A race for party chairman has turned into a fight over what some say are conflicts of interest. Democrats in the battleground state are still smarting after bad Latino outreach and a big loss in 2014.

Colorado State Democratic Party chairman Rick Palacio at an event with former Sen. Mark Udall.

David Zalubowski / AP

The Democratic Party in the crucial presidential state of Colorado dissolved into bitter infighting Friday over a combination of obscure party rules and allegations that the party's leader has ignored women and Latinos within the party.

The origin of the open feud between Chairman Rick Palacio and other top state Democrats is the Democratic National Committee requirement that 500 state central committee members be divided evenly between men and women. The Colorado party was short 46 men to meet the quota, and Palacio's rivals say he is using the new appointments to appoint supporters before party elections Saturday, something he denies.

"It's an embarrassment to the DNC," said Mannie Rodriguez, the DNC Hispanic caucus finance chair and a Palacio foe.

Colorado's Democrats were already deeply divided over the defeat of Senator Mark Udall in midterm elections. Some Democrats have pinned Udall's defeat on a decision not to campaign aggressively on immigration issues in the heavily Latino state. Palacio serves on a post-election task force charged with figuring out what went wrong in 2014.

But the internal conflict found a new outlet Monday when a Palacio rival for the chairmanship, campaign consultant David Sabados, brought up the fact that the central committee is short on men. The Democratic National Committee warned him Tuesday evening that an election carried out with the imbalance would be subject to challenge, Palacio and the DNC both said, and Palacio then alerted state Democrats in an email, provided to BuzzFeed News.

Palacio told BuzzFeed News that he's picking fairly.

"Where no alternates exist I've taken recommendations from county party chairs," he said.

Palacio has been sent at least three emails, which were reviewed by BuzzFeed News, by central committee members asking him to make the process more transparent and let his opponents Sabados and former congressional candidate Vic Meyers, pick some of the appointees. (A DNC official said the party did not tell Palacio what specific people to appoint.)

In an email sent to all three candidates Friday morning, former congressional candidate Owen Perkins told Palacio that randomly drawing from a group picked by state Democrats "to fill as many spots as possible is the best way to maintain the integrity of the Central Committee makeup and avoid any perception of a conflict of interest."

Behind the arcane procedural fight, however, are substantive disputes.

Rodriguez, the Hispanic caucus finance chair said the party spent 16 cents per Latino voter in Colorado in Spanish-language media.

"They needed a task force report to tell them what went wrong?" he said.

He also complained that Palacio wouldn't work with him on a big phone banking effort targeting Latinos for the reelection of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, but then took the credit when Hickenlooper was one of the few 2014 bright spots in the state.

Palacio said he wasn't going to stoop to the level of that allegation but took issue with the idea that he didn't work well with Latinos in the party.

"That's absolutely false," he said.

The other issues in the race range from concerns over Palacio's giving himself a $25,000 raise in the chairman's post, which he says he had a right to do, to complaints that he has not worked well with labor groups and doesn't speak to women leaders within the party. And Palacio's critics say he's the wrong man to serve on a task force that's supposed to help the party avoid a repeat of 2014 because the state's problems lead back to him.

"My focus is not on Rick and his failings," Meyers said. "He should have resigned after the terrible election losses. But what we need is a successful, stronger party."

"He was the problem, why would they assign him to work on the task force?" Rodriguez asked.

Palacio responds that Colorado was hardly the only place Democrats had a bad year, and that midterm elections historically see losses for the party that belongs to the president. He pointed to Hickenlooper's reelection as a rare bright spot for the party.

"2016 is going to be a different year, much like 2012 was," he said. "If people think any states operates in a vacuum without the influence of national elections, they should probably take a course in the way American politics affects elections."

These writers are not to be missed.

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Universal Pictures.

The surprise success story of the ever-expanding Fifty Shades of Grey franchise isn’t the film adaptation, which needed only two weeks to draw BDSM-curious viewers to the tune of over $400 million worldwide, but the film’s soundtrack — a sexy/cool compilation that recently became the fastest-selling multi-act soundtrack in a decade. Featuring original music by Beyoncé, Sia, The Weeknd, and Ellie Goulding, the album, released by Republic Records, sold more than 428,000 units in its first two weeks, according to Nielsen Music, and this week sends two hit singles to the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 (Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do,” No. 3; and The Weeknd’s “Earned It,” No. 9).

Most impressive of all? It’s actually good. Where many critics have argued that the novel and film versions of Fifty Shades succeeded in spite of themselves, the soundtrack has been widely received as an artistic achievement as well as a commercial one. Created out of an ambitious collaboration between Republic and Universal Pictures, the album is something of a throwback to the golden era of movie soundtracks in the late 20th century — Juice, Romeo + Juliet — with several original songs deployed during key plot moments.

