Welcome to LOST WEEKEND, VICE’s hungover news briefing.

It must be said that when it comes to female erections, I am far from an expert. So I was obviously intrigued when I received an email from Bryan Johnson‘s girlfriend late last week about lady boners. Just what are they, and what should be done about them?

Kate Tolo is probably well placed to answer that question, as she is officially in the “top 1% of all vaginas”—a bold claim made by her tech-millionaire-and-longevity-enthusiast partner, with whom she co-founded the longevity brand Blueprint.

This is her vaginal microbiome report. 100/100 score.

Top 1% of all vaginas.

Her sample is dominated by the single most protective bacterial species a vagina can host (Lactobacillus crispatus).

Only about 25-30% of reproductive age women globally are L. crispatus-dominant,… pic.twitter.com/Pt1JbKM5y0

— Bryan Johnson (@bryan_johnson) April 30, 2026

Tolo is on a mission to be the world’s most measured woman (it’s great when a couple has a shared hobby). As part of this, she’s harvesting data on her own nighttime erections. No, not using “bean calipers,” as Bryan’s freaky online fanboys have suggested, but with a piece of $15,000 lab equipment—for context, the device Bryan uses costs just $275.

The 49-year-old, who claims to have a 22-year-old’s dick, says this price gap sums up the current status of female health, which is primed for a revolution. “If nighttime genital blood flow predicts heart disease in women the way erectile function does in men, this is one of the most important measurements we’re looking at.” I love it when he talks dirty like that.

@katetolo

welcome to my room

♬ original sound – Kate Tolo

But as much as I like to poke fun at the whole longevity movement, improving our understanding of women’s health feels like something that could genuinely benefit millions of people. So I got Kate on the phone to find out more about her “techno tampon.”

VICE: So, female erections?
Kate Tolo: The clitoral area has the same erectile tissue as in men. Women go through the same erection cycles, particularly during REM sleep. Men wake up with morning wood; women wake up with the morning bean. Men’s erectile issues can predict heart attacks by two to five years. Is this true for women too? We have the same vascular network, so theoretically, it could be. Science hasn’t looked into it yet.

What’s the difference in longevity for men versus women?
I’ve never been about optimizing or longevity for women. I’ve been about, “What the hell is going on with our bodies?” We have not characterized the female body to the same degree as the male body. It’s extremely hard to measure a female body. The infrastructure is not built for that purpose.

And this “techno tampon” is gonna change that?
It looks like a tampon and has a light and a sensor. Because light is absorbed by blood, you’re able to deduce how much blood flow there is. It’s really archaic. Bryan measures his erections with a $275 wireless device that gives him an erection score. Mine’s like $15,000, with a long wire taped to my leg and software that looks like it’s from the 1970s. It took us three months to get it running. It disrupts my sleep and is not fun to wear.

Outside of this device, what does your female health protocol look like?
I measure around 1,900 biomarkers. I have a five-hour morning routine. Everything stays the same: food, water, exercise, schedule. At 6.30AM, the alarm goes off, and the F1 race starts.

Does optimization present challenges to your romantic relationship? Not sharing a bed for sleep quality, every romantic meal is Nutty Pudding…
It’s kind of cute. We’re living parallel paths. We have this ritual where we check his resting heart rate before bed. He can’t look at his phone because of the blue light, so he closes his eyes, and I’m like, “Alright, it’s 44, it’s 43…” We have all these weird rituals that only the two of us can possibly appreciate.

That sounds strangely romantic. Are you always chill about Bryan posting about you? “The 1%” is the famous one.
Sometimes I meet people in real life, and I can just tell they’re thinking about these tweets that have gone viral. He never posts about me without checking with me first. A lot of men don’t know about endometriosis—we’ve genuinely moved the needle on that. I support trying to gather as much attention around these things as possible.

I saw these tweets: “If Bryan Johnson solves endometriosis, all of his experiments will be worth it,” and “Okay, he can be crazy in peace forever if he keeps this up”—people seem to see him differently now.
Bryan and I started the business together and only started a relationship after that. I’m a shy person, and we kept things private for the first three or four years. That let us go through the normal turmoil of a relationship and be like, “We’re locked in. We’re good.” Once I came into the picture, they were like, “Oh, right. He cares about someone, and this is his person.” We’ve been doing this together from day one. It’s been both our brains—as a love project, ultimately.

