Screenshot of the footage aired on Four Corners.

On Monday evening, ABC's Four Corners aired horrific footage from the now-defunct Don Dale Juvenile Justice Centre in the Northern Territory. The nation responded with outrage. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called for a royal commission. But the NT's Chief Minister Adam Giles was resolute: he and his fellow politicians had no idea this abuse was going on. In fact, he claimed there was a culture of coverups.

"To think that this footage has not only been withheld from the former Corrections Minister and myself and many officials in government, to me says this culture of cover-up doesn't just go back to 2010, which the footage shows, but goes back way beyond," Giles said in a Tuesday morning press conference.

While Giles is admitting fault, the statement is nonetheless misleading.

The footage of Dylan Voller being stripped, restrained, hooded, and beaten by guards at Don Dale wasn't withheld from the NT's former Corrections Minister, John Elferink. They were sent to him personally in 2014, by Dr Howard Bath, who was then Children's Commissioner of the territory.

You can read a copy of Bath's 2014 letter to Elferink here.

Dr Bath confirmed to VICE the footage he sent were the same tapes of Dylan that aired Monday night on Four Corners. "If you read the letter, you see that it says 'attached are three videos,'" he said.

One of the videos Dr Bath send to John Elferink, which years later aired on Four Corners

So, for more than two years, Elferink has had this footage. Having said that, VICE was unable confirm whether or not the former Corrections Minister actually pressed play on the tapes Dr Bath sent him. When we attempted to reach out to Elferink for comment, we received the following response: "There will be no statement or media commentary from the minister in the foreseeable future."

However, Dr Bath did confirm to VICE that other senior corrections staff in the NT had, two years earlier, seen footage of Dylan Voller's abuse: the very same footage that aired on Four Corners.

In 2012, Bath became aware of the footage of Voller's abuse and called a meeting to make sure corrections staff were aware it was unacceptable. "When this came to my attention in 2012, I called a meeting where these tapes were shown to senior officers from the Department, including those from youth justice," Dr Bath told VICE.

"The idea was to make sure they saw the video. Now, we knew the footage was already in their attention because they were their videotapes," he continued. "They already knew that we had asked for the footage, but we weren't sure if it had gotten passed all they way up the line of command. We wanted to make sure senior staff would see the tapes."

That is to say: Dr Bath personally made sure senior corrections officials saw footage of Dylan being stripped naked and pinned to the ground. Four years ago, in 2012.

A 2015 report from the Children's Commissioner confirms this meeting, noting that, "In April 2012, surveillance tapes depicting the inappropriate and unsafe use of restraint were shown to senior staff of the Department of Justice... and undertakings were provided that such practices would cease."

What about the other footage from Four Corners, the CCTV footage from the tear-gassing? A spokesperson for the current Children's Commissioner Colleen Gwynne confirmed this was the same footage also described in their 2015 report on the incident.

The tear-gassing at Don Dale. This footage was extensively detailed in publicly available 2015 report.

We know for a fact former Corrections Commissioner Ken Middlebrook read this report. He responded to a draft, and that response was included in the final copy. You can read the document here. Police are currently investigating Middlebrook, as well as Elfernick, over their potential roles in the "systemic abuse" of underage prisoners at Don Dale.

When asked whether the current Children's Commissioner had "withheld" the footage described in the report from any ministers, the spokesperson told VICE the government readily had access to the tapes. "It's not our footage," a member of the legal team said. "It's the Department of Corrections' footage."

Dr Bath confirmed this. "Any authority that obtains tapes get them from government services. We had to get that footage from them, so they have to know what we're asking for. Before they pass it on, they would obviously review it and discuss it internally. They have all the material."

But what about the CCTV footage given to Ken Middlebrook, the Corrections Commissioner? Did John Elferink see that? What about Chief Minister Adam Giles, who is on record saying he only saw it for the first time on Monday night, along with the rest of Australia?

Dr. Bath offers us a possible explanation. "The head of government departments may not pass information onto their political masters," he said. "We assume it's passed on to the minister, but cannot confirm."

So if John Elferink truly never saw the tear-gassing footage, perhaps that's because his own department didn't pass it on. Still, the report in which it was detailed was publicly available. A member of Children's Commissioner's legal team confirmed any minister could have read the report. "If they had taken to do that. Just like the public," they said.

Minister John Elferink was stood down from his post as Corrections Minister in the wake of the Four Corners episode. However, he still holds numerous portfolios: Children and Families, Health, Disability Services, and Mental Health Services. He remains Attorney-General of the Northern Territory.

Dr Bath is no longer Children's Commissioner. He didn't get to see any changes during his tenure, although he tried to bring the abuse to light. Nevertheless, he's happy now. "Of course, I would've liked these to get resolved years ago. If there hadn't been Four Corners, I doubt we'd be seeing it resolved now."

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Could I justify smoking my joint, if I actually knew where my weed came from? Image via

Submit a question to our panel talk about the ethics of getting high in Sydney on August 3. In partnership with The Ethics Centre.

It was a thing of beauty. Long and conical, with graceful lines and smooth curves. Looking upon it evoked a strong tempest of emotions: It was a monument to the human ability to craft order and meaning from the simplest of raw materials.

I am of course, referring to the joint I rolled the other night. Consisting of roughly 1.5 grams of bud, a sprinkling of magic mol mix, and a small hint of tobacco at the tip to help it light. All well chopped, all well rolled. Even the roach was perfect, made from an old cardboard NSW train ticket, which is widely acknowledged as the superior roaching ticket.

Unfortunately, my plans for this bona fide piece of 21st century art were interrupted by my editor at VICE. They contacted me, asking if I could try working out exactly where my weed came from. Would I still feel comfortable smoking the thing if I knew what was involved in making it?

It wasn't something I'd ever considered before. I think I'd been happy being ignorant, to be honest. It wasn't really about there being some bad dude, somewhere along the supply chain, making some money. The thing I was worried about was that I'd discover someone had been hurt getting this beautiful joint to me. I guess I'd find out.

The first point of call was obvious enough: the people who I'd bought from. While they were happy enough to talk, they ultimately knew about as much as I did. Their particular contact had come from the dark web, and meetings were arranged through encrypted messaging apps. This arrangement is obviously beneficial in that it helps avoiding detection and arrest, but it leaves the buyer in the dark.

Somewhat disappointed that my dealer hadn't been able to produce documents certifying that their weed was completely organic and fair trade, I set about contacting other sellers. A pattern quickly emerged: They'd buy in pounds—either from dark web or real life sources—and then break it down to ounces, halves, quarts, and fifties. Most were unsure as to where exactly the pounds themselves came from, apart from vague descriptions like "bush" or "hydro."

Only two people had a more informed idea of where the product was coming from. One dealer spoke enthusiastically of a mate who had a constant crop of small plants on the go, enough to keep a steady income stream, without straying into the territory of a major dealer.

Another, an ex-dealer, spoke glowingly of their suppliers. They were a group of men who could be readily described as "bikies." The dealer was keen to make clear they were "non-threatening, non-violent."

WATCH: VICE Asks: What Are the Ethics of Getting High?

"I'd even call them paternalistic in a good sort of way," they told me. "Even though I haven't dealt with them for years, they're always stayed in touch with friendly messages. They even introduced me to the people who gave me an apprenticeship and the eventual pathway to a straight job".

It's not exactly surprising that the information I was getting was vague and varied. Apart from journalistic curiosity, there's very little reason for anyone involved on the smaller end of the supply chain to have any real information about the back-end of the operation. After all, if it was easy to track where your weed came from, there wouldn't be very many weed dealers left.

This led me to my next port of call, the police. With a strong sense that I was about to be added to another 20 government watch lists, I contacted Victoria Police's media unit, asking if they could explain to me the likely source of my weed.

I was bounced around a lot. It seemed like there were many police taskforces related to marijuana, and the drug trade more generally, but no watchdog dedicated to determining what's ethically sourced and what's not. Finally, I got an official statement.

"We need to change the attitude where some people believe taking drugs 'recreationally' is okay," it read. "The only people who benefit from illicit drug use are drug traffickers and organised crime syndicates for financial gain."

It was strange reading that. Obviously, neither of us want criminal gangs raking it massive profits. Yet I'd never think for a second targeting recreational users was the way to fix that. How had we started wanting the same things and ended up at such very different conclusions?

ImageviaYouTube

I decided a less stern authority figure might be more able to speak a little more honestly about the subject. So I emailed a drugs and addiction specialist who works in one of Australia's cannabis growing hotspots, Port Macquarie. Tony*, as he asked to be called out of fear of getting fired from his job, was a lot more forthcoming with information.

Tony said a lot of the weed grown in the area came from, "harmless hippies, who are just happy to see the stuff hitting the market." According to him, the worst thing you could really say about them is that, "they're not really paying any tax on their profits."

Fantastic, I decided, reaching for my lighter in celebration. I couldn't really justify not smoking this joint over tax avoidance, given I have an iPhone, wear Nike shoes, and pour my money into lots of other companies that pay as little tax as they can.

Unfortunately, Tony just kept on talking. "The rest generally comes from larger criminal consortiums, who'll gladly employ kidnap and torture in the course of their business," he said. "I've also dealt with groups in my area who'll commit sexual violence against woman and children in order to intimidate or coerce when required." And suddenly the aesthetic qualities of my joint seemed less enticing.

Where is our weed coming from? Mates helping mates, shady but civically-inclined biker groups, dark web sources, and the odd terrifying, deeply immoral criminal organisation. If you're in the habit of meeting mysterious men carrying fragrant ziplock baggies, the chances are you've financed some or all of the groups above. But like the coffee you drink, the chocolate you eat, or the clothes you wear, there's a chance that the choices you make as a consumer could be hurting others. How you feel about that is up to you.

As for my joint? Well, obviously it was just a fictionalised rhetorical device created to help guide this conversation. And by that I mean I smoked it right after I got off the phone with my editor. Now if you excuse me, I'm off to see what happens if you make homemade pizza dough, but use vanilla cake-mix instead of plain flour.

The headlines were hard to miss, even for non-foodies: "The Parmesan Cheese You Sprinkle on Your Penne Could Be Wood," "FDA Warns the Parmesan You Eat May Be Wood Pulp," "Cheese Exec Pleads Guilty in Wood Pulp Parmesan Scandal." Such were the gems that kicked off the great Parm-wood imbroglio of February 2016.

According to various reports, an FDA investigation found that some manufacturers were padding their pre-grated or shredded Parmesan cheese with excess amounts of fillers like cellulose, an anti-clumping agent made from plant waste, including wood pulp.

"That story broke just as my book was going to press," Larry Olmsted, a food journalist and author of the just-released Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating & What You Can Do About It, told VICE. Although the cover of his new book features a large hunk of what looks to be Parm, Olmsted's chapter on the cheese isn't about cellulose additives. It's about bewildering or nonexistent food regulations that allow US restaurants and retailers to label their cheese products as "Parmesan," even though the stuff in the green Kraft can bears almost no tactile or gustatory resemblance to Italy's storied Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Even some of the $20-per-pound Parms sold at specialty-food stores could be knockoffs from Argentina, "where the only legal standard governing its import is that it not be poisonous," Olmsted writes.

"But believe me, fake cheese is far from the biggest problem Americans face in the supermarket," he told me.

From mercury-laden "snapper" that's not really snapper to antibiotic-loaded honey, Olmsted's book details many of the common scams and counterfeits that make their way onto our dinner plates and into our grocery carts. Here, he answers questions about his book's most startling discoveries—and the implications fake food has for American health.

VICE: What was the biggest surprise for you during your research?
Larry Olmsted: Biggest single thing would probably be the restaurant side of all this. There's a long history of food adulteration, so I was not surprised that ground coffee or tea would be adulterated. But I was surprised to find the lack of regulation on the restaurant side and how often they lie with impunity. People say, "Oh, I only eat in nice restaurants, so I don't have to worry." But that's no protection. I wasn't prepared for the level of hyperbole on the restaurant side of the fence.

What kind of hyperbole are we talking about here?
The Tampa Bay Times did a big piece on restaurant fraud, especially for farm-to-table restaurants. It was a really good story, and they found that almost every restaurant was lying about something on its menu. And a lot of it had to do with seafood. Like, when you order red snapper, you're probably getting tilefish, which is often loaded with mercury. Or you order wild-caught salmon and get farmed salmon from Norway that's so high in heavy metals that people are advised not to eat it more than once a month. And that's not the worst end of fish farming. Let's talk about shrimp: Over 90 percent of the seafood we eat in the US is imported, and we consume more shrimp than any other kind of seafood. Most of it is farmed from Southeast Asia, and most of those farms have bad records of using banned or unapproved antibiotics. So there's no doubt to me that all this could have significant health effects, and that eating shrimp is one of the riskier propositions.

Are there not regulations governing all this?
There are some fed rules against misleading consumers, but they're very vague. In the book, I mentioned McCormick and Schmick. Very high-end restaurant chain. For a couple of years, they were advertising Kobe beef that wasn't actually Japanese. Complaints finally tipped the scales and led to a class-action suit. But in most cases, the damages a consumer could sue for is just the difference in cost between the $100 price they paid for a Kobe steak and the $10 steak it really was. So that's only $90. No lawyer is going to represent someone for that.

So there really isn't much risk for the restaurant, unless there's a class action suit. I think there's the potential as this gets more attention for more nonprofits to sue restaurants on principle, and I think that's warranted in some of these cases.

Should consumers blame restaurants and retailers, or are they getting duped too?
The supply chain is convoluted and opaque. But the FDA—in large part because of a government accountability survey I mention in the book that called for more regulation against seafood fraud—set up a new DNA testing lab for imported seafood. They started this pilot test of seafood labeling and found that 85 percent of seafood was labeled correctly at wholesale. So only 15 percent is mislabeled at wholesale. But that number more than doubles at the retail and restaurant level. So despite the length of the supply chain and all the middlemen, a lot of the deceit is really happening at the restaurant or retail level.

What are the harms that come from all this? I mean, apart from those fish loaded with mercury or metal, why is this bad for consumers?
Well, there's the economic fraud. You just overpaid for your steak. Also, in that Kobe beef example, the vast majority of beef in the US is what I'd call drug-laden. It's rich in hormones and animal byproducts, which basically turns cattle into carnivores when they're by nature herbivores. Lots of drugs used in US cattle. Real Kobe beef would have no drugs in it.

So on one level, you're being economically defrauded. And while there's a lot of debate over this, I would go so far as to say you're being poisoned and your health is in danger from all these added hormones and drugs. Of course there's the chance the restaurant could substitute drug-free meat for the Kobe, but most of our meat is not drug-free.

Also, a lot of our favorite geographically indicated products—like Parmigiano, Kobe, olive oil—there are very precise definitions for how they're traditionally made. Most producers ban steroids or hormones or drugs. That's true for many of these products. So their name carries an implied guarantee of quality and wholesomeness. When you get fake Parmigiano or olive oil, you're not getting wholesomeness. So there's the potential omission of health benefits. Parmigiano cheese, for example, was chosen by both NASA and the Soviet Space Program to go into space with astronauts because, for nutrition per ounce, it's like a wonder cheese. In Italy, it's one of the first things kids are given when they're weaned off mother's milk. Same with olive oil. All this wonderful heart health and anti-carcinogen and anti-Alzheimer's research. Every time they do a study they find something good about it. So if you get a lower-quality olive oil, you're also losing some of that nutritional quality—even if the lower quality isn't actually bad for you.

Wait, what's wrong with the olive oil I'm buying?
A number of studies and investigations have found various but significant levels of extra virgin olive oil sold in the US, especially mass-market supermarket brands, are not meeting the true standards for extra virgin. When I open a bottle of true olive oil, the aroma explodes out of the bottle, my kitchen smells like an olive grove, and the taste is transcendent. I've never found a supermarket bottle, even when labeled extra virgin—which is legally supposed to represent the very highest quality level—that did that.

What do I do about all this? How can I, as a consumer, ensure that what I'm buying is the genuine article?
That's the hard part. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. I give all the specifics in my book, but it varies depending on what you're buying.

Can you give me a few examples?
So for seafood, if you're buying retail, there are all these third-party auditors. The two biggest and most trusted are the Marine Stewardship Council, or MSC, which has a logo you can look for that's kind of like a fish and a check mark. I spoke with chef Rick Moonen, who's a big voice in sustainable fishing, and he said Marine Stewardship was one he absolutely believes in. The second one is the Global Aquaculture Alliance's Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) seal for farmed food.

Also, it depends where you buy it. I recommend Whole Foods. Not for everything. But they have good traceability when it comes to seafood. They'll say if it's wild caught and where it's from. Not everything they sell is good stuff, but they seem to be very transparent and honest about what they sell.

In restaurants, I'd watch out for snapper and tuna and shrimp. And I tend to watch out for what I call "value added adjectives." You see these menus listing Berkshire County pork chops and heritage-breed chickens and buffalo-milk mozzarella. If I see just one of those items, like it's their signature dish, then I believe it. But if everything on the menu is from small farms or has those premium adjectives, most restaurants can't afford that, so I tend not to believe it. It's just really easy to add those words and get more money.

What would you like people to take away from your book?
Everyone's focused on the shock and awe statistics. But it's about finding real foods, which are great and tend to be more wholesome and nutritious. They taste better.

I think a lot of this all goes to the disconnect we have from food. The old model was that you go to the market, and you buy what's fresh and local. We kind of have programmed ourselves to just open our cabinet. There's no rational reason to think that cheese is something you should be storing in your cabinet for a year and putting on food. You lose out on so many things when you eat like that. If you buy some fresh basil when making pizza, there's no problem. But it's once you decide you want a bag of dried basil in your cabinet that will last for two years—that's when you run into problems.

Clubbers revel at one of the last nights of Trade, a gay night that ruled London nightlife from 1990 until last October. Photo courtesy of Trade

"It's the one thing they've left legal, innit?"

It's 11 AM on Sunday morning, and I'm standing under a railway arch in London's Vauxhall neighborhood discussing poppers—the dizzying liquid high that narrowly escaped a UK government ban this March—with Jay. He wears a string vest that shows off his pecs, over which he sports a huge gold medallion and a red baseball jacket.

Jay lives in public housing just down the road in Stockwell. Despite looking young, he's in his late 30s and has been going out in the UK gay-nightclub scene for the better part of two decades. He's observed a recent shift: "There are still a lot of people going out," he says, "but the vibe's not the same anymore."

That "vibe" of UK and transatlantic gay nightlife is an elusive thing to define. There are more venues, gay partygoers, and different "vibes" on offer than ever before, but, broadly speaking, Jay's referencing his own memories of a dying LGBTQ nightclub culture, largely based around dance music. It's a culture that fizzed with glamour, drama, and excitement in the 90s and early 00s, but that scene—which once thrived at club nights like Trade and FF at Turnmill's, Garage and Pyramid at Heaven, New York's The Cock, and at Michael Alig's outré events—has dissipated into the stuff of legend.

Clubbers at Trade. Photo courtesy of Trade

While London residents lament the loss of several gay nightlife venues over the past two years—from the Joiner's Arms to George and Dragon—once-iconic parties like Trade, which reigned as one of the fiercest events from 1993 to 2008 (with subsequent special events up to 2015), are now a misty-eyed memory.

"Life's changed a lot since the 90s," says Simon, a 27-year-old media planner, by way of explaining the generational shift. "People are more health-conscious. And there's a lot more at stake with their careers. They're climbing the ladder, and places like NYC and London are too expensive. Everyone's chasing money––no one can afford to spend four days off their face anymore."

"A lot of my friends are straight, so I go to the same places that they do," adds Brad, 25, an HR director. "Also, many gay clubs are quite tacky. The music's not great and the people who are there tend to be off their faces and messy. So why would I go? If I want sex, I can just go on Grindr."

Clubbers, ex-clubbers, promoters, and DJs who spoke with VICE cited two main issues in explaining why clubbing today is, well, lamer than ever: gentrification and Grindr.

For former Queer Nation DJ Jeffrey Hinton, they form a problematic constellation: "So-called social apps like Grindr and our modern obsession with wealth reflect a language of surface, greed, and image," he says. "Thus, is empty and lonely––more so when you factor in chemicals people are using to destroy their souls and brains.

"But," he adds, "it's created a landscape that, hopefully, people will want to change."

Nightlife is a product that supplies two demands—sex and music—and the way gay men seek both have seen a historic shift with the rise of the internet. Or, as Clayton Littlewood, author of the seminal 2008 gay book and play Dirty White Boy, puts it: "Why go out when you can order in?"

But whether gay or straight, clubs are closing across the UK: According to the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, the number of British clubs dropped from 3,144 in 2005 to 1,733 ten years later. It's created a climate where clubs must push envelopes in their programming more than ever to survive. That's a task some parties and promoters are up for, such as Larry Tee's Berlin-based KRANK, a monthly bender where dildo-sporting, PVC-clad bears mingle among beautiful young twinks. But location is important as well—increasingly, such events are held not in London or New York but in smaller, more relaxed cities like Berlin. As Tee points out, the shift bodes poorly for the former.

"When Giuliani started his New York nightlife crackdown, I remember watching the sexiness of sleazy dark rooms and sneaky shared bumps disappear," says Tee. "When was the last time you heard an underground New York record that you couldn't wait to get home and download? Or been in a group grope, like at the Cock when it was on Avenue A?"

"For me, after 35 years, gay nightlife is no longer interesting," says London-based photographer Jamie McLeod, "unless I'm somewhere untouched by commercial Western influences—places like Turkey, Mexico, Lebanon, Egypt, or Iran."

The explosion of chemsex culture, as well, provides further competition for promoters of gay nightlife. "Clubbing has suffered at the hands of home-based chill-out and recreational drugs," says a patron of London's Fire. "There's drinking, using, and shagging all in the comfort of your own home or of near-neighbors thanks to the apps."

Watch the trailer for the VICE Films documentary "Chemsex."

"'The scene' is an eroded idea," says singer David McAlmont. "Gay men are still having a good time." And for a younger generation without the benefit (or detriment) of hindsight, who don't remember how things were, gay nightlife is certainly not for wont of excitement. "We go to Orange every Sunday night," says Simon, 19, who moved to London from a small Sussex town last year. "London's like an explosion of glitter in your face. Too much fun. When people say there's been a downturn, I just look at them and think, And when was the last time you went out?"

"The scene's still exciting—you've just got to know where to look," says Hannah, a 22-year-old graphic designer, originally from Norwich. "I go out in Camberwell, and there are loads of events at places like the Bussey Building or the Flying Dutchman. But Goldsnap at Dalston Superstore is my favorite night. Hot girls DJ-ing R&B and garage all nigh—what's not exciting about that?"

Follow John Lucas on Twitter.

Jampa Tenzin at the TRSHC in Darjeeling. All photography by Paul Gregoire

"Now the world's thinking it's too late for Tibetans, but our struggles will never be finished," says Jampa Tenzin with gentle defiance. The 68-year-old is sitting in one of the wooden craft workshops he's been working in since the late sixties at the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Centre in the Indian city of Darjeeling. Today, he's the duty manager of the centre. And he speaks passionately about the dyeing techniques he pioneered, when he used to work in carpet production.

The Tibetan Refugee Self Help Centre Orphanage

Over recent years, international attention has waned on the issue of Tibetan independence. Back in the late nineties, it was the cause célèbre. The Beastie Boys organised the Tibetan Freedom Concerts around the world, while a younger Richard Gere professed he was a Tibetan Buddhist. And the then-leader of the Australian Greens Bob Brown riled Chinese authorities when he made an unauthorised trip into Tibet to see the situation for himself.

Weaving at the centre

But for the 400-odd Tibetans living at the centre now, being displaced, while others back home face brutal repression, is a daily reality. They spend their days producing traditional handicrafts—such as woodcarvings, paintings and carpets—which the centre sells to sustain itself. The TRSHC was established in 1959, which was the same year the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, leading to a mass exodus of about 85,000 Tibetans.

As I stroll through the centre watching the artisans at work, I notice that most are elderly. These are the refugees who made the dangerous journey across the Himalayas into India when they were just children. And they've been living in limbo at this transit camp for about half a century now.

A photo of the original refugees when they arrived

Khedroob Thondup, president of the TRSHC, explained the centre works to rehabilitate refugees. And over its 57 years of operation, thousands of Tibetans have learnt skills that have enabled them to leave the centre and "stand on their own feet." But while the majority have moved on, some have never left. "Now we have many older people," Thondup explained. "Even though their children have gone to the west, they still want to stay there and consider that their home."

Unlike many of the other elderly refugees, Tenzin's four children live at the centre and one of his sons works there. Tenzin still has early memories of Tibet when it was an independent country, before the Chinese began their invasion in 1950. "They slowly occupied Tibet," he recalls

Prayer flags outside

When I ask him whether after living in exile for so long, he still believes Tibet will regain its independence and refugees like himself will return, Tenzin replies, "Definitely I can say Tibet will be returned." And explains he thinks that like Soviet Russia, Communist China will collapse.

Yet with the thriving Chinese economy this hardly seems likely. Indeed, China's rising power is one of the reasons there's such a lack of international outcry on the Tibetan issue.

Dharamsala is in the foothills of the Himalayas. It's foggy and cold in the mornings.

The Central Tibetan Administration is the Tibetan government in exile stationed in the north Indian city of Dharamsala. Their representative Lhakpa Tshoko paints a grim picture of the situation inside Tibet at present. He said the region has been turned into a "huge prison" and is under constant martial law. Because of the migration of Chinese into the region, Tibetans have become a minority and are "treated as second class citizens in their own land."

Around the capital of Lhasa, locals are monitored by CCTV cameras and there are checkpoints everywhere. "There is no freedom of speech and movement," Tshoko told me. Extreme environmental degradation is also occurring due to mining.

Last Wednesday, the Chinese government began demolition work at the Larung Gar academy, the largest centre of Buddhist teaching in Tibet. It's part of a plan to cut down the academy's population by half, due to overcrowding concerns. But Tibetan activists see it as part of an ongoing campaign of cultural genocide being carried out by the Chinese government.

And with the Dalai Lama having turned 81 this month, Beijing is now planning to intervene after his death and make their own choice of which child is his reincarnation. In response to these current suggestions the Dalai Lama has said he may consider not reincarnating.

Lobsang Wangmo painting

Tenzin takes me into another room of the workshop and introduces his wife Lobsang Wangmo. Like her husband, she too believes Tibetan independence is coming. In her opinion, it relies upon the support of the United Nations and the international community.

She then goes on to say that because this support is not forthcoming "there are now many self-immolations and I'm feeling very sad." Since February 2009, 145 Tibetans have set themselves on fire trying to draw attention to the plight of their people under Chinese rule. The last was on March 23 this year, when Sonam Tso, a mother of five, burnt herself to death near a monastery in China's southwestern Sichuan province.

Wangmo's story is a little different from the other elderly refugees at the centre, as she was actually born in India. But she's adamant that one day she'll go to the homeland she's never known. "Yeah, yeah, I feel I will. I hope. I pray also," she said with radiant eyes. "I live in India, but my heart and everything is for Tibet."

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This article originally appeared on VICE Spain.

When the doors of the Palacio de Deportes arena in Madrid opened for the Iron Maiden show two weeks ago, a small group of fans had been camping out in front of the gates for 24 hours. They were young girls all decked out in Iron Maiden shirts and flags. "We slept here with ten people," they told us about an hour before the doors opened. They were nervous—it was the first time they were going to see the band live.

Meanwhile behind them, Iron Maiden's more senior fans were taking things a bit easier. These Spanish veteran fans met through their Iron Maiden fandom and have been friends for decades, seeing one another only at shows. Before every gig, they come together in front of the arena for a sort of pre-game. They stand around, have a beer, and a chat about the band, the concerts they've missed, the leaked set list, what Resurrection Fest in Viveiro was like last weekend, and how the band members seem to be doing physically during this last tour.

This year's street party—or botellón in Spanish—started small, but as the opening approached, it gradually took over the whole of Plaza de Felipe II. Grocery shops that line the square in front of the arena started to run out of cold beers, but well-prepared fans had brought along coolers filled with alcohol.

One couple told us the first Iron Maiden concert they went to was at this very stadium in Madrid, more than 25 years ago. They couldn't count how many times they've seen the band since then. The same can probably be said of the rest of these pre-gamers—they all seemed to be fiercely faithful to their idols, and they took no note of how much Bruce Dickinson looks like your dad these days. Likely, because these guys are your dad.

Photo by Jason Bergman

Even the homophobes in Cleveland are hospitable. On Wednesday night of the Republican National Convention, I was sitting next to a middle-aged local at a no-frills watering hole called Nick's Sports Corner. I asked him his thoughts on Indiana governor Mike Pence, who was about to take the mic right down the block. I tell him I'm impossible to offend, and he really takes my word for it, going on a truly stunning and very laudatory rant that I would rather not reprint. His mug of America (formerly known as Budweiser) was sloshing over the rim as he pounded his fist against the bar.

"Damn right I'm a homophobe," he said before slamming down his glass and offering to buy me a drink.