“We really wanted the songs to be part of the fiber of the film — nothing crowbarred in or just auxiliary to the experience,” said Mike Knobloch, president of film music and publishing at Universal. “There was a very deliberate effort to create as much original material as possible, to tailor the production, the lyrics, and the performance.”

Work on the Fifty Shades soundtrack began nearly two years ago, with meetings between Knobloch’s division at Universal, director Sam Taylor-Johnson, independent music supervisor Dana Sano, and the entire Republic A&R team. Given the market potential of the franchise (the book has sold over 100 million copies worldwide), the group allowed itself to indulge in what Knobloch characterizes as “blue sky” conversations — with no artist, no matter how large, considered to be off the table.

“If we could get anyone,” Knobloch recalls thinking, “Who would we get?"

Further spurring early meetings was the unique role music plays in Fifty Shades as originally written by E.L. James. Billionaire Christian Grey’s seduction of virginal literature student Anastasia Steele is peppered with unusually specific music cues, including several classical pieces and songs by contemporary artists ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Britney Spears.

“We were thinking of artists that would be in everyone’s own little personal playlist as they were reading the books,” said Tom Mackay, EVP and general manager, West Coast at Republic. “They had to be able to convey a vibe that was sensual and soulful, a certain taste, texture, and tenor.”

Universal Pictures.

The group compiled a list of dream artists, many of whom were not signed to Republic or its parent Universal Music Group, and began making calls to managers, labels, and publishers. Despite the cultural and commercial momentum of the franchise, they faced significant challenges. One problem was typical of soundtracks: At any given moment, many artists are simply unavailable due to the time constraints of their own touring or promotional schedules. But there were also particular issues related to the book itself, considered by some to be either too racy or too lowbrow. Knobloch and Mackay say there were a few, though not many, artists who turned them down flat.

Ultimately, 12 artists and 14 songs, all but two original, were chosen for the soundtrack, with two additional pieces of score composed by Danny Elfman. Beyoncé was among the first calls.

“I think we made a pretty good pitch,” said Knobloch of approaching Queen Bey, whose smoldering reinterpretation of her hit “Crazy in Love,” produced by Boots, appeared in the first trailer for the film as well as on the soundtrack. “She’s being offered amazing things on a daily basis, but we gave her a compelling explanation of why the movie was going to be huge and why we felt we were making a great film that was going to do really well on a global scale. She thought it was an opportunity to do something that aligned nicely with her brand and agenda.”

youtube.com

To lure Sia, the Australian singer/songwriter of “Chandelier” fame, Knobloch and Sano visited her at home with a laptop and played the scene they had in mind on-site. It’s a pivotal moment, when the two protagonists have an ecstatic and intimate first sexual encounter.

“She played us songs and we would say, ‘That's good, but could it be more of this, or less of that?’” said Knobloch. “By the end we left her spinning her wheels about what she had to do to deliver just the right song to us for the film.”

Eric Charbonneau / Invision / AP Images

Ellie Goulding’s dream-pop ballad “Love Me Like You Do,” the result of a call from Mackay to super producer Max Martin’s manager, has emerged as the soundtrack’s biggest commercial breakthrough and a fixture on Top 40. But arguably the artist to have benefited the most from the project is The Weeknd, a post-radio lothario who, prior to writing “Earned It” for Fifty Shades (released in January and nearing 58 million streams on Spotify), had never produced a hit single.

With a large, loyal fan base and a reputation as a fierce steward of his own image, The Weeknd could have phoned in his contribution, focusing instead on lucrative touring prospects or his own pending new album. But, as was the case with others involved in creating the soundtrack, he decided to take the opposite route.

“He was unbelievable during this process,” said Mackay. “Our A&R staff brought him in very, very early and he worked on a number of songs for a number of scenes. Some were working and some weren’t, but he just kept at it, and kept at it, and kept at it. In the end, he wrote ‘Earned It’ and it’s the biggest song of his career to date. It’s the only song that’s in the movie twice.”

embed.spotify.com

Alex Cossio / AP

Courts in more than two-thirds of Mexico’s 31 states have granted same-sex couples the right to marry over the past two years in a series of rulings that will likely make marriage equality a reality nationwide in the near future.

The wave of rulings throughout Mexico hasn’t caused the uproar that has followed rulings in the United States over the past year striking down state laws barring same-sex couples from marrying. Couples have not rushed to marry nor have conservatives organized major protests.