Does being in love complicate the idea of wanting to live forever?
We have an 18-year age gap—that means something when you think about life and death. The funny thing about this project is none of us will get definitive answers for, like, 80 years.

So how do you make sure these findings benefit as many women as possible?
I am trying my hardest to get the word out there. The techno tampon is interesting because I grew up Catholic, and so I know how much taboo there is around sex. This is nonsexual and could be a really important cardiac marker for women to know.

OTHER NEWS

• One of the internet’s most annoying children, Jack Doherty, is supposedly banned from posting after signing a deal with a casino without reading the fine print, a blunder which is ultimately great promotion for both parties. Now, who wants to pay me to log off?
• Why walk around the world like Karl Bushby, who is back in the UK after 28 years, when you could just “visit” all these countries using AI, never leaving the comfort of your own home, or experiencing a single real thing, and still somehow ending up with a bigger carbon footprint in the process?

PREDICTION FOR THE WEEK AHEAD

• Bored and with nothing better to do after curing cancer, scientists will start shooting smack because, unfortunately, AI is unable to solve the fundamental problem of the ultimate futility of all human existence.  

BRAND NEW SENTENCE

• “This disgusting spectacle will involve rolling him out in a wheelchair, then live-streaming his body as it’s pumped full of bullets.”

BONUS PREDICTION: A BIG NIGHT FOR ERECTION HAVERS

• Bryan Johnson and Kate Tolo will take their relationship to the next level becoming DJ partners. Their Berghain set will consist of 140 bpm techno transmitted directly to erection measuring devices. 

Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi

The post Exploring the Mysteries of the Female Erection With Bryan Johnson’s Girlfriend appeared first on VICE.

Music journalism is going to the wall, and places for sensible, well-informed, nuanced takes on the latest releases are dwindling. So we thought we might as well put the final nail in the coffin

Read last week’s album reviews here.

Cameron Winter
Live at Carnegie Hall
Partisan Records / Play It Again Sam
This stark live album captures Cameron Winter at the height of a hype cycle so rabid even sensible music publications ripped up their calendars to name his 2024 solo record one of the best things to come out in 2025. This affront to sequential time was typical of the collective hysteria, which reached a crescendo when, at 23, the Geese frontman became one of the youngest solo artists to headline Carnegie Hall’s main auditorium. 

This set was recorded about a year after the release of Heavy Metal, yet when I first stuck it on, I was convinced it consisted entirely of non-album deep cuts, as Cameron reimagines the record throughout (also playing three unreleased compositions). No matter how far music technology has come, there are still few things more affronting than one man really going for it at the piano—just ask John Cale. At times, these songs are oldhead unlistenable, which you don’t hear too often anymore. During the “extremely sold-out” performance, Cameron stayed hunched over with his back to the crowd—basically mooning members of Phish, R.E.M., and Sonic Youth—who responded to the discordant hammering of keys with whoops of glee. 

The live album and accompanying concert film, made by Paul Thomas Anderson and Benny Safdie, captures a high point in the Season of Geese, or, as I prefer to call it, 500 Days of Winter; a time when everyone started pretending to have heard of Cameron and his band before Getting Killed came out (“I love 3D Country!”). Then they were branded a “psyop” and the same people were gravely offended by the band’s alleged use of bot marketing, which they definitely understood (rather than just feeling stupid for getting swept up in their enthusiasm).

This probably marks the start of a fresh wave of delirium; Cameron’s new music’s so confounding he’s yet to play it to his bandmates, so no doubt his second solo record will be the indisputable album of next year. And the one after.

7/10
CUM-SHOT JOHNSON

Troye Sivan
She’s the Best
Interscope Records
Australian pop star Troye Sivan is a smooth operator, with one graceful gesture giving way seamlessly to the next—like moves on the dance floor—throughout this vibrant fourth studio record, which pays tribute to many of the people who’ve shaped his life. But even he took a moment to find his footing during a recent interview when he was asked for his list of 15 to 20 of “the best” women. I hope his mom wasn’t too offended when she missed out on the top spot. To be fair, Sade has some real bops.

7/10
ERNAUX COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Pitbull
PITCOIN
Mr. 305 Records
The entire global economic order is going down, I’m yellin’ timber! After Pitbull made it big with a small handful of post-recession pop hits, I bet on him striking gold with this one and sold all my worldly possessions so I could buy unofficial tokens with the same name as this stonking new 24-track record. I figured that when it comes to decentralized international trade on the blockchain, I could learn something from Mr. Worldwide, who signed a timely deal with an NFT platform in 2021 (how are everyone’s Bored Apes doing right now?). But judging by this tacky, oversaturated album, the value of his creative output is in complete free fall. PITCOIN is pretty much worthless, and so are my life savings.

