathroom, according to Kotaku.com. 

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the National Poo Museum was the first dedicated to poop.

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Former Harvard Law School student Kamilah Willingham, whose report of being sexually assaulted by a fellow student was challenged after she was featured in the campus rape documentary, "The Hunting Ground," is fighting back for the first time.

Willingham, whose claim that she and another woman were sexually assaulted while incapacitated in 2011 was questioned by Slate columnist Emily Yoffe and a group of Harvard Law professors, said the criticism left her feeling helpless and alone. Now, she said, she's finding her voice.

"At some point, I had to make the decision either I let this happen, and back away, or I say, 'Fuck it, I've got nothing left to lose, because my worst nightmare has already happened,'" Willingham told The Huffington Post. "They don't get to do this without me coming back swinging."

Willingham's story has been picked apart in the year since "The Hunting Ground" was released. She said Harvard mishandled her report and ultimately allowed the student she had accused to return to classes.

Willingham didn't use the student's name in the documentary, but columnist Emily Yoffe, in an article for Slate, identified him as Brandon Winston and questioned Willingham's credibility. A group of Harvard Law professors joined in denouncing Willingham's version of events in late 2015. 

In the book, We Believe You: Campus Sexual Assault Survivors Speak Out, set to be published next week, Willingham compares Yoffe with those who doubt Bill Cosby's accusers and calls the writer a "principled denier of rape" who made a "niche" to "single out and attempt to discredit victims of ... sexual assault." 

Yoffe makes too much of the fact that Willingham and Winston are black, Willingham writes in a letter to Yoffe printed in the book. She says the Slate article was "an opportunistic move by a white woman who doesn't seem to care about the treatment of black Americans in the criminal justice system if they are black women."

Yoffe didn't respond to request for comment for this article. 

Willingham, in a blog post, also pushed back on the 19 Harvard Law professors who criticized her, condemning their "forsaken arrogance." She spoke last week at a panel about sexual assault at Harvard organized by law school students.

They don't get to do this without me coming back swinging."
Kamilah Willingham

Willingham and the other woman reported Winston to university and Cambridge police in January 2011. The school hired an attorney to investigate, who sided with the women. A September 2011 university hearing determined Winston was responsible for sexual assault. Winston's appeal was rejected at a first review, but Harvard Law faculty eventually overturned the guilty finding and allowed him back into classes.

In "The Hunting Ground," Willingham says her attacker is "a guy who’s a sexual predator, who assaulted two girls in one night." 

But Yoffe wrote in her June 2015 article in Slate that the incident between Willingham, the second woman and Winston was the "kind of spontaneous, drunken encounter that administrators who deal with campus sexual assault accusations say is typical."

After the Slate article was published, Willingham said she began receiving hate mail, including dozens of Facebook messages. 

One of them, Willingham said, called her "a skank," and included a picture of the naked sender, his penis visible, with a knife in his mouth. "I've got a knife and a cock. One of them is going inside you," he threatened.

"Sometimes I still don't feel safe falling asleep in my own bed, not until the sun comes up and I'm sure I don't have to relive those awful hours when I was 'ambiguously sexually encountered' while unconscious," Willingham writes in We Believe You: Campus Sexual Assault Survivors Speak Out.

Willingham said she doesn't hate Yoffe, but is still angry about the article. 

"I know that your attack, like all other attacks of this kind, is not personal, uniquely aimed, or even nuanced in any way," Willingham writes in the book. "It's not personal, but it's still painful. It seems to me that people just dislike women who try to stand up for themselves."

The U.S. Education Department in 2014 said Harvard Law often gave more rights to accused offenders than to victims. The school's "administrative board" found Winston guilty of sexual assault and recommended expulsion, but the law school faculty overturned that ruling without notifying Willingham, the federal review found.

"As such," federal investigators wrote, "the complainant was not provided an adequate, reliable and impartial investigation of that sexual assault complaint."

A grand jury indicted Winston on sexual assault charges in the attack on the second woman. Willingham testified at that trial. Winston was found guilty in March 2015 of misdemeanor touching of a nonsexual nature, according Yoffe's Slate article. 

_______

Tyler Kingkade covers higher education and sexual violence, and is based in New York. You can reach him at tyler.kingkade@huffingtonpost.com, or find him on Twitter: @tylerkingkade.

Related Coverage:

• Harvard’s Handling Of Sexual Assault Reports Lambasted In Federal Complaint


• Harvard Forced Sexual Assault Victim To Live By Abuser, Lawsuit Claims


• Harvard Sued For Allegedly Retaliating Against Professor Who Defended Sexual Assault Survivors


• Harvard Law Gave More Rights To Accused Students In Sexual Harassment Cases


• Harvard Students Launch Petition Calling For ‘Yes Means Yes’ On Campus


• Harvard Faces Federal Investigation For Mishandling Sexual Assault


• How Harvard Law Professors Retaliated Against An Assault Survivor


• Harvard Allegedly Retaliated Against Professor Who Defended Sexual Assault Survivors


• Harvard Students Stage Silent Sexual Assault Protest At Commencement (PHOTOS)


• Harvard’s Sexual Assault Victims Feel School Policies Favor Their Assailants


• Woman Behind Viral Sexual Assault Essay Is Not Done Fighting Harvard

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Last week, the robots finally came for that which we humans hold most dear: Our ability to write the Great [insert country or region here] Novel.

The Japan News reported, and various American outlets picked up, the news that a short novel co-written by a computer program and homo sapiens had almost won a literary prize. The prize, the Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award, accepts entries written by robots, though this was reportedly the first year that any such entries had been submitted. Of several submissions written with AI programs, one entry scored a remarkable victory: It made it through a single round of screening.

Out of four rounds.