This is in part because the technicalities of Mexican law have meant these decisions have been much more narrow in their immediate impact. Each decision applies only to the individuals who have brought the cases, and other same-sex couples will still have to sue in order to marry. It takes multiple cases meeting certain technical requirements for the courts to nullify a state law in Mexico — a hurdle that has not yet been met.

But with new rulings being announced almost every week — judges in six new states ruled in favor of marriage equality in the first two months of 2015 alone — it seems almost inevitable that this day is coming, say legal experts who have closely followed the litigation.

“It’s just a matter of time,” said Geraldina Gonzalez de la Vega, a lawyer who worked on the first of these suits filed in 2011 and is now a clerk to a Supreme Court minister. “This has spread all over the country.”

Justine Zwiebel for BuzzFeed News with research assistance from Rex Wockner

The first place in Mexico to allow same-sex couples to marry was Mexico City — a federal district that functions like a state, sort of like Washington D.C in the U.S. A marriage equality law was adopted by the city’s legislature at the very end of 2009. When opponents took the law to Mexico’s Supreme Court, the judges ruled that it was constitutional for Mexico City to recognize same-sex couples and went one step further: They also held that the city’s marriages were valid in every state of the country.

Gay couples take part in a mass wedding in Mexico City March 21, 2014.

Edgard Garrido / Reuters

But the Supreme Court left state marriage codes restricting marriage to heterosexual couples in place. The first case to argue that state marriage laws restricting marriage to a man and a woman were also unconstitutional seemed like a long shot. Unlike in the United States, where legal activists spent years spelling out the grounds for marriage equality and some state challenges attracted A-list attorneys, the idea to challenge a state marriage code came from a law student in the largely rural state of Oaxaca.

Alex Alí Méndez Díaz has now been involved in lawsuits in 19 states even though he is still finishing advanced studies in Mexico City and has an unrelated full-time job. Méndez first thought about challenging state marriage laws when he met a couple named Alejandro and Guillermo while helping to plan a pride parade in his native state of Oaxaca in 2011. The two wanted to marry, but they couldn’t afford to make the trip to register their union in Mexico City.

“These guys said to me, ‘We want to get married but we don’t want to leave. ... Can we get married here in Oaxaca?'” Méndez recounted during a 2012 interview with this reporter in Oaxaca City. He downloaded the ruling in the Mexico City case and concluded that it laid the foundation for challenging Oaxaca’s marriage code.

Others in Oaxaca’s local LGBT rights organizations thought going to court was a bad idea, Méndez said, in part because they were worried that the state wasn’t ready for a public discussion about same-sex marriage. But he was sure of his legal arguments, so he decided to bring the case by himself.

“I said, ‘Fine, if the collective won’t do this as a group, well, I’m the only lawyer [in the organization]. I’ll do it,'” he said.

In August 2011, Mendez filed cases on behalf of Alejandro and Guillermo and another couple he recruited through Facebook. In early 2012, he filed one more. These were amparos, a kind of suit in the Mexican system concerning human rights violations. He lost two of them — including Alejandro and Guillermo’s — but the third, on behalf of a couple identified as Lizeth and Montserrat, eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. In December 2012 the Supreme Court sided with the couple.

“Like racial segregation, founded on the unacceptable idea of white supremacy, the exclusion of homosexual couples from marriage also is based on prejudice that historically has existed against homosexuals”

The written decision in the case, published in early 2013, made an impassioned argument for marriage equality. A unanimous opinion authored by Supreme Court Minister Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea said that the court needed to step in partly because of a provision added to the Mexican constitution in 2011 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “sexual preferences.” Unlike in the U.S., Mexican courts recognize rulings from other countries, so Zaldívar also based the decision in part on landmark U.S. Supreme Court judgements striking down racial segregation.

“Like racial segregation, founded on the unacceptable idea of white supremacy, the exclusion of homosexual couples from marriage also is based on prejudice that historically has existed against homosexuals,” Zaldívar wrote, referring both to the 1954 school desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education and the 1967 case striking down laws banning interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia.

The judgement allowed just the petitioners to marry — Mexican law requires essentially five identical rulings on a subject from a high-level court in order to establish precedent binding all government officials. But it provided a very clear blueprint for bringing more challenges. Méndez announced on Twitter less than a week after the decision was handed down in December in 2012 that he was preparing to file amparos on behalf of more couples in Oaxaca, and lawyers in several other states immediately began talking about copying the strategy.

“In the two years [since], we have succeeded in covering almost the entire country.”