2/10
CHINESE XL BULLY

HAAi
DIGITiSE
Mute
The main thing you need to know about being human in a digital world (the subject of this blissfully kinetic dance record) is that you shouldn’t believe in anything. Except for birth order, which is 100 percent real and legitimate, regardless of whether or not it’s scientifically verifiable. So when HAAi says that this record is the “bigger, ravey sibling” to her previous one, HUMANiSE, what she means is that it’s cooler, more attractive, and just generally better, but on the downside, it’ll never live down that time it got caught dick-in-hand waiting for 30-second Bang Bros video previews to buffer on the family computer room’s 56 kbps dial-up connection. Ffs, it was just a pop-up!

7/10
AGENT DALL-E COOPER

The Fall
Post Script
Cog Sinister/Gonzo
If the logic here is that so long as there’s some digital remnant of Mark E. Smith, it’s The Fall, then surely it’s not long before we bring back the great man in hologram form for a residency in the bar of the Radisson hotel, which now occupies Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall. I’d pay good money to watch his cantankerous avatar bellowing and pissing himself through the hits from his sprawling, singular discography, rather than the ghoulish imitations conjured up on this lifeless posthumous record. I must confess I’m also motivated by selfish intent—I’m hoping the technology might also be used on his backing band so I’d get the chance to once again see my granny (playing the bongos).

4/10
FURRY JACK

Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi

The post VICE Album Reviews, October 9: Cameron Winter, Troye Sivan, Pitbull, and More appeared first on VICE.

Welcome to RATED AND SLATED, the column that is terminally online so you don’t have to be.

I’m quick to overestimate my own intelligence, but I wasn’t prepared for what would happen when I asked ChatGPT how smart I really am.

I wanted to know what percentile of intelligence I fall into compared to other AI users. I wanted the all-knowing machine to “be honest,” but it was just mean.

https://t.co/ATiUzrV2rD pic.twitter.com/zUeAa8JIf7

— emerson (@emerson_toomey) October 6, 2026

I didn’t mind being told that “I wouldn’t put you at, say, the 99.9th percentile based on our conversations.” I can accept that I “don’t consistently exhibit the kind of extreme formal/mathematical abstraction abilities, painstaking logical derivation, or encyclopedic technical knowledge that would lead me to make that claim.”

But when it explained that the fact I was even asking this question meant there was something seriously wrong with my cognitive processes, and that I probably shouldn’t be trusted to use a computer unattended, I began to realize it was lying to me.

I don’t know how it reached that conclusion. I mean, the only thing I use a computer for is writing this column.

rated and slated

JUDGING #SPICYBOOKSTAGRAM BY ITS TERRIBLE MUSIC TASTE

Instagram reels just showed me a guy who makes 'smutstep' for the booktok crowd and it is the funniest thing I have ever watched pic.twitter.com/PKcCswSEDm

— jaxonloid (@jaxonloid) October 5, 2026

I’m sure Darq Dagr’s “smutstep” songs sound great if you still listen to early Skrillex and read Fifty Shades of Grey, but for anyone else, this will have you pulling out used tampons and sticking them in your ears.

GO WOKE OR… GO TO WAR

No fatties.
No trannies.
No beardos.
No weirdoes.
No wimps.
No radicals — JUST WARRIORS. pic.twitter.com/mDktwOmn6F

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) October 1, 2026

Is it just me, or does Just Warriors sound suspiciously like the internet’s most patriotic adult entertainment platform? I certainly wouldn’t put this past the ever-enterprising Trump administration—and what better way to pledge allegiance than with a star-spangled butt plug?

DRAGON DRONES

The insane landscape of modern drone warfare. Including "dragon drones" dropping molten iron (thermite) onto structures and trenches. pic.twitter.com/QRbeW2ffuE

— Donald Mitchell (@DonaldPMitchell) October 4, 2026

Technology sets us apart from the medieval peasantry, who looked fearfully upon uncharted territory and exclaimed: “Here be dragons.” Now that we’ve mapped out the entire world, it’s clear it holds nothing to be afraid of. There are no mythological monsters lying in wait to destroy us. So instead, we’ve built them ourselves, brutal, mechanized killing machines that rain down fiery death from the skies. But don’t worry about ever being lost again; we’ve got surveillance systems that can find you anywhere, anytime. Thank god the same people are in control of both, or we’d be doomed.