Okay, so “nearly won,” as Bustle put it, might be a slight exaggeration of how well this artificial novelist performed. Maybe we should say “almost made it to the third round,” or “just barely didn’t come in last.” For a book crafted by the robotic intellect of a computer program, however, even such a small success shows a stunning facility with language and narrative.

Of course, there’s just one teeeeny weeny little other detail: The novel was, as mentioned above, “cowritten” by the AI program and a natural intelligence program: human brains. According to The Japan News:

Humans decided the parameters for the novel, such as the plot and gender of characters. The AI program then “wrote” the novel by selecting words or sentences prepared by humans and in accordance with the parameters, according to the team.

According to The Asahi Shimbun, the source material was actually a "sample" novel written by humans, broken down into parts for the program to repurpose into a similar work. Cool! So the robot novelist totally wrote the book, except for the plot, and the plot details, and the words, and the sentences the words were made out of. Humans wrote those -- about 80 percent of the actual work, according to a professor involved in the effort. But that’s a minor contribution, compared to the much more important task of picking pre-written words and sentences to fill out a pre-written plot outline.

As the Los Angeles Times put it, “the computers did the hard work.” Anyone can write “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” -- it takes a real artist to fill out a book-length MadLibs!

In a slightly more skeptical take on Slate, Jacob Brogan pointed out that literary algorithms might be able to remix and repurpose snippets of text into amusing new combinations -- he references the popular Magic Realism Bot -- but the allure tends be indivisible from the AI's lack of awareness of the reader's perspective:

Lacking a theory of mind -- a set of beliefs about what others are thinking -- these programs can’t really predict what it will be like to read their output. Accordingly, they can only work from what they already know, which means that they’re bound to be slightly incoherent without human intervention.

Or, as one of the cyborg-authored prize submissions put it, "I writhed with joy, which I experienced for the first time, and kept writing with excitement." Um ... oh boy.

So, are AI programs the new MFA grads, or is art the one remaining arena in which we can best these monsters of our own creation, which now hold the ability to defeat us at the game of Go? Who can say where artificial intelligence could take us in the years ahead? For now, though, when it comes to the arts, it's fairly safe to say that it's still MFA vs. NYC, not MFA vs. NYC vs. AI. There's just something about humanity's theory of mind that an algorithm apparently can't yet replace.

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Besides being reminisced upon by nostalgic millennials, '90s cartoons share a few distinctive qualities.

Most are fast-paced and feature an animation style that incorporates thick lines: think "Courage the Cowardly Dog" and "Ed Edd n Eddy." Those that center on crime-fighting -- like "Dexter’s Lab" -- have little focus on the individual characters’ personalities, and instead zip from conflict to conflict. They’re all a little weird, and are beloved for that reason; whoever dreamt up the premise of "CatDog" or football-headed Arnold must’ve had a wild imagination.

Fans of "Rocko’s Modern Life" or "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" may wonder whether today’s cartoons have the same odd charm. The answer -- as you’re sure to know if you’re a current cartoon-watcher -- is yes. But today’s shows have their own quirks. When faced with the sometimes too-real competition presented by CGI alternatives, those animating the old school way are finding new means of justifying their hand-drawn art. Bigger worlds, more character-driven stories, and more expressive characters are all part of the mix.

This is especially clear when comparing the '90s and aughts version of "The Powerpuff Girls" with the show’s remake. In the first new episode, Buttercup, always the more rough-and-tumble sister, rushes on screen, a tuft of hair signifying her burliness. Through her dialogues and her expressions, it's clear that she feels isolated by her girlish pals. So she makes new friends, goes roller-derbying, and her siblings lament her absence -- all of which is to say that the show covers new emotional ground.

The Huffington Post spoke with the team behind the reboot, including writers Jake Goldman and Haley Mancini, Art Director Eusong Lee, and Storyboard Artists Cheyenne Curtis and Julia Vickerman, about how the show, and cartoons in general, have evolved.

The stories are more character-driven…

"For stories and shows to evolve, you should always be growing out the world," Goldman explained. He compared the changes the team made to "The Powerpuff Girls" to the evolution of "The Simpsons" from a quirky, family-centric cartoon to a fascinating, full-blown community. Rather than sticking with the closed world of the Simpsons’ house, the creators expanded well beyond it.

Goldman added, “[The Powerpuff Girls] were essentially just three little girls always on their own. From a storytelling standpoint, that’s incredibly limited. I think you can feel more about who they are individually when you put them out in the world. Buttercup has friends who Blossom and Bubbles don’t get along with, like any sisters. It’s something that evolved from the stories we tell now on TV versus the stories we told 10 years ago. There’s a lot of fertile territory, I would say.”

… And the characters’ individual quirks matter.

Vickerman said that making the Powerpuff Girls strong in individual ways was “tricky.” “They kind of always look adorable, because their eyes are so huge,” she said. “Because of their proportions, their little Hello Kitty bodies and their giant exaggerated anime eyes that are so expressive. Even if they’re saying threatening things to a bad guy, they always look so adorable. They never completely get outside the realm of cute.”

But, as a storyboard artist, she’s worked to give each of the characters more individuality. “For Buttercup, when she’s angry her hair will get pointy, and she has these powerful stances and poses. With Bubbles, when she has her cute moments her eyes get big and they’re full of glitter and sparkles,” she said. “Another thing we’ve been utilizing more in the reboot is making shapes appear in their eyes, like rainbows appearing in their pupils, or stars or skulls. The teams have been having a lot of fun with that. We’re almost using them as mirrors or TV screens in certain sequences, expressing their emotions.”

The style is smoother, and less “zippy.”

Lee, the show’s art director, said he appreciates the unique look of '90s cartoons. “At that time a lot of it was very graphic. It feels like a graphic design or a very beautifully designed picture,” he said. “But my goal always was to make it a place where you want to feel welcome. Coming from that '90s style, which was very flat and line- and shape-based, we tried to expand it to more lighting-based, and a lot more comfortable with depth and more sense of a place.”