The gesture seems incongruous, but then again so did the entire convention this year, given that televangelist Jerry Falwell spoke on its closing night, later followed by openly gay businessman Peter Thiel. I'd like to ask this Clevelander his thoughts on the sort-of unholy alliance that Trump is attempting to forge between gays and conservatives in the wake of the Orlando shooting, but I have to decline the drink, as I'm there prepping to meet Milo Yiannopoulos, who I first saw speak at the surreal "America First" Rally on the opening day, orbited again at his relatively boring LGBTrump party the following night, and now had finally nailed down for an interview. In fact, the self-described homophobe I met would probably like the 32-year-old platinum-blond provocateur, given that his whole schtick is railing against the idea that words and identity politics are meaningful. Although he's been a voice of the alt-right movement for years, he very recently received a ton of mainstream attention after allegedly orchestrating a campaign of Twitter abuse against actor Leslie Jones, one of the stars of the recent Ghostbusters reboot, and getting banned from the social-media platform as a result.

While I enjoy at least the idea of Yiannopoulos rankling hand-wringing liberals, I also think that his arguments give permission to people who want to say vile, racist, bigoted things. Meanwhile, I find at least some of his arguments compelling, like, for instance, the idea that we're at a unique moment where after the legalisation of gay marriage, liberals now have to work for gay votes rather than just expect them. I spent about an hour discussing this with the infamous troll and challenging him to push me over the fence into full-blown conservatism. Here's what we talked about.

VICE: I'm gay, and I hate both the right and the left. I have been following you around and want to take this as an opportunity for you to convince me. Tell me why I should be more vocal about this at the risk of being socially ostracised.
Milo Yiannopoulos: This is a very strange interview.

I think you can make two choices in life when you have difficult things ahead of you: the easy one with the feelings, or the hard one with the facts. Science tells us that people tend to make decisions based on their emotions rather than reason and use reason to justify them later. It requires a significant degree of conscious effort to avoid that pitfall. Now it seems, to me, fairly obvious that if you are a homosexual, you can choose the mollycoddling and pandering and feel good maxims of the left, so that after a tragedy like Orlando you can buy into the rainbow Twitter avatars and the hashtags and feel good about yourself for saying, "Love wins." It doesn't really accomplish very much. And sometimes the conservative way is a little more counterintuitive—but more affective. Sometimes, actually, the compassion can be difficult to identify in it because it involves hard choices. It's not just about telling everyone that they're beautiful and wonderful and perfect.

I agree that Twitter avatars are not very effectual. What's the counterintuitive approach?
From my point of view, it's the conservative response to Orlando, for instance, a conservative response to the Islamisation of Europe, which represents the best hope for gay people to be happy and safe and comfortable. Now that involves saying some unpleasant things about people you know—about Muslims, for instance. Now, not every Muslim you meet is going to want to firebomb a nightclub or take a gun to your head. But significant numbers of them do, and not really in minority. It's a significant portion of Muslims who simply find our way of life completely unacceptable. It's become dangerous to be gay in America for one simple reason, and that reason is Islam.

So what do you make of the ways that both Trump and Hillary responded to the shooting? I've interviewed gay Trump supporters who say that the speech he gave after made them love him.
I looked at responses from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and something struck me, which is that the two responses from the left—one, denial, and two, feeling—led to almost nihilism, really. A denial that there was a link to Islam or a connection to an Islamic antagonism toward gay people. And the sort of Nihilism of "Love Wins." Well love doesn't win. AK-47s win.

Meanwhile, I didn't realize Trump had this speech in him, really. It was pretty much the most terrific speech he has ever given. It was remarkable, and I encourage everyone to read it. Trump's response proved to me, as a British person hoping for the best for America, that he actually had some answers. There was an opportunity there to elect a president who would do something. I don't see that from the political left.

What's a long-term solution if you believe gays and Muslims can't coexist? Segregation? I don't see the end game to this argument.
I'm not sure that I could get behind a full deportation, but I don't have a problem halting immigration in countries where it threatens, not just minorities or another Orlando, but Western culture—which is the best culture. Western democratic capitalism. Free capitalism of the likes that we used to have in Europe, that you still have in America—which gave women the vote, which means that gay people can have a nice life. The places in the world that don't have it—it ain't very nice to be anything but the prestige class. In this country, you can pretty much do what you want to do, and say what you want and go where you want. That's not the case in most of the world. What surprises me about the left is that it doesn't seem to realize where the good stuff came from.

Gay marriage being legal is a moment that is pretty liberating for a lot of people. They don't have to be single-issue voters.
Don't you find it depressing?

Do you?
Of course!

Do you think that gay marriage being over and done with has caused that community to pivot to hand-wringing over other things that aren't necessarily issues?
I think the gay rights struggle is over, and it's time to shut up, stop, and go home, rather than continue to bleat and whine and police language and pivot to transgender pronouns and effectively start doing shakedowns. I don't want to see the Gay Establishment and gay charities turn into these sort of organised Al Sharptons, that go around policing the perceived homophobia, inventing grievances and victimhood where none exists, pretending to see insult and offense where none was intended. I don't want to see gay people be like that. That seems to me to be profoundly antithetical to the best spirit to gay dissonance of someone like William S. Boroughs. That seems to me to be so contrary to all of the best things about being gay. It's horrifying.

You advocate dropping the "T" from LGBT. It strikes me as maniacally self-serving to dismiss a group of people who basically started the gay rights movement as soon as it becomes politically expedient to do so. It's like hitting the lottery and then never talking to your old friends again, no?
Even the L and G shouldn't be together. Gays and lesbians don't really get on very much. We don't mix very much; we're not allowed in your bars. Lesbians and gays are horrendous about each other. Why are the L and G together, let alone anything else. There was a time, sure, in the 50s and 60s, when it payed to stick together. But that time's over. And all of these groups have different priorities. The very lesbianic third-wave feminism has very different priorities from gay men, it seems to me. Both of those groups have very different priorities to the trans lobby.

I kind of think that Jerry Falwell has less in common with Peter Thiel than a gay man has with a lesbian. Looking at the people speaking tomorrow before Trump, I can't tell if he's trying to move gay people into the party, or if it's just a sign that Trump has absolutely no ideology whatsoever.
I would say—I didn't finish my degree—but I went to a very good university in Cambridge, and I was taught that their were dozens of different ways to approach text. You could do a feminist reading, you could to an Lacanian reading, you could do all sorts of things. It seems to me that journalists are so poorly educated now, they literally have one prism through which to view the world, and it's the prism of oppression, bigotry, sexist, racist, homophobic—that's all they see when they look out in the world. I pity them because I would hate to see the world so monochromatically as they do.

But if you snap out of that and realize that the public actually is sick of the one-note preoccupations of journalists and that the allegations of sexism and racism don't have the power they had anymore, and that's good, and people are actually looking for a chaos candidate—I think the dysfunctional coalition that Donald Trump is assembling makes a lot more sense.

Why does this moment feel different than the political correctness movement in the 90s?
In the 90s, political correctness started to pop up, but it was beaten. It was beaten away. So now it's come back, and it's come back with a full force of every civil institution in the country. Politicians, the media, the entertainment industry, academia, the lot of it. But that's good, because that means if we beat it now, we beat it in its final form, in its strongest possible incarnation, and it will never return. That I think is happening by itself, but I'm happy to chivvy it along and also of course document that history as well. It's nice being someone who can give it a kick up the ass and then scurry around the corner and write about it as it comes around.

How does it feel, as a conservative, to know that a lot of the voter base fucking hates you?
Well, a lot of liberals hate you. I'm better educated on politics in Britain, but what I can tell you is––

Liberals don't stand on a street corner holding signs that say "God Hates Fags."
Oh come on, how strong is the religious right in this country, really?

Strong enough that Jerry Falwell is speaking on the final night of the Republican National Convention.
But what purchase do they have on the media? What has Trump said that's been influenced by radical evangelicals or anything like that? Realistically, the era of the religious right was the 90s. This was when people were saying that music and video games inspired school shootings on the basis of no evidence. Now it's feminists saying they can make you sexist with no evidence. It's the same ugly instinct, just from a different political direction. I don't like it anymore from the religious right than I do from the social-justice left. But to suggest that the religious right or that social conservatives have anything approaching the power that social justice has on the left in America is simply ridiculous.

And Mike Pence hates you for reasons that aren't even religiously motivated or easily dismissed as based on an old book. That's actually worse.
Mike Pence doesn't hate gay people. He's a family values and states's rights guy, and I am fine with that.

I wanted to ask you, if you could change whether or not you were gay, would you do that?
Yes. No. Well maybe before my career started taking off. Very honestly, if you did put the pills in front of me, if you really did it, if you said, "If you take this pill, you will be heterosexual," I think I would do it.

Why?
Well, it's not any of the things that people normally expect. People are always surprised by this answer, and it's amazing to me that this has never occurred to other gay people, but, when I'm fucking a person I love, I can't make a baby with them, and that's weird, and saddening, and confusing, and not a nice experience. When you're making love to someone who's most important to you in the world, you can't do what heterosexual couples do, which is create a child. Maybe I'm completely alone in that. But that bothers me.

I definitely expected the answer was yes, but not for that reason.
I don't know why this doesn't occur to more gay people, or if they just lie to themselves about it, or if they never get to that stage in their life or whatever.

There's a combination of things. I very much like the access to that wild abandon and freedom, particularly the cultural freedom that being gay gives me. I've obviously taken full advantage of that in my career. But when I think about where I want to be in 40 years, it's like, "Do I want to be happily married with my own children with the person I made those children with?" It's very tempting.

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(Photo: Flickr user Angrylambie1, via)

Older people love having sex. That's because, like younger people, they too are also humans, and humans generally enjoy having sex with other humans. It's a lot of fun, and it feels great, and it's good for your bones and your heart and your soul. So it's no surprise that a recent report found that 26 percent of people over 60 in the UK are unhappy with life because they're not having sex enough. In fact, a lack of sex later on in life, it turns out, is a greater cause of distress than being stuck at home all day, living in relative squalor or being widowed.

A 2015 University of Manchester study found that 54 percent of men and 31 percent of woman over 70 are sexually active, but for the remaining percentages, it must be frustrating racking up all those decades of experience and then not being able to anything with it. So because you can never know too much about ~coitus~, we asked a bunch of people over (or near) the age of 60 to share some of that experience with us, giving us their best sex tips and asking them about they've seen sex change throughout their lives.

Sue, 67

(Photo: Agnieszka Chabros for Catalogue Mag)

In the late 1960s, in Britain, men still had all the power, so they asked women out on dates, and people would go to things like balls. But then there was also the radical hippy group who came in and held orgies with marijuana and acid and sexy dancers.

Even though men weren't very experienced with sex, because they didn't get to have experiences with any women that were more advanced sexually, women just thought whatever they did was OK because it was all they knew. And since all young people lived at home with their parents, there was no opportunity to go out and have flagrant sex and experiment on the kitchen floor. The change started in the mid-60s, because the music became a huge signifier of what was different. It was an odd time, though, because there was this huge sense of conservatism throughout it all – women were still writing cookery books and knitting back then, for god's sake. But then a whole bunch of acid came along and it gave people the freedom to say, "I will not get married, I will not have children, I will not be locked into housework; I will get a job and fly around the world instead." In the 70s my sister and I were living in a beach town, so we had to have sex with a different boy every night for a year to get experience. People went from sitting at home and eating TV dinners to not ever going home and dancing and fucking as much as they could.

The best thing to do to learn about sex is to go and have a lot of sex. I would tell everyone to go out and pick up random people. People should also talk about things, because there's no replacement for that. Definitely, definitely practice masturbation, because that's a skill. You have to know exactly what you want, and you've got to know what's happening to your body. So, if you're with a partner that can't give you those tingles in your feet, you're with the wrong person and you've got to leave them, because sex dictates how your relationship will be. You must also love your body and explore it in every single way. Even the top of your head; everything. You should also be very informed on sex toys – everyone should go to Amsterdam, because really that's where the best sex shops are, and it's brilliant! Having sex with people of the same gender is important, too – everyone should try that at least once in their life, but be sure to just have lots of one night stands in general. Lastly, everyone should try bondage games at some point in his or her life. With the right partner, it can be amazing. Oh, and everyone should make a movie of themselves having sex. If you're not turned on, don't do it. That's the only rule with sex.

Leo*, 59

People have always had sex – I doubt there's anything that people do today which wasn't done by the generation before us, or the generation before that, or the one before that, etc. I don't think dating has changed, either – people still go to the same kinds of places and get up to the same kinds of shenanigans.

Finding a date has certainly changed, though. Apps like Tinder have made it possible to find a date while sat on the sofa, which I guess is fine for most, but it sort of takes the sport out of it. I think the best part of dating is the thrill of the chase, the subtleties of flirting and the risk that she might already be in a relationship. With Tinder, this is all removed. How dull!

I've been very lucky in my life. Without sounding like a complete arse, I have never had a problem in getting a date, and I've done pretty much everything that can be done, sexually. If I were to offer any pearls of wisdom to younger men, it would be this: porn isn't real. The women that you will meet in your life are not porn stars and sex isn't like it is portrayed in porn films. Take time with your partner and don't be an arsehole.

Jo*, 60

When the six-week block of school holidays came around in the late-60s, my friends and I would meet up and go out to parks to meet up with boys and kiss them in the bushes. We'd meet the boys at the youth club and then get together afterwards, and if we could we'd get into clubs because sometimes they didn't check how old we were. We'd go there early and stay until way past midnight by putting mops in our beds with wigs on top so our parents wouldn't find out because they were Christians and would have gone crazy. All the boys used to walk us home, though. There was never the question or thought they'd do something bad to us, because it just wasn't like that. No matter how far it was, they'd walk us home.

Everything was different then; I got pregnant with my first child when I was 16, so we started young, even though our parents didn't want us to. It was all about breaking the rules and doing what we wanted to do at the time. I'd put on my best dress, make-up and go! Those were the days – everything was easier then and no one was scared of what might happen because it wasn't very likely anything would. We had good times back then, man. Things are so much different now, though – we could be free and do what we wanted, but people have to be much more careful now. I hear so many horror stories these days that I just want to tell all my grandchildren not to go out with strangers and do what I did, because you just can't any more.

If you do find someone you like and you get along and that spark is there, make sure you use protection! Or the pill if you've been together for a long time and you know where the other person's been. And tell each other what you like and what you don't – that is so important. When I got pregnant I'd only had sex a few times and I didn't even like it that much back then. So don't continue with something you aren't enjoying or you don't think is all that, and don't ditch your friends for anyone. Those are the most important things! That wasn't even on my mind when I was fooling about, because no one talked about it, but there you have it.

READ ON BROADLY: Teen Girls Are Roasting Boys Online in New Cyberbullying Trend

Ron*, 59

It's definitely become easier now for people to find sex. Dating was there earlier, but it was difficult to engage in sex unless there was some hope of a relationship. Today, I've found it really doesn't matter if people engage in sex even without a relationship. It's more out of carnal desire probably, or just to convince yourself there is physical compatibility.

Easy availability of sexual services via the internet has also made things so different for many people, such as paying for sex or sex outside marriage, for example. It's kind of denigrated the beauty of sex, so more isn't always better in my opinion.

As for sex tips? Don't rush in just for physical attraction or desire. Think about possible consequences, too. But, most importantly, you can enjoy a good sex life without making it the only headline in any relationship. Love, live, laugh and enjoy a relationship.

*Names have been changed to suit the person's low-key lifestyle.

@YasminAJeffery / @its_me_salma

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If people found out you didn't shave off your pubic hair, you were both disgusting and a lesbian. If you got a boyfriend, you were a slut; if you had a boyfriend but didn't sleep with him, you were frigid, and if you didn't ever have a boyfriend you were a freak. When you went on holiday, you had to take a whole Facebook album's worth of photos of you looking as thin as possible. Your group of friends start only eating soup or an apple for lunch. You start eating an apple for lunch. The thought of ever having to be a teenage girl again is enough to make me feel like I've got a hand physically around my throat.

Nothing surprises me about the new study from Girlguiding. Their poll of 1,627 girls and young women showed that confidence rapidly drops away from girls at the age of 10. Ninety percent of nine- and 10-year-old girls felt they would have the same chance as boys at succeeding in their chosen jobs, but this dropped to 54 percent among 11- to 16-year-olds and to 35 percent among 17- to 21-year-olds. Only a quarter of the older group said they felt "powerful", compared with a third of 11- to 16-year-old girls.

Anxiety is a multi-causal illness, but the fact that women feel worse by the time they're an adult than they do when they're a teenager is a troubling tell-tale sign of time spent lacking in confidence and feeling powerless. Women are nearly twice as likely to have anxiety than men. To find out more about these sad stats, I asked girls and young women about the first moment they felt like they'd lost their power and what to do to ensure this stops happening to the next generation of women.

Jennifer, 19, London

It was at the beginning of secondary school when people started making fun of me for being smart. I started worrying about why they weren't saying it to guys, so I began hiding being clever. I felt I wasn't being what a girl was supposed to be like. I was even told by a family friend that girls being clever intimidated guys. Not being honest with myself or standing up for myself made me feel so powerless.

It got worse when I was 13 or 14, as you worry more about what people are saying about your looks. One time after a chemistry test where I got full marks, this boy from my class came up to me and said, "Were you the one who got 100 percent?" I nodded and he said, "Why do you always do that? It's so unfair." A guy in my class also got 100 percent but he said nothing to him about it, only me. I felt like I'd done something I should be ashamed of as I'd made a boy feel bad. It's only now I see it doesn't matter how I make men feel.

If we want to help girls there needs to be a real focus on PSHE and SRE – which should definitely be mandatory and good quality – to teach girls about their own value and how to treat themselves.

Carissa, 18, South London

It was when I first went to high school. Suddenly, you're expected to not look like a kid any more and you have to be an attractive woman. It's make-up, shaving, waxing and everything. It all comes at once. If you can't keep up with that it can be a big problem for you. The people that were considered popular did it first and then there's the pressure to follow them and do whatever they're doing to get by. That's when your insecurities come in, you notice the differences between you and other people – how you present yourself, how you look and your relationships. As you get older, it gets worse. Your self awareness grows and you have the added pressure of being an adult on top but you're still carrying those pressures that started when you were 12 or 13.

It's difficult to fix because the media has a lot to do with it and no one can control that. But inside school environments, it's about educating people on those topics rather than ignoring them. I don't remember ever being told about confidence or gender imbalance at school. If there was a talk as a year group, it was always about drugs or alcohol or maybe safe sex, but never about more mental issues. Now when kids are that age they don't just have Facebook either, they have Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and we see celebrities and people older than us and we want to live that life and hold ourselves to those standards even though we're kids. Social media definitely makes this worse but how can you regulate how much time people go on it for? It's hard.

Alice, 13, Norwich

One day I was watching a movie and realised it was always the woman being the victim or unable to protect themselves. The woman was never going to beat the bad guy. They just go off with the guy and the guy gets rewarded. People and adverts say, "You're a girl, you can do what you want!" but it doesn't feel like that in reality. It feels like you get punished. In our sex education talk someone asked, "Why are men superior to women?" and the teachers just ignored the question and wouldn't discuss the idea further.

For me to feel more powerful, we'd have to get rid of a lot of the sexist people in the world.

Amena, 21, Birmingham

As soon as I lost confidence in one thing, I snowballed and lost confidence in any area. Before you hit puberty you either have baby fat or you're thin. If you have that baby fat, you're looking at the opposition before you hit puberty and it plays on your mind. At 11 or 12, you start looking at who's popular, and it's the girls wearing make-up and older clothes. It's harsh for girls, you're completely judged on your appearance. We felt powerless in the changing rooms. During PE, some of my friends would go into the toilets to change rather than be in the open. It's that age when you transition from knickers to boxer shorts to proper underwear. Everyone's looking around the gym to see if they're behind or if anyone's not wearing the right thing.

This got worse later on for me. Now I can't even leave the house without wearing make-up. I feel like as I get older I'm losing power. I'm increasingly critical and I think that's true of most girls I know. We're so hard on ourselves.

I'd say if young girls deleted celebrities and people who don't make them feel good about themselves on social media, that'd help. Now I only follow people who inspire me. People who do really cool art or make-up, for example. Workshops on how to deal with your body differing for other women's, and how you should fight to be equal to men in the workplace should be mandatory. Teachers are too scared to waver from the curriculum. School is the biggest part of socialisation so they should be allowed and encouraged to talk with kids about what goes on outside the classroom.

Esme, 15, London

If a boy wanted to be a musician, he is judged on how well he can play the saxophone. But I feel like if me or one of my friends wanted to be a saxophonist, first people would look at me and if they liked what they saw, they would then listen to my music. Knowing that makes me feel powerless.

I have no idea what could be done to make girls have more confidence. When you find out let me know. There should probably be more realistic portrayals of adolescence in mainstream media. It doesn't help my self-confidence to look at Olivia Newton-John in Grease and think that's what 17-year-olds are supposed to look like, when in reality she was like 28 when it was filmed. I want to see teens actually in their formative years, spots and all. There should also be more advice from school too. We have wellbeing lessons on gender identity and fluidity which have been surprisingly progressive but as for power and confidence, we've never heard anything about that. Even if we did, it would almost definitely be all together as opposed to separate by gender and too broad to be helpful.

India, 21, Cardiff

I started secondary school as a long-haired, long-limbed girl who could pull on and off my size four skinny jeans without unbuttoning the front. I lost power the minute my body started to grow, as I'd internalised the notion that to be thin was to be happy. I remember crying in my bedroom at 14 when I could no longer fit in my size six clothes. Around a similar time I was travelling home on the school bus and the boy behind me was telling me in detail how I was considered an "ugly" one of the girls. I walked home in tears and went to the bathroom to realise that I'd started my period. That was the time I realised I was no longer a neat or perfect girl.

I don't think there's an external solution though. We're always going to look on Instagram or at other people in magazines or the street. It's about naturally cultivating friendships and relationships which make you feel better about yourself and developing constructive habits and hobbies. I started competitive dance training to inhabit my body properly instead of living in my head. For me at least, it's been a good decade of struggle. Traditional parent or teacher interventions never worked for me or anyone I know. Perhaps trying to cultivate a culture at school and home where girls feel valued or worthwhile somehow would help.

Ruby, 19, Bristol

Having moved to a new city and having been going out to various different events and clubs, I have witnessed or been subjected to various accounts of groping and grabbing. Boys that seem to either be slightly younger than myself or the same age think it's fine to treat the girls around them in the clubs like a piece of meat that's on display. I immediately feel powerless as a young girl when, in response to having my bum grabbed, I tell them to stop and not to touch me, I get various slurs and hand signals shoved in my face. One of the only ways to get them to listen is to say "I have a boyfriend". Sadly it seems they are more likely to have respect for another guy than a girl. When in fact the only thing that needs to be said when you don't want someone touching you is "no".

I think in schools, from a younger age, maybe around 10, girls and boys should have open discussions in classes with supervision and direction from an elder about relationships, treating people with respect and that nothing is expected of you from someone. It's okay to say no and that's the only reason you need to give, should you feel that way.

@hannahrosewens

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Don't Trust the Internet is a weekly column where we investigate all the bullshit tabloid stories, political memes and conspiracy hearsay that your mum is sharing on Facebook.

Okay, so disclaimer: I don't use Pokemon Go. I have no problem with anybody who does, but sadly I have neither the data nor the inclination to chase Jigglypuffs around Hornsey. However, there are some elements of its omnipresence that are starting to grate. None more than the totally, definitely, absolutely fake "Crazy Pokemon Go" stories.

There's a logic to this, of course. If a considerable percentage of the world's smartphone users suddenly start meandering around strange and hidden locations they're bound to, on occasion, stumble across strange and hidden things. A couple of big stories have been true – this girl finding a dead body sounds pretty legit, as does this Plymouth sex shop becoming a Pokestop – but in their wake they have inspired a dearth of fabricated Pokefables. Inspirational or cautionary tales of looking for Charmanders and finding love, or murder scenes, or adorable elderly people. It's a foolproof setup; there's no way of proving you're lying, and all you need is a weird location and kooky incident, and you've got a ready-made crazy Pokemon Go story.

Much in the vein of people pretending to be children for retweets, these stories must come from a thirst for viral recognition. A strange regressive urge found in grown-adults to be popular and lauded for capturing one of life's quirky moments. And for as long as Pokemon Go continues to be more popular than food, we can expect these outright lies to continue. Reddit upvotes, dude! Gotta catch em all!

WITNESSING A MURDER

Let's begin with the fakest of all the fake "crazy Pokemon Go" stories. If you can't be bothered to watch the entire video, it's basically a clip taken from a live stream of a YouTuber called Alex Ramirez playing Pokemon Go. Out of nowhere, in the middle of his game, he suddenly notices a truck pulling up outside the church where he was playing. At this point, Ramirez suddenly freaks because, "ohmygodohmygodohmygod" he's just seen the dude in the truck kill some chick. What follows is a thrilling audio sequence as he finds himself pursued by the murderer, before eventually calling the police to explain everything that had happened. Only, he didn't, because, of course, none of this happened.

This story was picked up initially by loads of places, mostly gaming blogs and tech sites including Gizmodo, as well as blowing up on Reddit. Since then, Ramirez's story has become weirder and weirder. The police got involved to say they believe the video is a fake; Ramirez has supposedly lost his job as an Uber driver (something Uber have denied); and at one point Ramirez even had a GoFundMe set up in his honour – since he got sacked and all – but now it's becoming more and more obvious he made the whole thing up, the campaign has disappeared.

The biggest giveaway that Ramirez is chatting absolute Pokeballs is his acting. If you're going to go one stage further with your fake story and actually record audio of "the incident" rather than just write it down and post it on Reddit, you've got to be able to convincingly capture exactly how a human being would likely respond to witnessing a murder. Ramirez literally says: "Why is there a random truck here at the church? Is this motherfucker playing Pokemon too? Oh my god! Huh! Oh my god! Holy shit! This guy just killed some chick! Oh my god! I just witnessed a fucking murder!" Not exactly kitchen sink realism is it.

THREATENED WITH MURDER

This small epic is currently one of the most popular on Reddit's very own "Crazy Pokemon Stories" subreddit. It follows an "average evening of Pokemon hunting" for three brothers who, following a disagreement over how many original Pokemon there were, find themselves the victims of homophobic slurs and death threats at the hands of some older lads and their over-zealous mum. The best part of the whole thing is the GCSE drama of how the initial confrontation plays out. Behold:

"You know, I had all the original 120 Pokemon when they came out."

Obviously he was exaggerating, but we cared more about him getting his numbers wrong.

Ralph corrected: "151."

"Huh?"

"There were 151 original Pokemon."

You could cut the air with a knife, couldn't you? Proper old school stand-off, this. The sheer venom packed into that "huh". I'm shuddering reading it. I can see them now, the two packs of Pokemon hunters, like a version of West Side Story featuring an all-male cast of vloggers with baseball caps. The flick of a switch-blade when Ralph says, "There were 151 original Pokemon." The silence – the unending silence in which you could have heard a pin drop – preceding the absolute chaos that follows. And oh boy, what chaos. Thrown soda, cries of "faggot" and a mother so batshit crazy she threatens to run everybody over. All because some punk didn't know how many original Pokemon there were.

This is definitely fake, but that said, the actions of the mother remind me of the only Pokemon story I have. When I was nine years old I collected Pokemon cards. One afternoon a boy of a similar age who lived a few doors up from us came round to play. We were comparing cards and eventually agreed to swap three of his cards for one of mine – I think it was a Golem – based on their relative worth. He went home and I thought nothing more of it, until an hour later his mum came storming down the street and called me out quite publicly for conning her son out of three cards. I was forced to return them, without getting my Golem back. It was deeply humiliating and I have never forgiven the shitty mother or her shitty son.

SHOTS FIRED

Another one popular on tech blogs and Reddit, a YouTuber's run-in with a gun-wielding landowner is one of the more dramatic Pokemon Go incidents to hit the internet. As played out in the video above, the gag-inducingly named Lanceypooh got into a spot of bother when driving out into the middle of some backwoods somewhere in the dead of night. Everything goes awry when the plucky heroes leave their car and find themselves being yelled at by whoever owns the land it turns out they're trespassing on. The video of the incident currently has over 400,000 plays.

There's a line in Superbad that goes, "I'm sorry, Evan, that the Coen Brothers don't direct the porn that I watch." I'd like to imagine that if the Coen brothers ever do direct some porn, it will look a bit like this. A couple of hapless middle-American blokes, stranded out in the middle of nowhere, shaky handheld camera, gunshots.

The thing that makes these setups so obviously fake is just how performative everybody is during the build up. Not only is it an unholy coincidence that the whole thing was being filmed, but the two stooges involved behave like the worst kind of post-Will Ferrell YouTube comedian‚ squawking irate zingers at each other about "rural Pokemon" in a tone that screams, "God, I desperately hope my comedy vlog about tech takes off after people see how funny I am on this, because at this point I really have nothing left to give."

CAUGHT CHEATING

This story got picked up by both the New York Post and the Daily Mail, despite literally just being a vague anecdote about a breakup. This crazy Pokemon Go story goes as follows. "Gamer" Evan Scribner was canoodling with his ex-girlfriend behind his current girlfriend's back – something he would have got away with if it wasn't for Pokemon Go's pesky geolocation services. Scribner claims that due to the app recording his location – and when exactly he was at said location – his girlfriend was able to work out where he'd been due to him catching Pokemon in the neighbouring area. Poor old Evan says his girlfriend worked out he'd been spending time with his ex and hasn't spoken to him since.