Méndez also began working on an amparo colectivo, a petition of 39 individuals from Oaxaca challenging the marriage restriction. These actions didn’t revolve around specific couples alleging their rights had been violated because they’d been denied the right to marry. Instead, it was a group of gays and lesbians who said it was inherently discriminatory for the state to bar them from matrimony. This would streamline the process, allowing large numbers of couples to win marriage rights through a single suit, and also allow single people to win the right to marry even if they didn’t yet have a partner.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of this amparo colectivo in April last year. Since then, groups numbering in the hundreds have successfully brought these suits in multiple states.

As of late February, there have been rulings in favor of marriage equality in 22 states, according to local news reports, and cases have been filed in at least four others. This legal wave nudged the legislature of one state on the U.S. border, Coahuila, to pass a marriage equality law in September. And the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo — where same-sex marriages actually began taking advantage in 2011 of the little-noticed fact that the wording of its marriage statute was actually gender-neutral — held two mass weddings of same-sex couples this year.

Méndez himself seems astonished at the pace of change.

“Imagine, in 2012, we won the first judgement in Oaxaca,” Méndez marveled during a phone interview last week. “In the two years [since], we have succeeded in covering almost the entire country.”

Zen (left) and Alejandra kiss after getting married along with other gay and lesbian couples at a courthouse in Mexico City.

Marco Ugarte / AP

Even some LGBT rights supporters are a little mystified that marriage equality rulings haven’t sparked a national backlash. The fight over Mexico City’s 2009 marriage equality law brought strong opposition from the country’s Catholic hierarchy. Yet while some state bishops have condemned marriages between same-sex couples in the past few years, there has been no substantial opposition.

“The church was really concerned with the amendment here in Mexico City,” Geraldina Gonzalez de la Vega, the Supreme Court clerk who helped Méndez bring the Oaxaca case, said. But now, with scores of amparos pending, “they are not saying anything.”

Gonzalez attributes this in part to the fact that there isn’t much history of using the courts to force widespread change in Mexico, and so neither activists nor the media fully understand the scale of the change that’s underway. Méndez thinks this will change as the litigation moves from cases involving individual couples and produces the kind of rulings that will allow same-sex couples to marry in their states without having to file suit.

“The moment that there is an order from the Supreme Court forcing reform we’ll begin to see all kinds of resistance,” Méndez said. “We’re going to have serious problems with protests in opposition.”

Méndez expects the Supreme Court to start issuing the kinds of decisions that would make marriage widely available to same-sex couples throughout the country sometime in the next “two or three years,” based on the timeline for the cases already in the works. That may come sooner in some states — on Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued a ruling ordering the state of México (which borders Mexico City) to change its marriage codes, but it will take an additional case to make that binding precedent in the state. Three more states — Oaxaca, Jalisco, and Colima — are also on the verge of crossing that threshold.

Protesters hold up a giant rainbow flag during a protest outside of the municipal palace in the northern border city of Mexicali, Mexico on Jan. 17.

Alex Cossio / AP

As the wins become more substantial, advocates may no longer be able to carry on their work under the radar, and there are already signs that a backlash is coming. January brought the first high-profile resistance by local officials to a Supreme Court ruling allowing a couple to marry, a marriage equality standoff that made some national news. This came when the state of Baja California tried to duck a Supreme Court court order allowing a couple to wed in the city of Mexicali. The couple was turned away from city hall three times, the last of which after a volunteer who performs a mandatory pre-marital counseling session at city hall submitted a complaint saying the men “suffer from madness.” LGBT rights activists organized a protest in front of city hall under the hashtag #MisDerechosNoSonLocura (#MyRightsAreNotMadness), and city officials finally capitulated and allowed Víctor Fernando Urías Amparo and Víctor Manuel Aguirre Espinoza to marry on Jan. 17.

There are also signs that it could emerge as a theme in the campaign for national congressional elections that will be held in June, at least in some states. The clearest hints of this have come from Chihuahua, where Méndez said there have been 25 successful amparos. On Feb. 10, the leader of the opposition PAN party in the state legislature declared, “We are going to oppose approval of gay unions, we are going to vote against them, and that is what we were discussing with the bishop.”

But even if a backlash erupts now, Méndez said, the cases they’ve already won make marriage equality all but inevitable.

“Outside of Mexico, and even inside of Mexico, these advances are not widely known,” Méndez said. “It is very slow, it is very invisible — but it is irreversible.

Rex Wockner provided research assistance for this story.

BuzzFeed News used the Oscars red carpet as an opportunity to #AskHerMore.

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And Chloe Moretz wanted them to embrace their flaws.

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Murder, even in Russia, is always a shock.