MORE LIKE THE VIRGINMAKER, AMIRITE?

JUST IN: 16-year-old has to be rescued from British Columbia’s “Widowmaker” mountain after reportedly letting Claude map out the hike, leading him off trail. pic.twitter.com/WN313ZWWs1

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) October 6, 2026

I wouldn’t expect a 16-year-old boy to appreciate the perils of vibe-mountaineering. If you’ve never been in a relationship, how could you know that a rock formation known as the “Widowmaker” might be dangerous? It’s a good thing search and rescue were on hand, otherwise somewhere in America an AI anime chatbot waifu would be sleeping alone tonight.

LEGAL BLOW ENERGY

wtf did I just come across pic.twitter.com/ct0rFUGn6a

— hawa ツ (@sknnysuge) October 6, 2026

When you’re done comprehensively deviating your septum by snorting powdered caffeine rather than just drinking it like a normal person, perhaps you’d be interested in my latest business venture: “Smack” is the viral instant relaxation hack that fits snugly in your pocket. Just shoot up throughout the day, whenever you need it. No need to call the cops! It’s just baking soda, mostly.

ANDREW TATE COURT DOCUMENTS

Wild Andrew Tate claims include 'extreme porn,' bestiality pics with horse and eel as disturbing full allegations revealed https://t.co/mxYVhJNlpd pic.twitter.com/xwYkK7Wh5q

— New York Post (@nypost) October 6, 2026

If you’ve spent any meaningful length of time in the UK, you will know that the only place horse meat belongs is in a frozen lasagna.

3 small mercies

“CONSUMER”

Blackhaine⁰Saints In The Wethouse⁰Debut album⁰13.11.26⁰XL Recordings⁰⁰Consumer out now.⁰⁰Produced by Wraith9⁰Additional vocals by Mad Cobra⁰⁰Pre-order / pre-save: https://t.co/Jv3h7EiTjM pic.twitter.com/iMjY6rCBLv

— XL RECORDINGS (@XLRECORDINGS) October 1, 2026

The streamlined violence of Blackhaine’s new single carries the fingerprints of merciless producer Wraith9, whose signature tag has been a life-ruining vocal stim for me. I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but then that Mad Cobra sample dropped and now I can’t stop channeling the dancehall icon’s vocal catchphrase either. Fingers crossed none of my loved ones will have any pressing questions that can’t be satisfactorily answered by “OK!” or “YUSH!” over the next few weeks.

OLIVIA COLMAN’S RUNWAY DEBUT

thee olivia colman walking for the miu miu ss'27 show by miuccia prada. pic.twitter.com/w3Hs7l8JxG

— izzah (@izzah_vl) October 4, 2026

So it appears that Sophie from Peep Show is now modeling at Paris Fashion Week. I was going to make a joke about how Jeremy won’t like it when Mark comes home wearing his new designer suit that she chose for him. But anyone who appreciates this reference will probably be struggling to drag their own wardrobe into the 21st century (with its meaningless logos and ironic veneration of tyrants).

RELATIONSHIP GOALS (ANGRY HONEY BADGER EDITION)

Stoffel, a honey badger, was so determined to fight the lions next door that he kept escaping. When his keepers gave him a female partner to distract him, he used her to climb out again. pic.twitter.com/3SrdMR5UzH

— TVP (@Theveripost) October 6, 2026

You know it’s love when your girlfriend lets you climb on her back so you can get a better shot at your enemies. Come here darling, the lions next door are posting again and I’m ready to fight.

Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi

The post The Internet Is a Dark and Shameful Place, Week #856 appeared first on VICE.

Welcome to LOST WEEKEND, VICE’s Monday briefing.

Forget about curing cancer and ending war; what I really need from AI is it to get me a ticket for the Glastonbury Festival.

If I had my way, Glastonbury would become a gathering of the 210,000 most effective users of agentic AI in the world. The hippies and hedonists who’ve hogged it for the last however many decades have had their turn. Newsflash, wastoids: There are plenty of other parties where you can torch your brain cells and pump your biological age up a full generational bracket. Surely what I’m saying isn’t even that controversial. The true spirit of Glastonbury is transformation. And what could be more transformative for Western Europe than its very own Burning Man?