There's definitely something fishy here. Besides the whole "your girlfriend isn't speaking to you but you're doing an interview with the New York Post" thing, surely this story would only be worth reporting if there was a shred of evidence it actually happened, as opposed to a "gamer" – not a job title, by the way – retelling an anecdote. I'm also surprised there weren't more obvious ways of catching him out, like, I don't know, text messages or phone calls. To have to go deep into somebody's Pokehistory seems like really taking the long way round.

No, most likely, this "story" was just a way for Evan Scribner to show off to the world about how often he gets laid. Man just wants you to know how big his Pokeballs are, basically.

SURVEILLANCE

One of the most popular rumours about Pokemon Go is that it is, in fact, a massive surveillance operation run by the CIA, or Google, or the NSA, or the Illuminati, or something. This theory has spread like wildfire across Facebook, and even movie director Oliver Stone has declared the game a "new level of invasion" that could lead to "totalitarianism". There are a few different versions of this story. One suggests that Pokemon Go is using your camera to deliver images of your home to Google Maps, but other reports go further, suggesting that the app could be feeding information to the CIA or the NSA.

In very, very basic terms it sort of makes sense. Pokemon Go is essentially a massive map of the world featuring real-time locations of whichever members of the population are playing at the time. But you've got to ask yourself: what exactly would the CIA want with that information? Surely a massive list of the whereabouts of everyone currently playing Pokemon Go is the most counter-productive data imaginable. That's basically a hard-drive full of all the least dangerous people on the planet. The people who run blogs about game consoles, the people who Instagram their pets, the people who go to comic book conventions. It's literally the antithesis of a most-wanted list.

Even then, it's not real. Snopes recently got in touch with Google to ask if this data was being collected – if Pokemon Go really was handing all of our personal information over to the government – and the answer was a resounding no.

@a_n_g_u_s

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Sean Penn as Spicoli in 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High.' Universal Pictures

This article is originally from VICE US

"I no longer doubt that marijuana can be an intellectual stimulant," wrote the Harvard professor Lester Grinspoon in 1994. "It can help the user to penetrate conceptual boundaries, promote fluidity of associations, and enhance insight and creativity."
Those sentences are from his introduction to an edition of Marihuana Reconsidered, his groundbreaking 1971 book that aimed to challenge the public outcry over marijuana use.

The original edition ofMarihuana Reconsidered also included an essay by someone who referred to himself as "Mr. X," and he noted how being high in the shower helped him figure out how racism worked—a revelation that inspired him to write 11 essays in an hour. The claim sounded crazy, until it was revealed that Mr. X was Carl Motherfucking Sagan.

Sagan is a great example of a pothead who's accomplished amazing stuff while high—and he's not alone. Steve Jobs used marijuana to aid his creativity in the 70s, while weed was one of many chemicals it took to get Hunter S. Thompson's mental engines revving. Francis Crick was one of the scientists who discovered DNA, as well as an unlikely pot advocate who was a founding member of the proto-legalization group called Society of Mental Awareness (SOMA). The famed neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote that pot allowed him to reconcile with his own atheism; author Lee Childs—whose Jack Reacher novels are a favorite among the Fox News set—recently admitted he's smoked every night for 44 years and writes while stoned. So why the hell do people generally think of potheads as lazy do-nothings?

There was once a time when marijuana was accepted among intellectuals and creative types as lubrication for the brain. Under the influence of hashish, "people completely unsuited for word-play will improvise an endless string of puns and wholly improbable idea relationships fit to outdo the ablest masters of this preposterous craft," wrote the French poet, essayist, and general chill-ass dude Charles Baudelaire in 1860. He added, "Every difficult question... becomes clear and transparent. Every contradiction is reconciled. Man has surpassed the gods."

Of course, Baudelaire was geographically and temporally separated from the American moral majority's reign of marijuana scare-mongering in the 60s and 70s. As Grinspoon wrote, "There is something peculiar about illicit drugs: If they don't always make the drug user behave irrationally, they certainly cause many nonusers to behave that way."

And right when marijuana cultivated a reputation as the counterculture's substance of choice, the government stepped in to impose what Allen St. Pierre refers to as "the idea that marijuana use creates a lack of productivity, a slobbishness, a lack of attention." St. Pierre is executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (or NORML), and says that those stereotypes have been around since the Nixon administration, who used them to wrest legitimacy from anti-Vietnam War activists.

Nixon and his cohorts worked to ensure that, as St. Pierre puts it, "Regardless of your political affiliation, if you were a Vietnam War protestor, ergo, you were a pot smoking, non-working hippie." A talkative, bubbly guy, St. Pierre essentially functions as a one-man force against public misconceptions regarding weed: He speaks with gleeful erudition about marijuana, and he estimates he's done "thousands" of interviews about the drug since joining NORML in 1991.

As the years have passed, the myth of the pot-smoking slacker has grown thanks to the Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA), the organization behind the notorious "This Is Your Brain on Drugs" ads. Founded in 1985, the Partnership for a Drug Free America brought together the best and brightest in the advertising industry to create ads meant to, according to one LA Times article from 1996, "un-sell" the idea of taking drugs. The PDFA didn't just brand drugs as lame, but actively dangerous, too; and just like Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, the PDFA initially did little to distinguish between weed and harder substances such as cocaine or heroin.

One of its ads depicted a kid who smoked pot once as dangling from puppet strings, while another found a stoned kid named Tommy smoking a joint in the park being mocked by his schoolmates for being a delirious loser. Another featured a documentary-style interview with an imaginary burnout whose pot use led him to heroin at the age of 14. Scary stuff—that is, until it was revealed in 1997 that the PDFA was being bankrolled in part by Big Alcohol, Big Tobacco, and Big Pharma, a plot that St. Pierre rightly says is "about as Orwellian as you can get."

Though the PDFA swore off accepting funds from alcohol and tobacco companies in 1997, it still accepts donations from Big Pharma; two years ago, the Nation wrote about how Purdue Pharma—the makers of OxyContin—was a major funder of anti-marijuana legalization efforts. But St. Pierre tells me that he expects stoner stereotypes to decrease as the decriminalization of marijuana increases: "When one walks into a marijuana dispensary today, they see some are designed equal to or better than any Starbucks." As more people become familiar with weed, and realize it doesn't turn them or the users they know into puppets on a string, the perception lifts.

Meanwhile, anecdotes of artists using marijuana to enhance both their creativity and productivity are myriad. DJ Quik frantically mixed half of Tupac's classic post-jail album All Eyez on Me in 48 hours by alternating between a steady smoking regimen of cigarettes and joints (Quik's reps confirmed to VICE that the story is true). And as St. Pierre points out, "Listen to the Beatles in their first years of existence, then listen to Sgt. Pepper. It wasn't the fact that they went from being 22 to 26—it's that they took marijuana."

And anyway, science—to a certain degree—backs up the idea that weed can motivate rather than deflate. A 2011 study showed that alcoholics who switched from booze to weed might experience increased creativity as a result, and a 2014 academic paper posited that marijuana could help increase creativity in uncreative people.

"I don't think marijuana is a key that unlocks something," St. Pierre is keen to clarify. "But marijuana can help people get through their day and have a series of clear thoughts. People are ripping away the overwrought static in their head and live a more functional life. If that isn't creativity, then what is?"

Follow Drew Millard on Twitter.

Illustration by Sarah MacReading

In this day and age, it's almost old hat for gay characters on popular TV to trend more toward Homer Simpson than Waylon Smithers. From Happy Endings' Max Blum to Looking's Richie Ventura, the "masc" gay dude has gone from an easy punch line to the new norm, and it's far from a huge leap to claim that in 2016, certain ideas of gay masculinity have finally become firmly entrenched in mainstream Western pop culture.

Masculinity is, indeed, something that gay men obsess over and have obsessed over since the 1970s and the rise of clone culture. It's an obsession often manifested in derisive and self-loathing ways, because gay men often fetishize masculinity to the point that they look down upon and subordinate their feminine peers. The same pattern is evident among straight men—sexism and misogyny, after all, are alive and well—but this same type of anti-effeminacy often goes unnoticed among gay men themselves.

The parallels between how anti-effeminacy plays out between the two groups—straight and gay men—is too-little studied. So while completing my master's degree in sociology at Louisiana State University, I conducted an ethnographic study, using 20 in-depth interviews with New Orleans and Baton Rouge-area gay men from a variety of racial and economic backgrounds, to explore how sexual aggression plays out in straight and gay bars.

After two years spent in watering holes of all stripes (it was for science, I swear), I saw many stereotypes confirmed—for instance, that sexual violence runs rampant in straight bars, or that gay and straight men negotiate sexual consent in vastly different ways—but one surprising pattern slowly revealed itself: The way straight men discuss women and the way gay men discuss effeminate men are remarkably similar. And I found, most surprisingly, that gay men can be just as sexist against effeminate men as straight men are against women.

the infamous and supposed Madonna-Whore Complex (the idea some men "want to have sex with a 'slut' but not go out with one,") manifested as neatly and awfully between gay men as it is with straight.

Throughout the study, I encountered several gay men who had protected women from unwanted sexual contact, only to turn and blame those same women for their own victimization. Conversely, men I spoke with—whether bears (gay lingo for a stocky, hairy, stereotypically masculine guy) or twinks (lithe, boyish, and stereotypically feminine-presenting men), hypermasculine or feminine—frequently blamed men more effeminate than them for causing aggression in gay bars. Just as in straight bars, where women did not cause certain instances of aggression that they faced, gendered and sexist stereotypes were placed upon effeminate men.

Feminine men were repeatedly described as acting like they were on soap operas; one masculine guy I interviewed hilariously told me that a slapping fight between two young twinks in the French Quarter was like watching "Gays of Our Lives." Others made reference to "pissy queens" and a disdain for feminine men so strong that they would rule out going to certain bars to avoid them. One bear I interviewed recalled threatening violence against a twink at one point for simply talking to his boyfriend. In both straight and gay bars, twinks and women were blamed for instances of aggression such as these that they did not directly provoke. That said, the extent to which I witnessed or observed actual aggression involving effeminate gay men, aside from narratives of verbal arguments or slapping fights, was zero.

Several men told me about near-hookups in bars that began as exchanged glances but ended after a brief conversation because the guy's voice was said to be "too femme." I would later observe those same men head home together, speaking to a broader pattern of gay men who despise feminine guys in public but have sex with them in private, in much the same way some straight men will admonish women as "sluts" while later having sex with them. If said woman refuses, they go from a "slut" to a "bitch"—the infamous and supposed Madonna-Whore Complex (the idea some men "want to have sex with a 'slut' but not go out with one") manifested as neatly and awfully between gay men as it is with straight.

But gay men worship masculinity—that's nothing new. So what?

The sociological theory known as hegemonic masculinity, developed by R. W. Connell in their groundbreaking sociological text Masculinities holds that someone who performs masculinity always needs something to subordinate. In gay and straight bars alike, it's apparent that such subordination falls upon the shoulders of women, effeminate men, and gender non-conforming individuals.

To that end, the study ultimately revealed that masculinity and sexism are inextricably intertwined in queer culture, a phenomenon termed "queer sexism" by sociologist Jane Ward, author of the popular book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men. And queer sexism allows gay men to perpetuate the same effects of sexism writ large—income inequality, victimization, and internalized sexism—against men based upon their masculinity or effeminacy.

Data shows that men—and those who perpetuate a certain version of masculinity—are often those who perpetuate violence. Masculinity is not inherently toxic, but masculinity does have its toxic effects within queer cultures. LGBTQ peoples can do better than condone the marginalization of the marginalized, yet that, ultimately, is what is produced by the fetishization of masculinity.

Swede White is a doctoral student in sociology at Louisiana State University examining identity construction and social networks. Follow him on Twitter.

Don't get too attached to these marines – there's a good chance they won't be seeing the credits.

Aliens is 30 years old. I know this, because I can use calendars. James Cameron's all-guns-blazing sequel to Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror masterpiece of 1979 came out in July 1986, pulling in a box office of well over 100 million dollars on a budget of around 18 million. It won two Oscars, seven Saturn Awards, and was undoubtedly my favourite movie of all time until I reached an age where I could better appreciate the pacing and tension of its predecessor (and had seen more films). Its director's cut was a regular watch when underage parties finally cooled down, and we all slumped in front of the TV set. So far as action movies of the 1980s go, though, few come better – IMDb has it placed eighth in terms of popularity for the decade, encompassing films of all genres.

Aliens developed a rabid fanbase, eager for more stories of heavily armed marines battling acid-for-blood xenomorphs across the stars. So when Alien 3 came along in 1992, scarred by scripting problems, director's chair changes and featuring no guns whatsoever in opposition to just a single alien, people got pissed. Cameron himself was a critic of the film, calling its killing off of the survivors of Aliens a "slap in the face". The all-action follow-up to Aliens, sold as a "true sequel" and effectively rewriting the series' story as steered by Alien 3, would ultimately come out as a video game in 2013. Sadly, Aliens: Colonial Marines by Gearbox Software was a disaster of a shooter, riddled with bugs and awful enemy AI, set in boring environments and featuring forgettable characters. "You have to ask, if this didn't have the Alien branding, would it even have seen the light of day?" asked Eurogamer in its review. If only it'd remained in the dark.

For anyone wanting to celebrate Aliens' 30th by getting stuck into a video gaming experience of comparable drama and adrenaline, featuring familiar iconography, weaponry and worlds, it might seem that Colonial Marines is the only option. Suck it up, stick it in – the disc, that is – and just go with it. Yeah, yeah, that is Hicks, and I know, the whole thing's an absolute state; but what else are you going to play these days, on still-active systems? Alien: Isolation is a phenomenal game, of course, but it's a tonal cousin of the first movie, a far cry from the pulse rifle-lugging grunts of bug hunts past.

Well, you could play the WayForward-made Aliens: Infestation. Scratch that: you should play Aliens: Infestation (let's stick with the colon), especially if you're the sort of person who a) loved Cameron's movie more than you should have given you were something like 11 the first time you saw it, and b) know your way around the metroidvania genre, as this is very much an experience that mirrors the 2D open-world design of Nintendo's 1986 explore 'em up. Which is absolutely fair enough, as Metroid certainly borrowed its share of aesthetic cues from Scott's Alien, the game's character designer Yoshio Sakamoto declaring the movie a "huge influence", and its art team looking to H.R. Giger's work for creature inspiration. Infestation is merely cashing in what the Alien franchise was inarguably owed.

Infestation is a Nintendo DS game, meaning that it's also playable on the 3DS range – meaning that there are somewhere in the region of 210 million people out there who can pick this up and immediately play it on their handheld console. But it came out right at the back end of the DS's lifespan, in the autumn of 2011, which hardly aided its commercial visibility. This wasn't the first time a more than decent Alien franchise tie-in emerged when gaming technology had all but moved on.

In late 2000, with the PS2 already selling in big numbers, Alien: Resurrection came out for the original PlayStation, a full three years after the movie it shared its title and plot with. Although it doesn't look too similar at a first glance, Resurrection being a grimy first-person shooter, the game shares a few qualities with Infestation: both are heavy on atmosphere, in place of genuinely transportive graphics, and use multiple player-controlled protagonists. Both are incredibly tough, too, the difference being that once a soldier is dead in Infestation, they stay dead, XCOM style.

Article continues after the video below

Love aliens? Watch The Real 'X-Files'.

Which is why you can never rush anywhere in Infestation. It does put you in the boots of a number of marines, each one packing some serious firepower; but race into a new area of the game – be that during one of its USS Sulaco-set stages, or on the surface of the infamous LV-426 – paying little mind to the bleeping of your motion tracker, and you'll swiftly be overwhelmed by aliens, enemy soldiers (alas, this isn't strictly a men (and women) versus monsters affair), aggressive robots or any combination of Bad Things. On opening each and every door, via keycards or blowtorch, you creep into the newly discovered space, just in case. Because underneath all that armour, behind all those guns and bombs, and beneath those layers of attitude, you're just a puny human. And puny humans die real easily.

I've had my crew – four at a time, and no more, with new recruits available to fill vacant roles, assuming you can find stray soldiers willing to step in – obliterated inside 20 minutes of play before. Lose all four of your squad without an opportunity to recruit replacements, like in a tough boss battle encounter, and it's game over, man, game over. Every character plays the same way, at the same speed and with the same abilities, but Infestation's vibrant character designs, by X-Men artist Chris Bachalo, means that each has a distinct personality when exchanging messages with the operation's commanding officer, one Patrick "Stainless" Steel.

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'Aliens: Infestation', launch trailer

And the mission at the game's narrative core is unashamedly indebted to Cameron's 1986 story – "the company", Weyland-Yutani, is again trying to get aliens into its research facilities with the objective of using them as biological weapons. Your team isn't about to let this happen, even with a "generic company man" (the game's words, not mine) interfering. Plenty of callbacks to Aliens are inserted into the gameplay, including a loader fight, flambéing eggs, and a frantic APC escape; and the music's bombastic blasts and eerie turns are deliberately evocative of James Horner's original score.

Infestation looks simple, primitive, as a great many 2D games do nowadays. It's not going to blow anyone away with its looks, however nice some of the idle animations are. And it's not going to take up days of your time – if you're good enough, and that'll take practise, you can finish the whole thing within three hours, barely longer than the film that inspired it. But this is a deep and memorable Aliens-affiliated experience that does a terrific job of continuing the action that Cameron's movie delivered. It's not considered canon, as Colonial Marines so depressingly is, but by leaving the events of Alien 3 untouched but still returning to so many memorable locations – you even see inside the Derelict – it assuredly earns its unofficial place within the series in fan-pleasing style.

This is not the perfect Alien/s game – its respawning enemies can absolutely dick off, and there are times when the environment is almost conspiring against you, trapping your marine between a crate and an enemy with a gun, with no wiggle room to get your own shots away. To be honest, I don't think any game tied to 20th Century Fox's continuing franchise has quite nailed its interactive potential. But Infestation is absolutely the best game, the only game, to celebrate Aliens' 30th anniversary with, that you can easily play today without having to source a defunct console, or Konami's thoroughly bananas arcade game of 1990. Because zombies were a thing in Aliens, right?

@MikeDiver

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]]> http://www.vice.com/554779 VICE Staff stuff stuff http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/how-brexit-is-already-fucking-over-young-people Wed, 27 Jul 2016 16:45:00 +1000 Photo by Chris Bethell

Young people in the UK overwhelmingly didn't vote for Brexit. Because why on earth would they? Hey, undergraduate, want to ruin the economy and prevent yourself from studying abroad? No way! Young professional, want to make it way harder and a lot more expensive to go on vacation? Nope! Definitely not! Well-informed 20-something, want to blame immigration for absolutely everything wrong with the UK? Of course not! Because you're not a complete idiot!

Still, the Leave campaign stole it, so there's not much we can do now but wait to see how much we're screwed over in the long run. In the short term, however, things aren't looking great—we haven't even left the EU yet, but young people are already feeling the effects of the vote in a very real way.

We spoke to a few to find out exactly how it's affected them.

Katie, 23, Derby

I'm currently studying my MA in translation, and Brexit has hugely damaged my career prospects. EU laws protecting workers' rights and funding languages and translation will be taken away soon, making it a lot harder for translators like me to find well-paid work. It's the EU that helps us set decent rates: about $115 per 1,000 words, which may sound like a lot, but it's actually a good few days' work to complete. Without EU help, we could see this fall to $40 or less.

Also, how will I negotiate with my foreign business partners now? Of course, I could go abroad to do these negotiations in person—but oh, wait, a lack of free movement might stop that. We are now no longer protected from flight taxes, so getting there will cost more. This is more money that I don't have, thanks to my lowered job prospects and the ruined economy—not to mention the fact my pounds will be worthless after converting them to euros.

The Brexit result has been devastating for me. I feel like my future is bleak. I feel like I've spent, like, $65,000 on a career that is going to fall down a black hole. I feel so devastated that people didn't consider the real-world repercussions. We certainly have taken our county back: to the dark ages where we're now stuck and all alone.

Susanna, 18, Harrogate

I voted to stay in the EU. As much as I'm heartbroken by the outcome, I'm more worried by the consequences I will potentially face in the future as a result. In September, I'm going to begin a languages degree, and one of the key parts is the year abroad. I knew, as a language student, that leaving the EU would impact the future of the scheme. I was so excited by Erasmus. It's such a big part of my degree, and I was looking forward to living abroad and experiencing another culture. There's no better way to learn a language than to experience it firsthand in the country it is spoken.

The possibility of British students like myself being excluded from this scheme because of something most of us young people didn't vote for breaks my heart. I am worried that I won't get the opportunity to go ahead and experience it myself, something that my own mother did when she did her languages degree more than 20 years ago. I really hope that the scheme can stay in place for years to come.

I do feel that my future has been robbed. Fortunately, I am dual nationality already as I am full Italian but was born here in the UK. I'm so grateful that I have an Italian passport as well as a British passport, as I'm sure it will make my life a lot easier over these next few years.

Joshua, 25, Coventry

Everyone talked about "getting our country back" as literally the only argument for leaving. I think the old generation all voted to leave because of reasons that won't really won't affect them in the long run, like immigration and getting more money for the NHS—which I don't think will happen anyway. Everything about the Leave campaign was a lie, and that's why the majority of them are backtracking on everything they said.

I work hard all year in construction and now my vacation is costing me around $650 more because of the shit exchange rate. I'm having to go into my savings to get that little extra bit of cash. It's just annoying, not least because I'm trying to save for a house at the same time. It costs an absolute fortune to buy a house regardless, and it's going to become harder and harder to buy one now.

Mark, 28

I work for a company that manufactures and supplies a range of building products that are all made in Europe, but we sell them in the UK. We also sell them worldwide, but our investors are very wary at the moment because there is so much uncertainty over here. We buy everything with euros, and we're now making up to 30 percent less on all of our sales than we were previously because the pound is struggling, which is honestly the nicest way to put it.

No politicians have confirmed what's going to happen or when it's going to happen, which means our investors are basically looking at whether they're going to pull out of the UK because we're making so little money. Because my job is the head of UK sales, if we're not selling in the country, there's not really a position for me. So it's a pretty strange time at the moment—I'm in limbo, but I'm going to find out at the end of this month whether I'm going to be made redundant or not, and it's an example of how people don't realize how much we rely on Europe, as well as Europe relies on us.

I'm a realist; I know sales jobs are easy to pick up when the economy is booming and things are great, but on the flip side of that, with all this uncertainty around the economy, people and businesses probably aren't going to be looking to hire as much as they were. I've had a look about just in case, but there doesn't seem to be much out there that would help me advance my career at my age, so to speak. It's fair enough, too: Why would people invest in the country if they don't know what the political situation is likely to be? I don't think anyone's under any illusions that we have a solution for a long-term problem. It's things like this that the people who have voted to leave don't realize will happen, and how they'll be influenced. The future is bleak, and no one's doing anything about it.

Merisha, 24

There are family members I don't speak to any more as a result of Brexit. Not because of the way they voted, but the disgusting comments they made about immigration that I didn't agree with. As the daughter of an immigrant, I'm not willing to stand by some of my family members any longer. I also keep hearing people around me saying "the economy will get better, it's just for the moment," but nothing good has happened yet; it's all going to depend on the deal our government can do with the EU.

Politically, we're a mess, and I'm not sure it's going to get any better. We are one of the laughing stocks of the world, with a government that ran away when it needed to take control and continue what it fought for. This vote has shown the true colors of people in terms of xenophobia and bigotry; it's truly split the nation. There are too many people on both sides blaming one another for the way they voted and too much name-calling and pettiness. Unfortunately, this is the decision that's happened, and we're going to have to live with it, even if a lot of us don't want to.

Bethany, 19

I really wanted to study abroad for my master's, but because I've only just finished my first year, by the time we actually leave it might mean I can't secure Erasmus funding, which would make it pretty much impossible for me to go. On top of my own worries, I feel like the UK is in self-destruct mode and that we're becoming increasingly isolated. Knowing that we're stuck on this little island makes me want to go and live somewhere else. We're going to end up building a wall like America or something, I swear. This is only the beginning.

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I was about eight when someone showed me how to draw this. It started with two sets of three parallel lines that were joined diagonally left to right, then capped off at the top and bottom with pointy bits. It was a fierce, beautiful S, and drawing it was addictive.

Soon all my schoolbooks were covered in The S. I never questioned what it meant or where it came from, I just knew I loved it. But it turns out I wasn't the only one.

I recently googled The S and discovered that although everyone loves it, no one knows its origins. Various Reddits and notice boards are full of really nostalgic people without a clue.

It seems The S has appeared throughout all of North America, South America, Europe, Russia, Asia, and Australia. Some people think it's a 90s thing, others report seeing it as early as the 1960s. There were theories that it was the symbol of some 80s hair metal band. Other people thought it was the original emblem for the clothing brand Stussy. Others thought it was an incarnation of the Superman logo. No one was sure.

I thought I'd ask the office.

"That's the Superman S," mused Ben, our in-house graphics guy. I asked him if that meant it was actually from Superman but he said it wasn't. "No, I think it's just what kids think when they're drawing it. They really just draw it because it's cool."

I got on the phone to DC Comics to find out if they knew anything. According to Benjamin LeClear, who manages the comics library at their studio in Burbank, California, the S has nothing to do with Superman.

"It doesn't look like any of the emblems from the old Superman Shield logos," he said after rummaging through their collection. "His 'S' has a lot of open space and almost never connects to itself."

Benjamin told me he'd become intrigued and, like me, launched his own mini investigation on the web only to turn up nothing. "I didn't realise what a crazy urban myth/mystery this Pointed S thing is," he said. "I would love for this to be Superman-related, but I don't think it is. Though Superman has the most famous 'S' symbol of all time."

"It's the Stussy S!" exclaimed Ramona, one of our producers. Like Ben's guess, she didn't think it was actually an emblem associated with Stussy, but refused to believe it had any other name. "It's definitely called the Stussy S," she said, then drew her own version that wasn't as good as mine.

Pretty much every forum on the web mentions Stussy—the Californian surf/street wear company founded in the 80s. A lot of people seem convinced the symbol was originally a Stussy logo, so I called Stussy.

"No, this is not an original Stussy Logo," stated Emmy Coates, who has worked alongside Shawn Stussy since 1985. "I personally get asked this a lot, but people have been drawing this S long before Stussy was established. People have just assumed it was Stussy and it's sort of spread from there. It's actually quite amusing."

I finally asked Emmy what she thought the symbol looked like. "It looks like Suzuki logo," she replied.

I was tempted to call Suzuki but didn't. I needed to zoom out and take in the bigger picture, so I got in touch with an expert in symbols and semiotics: Paul Cobley.

Paul is a Professor in Language and Media at Middlesex University in London. According to him the theory that it was a hair metal symbol was also ridiculous—"It's certainly not the Saxon logo," he said. "Theirs was far more sharp and had a staff." Then he offered the most likely yet bland explanation of all. That is, it's fun to draw.

"The reason kids go through this is probably because it's a Moebius strip," he said, referring to the sort of looped one-surface shapes Escher was fond of drawing. "It can't be drawn continuously, but it does have a perpetual flow."

I think he was on to something. Most nine-year-olds can't draw, so when someone hands them a magical recipe to create something fairly cool, on demand—that'll go viral. Especially when the shape has the sophisticated, mathematical lineage of a Moebius strip. Yes I'd learned the term ten minutes earlier, but whatever. Moebius strip.

The S isn't a Stussy logo or a Superman emblem or a gift from aliens, I think it's just the most fun ever.

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As has already been well established here, summer sucks and the stifling heat dome bathing most of the continent in damp sweat has us desperately searching for cold, dark places to hide until it's all over. Relief is close though, as this morning's annual lineup announcement from the Toronto International Film Festival promises sanctuary in air-conditioned movie theatres for summer's final few weeks.

The program for TIFF's 41st festival features a slate of heavy, dramatic releases under the thematic umbrella of "infinite views"—further proving this city's ability to always, no matter how grasping, find a way to capitalize on prodigal son Drake.

From Antoine Fuqua's much anticipated opening night blockbuster, The Magnificent Seven, to Park Chan Wook's psycho-sexual romantic thriller, The Handmaiden, here's a look at some of the movies set to premiere at this year's TIFF.

Denzel Washington reteams with director Antoine Fuqua to continue playing some version of his morally ambiguous cop from Training Day. In Magnificent Seven he's a bounty hunter tasked with gathering a group of ragtag stereotypes to fulfil a contract for revenge. But is there more to his motive than just a paycheque? Probably, guys. Chris Pratt plays the comic relief (shocking) with Ethan Hawke, Matt Bomer, and Vincent D'Onofrio rounding out the cast. Based on Kurosawa's epic screenplay for Seven Samurai, Magnificent Seven will open this year's TIFF and at the very least will have a ton of blood and explosives.

Holy shit this looks amazing. If you're already a fan of Korean filmmaker Park Chan Wook then you know to expect more lush, deranged, sensual imagery and a bonkers storyline with themes of greed, torture, and sexual servitude. The Oldboy and Stoker director looks to have created another suffocatingly beautiful world that promises to expose a lot of ugly shit before leaving you wrenching from the plot's twists and turns.