Kirill Kudryavtsev / Getty Images

It was a sweltering summer day in July 2013 and dozens of reporters were pushing and shoving to get into a tiny courthouse in the provincial Russian city of Kirov. Boris Nemtsov rocked up, tall and tan, his light shirt unbuttoned one button too many, as was his customary style. He tried to push through. Everyone wanted to be inside when Alexey Navalny, the man who had shot to the forefront of Russia's wobbly opposition, delivered his final words to the court seeking to silence him.

Nemtsov used his broad shoulders to try to muscle his way through. We pushed back. Who was Nemtsov, anyway? In the 1990s he was a star. One of the youngest mayors of post-Soviet Russia, he managed to turn Nizhny Novgorod, one of Russia's biggest cities, into a place where the factories ran, the paychecks cleared, and the economy grew despite the poverty and chaos engulfing the country. He was that rare thing in those days — a popular politician. Boris Yeltsin tapped him for his cabinet in 1997 and appointed him deputy prime minister.

But this was July 2013. Nemtsov had been out of power for more than a decade, ousted from the cabinet after the ruble collapse of 1998 and pushed out of parliament five years later. Since then he had implanted himself firmly in the opposition, warning of President Vladimir Putin's growing authoritarianism, penning op-eds in Western papers, shouting from stages to those who would listen. And even then, when Moscow rose up in protest for real after Putin announced his intention in late 2011 to return to the presidency after four years as prime minister, he was surpassed by people like Navalny, who was younger, more charismatic, and less tarnished than Nemtsov, with his reputation as a man who cared just as much for women (so many women) and fine dining as he did for politics.

But Nemtsov was in on the joke. As he continued to try to push his way through the crush on the courthouse steps, a reporter shouted, "Why should we let you through?" Nemtsov flashed a smile — a rare thing in Russia, rarer still on the steps of a provincial courthouse — and said, "Because I'm Nemtsov!" And then he laughed, and the journalists laughed with him.

And in his solidarity with Navalny, Nemtsov had become something rare in even the most selfless protest movements. For years, Russia's embattled counted just a few dozen souls. They would come out to the same square in Moscow on the last day of every month (they called it "Strategy 31") and demand their constitutional right to assembly. Sometimes 60 people would show up. If 150 did it was considered an outrageous success. Nemtsov was among their leaders. He had an outsized personality and carried it around with a swagger, looking down over his glasses at the riot police who would be trying to arrest him, looking beyond and almost through the dozens of people who were protesting alongside him.

When Navalny came onto the scene — you could say out of nowhere, but it was really out of the internet, where he had amassed a huge gathering, the likes of which no opposition leader had seen before — it could've gotten ugly. Opposition politics in authoritarian states is often a lot messier from the inside than it looks from abroad and that holds for Russia. There are petty jealousies and bureaucratic rivalries. The leftists fight with the uber-leftists and this activist refuses to even sit next to that one. Nemtsov could easily have put up a fight. He loved attention and he was used to it. But as Navalny's popularity grew, Nemtsov stepped aside and fought alongside — instead of against — him. He ceded way for the next generation.

He still appeared on stage at opposition rallies, and issued reports outlining things like corruption at the Sochi Olympics. His colleagues said Friday night, in the wake of his brutal murder in the shadow of the Kremlin, that his upcoming report was devoted to Russia's war in Ukraine.

Inside Moscow opposition circles, there was shock and confusion. No one really understood why they had gone after Nemtsov. ("They" always means the Kremlin, but then comes the questioning: what if it wasn't the Kremlin? There's always a part that wants to believe it wasn't.)

To outsiders, the shock might seem surprising. Russia is a place where things like this happen. Opposition murders are to be expected. To be surprised is naive.

But the shock comes every time — after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya (shot in her elevator), of activist Natalia Estemirova (abducted from her home in Chechnya and shot), and now after the murder of Nemtsov. It's not about belief, that he lived in a system that would protect him or that he didn't take great risks by being politically active in Russia. It's just that he was there with us a minute ago, smiling on the stairs.

Alice Mongkongllite/BuzzFeed

God, I hate running. No — don't think that. It's not helping. Just keep going. Run. Run. Run. Mountains, pale green, early spring; carriage trail, dirt, mud. Puddle, dust, roots. Uphill, downhill, flat. Go. Go. Go.

Running, one year and change. Almost 400 miles, one pair of running shoes completely destroyed, another well underway. I'm slower than I was last fall. Thanks, winter lethargy. Thanks, hormones. Some athletes juice to improve their performance; not me, though. My pharmaceutical regimen is actually preventing me from building muscle. I am anti-juicing.