He added, “In the '90s, because of the thick lines and the graphic flat shapes, things were a lot more zippy and a lot faster.” In the original show, Lee points out, the viewer rarely sees the Powerpuff Girls walking -- they’re always flying or battling. “A lot of whip-crack, dramatic pose extremes,” he said. “But in this reboot we tried to give more personality, and their emotions in their motion.”

There’s less villain-slaying, more friendship-forming.

“We added a lot more friendly characters, which isn’t very common, if you look at the old episodes,” Mancini said. “We just tried to expand the world because storytelling has changed. As opposed to any of the cartoons of the '90s and early '00s, storytelling has evolved a lot, and you get more of an arc in an 11-minute show than you used to.”

“The reasons we really enjoyed putting friendly faces in with the girls is to show that there are so many wonderful experiences you get as kids," the writer said. "It’s just funny, and we get to see the games they play together, and really get the whole kid community, the kid world.”

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Every part of life is a valuable experience. So appreciate the here and now. 

A video by the Jubilee Project features people of all ages answering the question, "If you could be any age, what age would you be?" The participants in the clip, entitled "Timeless: 50 People 1 Question," gave a range of answers, however, by the end, it's clear all of them can be summed up by one 67-year-old's response.

"Embrace everything that you can about your life as it is today," the woman says in the video. 

In the short film, many of the children wish they were older, as they dream about sweet 16 and other milestones and privileges that come with age. However, other participants wish they could go back to the younger years and do it all over again. 

But with every year comes a different set of perks, as the participants point out. And as the 67-year-old participant mentions, it's important to stop and savor the moment.

"I was in a hurry to get through life. Consequently, many of those years are a blur,"  she said." We don't want to go through life having regrets. ... My regrets were a result of not being in the moment."

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Over the past 30 years, one filmmaker has documented the voguing ballroom scene in New York City and thereby amassed an incredible trove of footage from different parts and shades of the scene.

Now, Nicolas Jenkins has taken his countless hours of footage and compiled them into an 11-minute short film called "Walk!" 

The filmmaker told The Huffington Post that he has noticed an explosion of mainstream interest in vogue and ballroom culture over the last several years -- something he sees as both a good and a bad thing. 

"The Ballroom scene has always been inspiring to me because of the amazing sense of community I witnessed and by the way they celebrated and idolized some of societies most marginalized," Jenkins told The Huffington Post. "I personally find the white mainstream LGBT community depressingly very segregated. The LGBT mainstream has much to learn from the ballroom community and needs to see that it is possible to embrace and love each others differences.... But I am [also] concerned that with voguing’s success in crossing over into the mainstream to communities of the 'non marginalized' that there is a risk the dance may lose some of its connections to its roots. I’ve been around long enough to watch too many subcultures get absorbed into the mainstream and eventually get commodified."

We're so grateful to have this archive of amazing footage preserved for future generations. Check out "Walk!" above and head here to see more from Jenkins. 

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Warning: This piece contains nudity and may not be appropriate for work.

On Saturday evening, gallery guides at Los Angeles museum The Broad ushered visitors, in groups of 15, down a set of stairs to the empty museum parking lot, where they were met with piercing darkness. The crowd sat in a quickly evolving circle surrounding a black mat, its corners marked by four large cars, headlights on, doors open. "It looks like we're about to see a rumble," my friend whispered.

The crowd was settled, with most people hunched on the floor, save for a few sitting inside the parked cars, radios on, each booming a mixture of music, static, talk radio and advertisements. The various snippets all enmeshed and fought to overpower each other, creating a jarring blanket of noise above the seated audience. A Beatles song, the words "black lives matter," Yo Gotti's "Down in the DM," an advertisement for teeth whitener -- chopped and mixed and layered on top of each other, yielding the cacophonous tune of being caught in traffic with your windows down. 

Then Cassils emerged. The performance artist was fully naked, and though no one else was visible, their body was quivering, their eyes were panicked. Their hands were tightly crossed in an "X" shape over their chest, painfully still as if being held there against their will or warding off an impending assailant. In a flash, Cassils' body was flung downward by an unseen entity, their flesh crashing to the mat below with the cruel force of someone not treated with human decency. They breathed heavily, heaving, shaking, with twitching muscles and bulging veins creating abstract patterns on the skin that soon faded away to be replaced with new ones. Soon after, another hit. And then another. 

Cassils is a Los Angeles-based, transmasculine artist, known for using their physical body as a living, breathing, sweating, trembling sculpture. Their piece, "Powers That Be," is a fight between a human being and an invisible other, the identity of which is left up to the viewer's interpretation. Throughout the duration of the piece, Cassils is choked and pinned down, thrashed and dragged, but they also throw wild punches themselves. 

"I'm interested in the absence of body, and what my body looks like in relation to that body," Cassils explained in an interview with The Huffington Post.

The radio waves that ebb and flow in and out of recognition not-so-subtly illuminate some of the oppressive and oppressed forces rampant in contemporary society. Mediated through the car radios, the sound samples create a truly Los Angeles experience, the aural equivalent of surfing the internet and being bombarded with images of Syrian refugees and discounted gym memberships in the very same glance. 

I want it to be bigger than my own subjectivity, to include other things beyond ... I'm trying to make space so that, you, as the viewer can complete the piece.

"The radio in LA is such a good way of picking up the pulse," Cassils said. "At any given moment you can hear about a woman’s right to choose, a tanning product, a really bad R&B song." Cassils listened to various radio stations that air around 10 p.m., the time of the performance, and compiled a curated simulacrum of the experience at its most grating. 