Written and directed by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, American Honey won the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes festival. Sasha Lane stars as a runaway who gets caught up with a crew of hard partying, white dreadlocked magazine sales weirdos, with a dreaded Shia LeBeouf as their de facto leader. It's like a sunbleached Spring Breakers on the road.

We get it people who make movie trailers, it's a mad world and you find it kind of funny and you find it kind of sad. Please stop using this song to express so literally the vibe of your film. We've all seen Donnie Darko. OK, now that that's out of the way, Ewan McGregor's directorial debut actually looks pretty good. Based on the 1997 Philip Roth novel of the same name, the moody drama shows the quiet devastation of a small-town family after a couple's teen daughter becomes a political terrorist. Ewan McGregor plays the lead opposite Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning.

Leave it to overrated jock Oliver Stone to turn a story about an unassuming nerd into some sort of cyber-Rambo spy thriller. A jacked up Joseph Gordon Levitt (his neck is at least twice its normal girth) is definitely angling for an Oscar nom with his gravelly voice acting that honestly just sounds like he really needs to clear his throat, maybe drink a glass of water. The real life story of Edward Snowden is fascinating and thrilling enough, the Stone treatment here looks like an over-the-top campy injustice to the quiet bravery of the real man.

'Catfight' poster

There's no trailer for Turkish director Onur Tukel's Catfight, but the action comedy starring Anne Heche, Sandra Oh, and Alicia Silverstone got a lot of attention at this morning's announcement. Early reviews suggest a hilarious, vicious, and violent film about estranged friends who reconnect and take their jealousy and hostility to a bloody extreme.

Other notable films headed to Toronto this September include: Canadian Denis Villeneuve's alien sci-fi drama Arrival; Nick Cannon's directorial debut, King of the Dancehall starring Cannon, Busta Rhymes, and Beenie Man; JT + The Tennessee Kids, Jonathan Demme's Justin Timberlake concert documentary; and first-time director Kelly Fremon Craig's coming-of-age comedy The Edge of Seventeen, which will close out TIFF.

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So Tuesday night was the Masterchef finale in which—as the general population of people with a television and a penchant for suspense had suspected—Elena Duggan beat Matt Sinclair and became the Ultimate Master of Cheffing in The World of Reality TV for This Particular Year.

After what was yet another season of nail-biting, degrading, and unnecessarily stressful challenges that captivated (some of) a nation, Elena made a very complex egg situation that I still do not understand, and it made her officially better than Matt in at least one way (and possibly others).

Yes, it was riveting. Yes, it held the attention of more than 1.6 million human beings. But you know what? I can't do this anymore. I can't watch this show and pretend that it's not just a huge, Chemtrails-sized conspiracy.

Because shooting a TV show doesn't take the same amount of time as watching it, and I don't believe that food is still hot by the time it gets to Matt Preston. In fact I doubt it's even warm, which makes me doubt that when I'm watching George, Matty, and The Other One it's the first time they've tasted it.

I have to know the truth.

After some digging (Tinder) I find an Anonymous Source who once worked in the Art Department of Masterchef. We meet behind Shed F at The Docks at five past midnight. Just kidding I call them on the phone.

"The food just sits there," they tell me. "For at least an hour after they've made it. Just like, in the open air. Except if it's a dessert, then they put it in a freezer so it doesn't melt."

I already knew this in my hearts of hearts, but all I can think about are the chances of the judges having Salmonella or something.

I tweet at Matt Preston AKA @MattsCravat in hope of finding some clarity about this situation—both the food temperature and the Salmonella—but all I get is radio silence. Deafening radio silence.

My Anonymous Source says that the judges walk around, tasting bits of the contestants' dishes, immediately after calling Time's Up. Then, later, they pretend to eat it again, all cold and gross, at the judging table.

But it gets worse.

"Half the time they wouldn't even taste it," my Source tells me. "They taste the ones they think are going to win, or the ones they want to win. Which I always thought doesn't make any sense because they have to pretend to taste it later anyway."

Hold the frickin' phone. So they don't even taste all the dishes?!

"They don't taste them all when they're hot. But they taste them all when they're cold, for the cameras."

Listening back on the tape of this interview you can hear me saying "My God..." under my breath. The room goes quiet. The air is thick with the immensity of it all. What have I uncovered?

Next phone call: Julian Assange.

I'm fuming. I'm tempted to tweet @MattsCravat again but I'll refrain. What I won't do though is refrain from saying that we deserve better. Who decided that Australia can't handle watching the judges taste the food at the benches? When they're all messy and there's still sweat and fear in the air? Who said it has to be in a dimly-lit room, surrounded by wine bottles and oak?

We can take a bit of authenticity, Masterchef. We can take it.

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The mythos and underworld infamy of the Mafia has long been romanticized on the silver screen. These pop-culture depictions glorify the gangster lifestyle and its man-of-honor ethos. But oftentimes, reality is nothing likeGoodfellas or The Godfather. In the mean streets of Brooklyn, life is rough and sometimes becoming an associate of the Mafia is the only option.

Frank DiMatteo was born on Cross Street in Red Hook and raised in a family of mob hitmen. When you grow up with Crazy Joey Gallo pinching your cheeks until you cry like DiMatteo did, childhood can be nothing if not adventuresome. In his new book, The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia, out July 26, DiMatteo tells what it was like to grow up with mob royalty.

His father and godfather were both enforcers for the infamous Gallo brothers. DiMatteo's uncle was a bodyguard for Frank Costello and a capo in the Genovese crime family. DiMatteo dropped out of school at an early age and started hanging around with the President Street Boys, also known as the Gallo crime family, a faction of the Colombo family. Growing up, he had a front row seat as the Gallo's waged a war for control of the Colombo family.

DiMatteo calls himself a Mafia "survivor." When many of his peers ended up in the trunk of a car or thrown into Sheepshead Bay to "swim with the fishes," DiMatteo, at 58, is still kicking. And unlike many Mafia guys who've told their story, DiMatteo isn't a rat. He walked away from the mob in the early 2000s with his integrity intact and still lives in his hometown of Brooklyn. We spoke with him to find out what it was like working for the mob in its heyday, how 60s culture changed the game, what he thinks about the modern Mafia, and why he started Mob Candy, a Mafia-culture magazine.

VICE: What was it like growing up in a Mafia household in Brooklyn in the 1960s and 1970s?
Frank DiMatteo: Eight, nine I didn't give a fuck. I was busy being a little kid. I didn't comprehend the real Mafia stuff, because it wasn't really spoken about, and there were no books and newspapers in our face every second like now. By ten you notice your uncles are a lot different from other people. They're whispering and then there are people coming around and they dress differently than other families. By 12 or 13, I knew who everybody was. By 13, I was driving, and I started learning about the life. By then, I knew exactly what was going on, so I was privy to a few things, but not much. I didn't go kill nobody at 13, but I was going to the clubs with them. Driving them here and there because I was tall. I looked like I do now, just a lot younger. I was six foot at 13. These guys went to a lot of restaurants, a lot of clubs, topless joints. Driving is basically how I learned what was going on.

My godfather is Bobby B. Bobby was one of the shooters for the G crew. He wanted to be my godfather, and I was very close to him. I drove him around for a couple of years in the early 70s. Bobby was a character, a stone killer, but you would think he was a jokester, like real schizoid. I mean, the guy was for real, but he was a funny-type guy as far as you could make him out. If you didn't know him, you really couldn't make him out at all. These characters are a very strange breed of men.

Was it like a regular job? You just clocked in? Did you know your job detail?
No one turned around and said, "Hey, Frankie, let me tell you what we're doing today in detail." You're not supposed to tell every little thing you're doing to everybody. People that look for too much information scare me, because that's not what we're there for. I wasn't supposed to know shit. If I wasn't involved in it, I really wasn't suppose to know about it. But I'd hear other people tell me all sorts of stories and stuff, and I'd go, "How do you know that shit, man? You're not supposed to know that."

What was life like in a Mafia crew back then?
Everybody was busy doing their thing. Who's robbing? Who's stealing? And who's trying to eat? You know what I mean. It was the early 70s. Money wasn't flowing. We weren't big time hoods. Every fucking day they were trying to do something—shake somebody down. So you didn't know what was going on. We were doing cigarette runs to make some money. We were hoods, man. And they all had different personalities. Who was a grumpy fuck? Who was funny? Who was a drunk? Who was a pot head? We had Puerto Ricans with us. We had Syrian guys with us. We had a Jew guy with us. It was like a fucking circus. Who had five dollars in their pocket?

What was Crazy Joey Gallo like?
Joey left when I was like five or six. He went to jail. He got out when I was like 16, 17, so I saw Joey for one year. I think 71 to 72. Joey was Joey. Joey was a scary guy. His eyes gleamed. He smiled. He wasn't the guy to joke with. But on the other side, if you're with him, there's nothing to fear. But Joey sowed his oats when he came home. Don't forget he was gone for ten years, so he was going out drinking. He was conducting business, but he stayed in the city a lot. The rest of us guys those days stayed in Brooklyn. We didn't leave far from the neighborhood.

Joey was staying in the city with my godfather and Pete the Greek. We'd see him once a week if were lucky. He would come down to the club. He was a nutty guy. Functional, but legitimately nuts. He had no fear. He was like the throwback of the 1920s gangsters. He thought he could move around and do what he wanted, say what he wanted. He didn't think nobody was going to shoot him, nobody had the balls to do it, so that's how he functioned. But we know he was wrong. He was only out a year when they killed him.

How did the 1960s impact the younger generation of mobsters coming up who filled in the ranks?
The 60s impacted the mob guys coming up. The new hoods were a little different than the old street guys from the 20s. The street guys from the 20s came up out of poverty. These guys, late 60s early 70s, they weren't starving as much. They were just bad guys. What the 60s did was just open the doors to different crimes, stocks and bonds, and these guys just had a different mindset. Then there was the pot. In the 20s, 30s, and 40s, I don't think they were walking around fucking zoning out all of the time. These guys would smoke a joint in the street and laugh like it was a joke. They were half crazy. It all changed. It changed them. The respect or the mindset. They didn't listen to all the rules and regulations like the old-timers did. They laughed at that shit.

DiMatteo and his wife, Emily, around 1970

How did you leave the mob and avoid prison?
I was lucky. Had some foresight on a few things. Beat a lot of cases. I was very, very lucky to walk away, especially with all this rat shit. But we just walked away like it was the end of the day. The boss flipped, so no one came back and said, "No, you can't do this, you can't leave the Mafia." Everybody was ratting. Everybody was gone. We walked out the door like nobody was watching the door, like the door wasn't locked anymore. Nobody even called us. We were just lucky all the way around.

What do you think of the Mafia today?
They have no idea what they're doing. They're young. They've got guys who don't know shit because a lot of guys are dead, a lot of guys are in jail. A lot of guys are rats. A lot guys with a lot of time in have flipped. These guys coming up, no one is teaching them. They're just reading books and saying the word Omerta, you know?

Half the guys in charge, you can't even call them by their nickname anymore. They can't kiss in public because they're afraid. They're afraid of everything. It's like a fucking joke now. You've got no respect. Every other crew is laughing at you. You've got the Albanians laughing, the Russians laughing, you know? There's no respect. They're not scamming nobody no more. The other thing is you've got 200 rats, and no one is dead. Not one rat is dead, and they're walking around in the open.

The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia will be released on July 26.

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Bernie Sanders supporters stage a protest at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Photos by Jason Bergman

If anyone ever told Bernie Sanders superfans that the revolution won't be televised, they clearly didn't take it to heart. Minutes after their nominal leader formally conceded the nomination to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia exploded in cheers and G-rated pop hits, a flock of Sanderistas walked out of the Wells Fargo Center and marched directly on the press pavilion outside. Soon a crowd of maybe a few dozen silent demonstrators—some wearing Robin Hood–style hats and mouth coverings symbolizing their contention that they had been silenced by the Democratic Party—were assembled, fists raised in protest, while a scrum of national and international media roiled around them.

You couldn't have scripted a more allegorical end to the progressive crusade started by Sanders. For months, it's become increasingly obvious that the bitter primary campaign was essentially over. Sanders fell behind in pledged delegates, then was mathematically eliminated, then conceded, then fully endorsed Clinton. Most of his supporters have quietly followed his lead; the walkout was small enough that it wasn't immediately obvious on the convention floor that anything had happened. But the minority is angry, vocal, and hungry to publicize what they see as a rigging of the democratic process. They see Clinton as being cozy with the banks, in thrall to a corrupt system, and too willing to bend the truth.

"We've had it, we've just had it!" Pam Keeley, a Washington State Sanders delegate who was one of the organizers of the walkout, told VICE. "We've had it with the hypocrisy, the lies, the being used for votes and campaign funds and then just being thrown out like garbage. This is basically a peasant's uprising."

Keeley said that about 80 delegates walked off as Sanders conceded for the last time, but "several hundred" were prevented from leaving by police.

According to one delegate, Sanders himself sent out an email telling delegates not to walk—but some committed Sanderistas have grown disenchanted with their former icon and believe that the candidate has wandered off the trail he helped blaze.

"The reason that people got behind Bernie Sanders was that his message was a message of rebellion against a hated establishment," Kshama Sawant, a Socialist city council member from Seattle who supported the walkout, told VICE. "It was circular logic for Bernie to expect that his supporters would support his choice to turn around and say, 'All the political revolution was great for a few months while it lasted, now let's fold our movement behind the very epitome of the establishment that we hate.'"

On Tuesday, Sanders made a formal request that Clinton be the nominee after the votes were tallied, a ceremonial detail that emphasized his reconciliation with mainstream Democrats. But that didn't make a difference to the delegates who walked out. Neither did the policy concessions Clinton has made to appease the left, like her progressive plan to make state college free to families that make under $125,000. They felt ignored and disrespected by an Establishment that has been out to crush Sanders from the start; Democratic National Committee emails revealed by Wikileaks last week just seemed to drive that point home.

Harlan Baker, a Sanders delegate who is also a former Maine state representative, was particularly angry about the way the DNC was biased in favor of Clinton. "A good chair... stays neutral for party unity," he told VICE after walking out. "They don't pick a side, mock the other side, and then say it's time for unity... It's that kind of condescension that's led a lot of people out here tonight."

Other, more personal indignities added to the Sanders delegates' sense of grievance. Keeley said that the chair would only turn on the microphones when they knew what individual delegates would say, and Sanders delegates were frequently threatened with having their credentials revoked. "That's not democracy," she said. And a Maine delegate who walked out complained that they were only allowed to wave pre-approved signs handed out by Democratic officials instead of their handmade pro-Sanders signs.

The walkout may have been the most dramatic and documented protest against Clinton's official ascension, but there were others. A demonstration outside the DNC security perimeter was reportedly broken up by pepper spray and Jill Stein, the Green Party's presidential candidate, was openly courting Sanders voters who feel ripped off by the Democrats at a rally after Clinton's nomination. For many left-wingers, Stein is the obvious choice—in an op-ed for the website CounterPunch, Sawant called the Green's campaign "the clear continuation of our political revolution."

Many Sanders supporters weren't as confident about the direction they would take. Bob Canfield, an 18-year-old Sanders delegate from California, said by text that he was "frustrated with the direction the party seems to be going," but instead of quitting said he planned "on staying in the party and working on transforming it into a party that represents the progressive values of Senator Sanders."

Another Sanders delegate, who didn't want to be identified, cited the recent change in the rule on superdelegates as one concrete change Sanders won—in any case, he's not so upset that he's willing to take to the streets. "I wasn't a Hillary supporter," he told VICE, "but now I am."

The Sanders campaign, obviously, is over. What happens to the Sanders revolution is less clear. If the senator from Vermont ever represented a unified wing of progressives, that wing has now splintered, probably irrevocably. Some have abandoned the Democrats thanks to the bitterness of the primary, some were never Democrats to begin with, and some, Sanders himself included, will likely stay inside the Democratic tent, working on a stage of the revolution that is quieter and maybe less angry than the protests outside the DNC.

"This is a time of flux, and there aren't quick and easy answers about, 'If you're not here than you go there," Keeley said as she moved on to the next protest of the night. "It feels good to be outside."

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It all started with Lars Ulrich. Before he sued Napster back in 2000 and won, illegal downloading wasn't even illegal, no one really knew what it was. But after that case, hundreds of aggrieved musicians, record labels and nation states tried to stop people like me downloading Limp Bizkit's back catalogue for free. Just yesterday Isohunt, a pirate website that didn't actually host any MP3s itself but just had a directory for websites where you could download them, was ordered to pay £38m to a music industry group called "Music Canada". The UK government is planning on putting the maximum sentence for online piracy up to 10 years inside for the most serious offences, according the Office of Intellectual Property.

Of course, when Napster launched, places like Virgin Megastores and Tower Records were charging in excess of £15 for an album, and often more for a film or box set. The entertainment industry generally treated the general public with disregard, and people felt ripped off. So there was a fair amount of delight in sticking it to them and downloading terabytes worth of free songs. If you need a comparison for this day and age, imagine if someone built a railway line right next to every Southern Rail train track and then ran the service for nothing, and then Southern Rail came out and said "yes we know the free track is there but the moral thing to do is support Southern Rail".

Eventually the music industry worked out that it couldn't just bash people with the proverbial stick, and created the carrot of way cheaper legal downloading and streaming services, while also going around closing down the websites that had almost destroyed their industry.

That tactic pretty much worked and today I, like everyone else, am more than happy to wrestle with the extensive catalogues of YouTube and Spotify rather than endangering my computer with dodgy software. But I do wonder what happened to those old pirate websites, whether they still exist in some kind of internet graveyard or whether they have all been expunged.

So, as I was feeling particularly blue this week, I decided to try download Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound Of Silence" for free on every old pirate website, to see if any of them had sprung back up in my absence.

First up, the guys that started it all, Napster:

This is what you get when you get on to the Napster website these days, some generic looking music streaming site in the guise of Apple Music or Spotify. Apparently after getting chinned by years of high profile lawsuits, Napster decided to shut down its original pirate incarnation. But after getting bought out by US electronic retailers Best Buy, and later merging with Rhapsody, it has since rebranded itself as a paid for streaming service, (AKA sold out to the fucking system, man). I shan't be finding a free copy of a classic folk ballad here.

Next I tried Pirate Bay but when attempting to log in to their site, I just got a list of directories to other sites:

I clicked on some of the sexier sounding ones like 'fastpiratebay.co.uk' and the more official sounding 'thepiratebay.uk.net' but every time was met with a "site can't be reached" page. Turns out the Swedish site, after numerous raids on their offices, lawsuits and arrests, has been blocked in a number of countries and also banned from being mentioned on social media sites like Facebook. I mean, I could easily circumvent these blocks using TOR or any other kind of darkweb browser but dammit I'm not Jonny Lee Miller in Hackers I'm just in need of a quick fix of Garfunkel balm to ease my troubled mind, and so I moved on.

When I was growing up, the main bad boy of the downloading game was always Limewire. Sure, it had more viruses than you could shake a stick at and was horribly slow, but it was always user-friendly. So a massive shame when I tried to click on www.limewire.com only to be met with another 'site can't be found' page. I started having a look at various downloadable options and almost went for the one below, but then thought about how many viruses I used to fuck up my computers with back in the day and had a little pause:

Upon doing some research I found that Limewire had actually been shut down way back in 2010 after more lawsuits and court hijinks so there were no new working versions available. Various wikis explained that old versions not only don't work, but also have many trojan horses in them, and I didn't want to take the risk and not be able to finish the rest of this article.

So instead I tried Kazaa, the even more virusey Limewire alternative.

Oh right, bollocks.

Finally then, to Soulseek, trusty old Soulseek. Soulseek was the worst-looking, least user-friendly of the big P2P networks. It was the illegal downloading site your older brother used. Perhaps for that reason people didn't seem that bothered about knocking it off the internet and whaddayaknow, it's still operational.

It offered me a free download of the program. Upon opening the file, my firewall protector went a bit nuts, but was I about to back down now, when I was so close to the mellifluous sounds of S&G? Not on your nelly. So I proceeded to search for the seminal 1964 track and boy was I not, disappointed, a whole bunch of versions came up straight away.

And it wasn't like the old days either. No waiting around with a cup of tea for it to download, 30 seconds later look what happened:

Yes! Finally, after a whole three hours or so of being rejected by various old pirate website I was let back in by the sweet and loving embrace of Soulseek, and was now free to enjoy the tender and heartbreaking sounds of the "Sound Of Silence" at my leisure, just like I used to do with Limp Bizkit all those years ago.

So what do we know now? First, let me unreservedly apologise to Simon and Garfunkel, I have deleted the song off my computer and am now listening to it for free on YouTube instead, for which I'm sure you will receive 0.0003p. Second, the music industry have done a great job of making illegal downloading so hard and annoying and made streaming so easy that they don't even need to finish shutting down the remaining sites because who wants to spend three hours going through each one seeing which works. And third, this remains the greatest song ever written:

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A bottle of 665 Leather's house brand of amyl and a bottle of Jungle Juice aerosol amyl, surrounded by amyl pins made by the author. Photo by the author

I was first introduced to amyl (the inhalant that makes anal sex a breeze and dancing a joy) by a lesbian roommate who worked at a nightclub bar, who would return home each night with an armful of confiscated drugs. (It was, suffice it to say, an incredible living arrangement.) One drunken night, when I was 20, she forced me to take my first hit. Seconds later, I found myself rolling around on the carpet, giggling uncontrollably while my face turned red with heat.

I had no idea ayml was primarily a hookup drug until I was offered them during, you know, a hookup. I became massively confused, wondering why my guy wanted to turn the tide of our passionate night toward a tickle party. But it was then that I came to understand the glory that is sex on ayml.

In their heyday, ayml was typically made from a form of alkyl nitrite called amyl nitrite or isobutyl nitrite—hence the name. Nowadays, retail variations can include harsh formulas—everything from cyclohexyl nitrite to isopropyl nitrate—that often seem strong enough to strip paint; when inhaled, they can produce headaches, possibly cause permanent vision damage, and, according to some experts, even sudden death; older, legit formulas merely produce a pleasant ten-second high.

How reliably they produce that high, of course, depends on the brand you're inhaling. And there's a lot more to ayml these days than whatever Al Pacino was snorting in Cruising.

My body is now a prison and my brain is floating, waiting for my sensory system to restart, and I feel as if a friend were to shock or surprise me while I'm on them, my heart would explode.

At sex shops, you'll take your pick from seemingly dozens of brands of tiny amber bottles, with names like Amsterdam, Locker Room, Jungle Juice and Rush. I refer to the latter as the Nike of inhalants, and while Rush may be the most recognisable brand in the game, its vials aren't produced with the same care as, say, a fine Scotch. Bottles of "Rush" are sold for $5 at New York bodegas and $20 at upscale LA sex shops; there's legitimate formulations, obviously counterfeit offerings, and everything in between. And it's as important as ever to know what you're popping into. Maculopathy, after all, is never a hot look.

Enter small batch, local, artisanal ayml. Given how (relatively) easy it is to homebrew it, some gear and fetish shops now offer signature blends on the DL. A friend of a friend tipped me off to 665 Leather, a leather store in West Hollywood, which offers an unlabelled 10 ml bottle of its own unique formula for $20, one it simply calls "Leather Cleaner." (Other shops I called were cagey about divulging many details over the phone—one obliquely told me to "stop by," and left it at that—but I've heard that more than a few sex shops now carry house brands.)

While picking up a bottle, I was told it was made by "a guy," and the concoction is "similar" to amyl nitrite. I'd like to envision said man in a white lab coat with an MIT diploma nearby, but I later settle for picturing a leather pig who may or may not own a rubber fist.

I give them a rip once I get home, and the effects are intense compared to your everyday bottle of Locker Room or Nitro. My head is on fire and pulsating; my lungs feel like helium balloons inflated to their limit. The first hit is no joke, but once my eyes stop watering and I bow my head for round two, I find I'm unable to repeat the euphoria I experienced just moments before. Which is sad, because some formulas maintain their potency for hit after hit after of cheek-flushing hits. (Though as I clear my nostrils after my dive into Leather Cleaner, I catch a pleasant sweetness in my nose, and the slightest hint of vanilla bean. It's a wonderful vintage nonetheless.)

At the other end of the amyl spectrum lay varieties that offer the same high in more intense ways, and while at 665, I picked up a bottle of aerosol amyl named Jungle Juice. These contain ethyl chloride, and there's no recommended dose, because the label indicates they're "for cleaning glass and metal surfaces." They are, to say the least, decidedly sketchier than your average bottle of Rush—and I can't recommend you try them out, because the risk of harm to your body is that much greater, as I later learned.

I reach out to an experienced friend for further instructions, and he advises me that a five-second spray on a clean sock will do the trick; hold to mouth, breathe in a few times, and enjoy. I give it a whirl, and within ten seconds, my body is tingling from head to toe. (Especially my fingers, but I also think I sprayed that hand trying to angle the nozzle—this stuff is no joke.) The effect is far removed from the typical jolt I get from a normal huff of amyl; my body is now a prison and my brain is floating, waiting for my sensory system to restart, and I feel as if a friend were to shock or surprise me while I'm on them, my heart would explode. They're definitely doing... something to my body.

After giving them another try, I decide to play doctor and determine that it is in my best medical interest to discontinue use of this product. The next morning, my throat felt noticeably sore. It's possible I overdid it with these, but then again, the label reads "Cleaning Solution," and instructions suggest the formula is great for stainless steel kitchen appliances, so who knows what went wrong or why my reaction felt so harsh. The bottle could say "¯\_(ツ)_/¯" and I would have the same idea of what it is and how to use it.

With all the names, formulas, manufacturers, and counterfeiters of amyl in the world today, it's impossible to know exactly what you're ingesting and how much is too much when it comes to the drug. According to some studies, ayml is fairly innocuous—in 2007, they were ranked 19th out of 20 popular drugs in terms of addictiveness and potential for harm. Some people have gluten allergies and feel fatigued when they cave and eat that office donut; others take their first whiff of ayml and end up blowing out the center of their retinas. If you do choose to indulge in some unvetted formulation of the stuff, it's in your best interest to do some research to determine the authenticity of the product and what it's actually made of. In this day and age, there are forums and communities of users with decades of aggregated experience on the topic. It's a terrifying world out there in ayml-land—one day, hopefully, we'll see GMO-free nitrites on the shelves of Whole Foods, but until then, play safe.

The author's cat also enjoys a huff of euphoria. Gif by the author

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On Fire Island, the largest of the barrier islands outside Long Island, you'll find the Fire Island Pines. The hamlet serves as a community, cruising ground, and capital of high gay society. Lush with its namesake scrub pine trees and bordered by sand dunes, it's overrun each summer with queer men of all stripes, who flock there to find brotherhood and embrace.

Among America's gay communities, from Palm Springs, California, to Provincetown, Massachusetts, the Pines and its neighbor Cherry Grove have fixed themselves as a hedonist's mecca nonpareil in our national queer imagination. "The Pines is to gay people what Israel is to Jews," a resident once told the New York Times.

Since long before Stonewall, it's where gay men have sought sex and shelter from the outside world. The singular landscape has stained the works of Edmund White and Andrew Holleran. Its reputation as an essential destination for high gay society is said to have begun when W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood arrived costumed as Dionysus and Ganymede, "carried aloft on a gilded litter by a group of singing followers."

This weekend marked the 18th iteration of the Pines Party, an all-day, all-night dance and fundraiser where the magic of the island blooms into a bacchanal carouse. Photographer Nathan Bajar hopped a ferry to capture portraits of the attendees, aglow in the sun and drunk with passion.

Police arrest the drug ring's 26-year-old alleged leader, Charlee Lloyd. Image via

A five-month-long investigation of a drug ring in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales has culminated in the arrest of twelve people—including the group's 26-year-old alleged leader and a seventeen-year-old boy.

Elaborately-named police operation Strike Force Trinculo was established in March this year as part of an effort to investigate local suppliers of methylamphetamine. On Tuesday morning, detectives used seven search warrants to raid homes in the suburbs of Mount Annan, Edmondson Park, Ambarvale, Bowral, and Moss Vale. As well as making the arrests, they seized methylamphetamine, more than $30 000 cash, two poker machines, a replica pistol, and allegedly stolen property.

The ABC names the drug ring's alleged leader as Charlee Lloyd, a 26-year-old woman who has been charged with supplying a large commercial quantity of drugs, directing a criminal group, recruiting children to carry out criminal activities, and four counts of drug supply. Lloyd was refused bail and appeared in Goulburn Local Court today.

An unnamed 17-year-old boy was also charged with resist or hinder search warrant, resist or hinder police and possessing a prohibited drug. He will appear at a children's court next month. Most of those arrested were in their twenties, with the oldest player being a 50-year-old man charged with supplying a large commercial quantity of drug, participating in a criminal group.

In a statement last night, Acting Superintendent Andrew Koutsoufis from The Hume Local Area Command said Strike Force Trinculo "has made significant inroads in the Southern Highlands" and that inquiries are continuing.

"The detectives have worked tirelessly to achieve the results, including the large number of arrests, and we will continue to investigate the supply, distribution, cultivation and manufacture of prohibited drugs," Koutsoufis said.

"These arrests send a strong message to the community and to anyone involved in this type of activity, that it won't be tolerated."

"We will continue to do everything we can to keep drugs off the streets."