Transitioning from male to female, one year and change. Three and a half decades of denying that I'm transgender, 36 years of a constant inner refrain of “I couldn't” and “I won't” have finally shifted to acceptance — “I could,” “I will,” and now, “I am.” 100 milligrams spironolactone twice a day to block testosterone; 6 milligrams estrogen, taken sublingually so it doesn't destroy my liver. Softer skin, bigger ass. Plus one cup size. Maybe two if I suck in my gut and squint. Just numbers. Doesn't matter. Keep going. Run. Run. Run.

I began running because I didn't know how else to quiet my mind. My approach to pacing was simple when I started: I ran as fast as I could. If I still had energy to ruminate, I pushed myself faster. When I couldn't run anymore, I walked, and when the doubts and questions returned, I started running again. I needed a distraction I'd hate so much that it wouldn't leave room for anything else. I'd always hated running, so it was perfect. Amazingly, it worked; for a blissful few minutes after every good, long run, I'd feel calm. It does not sound like much, but last year, when I could find little else to hold on to, it was everything.

I always run alone. Especially when I began, though, and all through that first spring, I was never by myself. I carried with me the memory of a relationship that had touched all of my most tender places — the scar tissue that no amount of therapy and no magic number of Al-Anon meetings could ever heal. I ran with the knowledge that on the cusp of my transition, when I had needed support more than ever before in my life, my closest support had opted out. I ran with the overwhelming guilt of knowing that after I had abandoned her months prior, when she had most needed me, I couldn't pretend that I didn't deserve the same. No amount of pain, remorse, begging, or prayer could touch any bit of it, though. Villain, victim, and victor were all the same, and every version of the story I kept rehashing in my mind ended with the same line: Here I am, here's what comes next, and no matter what I do, there's no way back.

Even though most of me knows I made good decisions last year, it's hard not to be completely floored by a sense of loss sometimes. Why did I have to do this? I could have kept on as I was.

And so I ran. I ran as hard as I could because I didn't know if I'd ever again feel the way I'd felt with her, or if anyone else would ever love me that fiercely once I'd passed this boundary. I ran from the poisonous, insidious thought that in my cowardice I'd destroyed the last good thing I'd ever have. No matter how hard I pushed myself, though, no matter how labored my breathing or painful the cramps in my chest, the memory of her and her family — a family that had instantly felt more like home than almost anything else ever had — and my own sense of grief were never far away. They chased after me like ghosts.

What they don't tell you prior to transitioning is that once the thing you've been hiding behind is no longer there, you still need to deal with everything else; the losses accrued in the shadow of a truth you never thought you could live, and the collateral damage from those losses. It's like addiction recovery, except that there are no 12-step groups for this.

Run. Run. Run. My quads are on fire. My feet are a hot mess of blisters and callouses. My lungs feel like they're about to explode. Why aren't I sitting on the couch watching reruns of Buffy? No — stop thinking. Just go.

I'm running from what my therapists have told me: “You're so strong and good at taking care of yourself.” That's never felt like an asset to me. If there were easier options, I would have chosen them in a heartbeat. I certainly have elsewhere in my life. Where others see strength, I feel sadness and loneliness. And I can see that some of my “strong” decisions were actually motivated by fear.

I'm running from what friends have asked me: “When are you going to start presenting as female?” What the hell is that supposed to mean? Am I supposed to start wearing dresses and heels every day to confirm my gender identity to the outside world? Fuck that. I am presenting as female, 24/7. And most of the time I'm doing it in jeans and a T-shirt, like almost every other woman I know. People who don't know me are already gendering me correctly as female, and, god help me, even chatting me up and hitting on me when I'm sweaty and gross, out on the trail. Asking me when I'm going to start trying to look more female is bullshit.

I'm running most of all from what acquaintances tell me: “You're so courageous.” No. I'm not. No one who says this knows what cowardice and doubt have cost me. Putting on a skirt instead of jeans before walking out the door is easy. I don't really care about the consequences anymore. But staying and fighting for what I most want, for what scares me and what still makes me feel the most vulnerable, is something I struggle with. Calling me courageous just reminds me of where I've failed.

Run. Run. Run. My legs are killing me. My chest hurts. What sadistic jackass invented sports bras? Why aren't I sitting on the couch watching reruns of Xena? I want to stop. I need to stop. OK. I can stop after that next tree. OK, now the next one. Now the next. Jesus, how does such a stupid trick keep working on me? It does, though, and I keep on. Go. Go. Go.

Eventually, without hating running any less, I've begun to love it too. As the hormones have been making my body soft, this has been giving me a physical strength I feel good about. My body is finally beginning to feel right, and that's at least as much from running as from anything else. It's become my meditation and release, but not all pious and austere like that makes it sound. It's my sweaty, filthy, balls-out, lungs-bursting, muscles-burning, oxygen-deprived, tachycardial escape. It's what I'd always wanted yoga to be, but could never find through all the scandals, pseudo-spiritual mumbo jumbo, and self-proclaimed gurus. There are no scandals or mumbo jumbo here, though. There are definitely no gurus. There's just me.