The sounds traveling through the air conjure images of possible entities engaged in battle with Cassils, though each is transient and uncertain. News snippets intermittently describe police brutality and LGBTQ violence, along with more superficial and entertaining sound bites. "With this piece, I want to talk about more than just my body," the artist said. "I want it to be bigger than my own subjectivity, to include other things beyond. Using the airwaves and the absent figure, you can project on that absence all these larger issues that aren’t being spoken about -- issues around race, class, gender, religion. I'm trying to make space so that, you, as the viewer can complete the piece."

To train for the piece, Cassils, a former body builder and personal trainer, worked with fight choreographer Mark Steger to master the extremely difficult task of fighting without an opponent. "If you’re punching a punching bag, there is something that will absorb the hit," Cassils said, "and that actually completes the motion. When you’re trying to hit something that’s not there, you have to put force outwards and draw force inwards at the same time. It’s very easy to hurt yourself."

To achieve the illusion of virtually fighting with a ghost, Cassils trained vigorously. "This piece guarantees injuries, basically," the artist explained. In an early rehearsal, they gave themselves a concussion from speeding up and slowing down too quickly. "Rushing forward and stopping so much like that, you bruise your brain against the inside of your skull."

I see risky as hunching over a computer and eating Cheetos. That’s a death wish.

Steger often choreographs fights for Hollywood movies and TV, including "American Horror Story," and Cassils' work often alludes to the strange conflation of appearance and reality that is particularly pervasive in Los Angeles. During their time as a trainer, Cassils often worked with actors who needed to resemble soldiers. "After the Iraq war broke out, I had all these blonde actresses coming up to me, saying, 'I have to look like a soldier.'" In the strange space of LA, not only current events but the simulation of current events cycle in and out of view. 

Although most would describe Cassils' physical performances as intense, if not outright masochistic, the artist emphasizes that they have no interest in inducing agony or risking safety. "I’m not a masochist," the artist said. "It’s not risky because it’s completely controlled. I see risky as hunching over a computer and eating Cheetos. That’s a death wish." That being said, the training process for this particular piece was so taxing, Cassils said they would not tour the work.  

Watching Cassils be thrashed around by an invisible attacker, and fight back in return, viewers were spotlighted both by the car headlights and an army of iPhones, snapping photos, recording video, uploading and messaging tiny, naked, virtual iterations of Cassils into the ether. However, far from being a distraction to the main event, this became another aspect of the performance. 

"I’m interested in the way a document can become its own piece. I want people to use their mobile devices to film," the artist said, hoping to eventually use the uploaded footage as another aspect of the piece. "It speaks to the ways people feel empowered or disempowered to record events in their lives, whether it's an act of police brutality or something funny or a great concert. We're in a time when more people at a concert are looking at their phones than the act, more excited to photograph their food than to savor it. I'm interested in the ways we experience violence when we record; it’s like witnessing something instead of watching a safe spectacle."

We're in a time when more people at a concert are looking at their phones than the act, more excited to photograph their food than to savor it. I'm interested in the ways we experience violence when we record; it’s like witnessing something instead of watching a safe spectacle.

From every angle, with every motion, the potential meaning of Cassils' severe, almost sickening, performance changes shape. For a moment, the staged scene resembles Edward Kienholz’s 1969 "Five Car Stud," about a group of white American men, in front of their pickup trucks, brutally attacking a black man for drinking with a white woman. Is the piece about race? From another angle, we see Cassils in full spotlight, their form rupturing norms of bodily binaries and boundaries, serving as a living manifestation of a life indisputably lived in the in-between. Is this a piece about gender or identity? Commercials blast from the radio waves. Capitalism? The audience films. Passivity?

Just as the viewers begin to conjure in their imagination a potential outline of Cassils' attacker, the artist takes control, pummeling the invisible being with all their might. In the artist's words: "Who could the body be when I am an oppressor?"

"Powers That Be" took place on April 2, 2016, at The Broad as part of "The Tip of Her Tongue," an evening of feminist performance art curated by Jennifer Doyle.

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Food is a great friend. It's always there for you, whether you need a pork shoulder to cry on or an ear of corn to just sit with you and listen.

So who better to provide us a window into our relationships than the thing we turn to when those relationships go bad?

Mmm, if only all relationships were this delicious.

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Markus Prime is the artist behind B.R.U.H., the title of a cleverly named paperback that stands for "Black Renditions of Universal Heroes." And his brilliant work is exactly what it sounds like.

He has reimagined some of your favorite superheroes -- Superman, the Powerpuff Girls, Ash Ketchum, "Adventure Time"'s Finn -- as black women, replacing the largely male roster of superhuman icons with a group of kickass women of color. Why? "I want children of color throughout the world to be inspired by this book and start creating things that they can identify with," he explained to The Huffington Post.

Prime, an artist with a veritable Instagram following, has been swapping the gender and races of familiar characters for at least a year, creating new figures like his "Dragon Ball Z" flip "Froku." "She became an instant favorite," he said, "and the demand for her appearance was growing more and more, so it only seemed right to make her immortal, along with my other character flips, in one sketchbook."

To Prime, the most important aspect of his project is communicating the idea that representation matters. "B.R.U.H paints the picture of 'what if?' or 'just imagine,'" he added. "I ... want people to know that you don't necessarily have to flip original characters, you can create your own world. I've created many original characters, but to see something that you grew up idolizing and being able to identify with, it gets the message across almost instantly. I just want kids to feel like it's OK to draw things that look like them."

In an interview with Broadly, Prime hammered home just how serious he is about the importance of representation in pop culture. "'Ninja Turtles' is already one of the most popular cartoons of all time, so just imagine how many black girls probably would have wanted to become news reporters, or how many girls would've been like, 'I want to be an actress!' because they saw a black woman featured in some of the most popular cartoons and movies in the country," he said. "Or, 'I see a black woman in this comic book, now I want to draw comics.' Simple things like that [...] I really believe it could've changed the entire culture -- it could've changed cartoons and comic books because there would've been people trying to follow suit."