The second- and third-order benefits are difficult to compute. In my brave new world, Glasto would simply be attended by a better quality of person, the whole thing undergoing a kind of demographic transfusion: partygoers out, go-getters in. What, you thought us AI guys would be handing over our entrepreneurial smarts at the gate? Before you know it, we’ll be monetizing the portaloos, converting human waste into revenue for the suits in charge. We’ll be bussing in blood boys to turn the VIP into a hangover-free zone. The chat at sunrise will be like nothing the Stone Circle has ever heard before, as tech-bro visionaries debate the merits of psychedelic drugs and whether or not we’re living in a simulation.

“Before you know it, we’ll be monetizing the portaloos, converting human waste into revenue for the suits in charge”

No doubt there will be naysayers. The usual suspects will complain that entry to Glastonbury should be determined by how much each potential consumer actually cares about music (yawn). But this would result in the most suboptimal festival in living memory, with disparate clusters of black metal connoisseurs and Japanese noise aficionados stumbling across the 600-hectare site, blinking like trapped moles. Some folks are just better off in their bedrooms.

I don’t know why people are crying about the price of tickets, which are just £408, or to put it another way, less than an annual subscription to GPT Plus. Fortunately, there is little need to worry about depressing brokies these days, after security tightened up around the turn of the century, cutting off the kind of audacious freeloaders who loved music so much they were prepared to pole-vault a moat of human excrement to listen to some.

Increasingly, the tides are shifting in our direction. Putting tickets for the world’s biggest festival on sale at 9AM on a Sunday felt like a message to the pill-poppers and freakniks that they’re no longer welcome; no doubt most of them were too busy sleeping off their hangovers to log into a platoon of devices and stare at a set of unmoving green bars for four hours. Even if the queue contained the odd degenerate who’d been awake all night, I’m confident they couldn’t have successfully navigated a purchase that didn’t involve at least one Albanian man. Which is great, as these are the last people you’d actually want to hang out with at a festival. 

Simon Reynolds on ‘Heroin’, Rock’s Most Evil Song

Since the introduction of ID verification, buying tickets for Glastonbury has been a test of how effectively you can organize friends and family members into your very own home bot-farm operation. AI puts an end to that. There will be no more screaming at grandmother because her arthritic fingers can’t enter the registration numbers fast enough to complete a purchase on her Kindle’s internet browser. AI can do that job way better, then book flights to Ghent so we can euthanize her.

There was a last-minute change to the system this year, but it was easy enough to get around. The new “hack” was to gather up as many unused registrations as possible—begging, bribing, or blackmailing anyone who’s had kids or got sober since the last instalment of the festival in 2025—and making use of the extra unique queue numbers. I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an underground trade in the registration numbers of the recently deceased. Did you know they eat their fries with mayonnaise in Belgium?

“I don’t know why people are crying about the price of tickets, which are just £408, or to put it another way, less than an annual subscription to GPT Plus”

I learned that this week. AI agents are already making dinner reservations. Once they work out how to get into Glastonbury, you’ll know the singularity isn’t far away. AI can refresh a browser window faster than any human in history, so hopefully next year, the ticket rush will be a thing of the past. And if you drugged-out doomers don’t like the sound of that, you can stay home and watch on the BBC—as long as your agent has sorted out the license renewal.

OTHER NEWS

• Shout out to Kid Rock collaborating with Eminem for some religious rap about staying friends despite having political differences. Gonna be one of my least favorite genres.
• FBI Director Kash Patel just got engaged to country singer Alexis Wilkins, which implies the existence of unfathomably hideous his-and-hers customized Nikes (good luck finding a wedding dress to go with them).
• London’s underground art fair, Minor Attractions, returns this month and will include live music for the first time—one of the venues is the kinky co-working space STÜCK (which we’ve written about before), which I guess makes sense as it’s a pretty… fluid space. 

PREDICTION FOR THE WEEK AHEAD

• After the release of single “Patient Zero”—which tragically coincided with the death of a scientist at a Russian plague laboratory—Taylor Swift’s new track, “Mass Extinction Event”, is an unexpected return to form (streaming numbers are down though after millions die from Black Death 2.0).

BRAND NEW SENTENCE

• “The two-year-old robots were trained to throw themselves into molten steel after no longer serving a purpose”

Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi

The post When Is Glastonbury Going to Let My AI Agent Buy Tickets? appeared first on VICE.