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This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

When I get out of the U8 train at Berlin's Kottbusser Tor station at 5AM on a Thursday, three men dressed in rags raise their beer bottles to greet me. "Is this a nightcap or a good morning beer?" I ask. They don't answer, but grin at me with the few remaining teeth they have. The sun is rising over Kotti (as the area is affectionately called in German), reflecting on the satellite dishes and on the windows of the surrounding kebab joints and bars. There are hardly any people on the square – it's basically me and a guy manning a 24-hour vegetable stand. But the rubbish from last night that's still lying on the street tells stories: Someone spent the evening with a needle and a Capri-Sun juice box for company; a few feet away is an installation made from an empty sparkling wine bottle and a mini bottle of chardonnay. Additionally, I count 17 empty vodka bottles; the brands are so cheap that I don't even recognise them from my days as a student.

The street cleaner, who begins sweeping everything up just before 6AM, merely says: "It's dirty here. But for further inquiries you have to turn to the mayor's public relations office." Kotti has been in the press a lot recently. In April, the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that Kottbusser Tor is Berlin's hardest drug market: "It doesn't really get more bleak than this." Two months earlier, theTagesspiegel ran the headline: "(Kottbuser Tor) Is Too Crass Even for Kreuzberg Standards". According to the police, the number of muggings increased by 50 percent between 2014 and 2015. Theft increased by 100 percent.

But what's a lingering problem to some, is a hotspot of Berlin nightlife to others. To many, Kotti is the perfect example of a place in which different worlds can co-exist peacefully. Gay bar Möbel Olfe is just a few feet away from Café Diyar, populated mostly by very serious Turkish men who play okey. At night, African music blends into Turkish pop and techno. Is Kotti the cesspool of Berlin or a multicultural paradise? I'm going to spend 24 hours here to see what's up, from dawn to dawn.

The first dealers make their way to their posts for the morning shift around 6:30AM. "Hash, hash?" one of them asks in a sleepy voice as I walk past the Istanbul supermarket. Another yawns: "White, green, brown?", which apparently means "coke, weed, heroin." But I only got that by the end of my 24 hours at Kotti.

A delivery truck drops off döner kebabs at 7AM. The driver unwraps the giant meat cone and rests it on his shoulder. The image makes me think of a cave man carrying a mammoth's leg. "Do you think it's dangerous around here?" I ask him. "I've been delivering here for 11 years and nothing's ever happened," he says. "But the situation has gotten worse over the last year, especially on weekends. I've seen fist fights and one stabbing in the past few months."

9AM is when the morning rush hits Turkish bakery Simitdchi – Kotti's breakfast hotspot. Students in pixie haircuts grab their coffees to go. Women in hijabs drink black tea from little glasses and eat simit – the Turkish version of a sesame bagel. A pensioner pushing an empty shopping cart, locks it outside the store with a bike lock before going in to order. Another grandpa, wearing a John Deere hat and a crocheted shawl reads the culture section of Die Zeit. A scrawny man walks up to me, rolls up his sleeves, presents me with the rash on his upper arm and says: "I have AIDS, do you have money?"

Drug addicts, eccentrics, Turks, artists and students make up the fauna at Kotti. If you climb to the roof of one of the social housing projects surrounding it, then you can see Kotti in all its glory at once. The expansive, ten-story monster called the Neue Kreuzberger Zentrum, makes up the north side of the square. In front of it, there's a round, concrete labyrinth of shops, bars, snack joints, a hostel and a casino. In the West, you have the Istanbul supermarket. In the East, you have burger joint Burgermeister – a favourite for tourists. Every few minutes, the U1 train rattles into the station on the overground tracks. At night, it delivers the party crowds. The whole thing is a miniature of Berlin that spans a few hundred square feet.

I decide to get a kebab for lunch. While I'm standing in line, a stranger puts his arm around my shoulder causing my heart to skip a few beats. Is it one of the ambush thieves that the media writes about so often? Nah – he doesn't want my wallet, he wants my number. He gives me a piece of baklava as a parting gift and tells me he works in a corner store nearby.

Ahmet Tuncer

A local resident, Ahmet Tuncer, 63, will later tell me that I was lucky. His wallet was stolen once. He's also found a lot of gutted wallets on the ground and turned them in. The cash was gone but the documents were still there. Tuncer, who has been living in Kreuzberg for 47 years says that "it has always been a troubled place but also a lively, tolerant one." Nevertheless, he doesn't like using the term "multicultural" to describe the area. "The idea of Kotti as a cool neighbourhood attracts young people, and young people attract drug dealers."

But criminality isn't exclusive to the square; It's just more visible here because of the tube station's central location that make Kottbuser Tor a meeting point. Tuncer also says he feels things have calmed down in the past couple of months. Two private security teams – each made up of two men and a dog – are paid by the people who own retail spaces at Kotti to patrol the area at night.

Moreover, Tuncer is active in the "Kotti & Co." initiative, which fights the rising rents in the area. Between 2010 and 2016, his own rent was raised by 380 euros. In spite of the negative headlines, Kotti is a coveted place to live, which means it's getting more and more expensive. In nearby Café Kremanski, a barista with a groomed beard serves a caffè corretto to a guy working with a MacBook that is charging an iPhone and an iPad at the same time. The cafeteria's menu boasts an "acerola power shake". Outside, a man of indiscernible age is having a different liquid afternoon snack: Vodka. He offers me a sip when I come out. In general, I've been getting a lot of gifts from the snack bars and corner stores. By 7PM, I've been given pistachio cookies, three glasses of black tea, a peach and two bottles of beer. Maybe that's what makes people love Kotti in spite of everything. It's a bit like a big bazaar – lacking in rules and making up for it in improvisation.

Murat Cavan

"Kotti is its own country," says Murat Cavan, who is wrapping watermelons in saran wrap in front of Istanbul Supermarket. He's lived here for 18 years and doesn't "ever want to leave." He also says he's gotten used to the drug market blooming in front of him because "some just can't help it." The three dealers standing a few feet away all agree: "There are no jobs, that's why we're here."

For hours, they offer anyone who walks by "hash, weed, coke, ecstasy" in the muffled tone bullies used to insult you in high school – loud enough for you to hear but softly enough to keep them from getting caught. One of them is from Lebanon, the other from Egypt and the third is Palestinian. The Lebanese guy says: "I would rather sell vegetables but I don't have a work permit so, no vegetables." The Egyptian guy chimes in: "Life in Germany isn't as good as I thought it would be."

When the European Championship game between France and Germany begins at 9PM, everything suddenly looks like a stock image labeled "integration". Men with impressive moustaches are rooting for the German national team along with with muscleheads draped in German flags. People shout in German, Turkish, Arabic, English and Russian when the German team misses a shot at the goal. Some guy who offered me heroin earlier is now cheering a few feet away from a group of private security guards on their cigarette break.

Violette Dieblume

50 yards away, French hairstylist Violette Dieblume is drinking with her gay male friends in Möbel Olfe. "For me, Kotti is the most exciting place in Germany." In nice moments like these, it seems like she might be right.

After midnight, however, the mood turns. A black-out drunk woman is dancing in front of a dozen men, who are sat on a step. She stumbles, sways, catches herself, and continues to dance. People's bodies seem to tense and the mix of languages in the air has taken on an aggressive tone.

At half past midnight, a middle-aged guy in a track suit suddenly runs across the square, shouting in Russian: "I don't want any problems, I don't want crystal meth!" Everything happens in a blur. There is yelling and the sound of quick steps on the asphalt. A little group comes together next to the 24-hour vegetable stand. Three scrawny men push another, older man around; in the end they manage to rip something out of his hand.

"The old man threatened us with a broken bottle," explains Seyar, 20. He is a sturdy guy with the nose and body of a boxer. It turns out he actually is a boxer. "How dangerous is Kotti?" I ask him. He points to the scar on his throat as an answer.

Seyar

Seyar sometimes speaks to me in English, sometimes in German and sometimes in Russian. He says he's from Afghanistan and has had asylum in Germany for three years now. He takes off his T-shirt to show me a bunch of stab wounds distributed above his kidneys, larynx and on his upper arm.

- "They cut me open four times," he says.
- "Who did?" I ask.
- "It doesn't matter who," he shrugs.
- "Why?"
- "That's just how it is here."

Even with all these people warning me, I can't say I feel at risk in the time I spent in the area. But the people working overnight at Kotti complain a lot; about the criminality, the journalists who are obsessed with depicting the place as either a drug hole or a hipster paradise and the politicians that seem to only care about Kotti when it makes headlines. "Someone should tie Mrs. Merkel up to one of the trees here, so she can see 'multicultural' for herself," one woman says.

It's 5AM the next morning and the area around the station is pretty empty. A punk girl with dreads is chasing her dog, to the sound of drunken France fans rowdily queuing for a falafel, after a long night of victorious drinking. The döner guy, Mutlu, says that he recently found drug baggies in the flower pots in front of his shop: "They killed all my plants. I love Kotti but sometimes I think it's hopeless." Still, that did not keep him from planting new shrubs.

Dylan Voller, between 13 and 14 at the time, being stripped naked and hogtied. Image via.

You've probably already seen the Four Corners footage. It's harrowing.

Although children are no longer held in Don Dale in 2016, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called for a royal commission into the abuse that went on while the centre was in operation. Tuesday morning, he told the ABC, "We want to know why there were inquiries into this centre which did not turn up the evidence and the information that we saw on Four Corners last night."

The thing is, the evidence did turn up. The Northern Territory's Children's Commissioner tried to warn the territory's Children and Families Minister about abuse in 2014—and even said he had footage.

In 2015, the Children's Commissioner tabled a report which describes, in great detail, the same CCTV tear gassing footage you saw Monday night. The ABC made that report public in September last year: it's on Document Cloud. You could have read it. I could have read it. The prime minister could have read it.

Don Dale isn't the story of one explosive leak blowing the lid, though Four Corners' work is outstanding. It's a story about how people cry abuse, and we fail to listen—over and over again. It's a story goes back years: but it's one worth knowing.

Here are the main players: the Northern Territory's current Children's Commissioner Colleen Gwynne, her predecessor Dr Howard Bath, and Ken Middlebrook, who was the NT Corrections Commissioner at the time Don Dale in operation. He resigned in December 2015, after a convicted killer escaped an adult's prison while on work assignment. As we can see from a line of media reports and internal communications, all of them knew something wasn't right.

Dylan Voller, who was 13 at the time, being held up by his neck and thrown into a cell in the behavioural management unit at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson looks up during a press conference with US secretary of state John Kerry (unseen) at the Foreign Office in London. (Picture by: Kirsty Wigglesworth / PA Wire)

Imagine being Boris Johnson.

There is only one man who truly knows what it's like to be Boris Johnson. For the rest of us, some universal law means we can only follow his exploits from the outside. But in some ways, the past 12 days of wall-to-wall BoJo coverage have felt very close to full BoJo internality. It's been a a bit like that film, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait – the one with the Mogwai soundtrack – in which they just followed the French footballer around the pitch for 90 minutes without reference to the ball.

As he's zipped from verbal car crash to international summit, from New York to Brussels to France, the press pack has clung to his every twitch and emission. Following him has occasionally felt exhausting to watch, but what could it have even felt like from the inside? Nagel suggests it's impossible to truly know, but in the interests of science, we're going to try anyway, by reconstructing his week-and-a-bit in this Full BoJo Simulator, detailed below. If you're ready, then dive in, like a GoPro on a zip-wire, for a full account of Johnson's life as Foreign Secretary so far.

You are Boris Johnson.

In the summer heat, the press bays as you head through the door of Number Ten, but on the other side all is cool, well-upholstered calm. A smiling attendant nods and leads you through to Theresa May, who hands you control over the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – some 15,000 employees, a budget of over a billion pounds a year. You thank her and leave.

After running the other side of the media gauntlet, you read through the online coverage of your appointment. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt says: "I wish it was a joke, but I fear it isn't." The Germans have started the hashtag #Außenminister to post pictures of you alongside Mr Bean. The zip-wire thing inevitably resurfaces in a bunch of papers. Then, the heavyweights. The French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, says you "lied a lot" to get Britain out of the EU. He vows to speak to the new foreign secretary "with the greatest sincerity and frankness".

Someone has placed a sign at the bottom of your gate, saying: "Sorry World." But it's the Ugandan government spokesman who lands the most withering putdown: "We would be more concerned if the US or Russia appointed someone like Boris. But Britain no longer wields much power globally, that's why they have run away from the EU."

You are Boris Johnson. You head off to your first event – a summit where you will address all your new employees at the Foreign Office. But you can't figure out which black car in the road is your new official ride. You've left your front door, so now you're being chased round and round the road by teams of reporters as you hunt the danged chauffeur who just must be here somewhere.

The car finally pulls up, and you scoot off to the French Embassy's Bastille Day celebrations, where you are booed by the crowd.

Ten hours later, you emerge to issue a short statement sticking tightly to the script like a rabbit in headlights, as the events in Nice unfold.

A little over 24 hours after that, you're back outside the Foreign Office because there's been a coup against a man you once poetically accused of butt-sexing a goat, but it's vital, you assert, that we all now defend him to keep Turkey stable. Truly, folks, we've goat to repel the coup. No kid-ing.

You are Boris Johnson. Three days into your new job, you are in the elegant leather of a Foreign Office BAE 146 aeroplane, taking off from RAF Northolt bound for your first summit in Brussels, with EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini. You loosen your tie, grab a scotch and whip out a slightly dog-eared copy of the Speccie, but before you can dig into the latest Rod Liddle piece about the Muslamicisation of WH Smiths, the pilot advises everyone to buckle back up – there's been a failure of the plane's hydraulic systems. But don't worry – the emergency landing at Luton will be attended by several fire engines surrounding the runway. You're now hours late for your first ever foreign meeting.

You are Boris Johnson. You are being taken to the Foreign Secretary's official residence, Chevening, a sprawling grace-and-favour country house in Kent. "Wait a minute, there's a car in the drive already," you exclaim as you pull up onto the elegantly-raked gravel turning circle.

"That's one of your fellow house-sharers, sir," your flunkey purrs. "Theresa divided the FCO job into the Ministry for Brexit under David Davis, Liam Fox's International Trade brief and your own job. You'll all be living under the same roof here, for as long as things last. "Brexit Towers", some are calling it. I prefer to think of it as a sitcom called The Three Brexiteers.

You are Boris Johnson. Word gets back that there's another sign at the bottom of your Islington house. This one's a bit more creative at least; a sort of satirical blue plaque: "Passer of buck." "Cripes," is all you can mutter, as you instruct one of the security detail to pull it off some time in the middle of the night so the press don't see.

You are Boris Johnson. Another more stable plane has winged you to New York, to attend an anti-Daesh conference. You meet actual Ban Ki Moon! You meet John Kerry and then you get to do a press conference with him!

The BBC guy asks the first question. Probably a soft lob from the home team, right?

"Can I give you the opportunity to apologise to the world leaders you may or may not have been rude to over the past 12 months, and ask what your strategy is to build trust?"

Your depiction of Hillary Clinton as "a sadistic nurse" comes up again. And yes, you did accuse Barack Obama of harbouring a part-Kenyan's "ancestral dislike for the British Empire". But maybe the guy from the New York Times will go a bit easier?

"Mr Johnson. You have an unusually long history of wild exaggerations and, frankly, outright lies that, I think, few foreign secretaries have prior to this job. And, I'm wondering, how Mr Kerry and others should believe what you say considering this very, very long history?"

You stumble your way to the end of the conference, but all that peripatetic verbosity you keep trying on is increasingly bogged down under the sheer weight of the endless unflinching questions. You're talking for Britain now, and while your age-old strategy of bluster and charm was well-suited to being an innocuous flag-waver for a large European metropole, the sheer insistent drumbeat of questions at the top level of international politics can't easily be swatted away... you cannae hold her much longer, can you captain? Either you spend four years being strait-jacketed into hollow on-brief statements written by your mandarins, or you put up with the pre-emptive laughter of the people who think you're a loose canon, a fringe grown sentient, Basil Brexit, Herr Bean, everything you built this caricature for, in order to seduce a headlines-only popular press has now been turned against you, and it's inescapable. You made Boris Johnson. But only now do you truly realise that you are Boris Johnson. You are him, and there's just no escaping the searchlight as you crawl muddily, bloodily, under the razor wire of your own personality. You. Are. Boris. Johnson.

@gavhaynes

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Bob and Barbara's. Photo by Michael Alan Goldberg

Bob and Barbara's

You'd be hard pressed to find more Pabst Blue Ribbon memorabilia gathered in one place than at Bob and Barbara's, whose walls and shelves act as an unofficial PBR museum. The old PBR ads, posters, bottles, and cans are an interesting snapshot of the brand before its hipster highjacking, preserving a time when a can of the brew was more of a working-class reward. Bob and Barbara's famously invented what's now called the "citywide special"—a shot of bottom shelf whiskey and a PBR for a low, low price. Lots of good music is played here, both live and on the juke, and the bar often features other cool events like drunken spelling bees and drag shows. Worth a drop by for the stuff on the walls alone.

Dirty Franks

Dirty Franks is a legendary dive in the heart of Center City. It has no sign, but instead features a mural of famous Franks—Zappa, -enstein, old Philly mayor and noted racist Frank Rizzo, old blue eyes and noted racist Frank Sinatra—on both of its outside corner walls. Inside the bar is a crazy mix of artists, journalists, and everything in between—"aspiring writers, starving artists, the political, apolitical and the apoplectic, drunkards and recovering drunkards, the bright and the dim, those who want to root for or jeer the home team, comics and fancies, musicians and dancers, the reserved and the verbose," as its own website puts it. The "citywide special" here has its own twist, a pony of either High Life or Rolling Rock and a kamikaze shot. This place is a sanctuary.

Classier Joints

Of course, not everyone loves dives, even if they are a true window into the soul of Philly. With that in mind, Eichel recommends a few rooftop views at Skygarten, XIX, and "wonky politics aside," the Bok Bar (formerly Le Bok Fin).

Erica Palan, a Philly native and (deep breath) senior editor of audience development and social media at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com, recommends Bank and Bourbon, the bar at the Loews hotel on Market Street. "They make one of my favorite Manhattans in the city," she says. "Their extensive whiskey list is killer." She also recommends a quick jaunt to Chinatown just four short blocks away for soup dumplings at Dim Sum Garden or beef pho at Pho Cali, "both places where you're likely to run into journalists."

Be cool, Philly. Be. Cool.

Follow Brian McManus on Twitter.

The Loop's drug testing tent at Secret Garden Party

"Trying to change government drug policy is like pissing in the wind," says Fiona Measham, backstage at the Cambridgeshire music festival Secret Garden Party.

As one of two founders of The Loop, an organisation formed in 2013 to increase the country's drugs harm reduction services, she would know. The Loop now works with festivals and nightclubs all over the country to provide advice and information to the UK's young recreational drug users, and government cooperation is hard to come by.

So today is a huge day for Measham, as The Loop are two days into their voluntary forensic drug testing at Secret Garden Party, the first initiative of its kind in the UK. In short, punters can have the content of their drugs tested, then decide if they want to keep them or bin them. It's something that's been in the works for over two years, planned with Fred Fellowes, the SGP organiser, Cambridgeshire police and the drug policy review charity, Transform Drug Policy.

"The thing that's particularly brilliant about this innovation is it's moving against the tide in a UK that's becoming increasingly oppressive. It's pure pragmatism. It's real, and it's progressive," says Steve Rolles of Transform, who is onsite during the festival and understandably thrilled. "I think the dam will burst and that this testing will become widespread very quickly. I hope, in a couple of years, it's not just seen as best practice, but maybe a licensing requirement."

For a country with a Prime Minister who, as Home Secretary, "filleted" (in the words of Nick Clegg) the 2014 Home Office drug policy review he pushed so hard for, it's a refreshing change.

Among the things Theresa May cut from the final report were the promotion of cannabis-based medicines and the implementation of a decriminalisation system similar to the one introduced in Portugal in 2001; a system that has seen a decline in drug use among 15-24 year olds, a decline in overdose deaths (to just 12 in 2012) and, perhaps most strikingly, a fall in new HIV infections from 1,002 in 2001 to just 56 in 2012. Still, no dice from TM. This year we've also seen the Psychoactive Substances Act, which banned the sale of anything that gets you within a merest zephyr of an alternate state (unless its a substance making the government a shitload of money in tax, like alcohol or nicotine, natch).

The Loop doing some testing

So how did something like this even see the light of day in Mother Theresa's Britain? To find out I speak to Laura Hunt, the Silver Commander of Cambridgeshire Police, who has been the police's driving force behind it all. She's been working with Secret Garden Party for over a decade.

"We have some very clear objectives – they are to protect the vulnerable and to attack criminality," she says. "For me, if you're safeguarding people that render themselves vulnerable because of their possible use of drink or drugs, then why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't I agree with something that might help stop a loss of life?"

She's very keen to stress that The Loop is working independently. Everyone's in cahoots and knows what the others are up to, and The Loop share depersonalised information about their findings in twice daily safety meetings. But there's no police presence in The Loop's tent and they've agreed not to swoop on anyone stepping out of it. Still, she makes it clear that drugs are very much illegal. "This 100 percent isn't a laissez-fair attitude," she attests. "As a police officer, an agent of the law, drugs possession and drugs supply are criminal offences, and we have to take a hard line. But I think they can co-exist."

The machine

The methodology of the testing itself is simple, at least from the punters' point of view. They spoon a tiny amount of their drugs into a plastic baggy, then toddle off to the bar for 20 minutes. In the meantime, the sample is taken out the back of The Loop's tent, where one of their volunteers tests it using a £25,000 gizmo called the Fourier Transform Infra-Red Spectrometer (but let's just call it "the machine").

The drugs are scanned by an infrared laser on the machine, which instantly feeds back the information into a computer. It runs tests for content and strength, giving the latter a rating out of 1,000. Twenty minutes later, the punter returns and, after giving information about their age, drug history, current state of intoxication and some other generalities – all anonymously; no one is ever asked their name – they are told what the machine has found out about their drugs. They're offered the choice of whether they want to keep their chemical wares, and given tacit, sympathetic advice about the drugs they've got.

On the Saturday afternoon they're given 125 samples to test, an amount Measham is "delighted with" (over the entire festival, they'd see just under 250). Some of the more revealing results are that a quarter of people hand their drugs back after testing; that crushed up malaria pills parading as ketamine are doing the rounds; and that, bizarrely, there are examples of concrete pellets being sold as pills. "That's bad drugs being taken out of circulation. It's pure evidence of a good outcome," says Rolles.

The first group of users I speak to are five boys and girls from Leeds, all aged between 21 and 24. They've got some pretty shady-looking MDMA that had made them all throw up the night before. "I got it from a friend of a friend. It's really strong, but a weird sandy colour," says one of the group, Sally.

It turns out their MDMA, despite being strong, has a high sugar content, hence the sandiness. There being nothing too sinister in the results, they decide to keep it, but say they will take it easy.

A 19-year-old guy tests his ketamine, saying, "I tried it last night but it was really chemically. I don't know if it was mixed with something so thought I would get this tested. This ketamine is from a friend of a friend. I'm not normally nervous about ket, but I had a bad batch in the week." Again, he keeps it and happily walks of towards the Dance Off stage.

One thing I'm curious about is whether or not there's a certain sub-section that simply won't want to know what's in their drugs, lest they don't like the information and feel impelled to hand them back in. To the non-hedonist this might sound incredibly foolhardy, but for the 20-year-old who's spend the last dregs of their pay on some pills they can't afford to replace, there's a twisted logic to it.

"There's a cultural mentality with the British to get as wrecked as possible. There's a lot of bravado, which is quite a scary thing," says Gemma, one of The Loop's volunteers. With this in mind, I ask a friend of mine if he wants to get his coke checked: "No," he answers. "I want to do it and I'd rather not know if it's bad."

I, however, do want to know what it's in the little baggie of MD I've brought, so hand it over. It's got a rating of 871, so pretty high end. Super strong MDMA and pills are the prevailing issue The Loop deal with, and they tell me to "start slow, dip it low" with it. As someone who normally waggles his finger in the baggy like an eight-year-old with a shiny pouch of Fizz Wizz, it lingers on my mind.

For the rest of the weekend, my friends and I are far less cavalier than normal. We give actual thought as to how we're feeling, how much we've dosed and when the last time we dosed was. I've still got the final hours of Suicide Tuesday to come, but as I write this I feel better, more lucid, than I ever have in a decade of post-festival Mondays. Harm reduction in action.

@Gobshout

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The UK Prime Minister's Weibo page

Mrs. Zhang, a businesswoman from Beijing laughed as she told me, "We all thought that Britain was the most stable country. These things that have happened recently, we can't believe it! You've all gone nuts."

The Brexit referendum and ensuing political implosion can be pretty entertaining if the consequences don't directly affect your life. Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China, but local social media platforms such as Weibo and Wechat give millions of Chinese the opportunity to engage in the spectator sport of post-referendum-UK-watching. In China, government and transitions of power are notoriously opaque, so for Chinese people the recent drama in the UK is a window into the workings of a modern democracy.

Chinese netizens have taken a shine to the new PM, giving her the adorable nickname, "Auntie May". Over 19 million people have read posts tagged #Britain's Female Prime Minister on Weibo, China's version of Twitter. So what do they make of her?

FIRST LORD OF THE MICS

In China's parliament, politicians emotionlessly deliver lengthy pre-approved jargon-filled speeches. So the UK's unscripted Prime Minister's Questions comes across as pretty off the chain. One Weibo user took it upon himself to post May's first PMQs online, adding Chinese subtitles for his fellow netizens. The video was viewed over 3 million times in 24 hours.

One user commented, "Both sides have their crew jeering and shouting, it feels like they are about to break into a rap battle." Another commented, "If you didn't tell me, I'd think it was an old people's hip-hop show."

In this showdown, newcomer MC Theresa won the netizens' admiration.

On Auntie May they said:

"Too hype! The new Iron Lady has crushing strength!"

"fucking wonderful"

"she doesn't really answer any of his questions, but she does politics well"

"amazing, she's rational and has a sense of humour"

But one user generously added that "the questions he asked are important".

BOJO

A post narrating the new UK foreign secretary's long history of offending foreign people was received warmly, I guess. Weibo user Emily Lee's comment "HAHAHHAHAHAHAHA" received over 700 likes.

"ANTI-IMMIGRATION INTERNATIONAL STUDENT KILLER"

One in four of the UK's international students come from China, contributing billions of pounds to the UK economy. One widely shared article described May as an "International Student Assassin" and a "fully-fledged decimator". During her time as Home Secretary, Auntie May introduced multiple measures to make it harder for international students to study and work in the UK, including getting rid of the Post-Study Work visa for non-EU international students. Netizens were unimpressed with her lack of friendliness towards Chinese, especially considering the billions of dollars that China has invested in Britain in recent years. One user described it as "the final dying breath of the British Empire", while another wrote, "she's thinking about the interests of her own people, a trustworthy leader!"

May as a Game of Thrones character, as shared on Chinese social media

RUN THE WORLD (GIRLS)

Many saw May's power grab as a win for women's empowerment, with some envisioning a new matriarchal world order headed by Theresa May, Angela Merkel, Hilary Clinton South Korean prime minister Park Geun-Hye. A female Weibo user paraphrased Chairman Mao, exclaiming, "women hold up half the sky!" Synia Tampon Company took the opportunity to wish Auntie May good luck, posting on Weibo, "more and more women are involved in politics, girls, be true to yourself and work hard to realise your ideals!"

Theresa's famous leopard print heels (Picture by: Isabel Infantes / EMPICS Entertainment)

FASHION FAVOURITE

Theresa May's style and appearance was dissected online by fashion magazines such as ELLE China. Her bold headmistress vibe and leopard print shoes won her many fans.

"Auntie May is nearly 60, not everyone can hold down high heels at that age yo!"

"Auntie, you're so strong ah!"

"Love at first sight! I really like this woman, maybe something can happen between us..."

"Truly a nice pair of legs."

One gushing photo article invited readers to "experience Auntie May's aura", and an entrepreneurial user posted links to their online shoe shop in the comment section. The excitement about her style is more understandable when you see what China's political elite look like:

The 18th Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (Picture by: Vincent Yu / AP)

Other comments on her appearance were more backhanded or just rude:

"If it wasn't for the hunchback she'd be just perfect."

"I don't know why. But every time I look at her I feel uncomfortable."

"If you wanted to make a horror film you wouldn't need makeup."

MARXIST COMRADE, POTENTIAL RULER OF THE WORLD

All children in the Chinese education system must study Marxism and Mao Zedong thought – it is compulsory even in university. Many Chinese web users were surprised and impressed that themes of social justice and serving the less well-off were central to May's inaugural speech.

"It sounds like she's the leader of the Labour Party. When did supporting low-income workers and not working for the interests of the privileged elite become the guiding principles of the Conservatives? The world is changing too fast."

One user welcomed Comrade May, "Thumbs up for Britain's new leader! Serving the common people is the most important task for government, and it isn't easy, especially in a capitalist country. I really admire Marx, who showed that humanity's most beautiful future is communism... As for how to tread the communist path, there are many forms!"