Last year, MTV News asked comic book fans to name at least seven superheroes of color, and they failed miserably. While many critics have taken issue with the comic book world's inability to represent women and LGBTQ characters, it's important that those conversations include analysis of the lack of racial diversity on and behind the page, too. 

"For decades readers had to deal with the fact that the only black characters featured in these stories were corrosive racial stereotypes played just for laughs," Jason Serafino wrote for Complex. "In the ‘60s, major publishing houses like Marvel and DC began to feature more black characters in supporting roles and, eventually, as the stars of their own books. Still, the industry is dominated by white male characters."

For now, Prime is self-publishing B.R.U.H., no small feat in itself. "There are many challenges when you're self-publishing," he said. "First, it was tough to gather all of the images and pick the right ones for the book because once it's done, it's done. I also wanted to make sure that the message was clear, that representation was the focal point of the book."

Prime is also working with Amandla Stenberg, drawing for her comic "NIOBE: She is Life." "Niobe Ayutami is an orphaned wild elf teenager and also the would-be savior of the vast and volatile fantasy world of Asunda," Stranger Comics describes online. "She is running from a past where the Devil himself would see her damned toward an epic future that patiently waits for her to bind nations against the hordes of hell. The weight of prophecy is heavy upon her shoulders and the wolf is close on her heels."

Suffice it to say, we're psyched to see what Prime does next.

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ISTANBUL -- For 19-year-old Iraqi comedian Siryan Amer Shabow, laughter is like air. Without it, there’s no surviving.

When violent Islamic State fighters took over his predominantly Christian city of Bakhdida in the summer of 2014, forcing thousands of people to flee for their lives, many displaced Iraqis felt hopeless.

Comedy was a way for Shabow to breathe air back into his people’s shattered lives -- and his own.

Over the weekend, Shabow joined dozens of other Iraqi comedians, writers, cartoonists and performers at a workshop led by three U.S.-based comedians who flew into Erbil, the capital of northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

"After displacement, comedy had a bigger role in my life," Shabow, who loves puppetry and theater, told The WorldPost. "Comedy is very important to plant a simple smile on people’s faces.” He said it’s his “duty” to bring joy to displaced children.

The two-day event, hosted by the Iraqi media company Yalla, featured Joe Randazzo, former editor of The Onion and writer at Comedy Central’s "@midnight with Chris Hardwick"; Mo Amer, a Palestinian-American comic known for his work with the comedy troupe Allah Made Me Funny; and Maeve Higgins, an Irish writer and stand-up comedian who has appeared on "Inside Amy Schumer."

When Yalla first approached Higgins, she jumped at the chance to work with Iraqi creatives and share ideas in what she called the “common language” of comedy. She quickly recruited fellow comics Randazzo and Amer.

The workshop hosted a wide range of talents. There were writers, like Russel Hasan from Baghdad, who's working on her first novel, about a “deep-thinking person isolated from the world." There were animators who make satirical videos that depict ISIS extremists as creatures with goat voices.

Just an hour's drive or so from Erbil, where the workshop took place and where many displaced Iraqis now live, ISIS boasts control over Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.

“Here, where ISIS have been an actual threat, these jokesters have taken back their power and and used it the best way they know,” said Higgins, who praised the inventiveness, hard work and good humor she's encountered in the Iraqi comedy world. 

“I feel those elements are lacking in the U.K. and U.S. comedy scene, where many people 'do comedy' as a way to build their own brand, which I find crass and cynical," she said. “In Iraq, the comedians I've met are keen to use comedy as a form of self-expression, as a release valve and as an opportunity to transcend the reality of life."

People at the workshop, some of whom have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media despite having few resources and no formal training, talked a lot about satire and its role in Iraq.

“Holding the people in power responsible, making fun of them, taking them down a few pegs, can actually have an effect on cultural perception,” Randazzo said.

But unlike in the U.S. comedy scene, poking fun at ISIS, or even government and security forces, can have serious, sometimes fatal consequences here.

Famed Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat, who joined the workshop by Skype, knows this firsthand. For decades, he's been drawing politically charged cartoons that often satirize strongmen and corrupt officials. In 2011, masked assailants thought to be regime forces broke Farzat's hands after he published a cartoon depicting Syrian President Bashar Assad fleeing town with Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who had been overthrown just days earlier. 

Some of the comedians were “understandably nervous” about using satire as a political tool, Randazzo noted.

Many of the comedians, like Shabow, want to focus on using comedy to send positive messages -- whether it’s to promote the idea of unity in a country so divided by political and sectarian lines, or to simply create joy amid so much suffering. 

“There's a great sense of endeavor here,” Randazzo said. “People want to improve their world, to make a go of it.”

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This article originally appeared on artnet News.

On March 22, the world awoke to the tragic news of yet another terrorist attack on European soil. Two blasts in Brussels, the capital of the European Union, left more than 30 dead and over 300 injured. The city has also been the subject of several police raids in connection with the attacks that took place in Paris in November 2015.

With the 2016 edition of Art Brussels opening in two weeks -- which coincides, moreover, with the inaugural edition of Independent Brussels -- artnet News contacted Anne Vierstraete, managing director of Art Brussels, to discuss whether plans for the fair have changed as a result of the attacks, how the city is returning to normalcy, and why the art world has to carry on despite the threat of violence.

How is Brussels recovering from the attacks? What's the general mood in the city?

The city was deeply saddened and shocked by the events of Tuesday 22 March. The authorities have outlined security standards for a level three threat in Brussels to ensure safe conditions for the population so that the heart of the city can return as quickly as possible to normal life. Museums are open, concerts are happening, people are eating at restaurants, going to the shopping areas, enjoy walking in the streets, and take trams, buses, and the metro. We are wary that the information in the media often gives a distorted view of events such as these, but we have experienced a growing sense of hope in the city.