When my mind becomes quiet on the trail, the soft voices of hard truths become easier to hear. One of the softest, hardest, and most persistent of these is that what I'm doing, transitioning, is not what I most want. What I most want is family. What I'm running after is love. Isn't that what I've always wanted? Radically disrupting my biochemistry and sociological categorization is at best an unorthodox route to that, though. At worst, I'm scared that I'm slamming a door shut. Yes, I'm becoming who I am, and that's wonderful, and I could still find someone, and dreams come true, but the facts on the ground are that my odds of ever partnering with someone again are uncertain. A lifetime of discomfort with my body and my identity, a lifetime spent chasing the illusion of security by secreting myself away and playing small, has meant that I didn't start dating till I was 30. It's hard for me to have faith that anyone could ever love this revised, unfettered version of me. I never trusted that anyone could love the old me either. Holding on to unsubstantiated hope for a love and a sense of home that may never come again is exhausting.

This is where I really need courage.

This is where courage has consistently failed me in the past.

So I keep moving where I can. Keep running. Go. Go. Go. Thank god I'm almost at the end of the trail. It's mostly downhill from here. I've already made it further than I thought I would or could, and that feels like a quiet victory. I don't know how to work toward the common, simpler things I want, like finding a partner and a family, and not jumping ship if I do. So I'm working toward obscure, nearly impossible goals instead, like changing my gender via off-label and largely experimental drug use, and forcing myself to run harder and harder over longer distances while simultaneously decimating my body's ability to build muscle. If I can't find the way to my deepest desires of family and love, then I'm going to fight like hell for what I can instead. Maybe in the future toward which I’m finally running, I’ll acquire the skills to do that other work. But the home stretch is still beyond my line of sight, and right now, I need to focus my attention on where I am.

But the opening came as ISIS militants destroyed ancient statues in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

The national museum in Baghdad reopened Saturday, 12 years after thousands of antiquities were plundered during the early days of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

REUTERS/Khalid al-Mousily

Museum officials said almost 15,000 pieces were looted in 2003, according to Agence France-Presse.

Officials have been able to recover 4,300 works, but are continuing efforts to track down the remaining antiquities.

"We are still tracking down more than 10,000 artifacts in markets and auctions. What we got back were the most important," Qais Hussein Rashid, Iraq's deputy tourism and antiquities minister, told AFP.

ABAH ARAR/AFP / Getty Images

"Today the message is clear from Baghdad, from the land of Mesopotamia," Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. "We will preserve civilization and we will track down those who want to destroy it."

SABAH ARAR/AFP / Getty Images

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HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY YOU SEXY THANG.

When he looked hella fine in a suit even though he was wearing the douchiest earrings of all time.

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When he stripped on live TV and this girl's Vine summed up exactly how you were feeling.

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When he wore a weird ass hat but still looked so damn attractive.

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That time he looked like THIS.

AND NOW ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT IS CALVIN KLEIN ALL THE TIME.

Courtesy Calvin Klein / Via buzzfeed.com

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“Just saw the most unfunny SNL piece of all time.”

NBC

NBC

NBC

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“4,400 words of sizzling human on gay dress action.”

This is author Chuck Tingle, an erotic fiction writer who sells books on Amazon. Most of Tingle's, er, unique, stories feature gay humans, dinosaurs and unicorns.

This is Tingle's Amazon display picture, but it is probably not a real picture of him as it is a stock photo.

Via amazon.com

Yes, that title is referring to precisely The Dress you're thinking of. The one that has divided the globe into team #blueandblack and team #whiteandgold.

#TheDress

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In a pair of tweets, West revealed the new album will be called So Help Me God.

Kanye West performing at the Roc City Classic in New York City on Feb. 12, 2015

Dave Allocca / AP

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Live long and prosper.

Star Trek fans are still in mourning for Leonard Nimoy, the actor famous for his role as Spock, who died on Friday at the age of 83.

ROBYN BECK/AFP / Getty Images

The beloved sci-fi character was known by the Vulcan "live long and prosper" hand gesture.

Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

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Going outside is totally overrated. Stay in and make stuff instead!

Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed

Copper Candle Holder

Simple supplies from the hardware store give your decor a modern, industrial feel.

Meike Bambuch / Via kollabora.com

Crochet Floor Mat

What's better than jumping out of bed onto a warm, cushy crochet floor mat?!

Ludivineem / Via kollabora.com

Faux Fur Chair Covers

You don't need to toss all those old, mismatched dining chairs you just need to cover them in faux fur!