Her speech was so appealing that someone suggested inviting her to govern the world's most populous nation, " We can ask her to come and be Chinese Prime Minister. She'd do better than the guys we have at the moment."

And another raised the possibility of consensual world domination; "If she can put what she says into practice, the whole world will want to be part of the British Empire."

@LucyLDN

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Florin Barbu and Claudia Racolțea before their separation. Photo via

This article originally appeared on VICE Romania

Two years ago, the children of a Romanian couple living in North London were taken into custody by social services. Their parents, Florin Barbu and Claudia Racolțea, were fighting constantly, which gave their neighbours enough alarm to call in for help to protect the children. They were taken away and last June, the boy and the girl were adopted by a British same-sex couple.

The news hasn't gone down well in Romania; so far it's sparked fierce protests, while it also prompted the children's father, Florin, to go on a hunger strike for a bit. The Romanian Orthodox Church (which represents 80 percent of the Romanian population) spoke publicly about how the children's religious rights are being violated because they were adopted by a gay couple.

With Romanian immigrants settling in Western countries, it can happen that their new Western neighbours take issue with Romanian parents' sometimes harsh or violent Eastern European parenting style. In November last year, the children of a Norwegian-Romanian couple living in Norway were taken away by Norwegian social services. That case also led to nation-wide protests in Romania – mostly organised by Christian nationalists afraid that the children were being kidnapped and brainwashed by heathens.

A homophobic video that emerged in Romania in the wake of Florin and Claudia's children being taken away. It was shared by Florin. Via

Florin and Claudia are now divorced and while Claudia still lives in the UK, Florin has moved back to Romania. I spoke to both of them about how they got to the point where their children were taken away, and why they can't stomach a loving couple taking in their children.

Florin Barbu. Photo via

In January 2007, 30-year-old Florin Barbu moved from Romania to the UK to find work. He worked as a construction worker and trained to become a licensed bodyguard and cab driver. He met the then 25-year-old Claudia Racolța online. She had also recently arrived in the UK and initially worked as a nanny before becoming a club bouncer.

Several months after they met, Claudia got pregnant. Their first child, a girl, was born in February 2008 and they had a boy two years later. After a while their family life became strained. "We made mistakes. We argued in front of the children," Florin told me. "She would argue with me over anything. She'd take medication because of a knee injury, and you couldn't reason with her sometimes. When we fought, she'd call the police and they'd arrest me – handcuff me. One time it happened in front of our daughter. They would take me to the station and ask if I had ever been violent to my kids and my wife, and when I'd come home the next day everything would be fine – great even. That would last a month until my wife would throw another tantrum because of her medication. I don't want to badmouth her at all – she's the mother of my children and I want us to work together to get our children back."

Florin and Claudia came to the social workers' attention around 2010 and after frequent visits from them and the police, the children were removed from their home in 2014. One of the reasons cited for this removal was that Florin violated a restraining order Claudia had against him. "I shouldn't have let my husband come back home," Claudia told me over the phone. "They wouldn't have taken the children away if I hadn't. We did it to ourselves: we kept fighting with each other instead of focusing on our children. I spent a year in therapy because of domestic violence."

Claudia is now set to marry a Polish coworker and she says she wants a normal life. She doesn't think her kids are currently living a normal life, with the couple that took them in. "I'm not as concerned for my little girl, as I am for my little boy," Claudia explained. "I think it's an illness to have a different sexual orientation. I don't think it's normal. God didn't create this on Earth. That's my opinion, but I can't judge – God will judge. But my children are with them and we're not aloud to live with them, while I'm not dead and Florin's not dead."

The British couple's identity is kept private, but they did send a warm letter to Claudia to keep her up-to-date. They write that the kids both have their own picture albums with photos of Claudia and Florin and that they remember their parents fondly. The couple encourages the kids to practice Romanian and be proud of their Romanian heritage – they have a Romanian family member who answers all questions the children have. But in Claudia's mind, it's just talk. She plans to take the fight to the European Court of Human Rights.

Claudia Racolța. Photo via

The question is how far that will bring her. A British court ruled that the children could be adopted after social workers monitored the Barbu-Racolțea family for six years. The court found that it was clear that the biological parents loved their children, but had been unable to care for them in safe conditions. The children were present at their parents arguments, and Claudia was absent from one of the set meetings with her children after they had been taken away. When I asked her about that, she told me: "Yes, that happened once when I went to Poland, to visit my new partner's family."

There are some other incidents in the reports – about how her son had access to a knife, for example – but Claudia denies them all to me. She claims one of the social workers was just out to get her, because Claudia once turned her away at the club where she worked as a bouncer. "I refused to let her in because she had been drinking and her friend was carrying a small bag with white powder. A month and a half later she was assigned to me as my social worker." When reached for comment, social services in London declined to comment on the case.

Romanian authorities have recommended that the kids be placed in the care of the parents' extended families, but British officials rejected that idea – both children were born on British soil and have never actually visited Romania. The parents lost an appeal to the court's decision last month and now mostly try to stir up as much media attention, comments from authorities and protests as they can.

At the moment, Florin risks jail time for making the identity of the couple that adopted his kids public on his Facebook account and posting pictures of them. "You know, I have nothing against gay people – but I don't want them to do anything out in public. How will our kids feel when they see them kissing on the street or holding hands?"

At the end of my conversation with him, Florin Barbu asked me whether I thought he would get his children back. I avoided to give him a straight answer.

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Here's Why You're Going to End Up Just Like Your Parents

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We are – all of us, when it all boils down, when our flesh is melted from our bones and our brains are shot through to pulp – we are, all of us, little more than a set of dick and balls and/or a titty. Anna Richardson knows. Anna Richardson knows this.

And so to Naked Attraction, the most Channel-4-in-the-90s Channel 4 show of all time, where contestants take all their clothes off and stand goosepimpled in front of each other in an effort to win a date. This is 2016 and this is how we date now. Dating apps and dating websites have got us absolutely twisted to fuck. The only way we can find a life partner it to look at them in the following order: junk, tit area, face, voice.

It is the opening sequence, and "modern dating is complicated", we are told, while a load of girls with eyebrows and dudes with man-buns tell us Tinder is hard. With respect, Tinder isn't that hard, is it? I mean, an app where you can rapidly swipe through hundreds of people and instantly judge them on their face isn't that difficult in comparison to – AND I AM JUST PLUCKING AN EXAMPLE RANDOMLY OUT OF THE AIR – getting your dick and/or tit out on a television dating show. I just feel like the contestants on this show haven't fully explored every dating opportunity available to them. You very much feel that a lot of these application forms were filled in on a Wednesday after they'd all used up their super likes for the week and realised loneliness is inevitable.

Our first dater is Aina. Aina is 32 and harder than me. I can tell this. I can tell this immediately. Aina can Fuck Me Up. There is a montage where she giggles in a bar with a friend – "she's a strong girl so she'll need a strong man" – does some freaky yoga shit and listens to a song on large padded headphones in a dimly lit studio. This is the shape of the person we will come to know. This is everything Aina is. She likes music and strength. She wants a man who likes music and strength.

(I'll be honest: these dating show montages always freak me the fuck out, because if they had to make one about me, what would it be like? "Joel, 29, is a writer," a voiceover says, while I just sit in the reception area at work and just hold my head in my hands, then flick to Twitter. "And when he's not writing, he's—" what? What do I do? Would a tightly-edited two-minute video of me playing Rocket League, avoiding cleaning the bathroom and trying to fit into my trousers turn potentials dates on or off? It is impossible to know.)

"So why do you want to choose a date naked?" host Anna Richardson asks, possibly the most legitimate question ever asked by anyone in history. Anna explains that, after whittling the six potential dates down to two, Aina will have to herself get naked, and they'll all stand around in this curious nude safe space and say what they like about their bodies. Aina is nervous about getting naked but is going to do it anyway. "If it frightens you, go and do it," she says. Aina is a nihilist. She is immediately confronted with six dicks:

There's a curious undulating indelicacy going on, for what is such a cock and titty-heavy programme: Richardson ushers in the dicks with the words, "Can we please reveal... the bottom half of the bodies," which seems oddly distant and shy. Basically, what I am saying is that this show would be improved one-thousandfold if Anna just said, "SHOW ME THE JUNK!" in a "CAN YOU START THE FANS, PLEASE!" voice, but alas.

The bizarre balance between being frank and coy continues as Aina takes a few steps forward to really get some eyes on some dicks. "Nice willy," she says, of one. "Nice form, nice shape." Anna takes on a warning tone. "That's a very large appendage," she says. Aina, however, has seen some shit. "You think?" A guy with a not-even-complex elephant tattoo around his dick also has a prosthetic limb. "Let's discuss the leg!" Anna says breezily. It's so hard to tell what the tone of this show is: smutty, electrically charged, weird, funny, goofy? Let's discuss the leg? They discuss pubes. Aina has some. A small interstitial shows a whole mess of pubes forming the word "pheromones". Aina eliminates the dude w/ the smallest dick and says it's because his "stance" isn't strong enough. It isn't. It's because his dick isn't strong enough. Already, this show – which is about as erotic as watching a sex education tape on a big VHS player in a classroom with a teacher you once called "mum" – is amazing.

The first guy out, Muhammad, then does this weird sort of glamour pose in the middle of the studio, alone and fragile and naked, then says he had a great time, that he is confident now, loves his self and loves his body, and all I can think of throughout is: 'THIS DUDE IS GOING HOME AND HE BASICALLY GOT HIS DICK OUT ON TV FOR LITERALLY NO REASON. ALL HE SAID WAS "GOODBYE". THAT'S IT. I HAVE SEEN YOUR DICK, MUHAMMAD.'

Maxwell is next to go. Maxwell, a trainee zookeeper with the kind of eyebrows that can get your drinks bought for you all night if you put on a nice frock and take them to Aintree:

Still, the half-educational, half-cheeky sex chat continues apace. There's a moment where Aina and Anna stand and discuss bad kissing in front of a clearly naked and sleep deprived man, and he just smiles and nods along like he's trying to insert himself into a conversation at a party. Every man leaves and has to do a fully nude, don't-get-your-genitals-on-my-trousers hug with Aina. Anna tells them before they leave what Aina liked about them ("She liked your juicy bum") even though they have literally just heard everything she has said about them.

More and more, reality TV feels to me like some sort of peek at a vision of the future, a little glimpse of government-mandated dating in 2050, lining up the proles by their tit and dick size and telling them to have at it however they want. More and more, Naked Ambition feels like a precursor to two or three years in the future, where Kay Burley is stood in a hyper-CGI Sky studio reviewing intrusive camera footage of a potential love partner, asking Darren, 24, from Ashbourne, "And what do you think of her urethra?"

Weird thing is that everyone more or less says they had a great experience. That they do their genitals-apart hug and lingering-bum-shot walk out of frame, then go to a green room, where they are smiling, saying that even through they didn't get picked they had fun, that actually they'd never been all that comfortable with their bodies before today, that standing there with their dicks out and face obscured was liberating, almost, freeing. Nobody mentions what the smell in the boxes must be like, but I know already that it is "extremely savoury".

Aina, meanwhile, has whittled it down to two: Matty, a one-legged, elephant-dicked artist, and Rob, a self-deprecatingly funny dance teacher. She reveals herself nude to them both. Matty, on Aina: "Absolutely beautiful. Lovely curves. I love the hips, the breasts." I'm pretty sure this is no longer a dating show and is just a complex job interview for a role doing the headlines on the Sidebar of Shame.

It's really weird watching people make v. practical movements while totally naked: everyone here looks like they are assessing a boiler or a fucked fridge, squinting at bums, doing hand-on-face rigorous assessments of bellends, pubic musings. Anna asks the boys what they think of Aina's pubes and armpit hair. "You can do what you want with your own body," Matty barks. "If you're proud of it, you can do what you want." This is so fucking weird, man.

Eventually Aina picks Matty, and they have a clothes-on date in a bar. Unfortunately, Matty dresses like shit. Everyone on the show dresses like shit. Suddenly you see the appeal of a nude reality dating show to them: with every over-ripped jean and wooden necklace, you see why they are so comfortable being undressed. If there is a moral to this TV show, it's "take a chance on the badly dressed, they quite often have absolutely kicking bodies".

Second half and we meet Mel, who I'm pretty sure was Kingsley's girlfriend in series two of Fresh Meat. Mel is bisexual, which makes this show interesting: now she can play "Deal or No Deal but with fresh junk" with a combination of men and women.

As they walk around, Anna engages in half-sisterly, half-educational "have you ever had too big a willy?" chat, making the whole thing feel weirdly like unasked-for sex-ed with a very bombastic auntie. It's Christmas, mum's just packed all the dinner away. Dad's in front of the telly. Your fun aunt, Anna Richardson, is on her second bottle of red wine. You are 13 and just trying to work out where all the smells and hairs are coming from. And Anna Richardson sits opposite you, fag on the go, and asks: "NOW, DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ANALINGUS?" Back to the show, and Mel is two body parts in and really feeling the girl on the end in the green cage. "I am attracted to the tattoos on green," she says. Anna pauses. "Anything about the tits?"

Ruben is sent home because his dick's too big, and he makes this face about it:

As before, all of the post-bin off to-camera pieces are very #bodyposi, with everyone saying what a great time they had, what a babe their potential date was, how they're so happy they did this show, what an experience it was. Apart from Mark, who is an estate agent, and as such a dickhead. "She's very good looking," he says of Mel, who rejects him, "but I didn't like her legs." DRIVE A BRANDED MINI ABOUT IT, MATE.

They all have to stand and say what they like and don't like about their bodies at the end, which is very #solidarity, but leads to some really weird conversations – like literally never-had-before-in-the-history-of-the-earth conversations, such as this one, between Anna and two potential dates, as they wait for Mel to make her naked appearance:

"What do you think Mel will look like naked: pubes or no pubes?"
"I think she'll have pubes, but they'll be very well groomed"

Mel chooses Rebecca, all tats and tits, from the green box, and they have a laughter-and-tequila date at the same bar as before. Once again, everyone is thrilled they took their clothes off on Channel 4. "I wasn't thinking about every body part and wondering if she was judging each body part," Rebecca says of her date, "because she's already seen my body parts." In one-month-later vignettes, both couples are still together and look really loved up. Could... I mean... this insane system works. What in the fuck.

Remember the 90s? Blind Date and people saying mildly cheeky innuendos to Cilla Black's big pink face, and then Take Me Out happened, a human meat market with some bawdy Saturday night banter, and we thought: how bad can it get, how bad can it get? And now, both Undressed and this: people just straight up taking their clothes off on television – I mean, we are talking flaps and all – and somehow finding love that way.

Are we all broken inside? Are we so desensitised now – so porned up, so horned out, we've all seen so many dick pics we can't function – that this is the only way millennials can date? Or is it something deeper: that we are all so desperately searching for love, some holy once-in-a-universe connection with something real, that we'll do anything to find it; that we'll let Anna Richardson talk frankly about our bush? I don't know. I will be watching episode two of Naked Attraction to find out.

@joelgolby

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On Sunday evening, I visited three campgrounds in southern New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia. The campsites—Timberlane, Four Seasons Family, and Old Cedar—were booked at or near capacity through the week with visitors for the DNC. As I walked around the grounds, weaving between trees and tents and larger-than-life effigies of Bernie Sanders, the lack of Hillary support was impossible to ignore. Signs, buttons, light boxes, T-shirts, and car windows branded with the Vermont senator's name littered all three sites, yet I wasn't able to find a single piece of Clinton paraphernalia. This is likely due to Occupy DNC, the group that organized the wooded getaway, and its unwavering support for Sanders. In addition to organizing the campsites for visiting activists, the group has developed a shuttle system to ferry demonstrators between their respective campgrounds and the DNC.

The mood at the sites was somber, and the people I spoke with were adamant that they would keep fighting and continue on with their revolution even after the convention. Whether or not this energy will be able to sustain itself throughout the general election with Hillary as the nominee and the magical Bernie train's memories fading from view remains to be seen, but for now, a bunch of diehard Sandernistas are keeping the dream alive in the New Jersey wilderness.

Image by Frances Smith for VICE

When Run Lola Run was released in the US in 1999, it was already the largest-grossing movie in German history. The film's success makes sense, since its fast pace, unique vision, and heart-pumping soundtrack make for the kind of movie that people had to tell others about—or see again.

At the time, audiences had never experienced anything like director Tom Tykwer's thrilling tale of Lola—portrayed with brilliant urgency by Franka Potente—trying to come up with $100,000 in 20 minutes to save her boyfriend's life. Throughout the film, Lola's 20-minute run across Berlin is told three different times in three different ways, and in each retelling, there's one tiny change that dramatically affects her outcome.

Over the past 15 years, the film's achieved cult status, and its average rating on Amazon of four-and-a-half stars reflects that, with 73 percent of users awarding it the maximum rating of five stars. At the time of this writing, only 3 percent of the 666 (!) Amazon reviews give the film one star, a fair number from Amazon users pissed that the subtitles didn't work on their streaming rental; the rest are, in my opinion, contrarians doomed to live on the wrong side of culture.

We pulled some of their most vicious, froth-mouthed critiques of the film—and then we read them to her to see what she thought.

Estela Kehoe's one-star review from October 26, 2013 is titled "Don't waste your money": "I had heard of this movie, and wanted to see it. The movie was terrible. I love Franka Potente, but this movie is not good. It had a good concept but it just dragged on and on. You watch one scene over and over and over. I donated this movie to Goodwill."
Franka Potente: She's not right or wrong. The film plays the same scene a few times with different results, so it can feel like it's dragging if you're not paying attention. If you're a hunched over a bowl of chips or if you go to the bathroom at the wrong moment, you might feel like you're seeing the same movie again and again. I can see that.

That's how people view a lot of TV and movies nowadays—we do other things while we watch. Maybe this movie is more difficult to watch now than it was nearly 20 years ago.
Well, people certainly aren't as patient—I notice it in myself! I just watched one of my favorite movies the other day, Belle de Jour,and it seems so slow now—things take forever to develop. Today, you have to make yourself sit down and breathe. We've lost the ability to immerse ourselves in things. When Run Lola Run came out, the thing about it was it was a very fast-paced film. Today, all movies are fast-paced, and the editing's so quick that I feel like I'm being robbed of an experience. Everything is accelerated now.

What's your response to Estela about this sentence in particular: "The movie was terrible"?
That's totally fine. Honestly, I can't force you to love it. I like a good, strong statement. I walk out of movies all the time saying "That was terrible!" or "That sucked!" I'd rather you felt strongly one way or the other than not at all.

This is from Paulo Leite in August, 2007. This one-star review is titled "SPOILER - a stupid film, unimaginative, badly written... with barely one good idea." "Basically, this is just a 'one-idea-film' that would have made a GREAT short feature. Instead, they stretched it into a feature film. And it is all offensively idiotic."
I love that!

Do you find the film offensively idiotic?
No, but I love that it invoked such a strong position. Out of all things for the film is, unimaginative certainly isn't one of them. A lot of things in the film were actually new at the time, so I'd certainly disagree with that part. I would be very curious to hear which movies Paulo thinks are imaginative. Which other movies did he review?

I can't find any more movies he reviewed, but he reviewed a book called Global Leaders and Islamic Finance and gave it five stars.
He sounds smart, at least.

"Greg" wrote a one-star review titled "Three words: empty, repetitive and boring": "I know all opinions are subjective but I do not undertsand what you could find interesting in this movie. The love story is stereotyped. The boyfriend is an idiot (which makes the girl an even more idiot), the soundtrack is exhausting and the plot is non existing. In this type of movie there is MUCH better which has been done. Please....."
Well, the boyfriend is an idiot—I totally agree with that. But in Lola's defense, she's young—in her early 20s. that his being an idiot makes her stupid for running all around for him and trying to solve his problems, but...yeah, that's what young chicks do.

"The love story is stereotyped"—what could that possibly mean?
She's dating a guy who holds people at gunpoint in a small supermarket in Berlin, so I don't know about that one.

This one from "A Customer" is quick and to the point: "It made me dizzy. I feel asleep."
It makes me dizzy too! There's a lot of fast editing, and running, so if you have a condition, maybe you'd fall asleep. Maybe it was exhausting to watch all the running. I don't know how could you fall asleep a movie like that, though.

I mean, it's 90 minutes of you running to an energetic soundtrack.
I once dated a guy when I was in Japan, and when I visited his family, we rented Meet the Parents because I said, "Oh my God, it's my favorite film! Let's watch this!" During the scene where Ben Stiller ends up on the rooftop and his cigarette burns everything, my boyfriend and his mom both got up and said, "We're tired—we're going to bed." It was too much for them—the action stressed them out—and they apologized and went to bed right when the action was getting going. There are certain people who get tired in the face of action. Maybe "A Customer" is one of them.

From zzcatfelix's review "Run Lola, Run Lola, run Lola and again run Lola," August 2002: "I did not get it. She is just running and running and again running. No philosophical idea. No point. The movie is telling us the same story in three different versions. Why? Boring..."
You can look at the movie in different ways—you can see the action in itself, which is that the person keeps running, or you can see the philosophical or universal message behind it. But I'm not gonna bore anyone with this again. Actually, this person totally got it—running, running, running: That's all the movie is.

The word "run" is in the movie's title twice.
In German, the movie is called Lola Rennt. When I was told that I was doing a movie called Lola Rennt, I was like, "What?" I didn't get it, or the title. I started reading the script, and I still couldn't fathom that it was about a person named Lola running. Before my agent explained it to me, I couldn't even make any sense out of it.

One last review: "This is one movie where the title makes as much sense as the content. I gave it one star, although Franka deserves five stars for fitness."
I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day! I was so unfit, but I am glad it didn't look that way.

How did you manage to smoke two packs a day and run that much?
I was young and stupid—you know how it is. It's so crazy to look back. I was 22! Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I would drink and smoke and get up and shoot a movie. The movie was so much fun to work on, though, and the director was a lot of fun. Even if you showed up tired, everyone was hanging in there and having a good time. There's no way you were tired. It was really one of the greater working experiences.

Follow Brian McManus on Twitter.

Living the dream? Image via.

As housing becomes a contested issue across New Zealand, the idea of owning a home is fast becoming a pipedream for many young people.

So where does this leave our generation? Are we going to be a generation of homeowners like our parents or are we going to be a generation of renters?

VICE spoke to four young New Zealanders to find out if they actually want to own their own home anyway.

James, 22
Student

VICE: Hey James, what's your living situation at the moment?
James: I'm living with mum and dad, at home. I flatted for about a year and a half but renting was just too expensive and I knew I wanted to go overseas, so I had to move back in to save.

How does living at home compare to flatting?
Oh man, I like flatting way better than living at home. I would definitely move out, but I think rent prices would have to be like Dunedin prices—and that would just never work up here.

Do you think there's anything more that local government can be doing for youth housing?
See, no, I don't even think there is anything else. This bubble is not like what happened 10 years ago with a housing market crash based on shady loans; this is a supply problem.

Can you see yourself owning a home in Auckland? Is that even something you even want?
I would love to own my own home here, I mean it's the freaking New Zealand dream isn't it? Have people come over and compliment your house and you're all, 'Yeah, I built this all myself' type thing. I don't think it's feasible though, not here in Auckland. You would have to be saving from 18 years old. If I can find affordable housing overseas, I'll go there.

You sound pretty resigned about home ownership, do you think a lot of young people are this complacent about it? Or is it apathy?
I'm not apathetic about it. Of course I vote to have my say in these kind of issues. But it's like going to a bakery for a bagel that used to be four dollars and is now 12. You don't get mad about it—you go somewhere else to find a solution. I would rather see the world than see my own backyard.

Kelly, 23
Accounts

Do you want to own your own home?
I already do actually. My partner and I bought in October last year. My partner's nana was selling and so we were like, 'We'll grab it while we can'.

Where were you living at the time?
We were living with my parents and saving. We never wanted to rent and pay somebody else's mortgage. We wanted to save and put that money towards paying off our own mortgage.

What did it take to get that deposit?
A lot of hard work. A lot of saving. Now we can't go off and travel and do things like that. I guess for me, the little things I used to buy are really not as important. Owning a house is a huge thing, especially now. I look at my younger brothers and the effort they'll have to make to attain the same thing is going to be huge. My brother is talking about moving down to Christchurch or somewhere smaller so that buying a house can be a possibility for him.

Were you able to buy in the area you wanted to?
Yeah, it was where my partner had grown up. I guess you've got to weigh up the pros and cons of whether you want to own a house in an area you don't want to live in or live in an area you want to and not own your own house.

Did you need your parents' financial support in order to buy?
No. We had that option if we needed to. They were happy to be guarantors but we didn't have to go with that. We managed.

Do you see the house as part of your retirement plan?
Yes definitely. The house is perfect because it's got a flat underneath so that helps us pay off our mortgage too. It's the house I want to have kids in.

Would it concern you if the housing price came down?
Yes because it would bring the value of our house down. But I understand if people can't get in the market, it would make it more accessible for people who need it. But then the people who have paid lots of money for their houses are going to lose out. I'm in a house so I'm lucky and I'm not due to sell any time soon.

Kyle, 28
Retail manager

Do you want to own your own home?
Kyle: I do, but I can't at the moment.

Why do you want to be a homeowner?
Long term investment. I think property is the best way to set yourself up from a long term standpoint. I don't know for sure that superannuation is going to cut it when I'm 65.

What's preventing you getting into home ownership now?
House prices are ridiculous. My partner and I are in Kiwisaver but to get a deposit together at the moment is next to impossible. You've got to be on a really good whack of cash to get anywhere near it. It's still doable if you're mobile—you can move to somewhere like Whangarei or Rotorua and pick up a house relatively cheaply.

Would you consider moving away from Auckland in order to buy?
We've thought about it. My opinion is the opportunities from a career standpoint aren't as good in those smaller towns. If you use Kiwisaver to buy your first house, you have to live in it for the first six months. For someone like myself, who would rather do property from an investment standpoint, it's hard to justify moving out of Auckland to go and buy a house with the objective of coming back in six months time just to start on the ladder.

So you're renting at the moment?
We are. We moved in a couple of years ago. The landlord raised our rent marginally earlier in the year so we looked at what was around and decided we were better staying where we are. Landlords know that no-one can afford to buy so they can charge a bit more rent because most people don't have another option.

Are politicians doing enough about it?
They're trying to get some kind of hold on it. It's difficult when things explode. Once house prices start rising like this you're on the back foot. It's going to take a long time to do anything about it that's substantial enough to quell it. There are definitely initiatives in place, it's just unfortunate it didn't happen earlier. Maybe we wouldn't be in this position.

Rachel, 23
Designer

Do you actually want to own your own home?
Not really. It's not something I think about because I can't imagine it. My mum bought her first home when she was 21. She literally bought the house next door to her house and used it as an extension of her bedroom. I could never do anything like that.

Are you living at home now?
No I'm renting, and I think I'll be renting for the foreseeable future.

Do you like renting?
My aunt and uncle only rent and that's cool because they move around a lot. I get that. But it's different to owning your own home. You have a lot less freedom, like our house is really cold and we can't really do much about it. And it's expensive.

Would you like to own in the long term?
Only if I became really rich. Otherwise I think I'd be saving all my money for all my 20s and half my 30s to possibly try to buy a house.

What do you spend your money on?
I guess it's paying rent. I can't pay rent and save for a house, I don't think. I don't know what I spend my money on—concerts and stuff like that.

What do you think politicians should be doing about the housing market?
I don't know how the market works in terms of how to make houses more affordable. I know if prices went down then people with huge mortgages would go into the negative and I understand why that's a problem as well, so I don't know what needs to happen.

Enrol to vote now for this year's Local Elections

NSW Blue Tongue Wizards defeat the Vic Leadbeaters in the State of Origin. Image via Facebook.

On Monday, Australia's national Quidditch team, which is something we have, apparently, became world champions. The aptly named Dropbears defeated the United States in a close match at the Quidditch World Cup in Frankfurt, Germany. Which is also apparently a thing. Turns out, 21 countries fielded teams, up from just seven last time around.

News stories about the victory lauded Quidditch as a sport that encourages positivity and sportspersonship, while requiring incredible sporting prowess. I thought it sounded kind of bullshit. Real-life Quidditch looked like a sad take on the Harry Potter sport, a bunch of 20-somethings running around with sticks between their legs.

But, trying this new thing where I try to be less of a cynical asshole, I decided to interrupt the celebrations of the Dropbears' chaser, Tara Rawson, to ask whether Quidditch is the real deal.

VICE: Hey Tara, congratulations on your win. I have to be honest, I didn't know Quidditch was a sport people actually played until a few hours ago. Was it hard to win a spot on Australia's national team?
Tara Rawson: People from all over the country tried out for the team. It's definitely getting more and more competitive. The first time around, it was just sort of an elect yourself, send some videos—because all of our games get filmed—so we could show what we could do for the selection panel.

This time around... watched us at the national tournament, which is called QUAFL. And then they picked a giant pool of 50 people for two weekend-long selection camps. Everyone who was invited to those hand to try out: we did beep tests, they tested us physically, they tested our endurance, our footwork. They picked the team from that, plus reserves.