The new location of the fair is near to Molenbeek and Schaerbeek, areas in Brussels that were in the media recently because of the raids against terrorists. Have any contingency plans been developed to ensure security at the fair?

We have taken extra steps and measures to ensure that high security is maintained this year, since the safety of participants and attendees is of utmost importance. We have sought out expert advice and continue to follow the guidelines of the authorities on maintaining security.

Have exhibitors or collectors expressed any concerns about attending the fair?

In today's circumstances as Brussels airport is still not yet operating at full capacity [it reopened partially on April 3], we of course receive a number of questions addressing practical questions like flight organization and so on. Visitors mainly inquire about the security level at the fair and in town.

Given the current threat level, would you ever consider cancelling the fair? What's the position of Art Brussels in response to the attacks?

We were deeply saddened by the events of Tuesday 22 March and naturally our thoughts are with those who lost loved ones. We thank all those who have offered much appreciated words of support for the fair, the wider community, and the city of Brussels.

We are confident about the fair and very excited about this year's program which we are happy to launch in our new location of Tour & Taxis. This move to a new venue opens a lot of possibilities and has allowed us to instigate many changes which will benefit the fair, not least of which the reduction in size by 50 galleries to a total of 141. This has enabled us to be more stringent in the selection process. Obviously, we constantly strive to improve the quality of the art on view; and we aim to renew, surprise and innovate, ensure good hospitality, and create good viewing conditions for art.

We are looking forward to the fair, and while we remain vigilant, our lives go on as normal. We do not feel threatened as these incidents, we have to remember, remain quite rare.

In the last five years Brussels has gained a fantastic reputation as an arts hub, gathering not only a solid network of galleries and collectors, but also a growing base of emerging artists. Do you think the recent developments might challenge that status?

Time will tell regarding the short, medium, and long term effects of recent events. I would be reluctant to prejudge attendance for the fair at this stage. Certainly looking at examples of other cities that have suffered similar events, such as Paris or London, there is naturally great shock and disruption, but at the same time the cultural life of a city does continue. It remains the case that Brussels is an extremely vibrant city.

Recent events like the premature closing of Paris Photo or the cancellation of the AKKA art fair following the Paris attacks show how terrorist violence around the world is directly affecting the art world. Lahore, for example, announced the launch of its first Biennale two weeks ago, and in the following weekend there was a horrible terror attack there. A week before the Brussels attacks, the director of the Goethe-Institut's branch in the Ivory Coast was among the 22 killed in a terrorist attack near Abidjan. How, in your opinion, can the art world deal with threats from terrorism?

After the terrorist attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris, it became obvious that security measures had to be reconsidered in general, no matter what city in the world an event is planned in. The terrorist threat is, unfortunately, part of the world we live in, but it is not a new phenomenon. We also need to bear in mind that there has been a lot of fear mongering and sensationalist reporting on the events.

On a more positive note, what are you looking forward to in this year's edition? What are the fair's highlights for you?

The Art Brussels team is very confident of what we have to offer this year. In particular we are excited to be moving to our new space, Tour & Taxis. As Belgium's leading fair, we continue to build on our profile and track record as one of “Europe's foremost discovery fairs", as stated recently in The New York Times. This year, we added a baseline: "From Discovery to Rediscovery." We eliminated the YOUNG section in order to enlarge the DISCOVERY section from 14 to 30 galleries; we added REDISCOVERY, which focuses on under-estimated, overlooked, or unduly forgotten art made between 1917 and 1987; and we maintained PRIME, which brings together galleries presenting mid-career and established artists. As a result we have 3 clear, identifiable sections.

We also launch the OUT OF THE BOOTH project, which allows a number of galleries to present larger scale works in the form of a sculpture parcours inside the fair, with works by 12 leading international artists working in the medium of sculpture.

Our flagship project in the artistic program this year will be the exhibition "Cabinet d'Amis: The Accidental Collection of Jan Hoet," curated by Katerina Gregos, artistic director of Art Brussels. Jan Hoet amassed a personal collection during his years working as a curator, with over 500 works in it, most modest in scale, and certainly not spectacular. Many artworks were gifts from artists, resulting in a collection joined not by design or intent, but almost by accident. Artists include Joseph Beuys, James Lee Byars,Marcel Broodthaers, Thierry De Cordier, Marlene Dumas, David Hammons, and Luc Tuymans, among many others.

This edition of the fair coincides with the arrival of Independent. What are your thoughts on that? Do you see Independent as a competitor, or rather as an addition that will complement the local scene?

When Independent first announced that it would be joining us in Brussels, I noted how it proves that our city has become an attractive international contemporary art community. There is a common precedent across the globe of satellite fairs popping up around larger ones once a scene is cemented. However in this case, the Brussels market has been solid for a long time and those in-the-know have been making the most of that at our fair for many years.

On a local level, in Belgium we have more collectors per capita than any other country in the world. We have an unrivaled proximity and connectivity with so many of the other European art capitals. Art Brussels was one of the first contemporary art fairs so we enjoy very long standing relationships with collectors, artists, curators, and museum directors from around the globe who respect our experience and curatorial approach, and continue to make this a priority in their calendars.

The fact that we receive more than 30,000 visitors, 30 percent of whom are from abroad, and have engaged in long-term VIP recruitment is of course something that Independent will profit from. It will also profit from the fact that so many other art events and partnerships are organized thanks to Art Brussels around the time of the fair. On the other hand, the two fairs are very different and have different lists of galleries, meaning that there is a complementary aspect that can only enrich the landscape. In fact, it is a situation of mutual reinforcement.

Katerina Gregos will leave her post as artistic director of the fair after this edition. What profile and skills are you looking for in her successor? What are the future targets and goals of Art Brussels?