A Beautiful Mess / Via abeautifulmess.com

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She says she is “95% certain it’s not a scam”.

A woman has defended her decision to send more than $1 million (around £650,000) abroad to a man she formed a relationship with online but has never met in real life.

drphil.com

During that time, Sarah wired large sums of her inheritance to Olsen, who told her he was currently based in Africa. She said: "He told me early on that he was a widower and that he had two daughters, and he was on a business trip in South Africa."

Olsen told her he has been prevented from coming home because he keeps being arrested on false charges. "He's from Milan, Italy, and moved to the United States about 18 years ago," Sarah said. "He's very poetic when he talks to me."

But the relationship set off alarm bells for her cousin Crystal, who told Dr Phil she believes Sarah is being conned.

drphil.com

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Looks like Asda just signed a legend in the making.

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Yet another reason to love her.

Taylor Swift has spent months engaging with fans online, giving them relationship advice, protecting them from trolls and also buying, packaging and sending them gifts.

Stephen Lovekin

She said:

I love them. They are cool and smart and hilarious and focused on the right things. I want to make the most of this cultural relevance or success or whatever you want to call it, because it's not going to last. I have to be as good a person [as I can] while my name still matters to them. Because it's not always going to matter to kids who are 15 and really struggling with who they want to be or [because] their friends were brutal to them at school that day. That's actual turmoil. I have to do everything I can to make their day better while I still can.

Sav / GC Images

Taylor explained:

I'm getting to know them on a person-by-person basis. When I pick people to send packages to, I go on their social-media sites for the last six months and I figure out what they like or what they're going through. Do they like photography? I'll get them a 1980s polaroid camera. Do they like vintage stuff? I'll go to an antiques place and get them 1920s earrings. Do they work out a lot? I'll get them work out stuff. When you actually get to know them on a person-by-person basis, you realise what you're doing is special and sacred and it matters.

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Footage of the incident has gone viral after being uploaded to YouTube.

CCTV footage has emerged of a would-be criminal knocking himself out by trying to smash a car window with a brick.

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ITV News reported that the footage was uploaded to YouTube by the car’s owner, Gerry Brady.

In just a couple of days it has been watched over 2 million times.

youtube.com

The minute-long clip shows a man trying to throw a brick through a Mercedes parked outside the Pheasant pub in Drogheda, Ireland.

youtube.com

It doesn’t end well for the hapless chap though – it bounces off the vehicle, hits him in the face, and knocks him out.

Brady, who also owns the Pheasant, told the Irish Independent: “When I saw him, he was lying there stone cold on the ground and his face was in ribbons.

“My first thought was that ‘this guy is after getting the **** knocked out of him’, while my girlfriend said it must have been a hit and run.”

Brady claimed the man later came round and tried to blackmail him.

The pub owner said the man asked for €50 for a taxi, and that when Brady said no the would-be-criminal threatened to burn his pub down and said he would tell the police Brady had beaten him up.

youtube.com

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Love yourself.

All the statements on this list were said to me at some point during my illness. There are so many myths and misconceptions that still surround eating disorders. They must be challenged.

"You’re not thin enough to have an eating disorder"

Eating disorders come in many forms and the majority of sufferers are not underweight. Mary George, Senior Press Officer for the charity Beat told Buzzfeed that “although anorexia is the most reported and best known it only represents 10% of eating disorders. Bulimia affects 3 times as many people and binge eating has the highest incidence. Some people can experience traits of different eating disorders – having had both anorexia, bulimia and binge eating at different times”.

ink-stain.tumblr.com

“You’re just looking for attention”

An eating disorder is a life-threatening mental illness that has long term physical consequences. It isn't a way of seeking attention from others. It’s more important to listen without judgement than make damaging statements about sufferers.

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“Eating disorders are for teenagers”

Anyone can be affected by an eating disorder, regardless of age, social class, race or gender. According to the charity Beat, around 1.6 million men and women in Britain suffer from an eating disorder.

itv.com / Via kurt-confessions.tumblr.com

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The sisters, from Gloucester, have been made to produce their birth certificates to prove they are related.

Meet sisters Lucy and Maria Aylmer. They are twins.

The 18-year-old sisters from Gloucester were born in January 1997.

Their mother, Donna, is half Jamaican and their father, Vince, is white, the Daily Mail reported.

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Lucy, left, said their mother had been shocked when the twins were born.

"It was such a shock for her because obviously things like skin colour don’t show up on scans before birth. So she had no idea that we were so different. When the midwife handed us both to her she was just speechless," she said.

WorldWideFeatures

WorldWideFeatures

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