I feel like Quidditch players must occupy this strange intersection of people that are both massive Harry Potter fans, and also really into sport. Is that the case?
You do kind of get the spread, people are usually either very much a Harry Potter fan or very much a physical, sporty person. I don't think I realised until this trip how much our very, very sporty—I mean they are the best in the country—how many of those people are actually massive Harry Potter fans. People are actually doing side trips to London while we're over here to see the Harry Potter park. One of our players brought a trivia quiz of Harry Potter, and everyone knew all of the answers.

Teams competing at the QUAFL Australian national finals. Image via Facebook.

Is that how you first got into Quidditch, being a massive Potter-head?
I heard about it and I think I probably had the same reaction most people do, this is not a thing. I had to check it out, it sounded hilarious. And I fell absolutely head over heels in love with the sport, which I think everyone who actually gives it a decent go does. It's completely unique, I've never played anything like it... Once you get going, the Harry Potter side falls away. It's just the most amazing sport on its own.

Right so break it down for me, a mere muggle. How do you play real-life Quidditch?
Okay, so you have to kind of let go of the fact that it's Harry Potter and we don't actually fly and all of that. But we do all run around with a stick.

Like a broomstick, between your legs?
Yeah, it actually just adds an extra level of difficulty. You're performing tackles with one hand, a lot of our catches and throws are done with one hand. You have to be able to run as fast as you can, and move as fast as you can with in your hand.

Sometimes teams play with actual brooms. Image via Facebook.

So you're a chaser. Are the other positions all the same as in Harry Potter?
Yeah it's kind of split between your chasers, who wear white headbands, and they score the goals. You've got a keeper, who wears a green headband, and they are sort of a glorified chaser. And then you've got your beaters, who wear black headbands... they have to hit people with dodge balls and knock them out. And the final part is the snitch and the seeker.

In the books, the seeker has to catch the snitch, right? Tell me how that works in the real world.
Yeah the seeker has to catch the snitch, who is sort of an impartial person. It's like tag footy for them. They have a tag on their shorts, and the game doesn't end until you catch them.

Oh, I get it. The snitch is a person, rather than like a magical flying ball.
Of course, so when we're playing back a home, the snitch is a person from another team who isn't playing the game. At the World Cup, we had impartial snitches who were chosen, they were the best in the world. They are either really physical, they can throw you around. Or they are incredibly fit and they just run and run and run. It's actually incredibly difficult to catch them.

Seeker Dameon Osborn after catching the snitch. Image via Facebook.

So that's how Australia beat the US, we caught the snitch?
We did, yeah. But the snitch is only worth 30 points, so you have to score goals, you can't just focus on catching the snitch. In the books it's worth 150. So we were down, but we were within "snitch range." I think we were 20 or 10 points down and we caught the snitch.

America actually caught it first but the catch was called "no good," because it has to be clean. So America caught it, we were still absolutely elated because we were like, "Oh my god, we're still within snitch range. We've given our best, no one has ever done this well." And then the catch was called "no good," so everyone picked up again. When our seeker Dameon Osborn actually caught it, that was the longest two-three minutes of my life, waiting for them to deliberate over whether to call it good or not.

... So they called it good?
Yeah and as soon as they called it good, I mean the entire team flooded the field, all of the supporters too. I've never been in a mosh pit like that before. It was so intense.

Were the US the team to beat? The Slytherin of the Quidditch World Cup, if you will.
Absolutely, they started the sport I think it was 10 years ago now. And, you know, it's America: they take everything so amazingly seriously, and they absolutely dominate everything that they do. So they had a head start on the world and because it's America it's been—up until this point—literally impossible for anyone to get even close to them.

Have the Dropbears versed the US before?
At the last World Cup, America and Australia were in the grand final again and I think the final score was like 250, or even more, against nothing. Australia didn't even get on the scoreboard. So to come in and have a really close game, and then win, it is just the most amazing feeling in the world... No one thought we could do it, we didn't go in as favourites. People thought Australia would get top eight, maybe push into the top four.

Okay, so you're world champions. What's next for Quidditch in Australia?
I think we just want to take what we've learnt from this experience back to our local teams. I just really want to improve people's opinion of the sport, as well. There's still such a stigma about it because it's from Harry Potter.

Follow Maddison on Twitter, she's a Hufflepuff.

"What is it? The Thing?" one of the billboards asked. "The Mystery of the Desert!" another answered. "It's a Wonder!"

As soon as you think there can't possibly be another billboard, there's another billboard. For all I know, the people responsible for these advertisements have circumnavigated the globe with billboards. They've hired a translator to phrase the questions in Russian, Spanish, Chinese. They've put a billboard at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and are currently in talks with Elon Musk to put a billboard on the moon.

Perhaps you think this is hyperbole. It's not.

This nonsense goes on from Phoenix, Arizona to El Paso, Texas, stretching 430 miles of interstate.

The Thing?

What is The Thing?

What is The fucking Thing?

By the time you reach the tiny town of Texas Canyon, Arizona—home of The Thing—the question will have driven you mad. And even then, you won't be much closer to understanding The Thing. Instead, you'll find yourself parked in front of a gas station and a bright yellow building promising souvenirs, T-shirts, jewelry, gifts, and a museum; The Thing, it suggests, is buried somewhere inside.

Before you can gain access to The Thing, you have to pay the attendant one American dollar. This is non-negotiable. When you do so, the attendant will tell you to enjoy the museum.

Aha, you might think, The Thing is a museum. But this is a mistake. The museum is a thing, certainly, but not The Thing.

The museum is comprised of three long metal sheds painted with stripes of alternating primary colors. On the floor of these sheds are large yellow footprints, presumably made by The Thing.

The first shed is long and poorly ventilated. It houses some of the attraction's larger exhibits, such as a Rolls Royce supposedly used by Adolf Hitler. How the Hitlermobile wound up in Texas Canyon, Arizona, is not disclosed to the visitor. As if to assure the visitor that Hitler's ass once sat on the leather seats of the vehicle, there is a cracked, plaster version of the Führer partially leaning out the back window.

Farther down the shed, there is a still-life arrangement featuring a disfigured wooden mannequin staring at the roof, in a gesture that appears to be looking for God. Behind the mannequin is a four-poster bed outfitted with two dusty and sheet-less mattresses, and beside the bed is a chifforobe and an upright piano. There is a Persian rug on the ground, and the rug is littered with pennies tossed there by previous visitors to the museum. The scene, presented without context, is unsettling.

The second shed is about 50 feet from the first shed and much smaller. A sign next to the entrance warns visitors to be wary of Gila monsters, tarantulas, rattlesnakes, and other venomous animals that often used the shed to escape the heat, which can easily surpass 100 degrees in the summer.

Here, the walls are lined with small display cases, each containing an assortment of seemingly random things: Dozens of pieces of driftwood with painted-on eyes, mouths, and hooves. A Toledo cream separator surrounded by Hopi Kachina figures and Navajo pottery. A phonograph juxtaposed with a shattered mammoth bone. Old photos and paintings of England, France, and Italy. One sign describes its object as an "ancient churn made in Kentucky in the 1700s."

Another case displays 17th-century rifles from Spain and Constantinople. One of the rifles is identified as a matchlock from 1654, which wears a sign that says: "This is one of the rarest pieces on Earth and is the only one in the world. THIS IS BEYOND PRICE."

As you enter the final shed, a large, orange banner will announce that at long last you have made it to The Thing. Underneath the banner is a waist-high display case made of cinderblocks, and in the display case is The Thing.

At the risk of seeming anticlimactic: The Thing is a mummified mother and her child. Their wrappings are in tatters, and it is possible to see bones where the flesh and wrappings have decayed.

The only thing is, The Thing is none of those things. The Thing doesn't exist, and the questions have no answers. It is a simulacrum pointing to a nonexistent reality. It is not even The Thing, but one of many Things.

The Thing housed in a cinderblock sarcophagus in Texas Canyon, Arizona, was made by a man named Homer Tate, a jack-of-all-trades who got into the business of making mermaids, mummies, and shrunken heads from mud and bones in the 1940s. He would tote these around as roadside attractions, and sometime around 1950, a lawyer named Thomas Binkley Prince purchased The Thing for $50 and developed it into a permanent attraction.

Prince died in 1969, but before he was laid to rest, he had managed to accumulate all of the things that inhabit the museum today. Indeed, these historical items seemed to have no purpose other than serving as alibis for The Thing's authenticity.

The property was maintained by Prince's wife, Janet, for a number of years after his passing, but she eventually sold the Thing to a company called Bowlin, Inc. and moved to Baltimore. Based in Albuquerque, Bowlin specializes in keeping the Western myth alive and owns pretty much every themed trading post in the Southwest. It is the perfect corporate proprietor of The Thing.

The Thing doesn't get too many visitors. The gas station outside is regularly busy, but few of its patrons care to come inside. Perhaps they're afraid to discover what The Thing really is, or worse, to discover that The Thing doesn't exist at all. When people do come in, they're usually not from Arizona. Instead, they're headed out West in search of their own Thing: a relaxing vacation, an adventure, a better job.

Once you remove the hundreds of miles of advertisements, the promises that The Thing exists, the notion that The Thing can be obtained if you just pay the fee—once you toss all that out, you find that there was no Thing there to begin with. All you're left with is a pile of mud and bones to remind you of your origin and destination.

Follow Daniel Oberhaus on Twitter.

The first episode of The Night Of asks the question: What would you do if you were accused of a horrible crime that you had no recollection of committing? By the third episode, which aired on Sunday night, we have our answer: It doesn't matter what you do. From the moment you are arrested, you give up control over your life.

The Night Of is about a murder, but it is not a murder mystery: The act itself, which formed the centerpiece of the fantastic first episode, has receded into the background. Even the police investigation appears to be essentially over, and we're given no new clues about that titular night. What's left is the long aftermath, which finds our major characters utterly helpless in the face of a system that has tightened around them.

First, there are Naz's parents, Salim and Safar Khan, played with a dignity that threatens to slide into confusion or anger by Peyman Moaadi and Poorna Jagannathan. They visit their son in Riker's Island, but there's nothing they can do. They are approached by John Stone (John Turturro), who offers to represent Naz for $50,000; they say nothing—who has that kind of money? A more polished lawyer from a big firm named Allison Crowe appears and says she'll do the case for free, and of course, they accept. Naz's father tries to get his cab back only to be told that since it was used in commission of a crime, there's a good chance he'll never see it again, unless he presses charges. The cop who tells Salim this is good-natured—sympathetic, even—but it doesn't matter what sort of face power has. The point is that it's power, and you can't change its mind.

Stone finds himself in similar straits. He starts the episode trying to wheel and deal his way toward the beginning of a plea bargain, but his sweaty, eczematic charm gets him nowhere with the prosecutors. He then does the legwork of a good, if under-resourced, defense attorney—visiting the crime scene, buying Naz socks—but loses his client anyway. He can't even do anything about the plight of the cat that lived in the dead girl's apartment, except bring it to animal control, where it's sentenced to be gassed to death in ten days.

But this is ultimately a show about Naz, and it's through him that we really get a sense of narrowed options and impossible choices. Riz Ahmed continues to be brilliant in his portrayal of the defendant, quivering with fear and nerves as he walks through a version of Riker's Island stripped of color. Other inmates, more experienced and violent than he, stare him down. The guards either ask him bureaucratic questions ("Homosexual?") or exist to do the bidding of the jail's prisoner-king, Freddy (played by Michael K. Williams, who also hosts a show on VICELAND).

It doesn't matter what sort of face power has. The point is that it's power, and you can't change its mind.

Without Freddy, this episode might have been a little dull. There is little in the way of movement on the case, no twists or reversals to drive the plot forward, so the introduction of a new predator into the ecosystem does a lot of work. In the show's understated way, we learn a lot about him in a few minutes of almost dialogue-free action: He's a former boxer who wields outsized power in Rikers—check out the collection of phones in his cell—and has a kind of intellectual self-confidence—look at his Norman Mailer book, or listen to the way he casually drops reference to the specific African region his ancestors hailed from. He's having an affair with one guard, apparently so she can smuggle goods for him, and keeps others in line by threatening their families on the outside. Freddy makes choices that matter; he gets what he wants.

Freddy's the sort of character who delvers koan-ish pronouncements about how the calves raised to become veal are kept in dark crates, the sort of character who is basically a mythological creature in a show about functionaries. (Try to imagine him and Stone occupying the same scene.) Williams served this function in The Wire, too, where his Omar broke every rule about the realism the other, less legendary characters had to follow, and he's a welcome presence in an episode that would otherwise lack much in the way of an antagonist (Bill Camp's Detective Box, who filled that role last time, is largely MIA here).

Freddy is the one who gives Naz his only choice of the episode. The young accused murderer doesn't get to pick where he sleeps or who his lawyer is or how the law will treat him, but he can accept Freddy's offer of protection or not. Naz is down the rabbit hole, but he's not himself ready to start a relationship with a full-blown gangster. Then, in the last scene of the episode, he walks from the bathroom to find a fire burning, the other inmates standing around it and staring him down, making various "I'm going to kill you" gestures. It turns out this isn't a choice either.

The system Naz has been taken inside is transactional in nature. No one does anything out of the goodness of their hearts, possibly because they don't have much in the way of either goodness or hearts. Crowe's proposal to represent Naz pro bono almost certainly comes with strings attached; that she brings a young South Asian lawyer (Amara Karan) with her to meet Naz's parents speaks to her extreme pragmatism, or her cold-eyed ruthlessness. Freddy, similarly, is not a man who does something for nothing. But your benefactors' motives don't matter when you don't have any other options. For now, the characters are left in the same position as the viewers: waiting for that other shoe to drop, and knowing that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

Sex! Fucking! Cumming! Isn't it marvellous? I bet you'd like to be doing it right now, wouldn't you, rubbing your genitals into a sloppy, sticky frenzy, like an eager, rutting animal? I thought I knew everything about sex, but one thing about growing up is realising just how little you do know. You know? Like, when did straight guys become so blasé about analingus? And how do you choose a good safe word? And does anyone, really, like being fingered?

I wanted to look at aspects of sexuality that I'd never heard of before for my new BBC Three series The Paris Lees Sex Show. That's right. The BBC has given me my own show. About sex. I wanted it to be much smuttier and more superficial, but the Beeb insisted we give it an educational spin, you know, for the yoof and that. Public broadcasting innit. But it's still quite slutty, by BBC standards – see how my lady lumps jiggle about in this clip like two big wobbly jelly-filled balloons?

Anyway, VICE wanted to know if I'd actually learned anything from my special investigations and it turns out I did, actually, which, combined with a good decade of being – well, let's face it, a bit of a slag – means I've gathered a fair bit of wisdom when it comes to sex. So, without further ado...

1 CHILL

Relax. Take a deep breath, hun. Honestly, if life has taught me anything it's that you can sit on a traffic cone, if you would only chill the fuck out for a minute. #ThisGirlCan

2 GET A SEX DRAWER

I don't care who you are, get a sex drawer. Even if you're hooked on traditional penis-in-vagina sex, cum is gonna fly loose every once in a while, right? Not to mention all those lovely pussy juices. So you're gonna need somewhere to store tissues, condoms, and a hand towel. Handcuffs. Dildo. Machete. All your sex stuff. I'm also a big fan of those Andrex washlets you can get in Boots. They were on offer in Sainsbury's in Hackney the other week so I stocked up on them like a thrifty 1950s housewife. I'm telling ya, these Andrex make you feel super frickin' fresh down below. I swear the aloe vera ones done turned me into a virgin again.

3 VALUE INTIMACY

I've had several truly intimate and special relationships in my life – my manicurist, my hair stylist, the lady who does my eyebrows. But it's only really in the past few years that I've grown the fuck up and realised how great true intimacy can be. Sure, promiscuity can be incredibly fun – and anyone who used to drink in Yates in Nottingham back in 2009 knows I mean that with all my heart – but I doubt it's nourishing in the long run. I kind of think of casual sex as junk food now. And love-making as home cooking. Don't get me wrong – sometimes you just really, really fancy a big fat greasy saveloy from the Turkish chip shop down the road, but it's never going to compete with a meal that's been slowly prepared with herbs and love and shit. Who'd have thought it eh? Me, a romantic...

4 NOTHING REALLY MATTERS

So here's the other thing that my awakening to intimacy has taught me – when you love someone, pretty much anything goes. I'll always have my own preferences and, believe it or not, boundaries, but when you're loved up, you'd kind of do anything for them. And I don't mean that in a weird, degrading, co-dependent way, but in a loving, open and beautiful way. Like when you find yourself doing something you've never really been turned on by before purely because you know that the person you adore finds it hot, but – and here's the crucial bit – now you enjoy it too.

5 NEVER SAY NEVER

I'm "sex positive" but there are things I can't help but have a visceral dislike of – say, for example, people hurting themselves. And I suspect that scat – playing with shit – will always be a step too far for me. But many things that I once thought beyond the pale, or ridiculous, don't seem so bad to me any more. And from personal experience, I know I'm not alone in that. I've met many guys in their 30s and late 20s who are turned on by trans women – whether post- or pre-op – who, at 20, would never have believed that they would 'go there'. But like so many areas in life, your sexual perspective changes all the time, often quite dramatically. And that's OK. I guess that what I'm trying to say is that I've recently discovered I'm in to Furries.

6 FUCK ME WHILE I CRY

Can we all just agree that it's super hot to be fucked while you're emotional?

7 PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES NEED TO CUM TOO

I'm fairly self-absorbed, so it's not something I've thought about a lot before, but since I started filming my show, I've learned that there isn't a lot of porn out there for people who are blind or visually impaired and, well, that sucks. There is a book of braille porn, but you need two hands to read it... so yeah. Blind people need better erotica that appeals to all their senses.

8 FANTASIES ARE FINE

Everyone has a naughty fantasy that they would never in a million years want to enact in real life and that's fine. And I reckon everyone needs to access that fantasy once in a while. Even if you're really turned on by the person you're with, even if you love them desperately and couldn't be more attracted to them, sometimes you will still have to think about Your Thing to get off. I don't want to know what yours is and you sure as hell don't need to know what mine is, although if you really want to know it involves a see through mac and a girl I used to go to school with on a wet and windy night with six rugged, woman-starved firemen and a dog biscuit but that's all I'm saying, OK.

9 THREE'S A CROWD

You always say you're going to have a threesome when you first hook up with someone. You probably won't. I'm not saying threesomes can't be good or that happy couples can't pull them – and a third party – off with huge success, but it's fraught with danger. I reckon you should get the threesome stuff out your system during your slut years, but it's 2016, so do whatever the fuck you like, I suppose.

10 GET TESTED

Lord knows how, but I've never actually had the clap. IKR? Despite doing it unprotected down an alleyway behind Marks & Spencers, twice, with a drug dealer who looked like the one with contact lenses from So Solid Crew. But I'm an idiot. Just use a condom. We don't want you getting some awful sexually transmitted disease, like gonorrhoea, or a baby. Speaking of which...

11 BRITISH SEX EDUCATION NEEDS TO GROW UP

Most sex education does next to nothing to prepare you for the realities and responsibilities of Game of Bones. Oh, what's that you say? You put a penis in a vagina and a woman can become pregnant? Who fucking knew?! There was me thinking the only way to find yourself with child was to fall asleep under a hawthorn tree on the solstice. Yes, kids need to learn about reproduction, but they also need to know about consent if we are ever going to end sexual violence, promote respect for people's personal boundaries and save a lot of trauma and suffering. When I was at school, we watched a film telling us that one day we'd have to wash our armpits more often, grow hair down below and that masturbation could be quite nice – all of which I'd have worked out by myself by the time I was 14, thank you very much. No one ever told us it was OK to be gay, or bi or even not to want sex at all. And they fucking should have done.

12 EMBRACE THE AROMA

Armpits are hot. Don't spoil them with cheap deodorant. Just keep them clean. It's important. I watched a video about that once. Maybe it's just a personal preference of mine, but I suspect the Joy Of Sex was right – we are supposed to like the way other human beings smell. Apart from Boris Johnson. I reckon he smells like spam and failure.

13 STOP BEING SELF-CONSCIOUS

Stop worrying. Your sex partner is with you because they're attracted to you. Or really horny and can't do any better. Either way, just fucking own it – and enjoy yourself!

14 LATEX WORKS

Latex is hot. This was my dress at the beginning of March:

This was my dress at the end of March:

Sorry, Kim West Latex.

15 HEAD IS A SKILL

Blowies. I'm gonna leave the last word with Samantha from Sex and the City: "Teeth placement and jaw stress and suction and gag reflex. And all the while bobbing up and down, moaning and trying to breath through our noses. Easy? Honey, they don't call it a 'job' for nothing."

§

And that's it, really. I will probably just keep making the same mistakes over and over again for the next 50 miserable years or so, but I hope that at least some of the knowledge I've picked up can help you. Happy fucking!

@parislees

Watch The Paris Lees Sex Show here.

More from Paris Lees on VICE:

My Transgender Tinder Adventure

Germaine Greer and the Hypocrisy of the Left

Misfits and Weirdos Everywhere Owe David Bowie Their Tears

Corbet discusses the film's thunderous score composed by Scott Walker, how being a child actor impacted his directorial approach, and how winning at the Venice Film Festival transformed his life.

Shanna Katz Kattari. Photo courtesy of Shanna Katz Kattari

When people think about BDSM today, they often think about Fifty Shades of Grey. That franchise and other pop-culture touchstones paint kink as a sultry extravagance of the rich, svelte, and white—a rarified space for those with pristine bodies. Even as kink becomes more popular and widely discussed in mainstream culture, the common depictions of BDSM don't leave much room for those with non-normative bodies to be able to participate.

However, the actual world of BDSM has long been populated by people of all levels of ability—from those with visible conditions like paralysis to invisible conditions like chronic pain or fatigue, as well as mental conditions like PTSD. For many people with disabilities, BDSM is just one facet of life in which they have learned to accommodate their differences. For others, kink is a powerful tool for managing their disability: controlling pain, inverting social dynamics, and achieving new levels of comfort with and communication about their disabilities and needs.

Many major kink sites and organizations now offer public workshops on how to navigate disability in BDSM play and relationships. But relative to the incredible diversity of disabilities and the nearly infinite variations of kink, the intersection of BDSM and disability has received shockingly little attention, even within the kink world.

VICE spoke with several people living and working at the intersection of these identities—those who came to BDSM with a disability and others who were already members of the community and developed impairments later in life. We also spoke to private practitioners and public sex educators. They told us what kink can bring to the disabled experience (and visa versa), about the differences between being disabled in private and public BDSM spaces like play parties or dungeons, and some of the complications disabilities can create in the kink world.

Photo courtesy of Shanna Katz Kattari

Shanna Katz Kattari

Shanna is a disabled woman and sex educator (who did not wish to disclose the details of her disability and its affect on her life). She researches and offers classes on BDSM and disability.

I had always heard from clients and workshop attendees how inclusive and supportive the kink community was around disability, and then experienced this for myself when I offered classes and workshops in kink spaces.

Some attendees take advantage of pain processing workshops to learn how to breathe through their daily pain, while others have brought up using flogging to increase endorphins thereby reducing pain from scoliosis, and having their partners use domination to help them work through anxiety and panic attacks.

I have had clients concerned that they could not be truly dominant if they were disabled, who then realized what a great way to have submissive partners provide service—like bringing pills on time, making sure they stay hydrated, prepping and cleaning up play spaces, or massaging painful body parts. Conversely, I have met submissive folks who have resolved their concerns about their impairments through the care provided by a dom.

I think every single individual, couple, and group could benefit from the conversations and negotiations built into kink culture prior to playing or being in a relationship, and I've seen how much that benefits disabled folks. Someone with mobility issues might include what positions feel good and which ones don't. Someone with PTSD, a trauma history, or anxiety might share what words, actions, scents, or other things might accidentally trigger them and what their partner should do if they're triggered.

Kinky people are incredibly creative, and disabled individuals are also creative, which results in an intersection that can revolutionize the sexuality of kinky disabled folks and their partners.

Photo of Lyric Seal by Nikki Silver

Lyric Seal, a. k. a. Never Be(ast)

Lyric is a transgender individual and artist, activist, and adult performer born with scoliosis and a joint disorder known as amyoplasia who uses a wheelchair.

I have been trying to take my time in how I represent myself as a kinky person in my art because I have natural performance anxiety. In certain contexts, as an adult performer, there is an expectation of how your body is going to be able to perform, props and all, and I think my anxiety is related to having a kind of unpredictable body that is not always going to perform in a way that is normatively expected.

In my personal life, I'm more intuitive and direct. I feel like I'm better at explaining what I need, as well as listening to what someone else wants and needs. It really feeds my imagination to be able to imagine a visual and physical representation of what I want and be fearless in sexualizing it. I feel the intersection of having a challenging, exciting body and challenging, exciting sex has made me a braver person.

I think that I have been given the social message that it is too much for me to be everything that I am: black, queer, disabled, tattooed, as well as a sex worker, an artist, and a kinkster. When I imagine sexual situations, I sometimes wonder, Does this contradict this other part of who I am? If I want to bottom in a certain way, does that degrade or betray the other aspects of my identity in which I am oppressed? Then I remind myself that, no, these identities are all inside the same person. So that helps me grow as a person and helps me understand how three dimensional other people are.

Photo courtesy of Grace Duncan

Grace Duncan

Grace is a longtime kinkster who developed a thyroid condition ten years ago, and her husband and BDSM partner has developed back issues.

Back before I had Hashimoto's disease, my husband and I could spend an entire day playing in various ways. Now, we have to carefully figure out how much I can do or it ends up ruining the play for us because, instead of a satisfying session, I just end up tired.

My hub and I would plan a scene, get everything set up, and the whole time I would be struggling. I kept telling myself that I'd be fine, that my being tired won't get in the way, but the full-on fatigue didn't allow me the mind space I needed to submit.

Instead of letting go, I ended up more stressed because I couldn't do what I wanted so badly to do. For a long time, I fought this, insisting to myself and my hub that I was all right. I didn't want to accept that my health, especially the fatigue I was feeling, would impact this aspect of my life like it had everything else. It got to the point where he would recognize the signs when I was too tired to play and would call it off.

It wasn't until I totally freaked out during a session and called my safe word—which is extremely rare with us—that I began to accept that I needed to start being more honest with my husband and myself because it wasn't doing either of us any good if I tried to fake it.

At the time, the idea of being disabled in any way and still involved in BDSM wasn't common. I didn't have many close to me in the community who I could go to—all of them were quite able and didn't have to make allowances—and I had a difficult time finding resources on how to limit.

So some of what we came up with was, really, just me and my husband's own creativity. We stepped back and reevaluated our play—looked at what we could do that wasn't necessarily such a big scene. I am a masochist and absolutely adore impact play, so we found ways to work in smaller spankings or floggings. I was also able to find other subtle ways to feed my submissive side, like sitting at his feet while we watched a movie.

We still plan scenes, though I doubt I'll ever be able to do the types of scenes we were able to do before I got sick. If we do plan it properly, submitting to my husband and handing over control helps relieves my daily stress, as well as the stress that my problems cause. It's not an easy thing to accept, but it sure beats not playing at all, which, frankly, I refuse to do.

Related: Check out 'Cash Slaves,' our documentary about financial domination

Lady Solaris

Lady Solaris is an LA-based dominatrix and sex educator with a connective tissue disorder, among other impairments.

For a lot of people, BDSM can be difficult in private play because there's not a set time or space. Adaptations are also huge in private play because most people don't have a dungeon or dungeon furniture in their home, but they can get incredibly creative with the items that they have at their disposal.

When you're going into a dungeon, the feeling is different. It allows for socialization. But because of prying eyes, a lot of disabled people coming to public kink spaces have this sense of pressure—which factually doesn't often exist in the community—to fit the mold of what society has shown us BDSM should be. For someone coming in with a disability, you have to be very secure in yourself as a person to relay that to somebody you're playing with, and then to be OK with adaptation.

Disabled people sometimes can't even get in to some spaces because of the way they've been designed. Some club owners don't necessarily think about the fact that they could design the space for people with disabilities from the start. Additionally, some of the furniture designers forget to think about the community as a whole and neglect to create furniture that could adapt to multiple people.

The gap became very apparent to me when I would ask at seminars for an adaptation in something like throwing a flogger or tying someone in a particular way, because I don't have the strength or dexterity to do those things as easily as someone who doesn't have any restrictions or disabilities, and the presenters would tell me, "There are none, this is the only way to do it."

So I started adapting my own stuff for myself and the people I'd play with—coming up with different ways to tie people up or throw a flogger and so on—and be safe while doing it. Maybe it didn't look the same as what other people in BDSM were doing at clubs and dungeons, but it was safe for the bottom and safe for me, and I could still enjoy BDSM.

Seminars with disabled people who previously felt like they had to keep their disabilities hidden have started to open the discussion up in LA's kink space, especially over the past eight years, but we still have a long way to go. It really helps to share the knowledge of adaptation for people with disabilities or injuries, as well as being comfortable playing in public spaces. Other people may see an adaptation and use it as well, realizing, "I can still do this type of play because I just saw somebody do an adaptation that would actually work for me, even with my back injury."

Photo of Azura Rose byDoomCookiePhoto

Azura Rose

Azura is a goth sex worker, model, and submissive based in Toronto with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which causes frequent joint dislocation and chronic pain.