We have not begun the process of looking for a successor for Katerina Gregos as of yet.

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HAJJAH, Yemen (Reuters) - They live in scruffy tents or mud huts on dry, stony ground. Children play with what they have - a rubber tire will do. Medical treatment is hard to come by for young and old alike.

In northwest Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, families uprooted by the war have been stuck in camps for the past year.

Around 400 of them now reside in the Shawqaba camp in Hajjah province, which borders Saudi Arabia. A visiting Reuters photographer has captured their life in a Wider Image photo essay.

When fighting between Saudi forces and Houthi rebels began in March 2015, these refugees were forced to leave their villages in al-Dhahir and Shada districts in neighboring Saada province as Saudi-led warplanes targeted Houthi positions.

Residents and human rights groups say some of the strikes destroyed homes and damaged farmlands. The coalition has acknowledged mistakes in air operations in Yemen but denies Houthi allegations that its forces strike civilian targets.

A few months later, the place they sought refuge, al-Mazraq camp near the border city of Harad, also in Hajjah, was bombarded.

Families moved further inland to the arid Shawqaba camp that lacks the most basic services. Residents call home poorly built huts that protect them neither from summer heat nor winter cold.

Amal Jabir, 10, standing outside her family’s hut, says there’s only one thing she wishes for.

"I want this war to be over, to return home and finish my studies," she says.

Many children suffer from a lack of nutrition and health services. Muhammad, 11, is waiting for treatment of his fractured leg.

Elderly people with diabetes and heart conditions complain of a lack of medicine - and the high prices when it is available.

Yemen has been in a civil war for more than a year between supporters of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the Iran-allied Houthi group that has sucked in a Saudi-led alliance and caused a major humanitarian crisis.

U.N.-sponsored peace talks are scheduled to start in Kuwait on April 18. The two sides in the conflict have confirmed a truce starting at midnight on April 10.

Take a look at more images from the camp below:

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I was on my way to work last week prepping for my interview with British feminist author Laura Bates about her book Everyday Sexism when a man told me to smile. A few minutes later -- still not smiling -- it was raining, and I tweeted about my wardrobe confusion. A middle-aged father responded, suggesting that I consider "wearing nothing."

Ironically, it's these tiny "pinpricks" as Bates calls them, that the U.S. edition of her book (and the Everyday Sexism Project which inspired it) is intended to bring awareness to -- and ultimately combat. 

Bates launched the Everyday Sexism Project in 2012 after a sh*tty week where she had "several terrible experiences in a really short period of time," from street harassment to groping to being followed home by a man. The common thread? They all felt violating, but a kind of "normal" part of womanhood. She began speaking with other women and decided to create a platform where these sort of experiences could be shared.

Four years later, the project exists on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and on the Everyday Sexism website. More than 100,000 women have used the platform to share their stories of gender-based discrimination. The anecdotes include tales of street harassment, sexist dress codes and subtle workplace digs, and also darker stories of sexual violence, stalking and overt discrimination.

All of the stories illustrate the small and large ways deep-seated, structural sexism plays out in women's lives.

Bates had a lot to say about why both women and men should care deeply about these issues, and what we can do -- on a legislative, institutional and individual level -- to combat everyday sexism.

What made you start the Everyday Sexism project?

The spark was a really terrible week. I was followed home by a man aggressively sexually propositioning me and refusing to take no for an answer, I was groped on the bus by a man, and when I said out loud what was happening everyone else looked away and no one stepped in or said anything, and then I was shouted at by two men in the street as I walked past them commenting on my breasts. At the end of this week it struck me -- if these experiences hadn’t all happened in the same week, I never would’ve thought twice about any one of them, because it was normal. It was just part of being a woman.

And that was a real eye-opener for me, that moment of realizing -- that’s just what it is to be a woman in the 21st century. So I started talking to other women and girls and asking, "Have you ever experienced anything like this?" And I was absolutely blown away by the sheer number of stories. It was every woman I spoke to. 

That was a real eye-opener for me -- that moment of realizing, that’s just what it is to be a woman in the 21st century.

When I tried to talk about it, I found myself being shut down. People said, "No, sexism doesn't exist anymore, women are equal now." So I started Everyday Sexism because I wanted to bridge that gap between the idea that gender equality has been achieved, and the reality of what women and girls are still putting up with as “normal.”

How do you define everyday sexism?

Sexism is treating somebody differently or discriminating against them because of their sex. And I used the term "everyday" partly because I wanted to point out that this is something that impacts women and girls on every level, whether it’s street harassment, workplace harassment or sexual violence. It is so regular and such a normal occurrence, that there’s a lot of sexism that has become normalized.

As you said, it’s very easy to brush off each individual incident. Why should people care about seemingly small instances of sexism?

One thing the project has shown really clearly is the connection between the "minor" things and the more serious abuses. We’re often told not to make a fuss about street harassment or that we’re getting upset about nothing if we talk about media sexism, but you can see from the stories we receive that these things have a [domino] effect. So, for example, the same words and phrases that might be used against a woman in the street are used against a woman in the workplace or against a victim of domestic abuse. We can also see how incidents can escalate. If a woman rejects or ignores a street harasser, she might find that he becomes angry and sexually assaults her or follows her home.

I don’t think it’s realistic to compartmentalize these things, to say it’s OK to treat women as second-class citizens in one arena, or it’s OK to see women’s bodies as pieces of meat in public spaces, but you have to treat them equally in the workplace. I don’t think it works that way. When you normalize these everyday pinpricks, they create an environment that makes the more serious incidents possible. In the U.S., where three women per day are killed by a current or former [male] partner, I think it’s acceptable to challenge discourse that is suggesting women are inferior to men.

What role does intersectionality play in the way everyday sexism impacts different women?

It’s absolutely huge. From really early on we were receiving entries from people who were experiencing sexism, but they were also experiencing another form of prejudice. You can’t compartmentalize these things, because that’s not how women experience them. Women don't go out of the house one day and experience homophobia or racism, and on another day experience sexism. 

We would hear from a disabled woman who was asked to do a pole dance with her walking stick. Or we would hear from a woman who was walking with her female partner and was chased down the street by men asking if they could join in or videotape them. Or from a black woman who was told by a man at a job interview about his fantasies of sleeping with "spicy" and "exotic" black women.

When you normalize these everyday pinpricks, they create an environment that makes the more serious incidents possible.

Those women’s lived experiences are the perfect illustration of why intersectionality is so important in the way we begin to tackle the problem. It doesn’t work to tackle the gender pay gap if you don’t work into your strategy the fact that women of color make so much less than white women. It doesn’t work to try to legislate against domestic violence if you don’t have something within that plan that addresses that disabled women experience domestic violence at twice the rate of non-disabled women.

How does everyday sexism play out at work, specifically?

If you look at the over 100,000 entries we’ve received, the single most common category of entry we receive is from women in the workplace. The workplace is also the area in which people are most likely to refuse to believe that this is happening. In the workplace particularly, there’s a culture of dismissal, disbelief, and silencing, and of women feeling unable to come forward because of economic insecurity. They’re worried about losing their job or being demoted or pushed sideways. And obviously this is an intersectional area. This is something that disproportionately impacts low-paid workers and those with jobs that don’t have security, and who are also disproportionately likely to be single moms and/or women of color.

Everyday sexism in the workplace starts right at the point of interview, with women being asked about their childcare or family plans. It includes sexual harassment, everything from female colleagues’ faces being photoshopped onto porn pictures and being sent around the office, to women being asked inappropriate questions about their sex lives. And then discrimination which might be very subtle, like women always being asked to take notes in meetings or someone making the assumption that a woman is junior to her male colleague, or it might be overt, like a woman being told she won’t be considered for a promotion because she’s considered a maternity risk. (Maternity in itself is a whole area of enormous discrimination.) In the most extreme cases, we’ve also gotten a number of entries from women who have experienced sexual violence in the workplace.

Another thing we hear a lot about is women who go to an HR department or report something to their manager -- which of course, not everyone has recourse to do -- and get responses like, “As a woman in science, do you really want this on your record” or if the CEO is an older man, “Of course he harassed you, what did you expect?”

What has the reaction to the project been like from men?

It’s been very mixed. There has been a huge amount of support from men. A huge amount of men writing to say it shocked them, it’s opened their eyes, they want to be a part of the solution -- especially fathers. There have been a lot of men who say they have been galvanized to join the fight.

I don’t think it’s contradictory to say that this is something that affects men and matters to men, and also say this is something that mainly impacts women.

Unfortunately, there are a small minority of men who have responded with aggression. I receive hundreds of rape threats and death threats from men who are so scared by the idea of talking about equality because of this misconception that talking about women’s rights must mean wanting to take something away from men. The only way they know how to respond is to try to silence you, which is ironic because they do that in incredibly misogynistic ways. I will get messages that say things like “There’s no such thing as sexism, you stupid bitch.”

Toward the end of the book, you have a chapter dedicated to men. How do you think everyday sexism impacts them?

It impacts them hugely. We hear from girls who are being bullied and taunted at school and told they can’t play football, and boys of the same age being ridiculed because they want to take dance and it’s considered too girly. Or we’ll hear from a man in the workplace who has asked for parental leave and been denied it, and in the same week from a woman who has been denied a promotion because she’s considered a maternity risk. These are the same outdated gender stereotypes having a negative impact on people regardless of sex. If you look at the fact that the male suicide rate is far higher than it is for women, that’s a classic example. Because the idea is that men are tough, big boys don’t cry, men don’t talk about their feelings. The flip side of that is that women are emotional, women are hysterical, women are hormonal. And I think men not feeling able to talk about their feelings has a major impact on whether they’re going to reach out for help.

Sexism is in everybody’s interests to try to solve. But sometimes when you talk about that, people say, “Oh well if it’s about equality and it affects men as well, why don’t you call it Equalism, why don’t you call it Humanism?” We need to name the problem to solve the problem. And the “fem” part is in there because it is women who disproportionately face structural and systemic oppression based on sex. It is women who bear the brunt of sexual violence, and have throughout history. I don’t think it’s contradictory to say that this is something that affects men and matters to men, and also say this is something that mainly impacts women.

So how can we combat everyday sexism productively?

We need to tackle this at all different levels. We can be calling on the government to legislate in ways that would be beneficial for women. For example, legislation around maternity pay -- the United States is the only industrialized country that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave. And then at the organizational level, there’s a huge amount companies can do around shared parental leave and flexible working hours, as well as tackling the gender pay gap. And then I think there is an institutional level, where colleges and universities need to be doing more to tackle things like sexual violence on campus.

At some point, each of us has a moment where we have the opportunity to shift what’s normal.

Then there’s also a whole individual level to this. I think perhaps that individual attitudes towards women is where we need to see the biggest shift. Because we know that legislative change is important, but that it doesn’t always trickle down. We know that sex discrimination is illegal in the workplace, but we also know that women are experiencing it. And I think that’s scary and frustrating, because it’s not an easy or simple fix. But it’s something that all of us can contribute to in small ways within our own sphere, because let’s face it: This stuff is widespread. We will all have a moment where we hear something discriminatory being said at the office, or we see someone being harassed, or we hear a friend making a sexist joke or calling a woman a slut, or we might have children and have to decide how we’re going to talk to our boys as well as our girls about sexual consent.

At some point, each of us has a moment where we have the opportunity to shift what’s normal. And it has to be about all of us taking that responsibility if we want to see a real cultural change.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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