People were always kind of onboard with me being a submissive or masochist—although they were worried about hitting me too hard and knocking a joint out of place. But I've had the most issues with the rope bondage community. When you tell people in that scene, "I have joint issues," they're hesitant about putting their rope on you especially with suspension. They're worried something's going to dislocate, and they're going to drop me and are unsure of how to accommodate for the way that my body is because they often only learn one way of tying people up. Sometimes people decide that they'd just rather not play with me.

I can understand from a safety perspective why people feel uncomfortable consenting to the risk of playing with someone when they don't know how. But it can be really frustrating when I miss out because other people are not as adaptable as I've had to be my whole life.

In my private life, I'm polyamorous. One primary partner is also disabled, so we balance our needs together. I'm really stubborn and will play through an injury, but she has fibro myalgia, so she can't just work through it because it will just get worse. Being with her has also taught me to be more comfortable about taking my time and judging what's reasonable for me, not just injuring myself over and over because I want to do something.

My other partner is able-bodied, but he's really good at listening to me. If I say that something hurts, he has to decide if it's something significant. He can overreact sometimes, whereas most disabled people realize that being hurt is just a daily occurrence.

Building a BDSM relationship with a disability can still be difficult. I need to make sure that people see me as an independent, rational adult and respect me when I say that I don't need help. It's also important that people address their own language issues and not use slurs around me. Building those ties can be as simple as taking the time to think about accessibility when planning a night out with friends or just not looking at me with revulsion every time one of my joints dislocates.

I think that the hardest part for people can be when they witness other people treating me badly. Maintaining a positive BDSM relationship is not just about people addressing their own issues, but really taking a stand if a friend starts using slurs or talking about how they don't care about accessibility.

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

If you ever needed any more evidence that the global financial industry – and, by extension, the thing that controls our pathetic lives – is as frivolous and ludicrous as a diamond-encrusted SpongeGar iPhone case, then the fluctuating shares in Nintendo have you covered.

The Japanese video game company experienced an extreme boost in shares after Pokémon GO – the augmented reality game that you already know everything about – was released earlier this month. However, investors clearly didn't google it properly, or perhaps just couldn't be bothered, because Nintendo don't own the app; it was a company called Niantic, Inc. that created and published the game. Shares in Nintendo subsequently dropped by a fairly large 17 percent.

In fact, Nintendo only have a 33 percent stake in Pokémon as a franchise. The Pokémon Company, which owns the copyright to Pokémon, is a joint venture between Nintendo, Game Freak and development company Creatures. The maximum profit share Nintendo stand to gain from Pokémon GO is 30 percent.

That said, Nintendo's shares are still up 60 percent, even after the sharp decline. Pretty mad that a company has to basically tell these people to stop investing because they'd made a huge mistake or just hadn't bothered to check. Man, glad these guys are the ones with all the money!

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Illustration by Ashley Goodall

"Luke, is it? Fucking let me tell you something, okay," the drug dealer said. We were inside his St Kilda boarding house. His eyes were getting bigger, pupils like two vibrating eggs. "I am a fucking pharmacist, do you understand me?"

But he wasn't. And chances are he had no idea what he was making. Chances are my drug dealer friend cooking up speed in his sad, tiny room knew much less than than Rebecca McKetin, an associate professor at the Australian National University's College of Medicine, Biology, and Environment. According to Dr McKetin, thanks to drug lingo, there are some widespread misconceptions about what speed actually is.

"If you were taking something you called 'speed' from about 1990 onward, you were actually taking powdered meth—not amphetamine sulphate," she explains. "Many people have being taking 'speed' for a long time, when they are taking methamphetamine without realising." Police know this because when they test the 'speed' they've seized from people, it's usually actually powdered meth.

As Dr McKetin explains to me, powdered methamphetamine, which is also called "speed" or "meth," is just one of three distinct illegal amphetamine formulas. There's also amphetamine sulphate, or "speed," which hasn't been on the Australian market since the 1980s. Then there's crystal methamphetamine, which is called "ice" but again, also "meth." Crystallised meth is made with the same base ingredients as powdered meth—usually ephedrine or pseudoephedrine—but is generally much stronger.

Amphetamines and methamphetamines operate on the body in very similar ways. They both squeeze large amounts of dopamine into the synaptic cleft between neurons—making users feel happy. Methamphetamine is much stronger though, and actively suppresses the reabsorption of excess dopamine. On top of this it must be first metabolised into amphetamine before it can be disposed, which is one of the reasons its effects last longer.

This is pretty crucial information, and not just if you are user yourself—these nuances really help us understand a rise in methamphetamine-related harm in the past few years.

The Australian Government's 2013 National Drug Strategy Household Survey shows use of the less potent powdered meth decreased significantly from 51 percent to 29 percent between 2010 and 2013, while the use of crystal methamphetamine more than doubled, from 22 percent in 2010 to 50 percent in 2013.

"When crystallised meth started coming into the country and entering drug user circles, we also saw a corresponding increase in the purity of powdered meth," explains Professor Paul Dietze, deputy head of the Centre for Population Health at the Burnet Institute. "So the proportion of the population using methamphetamine hasn't really changed in several decades, it's just that people started using stronger meth, more often in the last few years."

This information prompts the question: Why is crystal meth so much more popular? As I was about to see at my "pharmacist" mate's place, it's likely got something to do with the fact that locally made, powdered meth is garbage. On top of that, importing crystal meth from overseas is becoming much more prevalent.

With the door still locked, I watched as my guy pulled out laundry powder, bleach, and a few empty coke bottles. When I described this setup to McKetin and Dietze, they both agreed this isn't how you make crystallised meth. The equipment was nowhere near sophisticated enough.

To make crystallised meth (that is to say, turning powdered meth into crystals) one needs industrial-scale equipment, which is why it's normally made in remote areas and developing countries.

The latest Illicit Drug Data Report shows 88 percent of the all amphetamines coming into Australia are coming from China, Hong Kong, and Thailand. According to data from the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, 86 percent of all crystal meth is coming via the parcel post, with another 9.5 percent coming in via air cargo.

If my drug dealer was making meth, it looked like he was using the shake and bake method—which makes (usually quite weak) powdered meth. Home labs, which don't produce crystal meth, are not the cause of our nation's methamphetamine problems. Yet they are often the focus of government campaigns that spend millions of special "task forces" to smash the labs.

If Australia wants to reduce crystal meth supply, it might try doing better work at its borders and in cooperation with governments right across the Asia-Pacific.

This is an edited extract from Ice Age: A Journey into Crystal Meth Addiction.

Follow Luke on Twitter.

Original artwork for John Marston, via Rockstar

Rockstar Games has created many a protagonist in its 18 years in business, but few feel quite so relatable, as likeable, and as empathetic as Red Dead Redemption's John Marston. I've been reacquainting myself with the GTA makers' open-world Western for a couple of nights now, around five hours of play adding up to ten in-game days, and I'm surprised by just how excited I am to be doing it over. What was supposed to be filler fare, a cursory reinvestigation brought about by the game's recent backwards compatibility with the Xbox One, bridging the gap between finishing The Witcher 3's Blood and Wine DLC and starting early August's No Man's Sky, is now every bit as compelling as it was the first time around.

And I think that's for two main reasons. Okay, three, factoring in my adoration of Blood and Wine and the stories told by The Witcher 3 before it – Red Dead plays in much the same way as CD Projekt RED's multi-award-winning RPG, albeit without such a heavy emphasis on stats and, naturally, significantly less importance placed on the use of magic (though a little faith and fame can come in handy in the fictional frontier territory of New Austin). You're a man with a folklore-worth past, upright on a horse a lot of the time, travelling the land to perform deeds both honourable and rather less so. Catch the two games in your peripheral vision and your brain could well muddle them up, save for a wyvern swooping down on Geralt.

Aside from the fact that I'm evidently in a mood for men on horseback right now – I suppose that's a sign to get on and finish The Phantom Pain – Red Dead's immediate appeal, second time around, is based in two distinct characters: the landscape that Rockstar has carved out of so much digital dirt, endlessly fascinating as it both lures the player into its beauty and then looses a bunch of cougars and bears at them, and John Marston himself.

The environment immediately embraces the senses, a high-def depiction of a world so far away from our own but equally in the throes of technological change – this is the West alright, but it's not so Wild now, with the railway established, a phone network reaching out from the Eastern cities, and new-fangled carriages without horses coming onto the roads. The game's 1911 setting places its events 30 years after the demise of Billy the Kid, three after the establishment of what would become the FBI, and just another three from the outbreak of the First World War. William Cody, aka Buffalo Bill, was still alive, but his famous touring Wild West Show had long ago fallen out of public favour as cinema, with moving-picture Westerns like The Great Train Robbery, grew in popularity. Progress was marching in earnest, and any old dogs were likely to be trampled beneath it.

John Marston is an old dog indeed, and one that quite probably can't learn any new tricks. He wears his scars, reminders of a life lived in opposition to the law, and his demeanour is one of a man who knows his ultimate destiny, and it's not going to be pretty. When we meet him, though, he's in the company of federal agents, charged with the apprehension, or obliteration, of an old buddy of his, Bill Williamson. Bill's been tearing up New Austin and the surrounding area, leaving too many corpses in his wake for the local lawmen to watch idly and hope that a rattlesnake does the right thing as he sleeps. While he's now doing government work, John's way of life is ingrained so deeply that he can't change direction, even when the opportunity seems to be there to do so.

Original artwork for Bill Williamson, via Rockstar

During the game's tutorial-style first couple of hours, John spends a lot of time in the company of ranch manager Bonnie MacFarlane, carrying out helpful duties and odd jobs. He walks the ranch in the company of a trouble-smelling dog, Charlie. He herds cattle alongside Bonnie. He breaks horses to add to the ranch's harras. He learns the ropes – or, rather, the lasso – alongside the kind of strongly independent female character that remains uncommon in video games. A sweet bond develops between the two, and I'm sure it's Rockstar's intention to have the player believing that Bonnie has affection for John that goes deeper than the pleasantries they exchange, and John certainly has a great deal of respect for her, too. "You're worth two of any man I know," he tells her, as Bonnie correspondingly compliments his skills, claiming he could be a fine ranch hand if only he could break out of the outlaw way. But John Marston is an honest man, and he's committed to a wife we don't meet until several hours later. And that's what he's in this mess for, pure and simple: the safety of his family.

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Given that Red Dead Redemption came out in 2010, enough time's passed that any article on it should pass without fear of spoilers. But its backwards compatibility saw sales spike by almost 6,000 percent in a day earlier this month (July 2016), which suggests that there are plenty of people out there playing the game for the first time. I won't delve into the finer details of how John's tale works itself out, then, but I will celebrate the fact that he's a Rockstar leading man acting (almost) entirely altruistically. He states, more than once, that he doesn't want to kill Bill – but his hand is being forced by authorities, men in positions of power preventing him from seeing his wife and son until the job's done.

Plenty of video gaming protagonists are motivated by personal gains – Grand Theft Auto V might line up three very different playable characters, but each one of them is in it for themselves, chasing their own vision of the American Dream by any means possible (yes, Michael has a family, but his love for it is hard fought). Elsewhere in the Rockstar catalogue, we see Max Payne driven by understandable vengeance, and Bully's Jimmy Hopkins smash the bad eggs of Bullworth Academy, but all the while craving popularity for himself. Contrary to such self-satisfying forces, whatever their reasonable catalysts, John Marston just wants his family back, his sole selfishness to be left alone. His outward persona is several shades left from the definition of a good man, that much is as obvious as the deafening thunder that rolls over Hennigan's Stead; but his heart is as pure as any virtual one has been in (not exactly) recent memory.

Original artwork for Bonnie MacFarlane, via Rockstar

Which is why it's so hard to do what you should be able to in a game cruelly dubbed "GTA with horses" by just about everyone who never played it: go on a post-save rampage and wipe out as many civilians as you can before the law steps in with no-questions-asked directness and the safety off. Don't pretend like you've never done it, we all have, ever since those late nights in dorm rooms staring at Grand Theft Auto III on a small, second-hand CRT. I've already found myself unable to even do what the game is explicitly telling me to, when it comes to leaving strangers with no fate other than death, or worse.

On encountering the Christian missionary Jenny, alone and extremely unwell, in the wilderness, the game will instruct you to bring her medicine and simply walk away. But do so and she collapses, apparently content to be vulture food. She claims that God will save her, but John Marston's not about to rely on any man upstairs: "nobody made my path but me," are his words to Bonnie when she asks if he's religious. So instead, I raise my Winchester to her, which immediately has her bolt upright and sprinting between the cacti. A short chase and a Y-to-hogtie command later and she's on the back of my horse on the way to Armadillo, the nearest town. Unfortunately, this counts as "abduction", and there's a twenty-dollar bounty on my head. I race into the telegraph office and clear my name (thanks, randomly received pardon letter), and then cut her free. She staggers down the central street – to where, who knows, but she's moving a lot better than she was back there in the badlands.

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I feel that's a good deed done on top of those where individual player agency takes a back seat to linear progression, and one that properly reflects the man that Rockstar paints with Red Dead's first fistful of missions. On saving the bleeding-out travelling salesman Nigel West Dickens, and getting him to the nearest doctor, John tells him to get better before they conduct any kind of compensatory business. "Let's get you fixed up first, when we'll decide what you're my man for," he says, helping the old-timer into the care of Armadillo's resident physician. He, under my command, tries to help a bride-to-be in total denial that her betrothed passed away some years earlier (or, is she a ghost, eh?). He goes out looking for missing children, and willingly rides with the finely hirsute Marshal Leigh Johnson, owner of the neatest mutton chops this side of Blackwater, against the various gangs plaguing the region. He is a rare good guy, sincere and resourceful, amid an ocean of narcissistic gaming world peers.

Original artwork for Marshal Leigh Johnson, via Rockstar

And he's as much a product of the game's landscape, and of Rockstar's obvious determination to move Red Dead further away from lazy GTA comparisons, as he is a vessel for the player's own free-roaming actions. "I think it's this land that makes the men, rather than the other way around," he says to the Marshal and his deputies. "Men are born, and then they're formed. At least, that's how I see it." He knows he is expendable, in the biggest picture. He knows, deep down, that the West's advancement will be his undoing, and that this earth will someday claim him.

But right now, on day ten of who knows how many more, his mission is simple: do right by those he promised to protect, and who never deserved to be caught up in a mess of his making. And that's wonderfully compelling from the player's perspective, because you know that the intensity will escalate, and the risks taken become all the more fraught; but as they do, he'll never think to quit, because what's at stake means too much. I know so, because I've done this all before. But, as I now realise, and with apologies to newer games that no doubt need attention, that's no reason to stop.

@MikeDiver

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By this stage you should have learnt that the only words you actually need to talk about drugs are basically: "weed", "coke", "pills" and "ket". Maybe you'll need to use "hash" at some point, if you're getting specific, or possibly "2CB" if you're a real wreckhead. But realistically you could talk about drugs using a maximum of eight words.

Yet drugs are constantly gaining new street synonyms. People remain permanently unhappy to call them by their dictionary name.

There are so many street names for drugs that the ones people use can tell you a shit ton about them: how relaxed they are around them, how much they enjoyed it last time, who they take them with, where they grew up, and of course, how fucking cool they are.

So here's a pretty comprehensive, in no way biased or speculative, 100% accurate guide to what your drug vocabulary says about you.

You are my mother. You are specifically referring to the only drugs story you have in your canon which goes "there was a bit of pot about, I tried it, didn't like it, passed it on." This rule applies to every mention of "pot" that has ever been made by any parent. There is always "a bit of it" and it is always "about". You never talk about "buying loads of pot" or getting "some quality pot". No, it has only ever been 1978 and there has only ever been "a bit of pot about".

You're a journalist at the Sun and you're probably writing about Raheem Sterling.

You are a robust Northern Bloke. The sort of robust Northern Bloke who manages to make taking drugs seem quite wholesome, a bit like you're tucking into a Sunday roast. You can spend entire evenings cutting up forearm-thick lines of beak and somehow maintain complete composure while the party around you crumbles into a cacophony of steaming chatter. You make checked shirts appear on trend. You wear Clark's desert boots. You've got lovely greying stubble and a nice watch. I think I like you, in that way.

You talk a lot about high grade, don't you? The chronic. You leave comments under YouTube videos of songs from before you were born saying "better than the shit that gets made now". You firmly believe there is a media conspiracy against Jeremy Corbyn and you regularly share Canary articles corroborating this standpoint. You think Kanye West is a dickhead. When you smoke high grade, your evening inevitably starts with a lot of Massive Attack, which then leads to watching the same Adam Curtis documentary you've seen approximately 25 times. You have strong opinions on almost everything, particularly neoliberalism and your mum's new boyfriend Ray.

The last time you took drugs regularly was when you were 25; about eight years ago. Since then you haven't had the chance to get out as much, now you've got a mortgage and an Abel and Cole membership, and without realising, you've become exactly the sort of clean shirt you'd spent the last decade taking the piss out of.

Drugs though, they used to be fun, like, really fun. The world used to be a non-stop stream of glitter, big bottles of cider, radio-friendly indie remixes and boutique festivals. Sometimes, in bed, you stare up at the ceiling of your duck-egg blue bedroom and remember parties. You remember how tightly your skin used to cling to your face, how everything seemed more colourful, like thick paint, and the memory makes you so happy it turns into mourning.

These days your partying has been stripped back to a biannual trip to Latitude or Secret Garden Party, long weekends you'll spend applying and removing body glitter, eating gourmet scotch eggs and trying to charge your phone. Still you go, you get tickets, pack the car, buy a bit of "mandy" off your mate's ex boyfriend who still sells, and hope the weekend will be as fun as you are trying to make it sound. You become unreasonably unsettled on your way into the festival, at the thought of security finding the gram you've hidden in your Cath Kidston thermos – the prospect of explaining to everyone in the office that you were arrested on the weekend is nearly enough to make you turn around – but they don't stop you, they don't search you, and you get in without a problem. You and your partner who you definitely should be engaged to by now really c'mon mate, talk about crushing the gram but you're tired after the drive and decide to call it a night after a Jon Hopkins set. The next night in rains. On the third night you decide it's too late now to take it because you've all got to drive home tomorrow, but you head out with it in your pocket anyway. "I'm going to sell it," you tell everyone. "May as well get my £40 back!"

Later than night, while watching Madness, you slip the gram into a green wheelie bin. You sigh. It's over.

You are Ronnie Corbett doing cocaine at the Baftas in that episode of Extras.

The year 1989 gives you a hard on. You played some minor supporting role in the acid house revolution in Manchester, and it's a tenuous claim to fame you've managed to turn into two books and semi-regular talking head appearances during documentaries about the 1990s. You spend a lot of time talking about how mobile phones have ruined nightclubs, and how music now is piss poor because there's no quality control. You don't take drugs anymore, God forbid, no, but you talk about garys, a lot, and how strong they were. How you'd barely have pushed one passed your lips before you'd be rushing off your tits back then. You've got loads of vinyl, you drink a lot of thick ales, you claim you're mates with Guy Garvey even though you're not, and you probably spend so much time telling young people they are "getting youth culture wrong" in order to wallpaper over the damp drabness that has moved into your life since the long nights of '89 ended.

Your relationship with cocaine is comfortable. Very comfortable. To the point where you now refer to it with the same lackadaisical flippancy you would buying a grab-bag of Doritos. The class As come in without fail after every pub session and in a certain light, it could be said you have a debilitating drug addiction, but that's all a bit doom and gloom, so you call it packet and suddenly it sounds like a bar snack and everything is a little less scary.

You are a 14-year-old American or you are French Montana.

For some reason you think ketamine in large social situations is really fun. You love getting a little bit ketty, don't you? And by "a little bit ketty" you mean slathering drool down your T-shirt, slumped on a sofa trying to get Pokémon Go to work on your lighter. You've been a bit naughty, gotten a little bit ketty, and now the spaces between spaces are closing in. Just a little bump of special K, touch of donkey dust, and you've got all the composure of a scarecrow with a bowling ball for a head. You love Gentleman's Dub Club. You own a lava lamp. You go to Shambala every year.

You are the sort of person ironically alludes to "bunnin' a zoot" despite the fact the last time you smoked weed was four years previously—an incident which ended in a full-scale whitey in a portaloo. Since that incident weed scares you. In fact, all drugs scare you. You'd much rather spend your time watching old episodes of Torchwood before maybe heading to a Yo Sushi branch inside a shopping mall. If the weather's good you might head into for some "pubbage". Your words not mine. After a few hours and four pints of cider with your mates somebody suggests going to a house party. You're reluctant—a familiar acidic doom swills around in your belly. You try and generate some excuses to slip out but your boyfriend/girlfriend is keen. He/She hasn't been to a party in a while and the thought has them visibly excited. You surrender and agree to go. An hour later and you're in a new build semi-detached house somewhere on the outskirts of a satellite town. It's the sort of "house party" where the host has put a big bowl of Wotsits out. There are about 14 people there in total. It isn't totally shit, you have a good conversation with somebody called Paul about who you think is the funniest panelist on Would I Lie To You, and somebody compliments you on your Converses, so that's cool. However, your worst fears are confirmed when a bloke with a polyester shirt on removes what looks like a sonic screwdriver from his pocket and tells the group it's a portable vaporiser. It's passed around the circle. Everyone pressing it to their lips and sucking in. Your girlfriend/boyfriend even has a go. They cough and everybody has a well-meaning laugh. It's closing in on you. You're running out of time. Two people away. One person away. Then, "ah, bunnin' a zoot, nah it's cool I'm chill nice one."

You found the Bob Marley Snapchat filter funny, incidentally.

Yer in Glesga, and oot yer nut on a coupla wee swedgers and yer a diamond honestly yer ma best friend. Ur yoo normally headin tae Subby later the nite. Aye, th waither micht be shite up 'ere bit thir's something that runs deeper. A spirit atween us that connects us, something ye cannae find anywhere else in th world. Thare is nowhere in th universe you'd ower be than ere and nobody you'd ower be wi. After that ye come home fae the club to ur gaff. Yer pure nutted, the tunes are on noo. This is it. Th' weekend is ne'er aff tae end as lang as ye'v git th session, a bottle o bucky, a wee swedger or twa 'n' yer best mates in a' o' Scootlund, nae, th world.

You're a Tory. That much is true. But you do that slightly confusing thing posh young people do where they go all "self-aware posh". You wear little boat shoes and blue Oxford shirts and say stuff like "rather" and "totes" and it's impossible to tell if you are taking the piss or if you actually talk like that. It's probably because you've watched too much Made In Chelsea and it's left you in an existential flux, both laughing at but knowing yourself to be the object of fun. You say "banter", completely at a loss as to whether it's you the posh Tory or the figurative posh Tory character that lives inside you like a parasite. In all honesty your actual personality is long lost by this point. You are now just an amalgamation of privileged cliches, Eton Messy nights and instagrams of Prosecco on balconies. It's for this reason that after a few cocktails, and a ten deck of Marlboro lights, you think it is acceptable to suggest getting in some "charlie".

You like your pills industrial strength. Your idea of a big night out is a never-ending session in the belly of a warehouse somewhere in the Eastern bloc. The pills you buy, normally somewhere on the dark-web, are thick and dark in colour. You're the type to recommend magnesium tablets to everyone throughout the night. "Stop you biting yer tongue," you'll tell them. You cut a friendly but lonely presence on the dancefloor. You measure how good a night is based on how much body weight you lose in sweat and how much you look like Steve Buscemi by the end of the night.

You write for VICE.

Follow Angus on Twitter.

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This isn't a picture of the Romanian hospital mentioned in this article, but praying is probably what you'd want to be doing if you were a patient there. Photo by David Amsler via

This article originally appeared on VICE Romania

Last week a particularly gruesome video was leaked to Romanian media, showing several maggots in an open wound close to a patient's ear. The man had suffered severe burns and was hospitalised in a burn unit in Bucharest.

The video was leaked by Camelia Roiu – an anaesthesiologist at Spitalul de Arși, where the patient was admitted – who told newspaper Gazeta Sporturlor: "What's the point in hiding what's really going on? What's worse – to let the public know about the horrible conditions we work in or to live with not having done anything to change them?" She also claims that there were flies flying around the intensive care unit, where she shot the video. The patient died one day after the video was released.

"The maggots were not the cause of the patient's death and, of course, we removed them from the wound," the hospital's spokesperson Dr. Adrian Stănculea told Romanian television station Antena 3. "The footage is real – I can't deny that. The patient had four or five larvae in the burn wounds on the side of his face. The wound was covered with dead tissue, which can't be washed easily – if you aren't careful, you could end up with an ear in your hand. Those areas were washed very delicately."

But Camelia Roiu claims there have been other cases of larvae infecting patients' wounds in the same unit. She has encouraged her colleagues to speak out but the response has been mixed. "Some of my colleagues think I should shut up but others are professionals. I appreciate that," said Roiu according to hotnews.ro. "Those who don't want to admit what's going on should remember that, as doctors, it is our duty to care for people."

In an interview with TV station Digi 24, the recently appointed Romanian Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu did not hesitate to accuse the hospital's management of negligence: "This is unacceptable. (...) surely someone could have taken some time out of their lunch break to put up a mosquito net," he said. He also said he hopes the doctor who filmed the incident cleaned the wound after putting her camera down.

The Romanian medical world has suffered a bunch of scandals recently. Less than a month ago, the same burn unit came under scrutiny when a patient died after she accidentally received a transfusion of the wrong blood type. In May 2016, an investigation showed that disinfectants used in most major hospitals' across Romania were being diluted to the point where they lost their effect. And in November 2015, 64 young people lost their lives in a fire in Bucharest's Colectiv club. An investigation by newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor revealed that the cause of some of those deaths were not the actual burns, but hospital infections.

The Spitalul de Arși intensive care unit was closed down after the larvae video was leaked. The Ministry of Health sent out a press release describing the measures the hospital will take to prevent this from happening again – like installing hand-sanitising stations at the entrance and exit of every ward, and hiring an outside firm to clean and disinfect the air conditioning. Phew.

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And so Democrats hoping that their national gathering would strike a contrast to a Republican convention marked by tension and doomsday rhetoric have so far been disappointed. Hordes of activists poured onto streets in sweltering heat Sunday and again Monday to protest Clinton's positions on everything from climate change to the TransPacific Partnership, and in particular, her stance toward cracking down on Wall Street banks. "Bernie or Bust" signs are everywhere in downtown Philadelphia; meanwhile, Clinton's supporters, if they're out here, have been keeping a pretty low profile.

It doesn't help that the old primary divisions were ripped open at the worst possible moment this weekend by leaked internal party emails, which show staff members of the Democratic National Committee expressing open hostility toward the Sanders campaign. The controversy has already forced Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to announce that she would resign from her post as party chairwoman at the end of the convention, but not before she was aggressively heckled at a breakfast for the Florida state delegation Monday morning. The news that Wasserman Schultz had been awarded a gig on the Clinton campaign just added more salt to the wound.

"It made a lot of people come out who weren't going to come out before," said Danielle Garda, a steel worker from Detroit who backs Sanders and is still holding out the faintest of hope that her guy could win the nomination when delegates vote this week. "Superdelegates could switch sides when they see she's going to crash and burn. Why pick the woman who does nothing but lie, and keeps getting caught in lies?"

Of course, the fact is that Clinton really does have the nomination locked up, and has for some time. In a recent speech endorsing his primary rival, Sanders went so far as to urge his supporters to get onboard with Clinton's White House bid—a message he is expected to repeat when he addresses the convention Monday night.

Party officials are also hoping that the marquee line-up of other convention speeches—including President Barack Obama and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren—will help unify the party, rallying Democrats around the common goal of defeating Donald Trump. And it helps that Sanders's campaign did manage to push the Democratic Party platform to the left on a number of issues—an accomplishment that will be highlighted when the full convention votes on the platform language Monday night.

The big question, though, is whether anyone who doesn't already support Clinton is still listening—or if those voters will be distracted by the overwhelming sense that the Democratic Party is in disarray.

Making matters more complicated for Democrats is the fact that Trump appears to be enjoying what talking head-types refer to as a "convention bounce"—a spike in the polls following his nomination as the Republican presidential candidate last week. As of Monday, he is now leading Clinton in three national surveys, and Democrats—notorious for wringing their hands at every shift in FiveThirtyEight probability numbers—are likely starting to lose their cool.

Among the activists swarming the streets of downtown Philadelphia, there doesn't seem to be a lot of concern about the possibility of a Trump presidency—or at least, not enough concern to force them into Clinton's camp. As they marched near the city hall Monday, demonstrators I spoke to said they planned on sticking around for the duration of the convention—and no one seemed willing to even consider the possibility of getting behind the former secretary of state. Even Sanders felt the wrath of his own fans Monday, when he was booed for telling supporters that "we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine."

"The glimmer of hope is that the superdelegates get their shit together and actually nominate the one candidate who can defeat the Big Bad Wolf who Trump supposedly is," said Ryan Schappell, a chemical worker from Baltimore who I spoke to in Philadelphia.

So for now, at least, the split appears to be real, the populist anger withering, and the rage at Clinton and her supporters inside the party apparatus enduring.

"I don't think I've experienced a presidential campaign like this one," Brad Miller, a former Democratic congressman from North Carolina, told me. "Or at least not since 1968, when I was a child. There's a real split in the Democratic Party."

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

17-year-old Dylan Voller strapped to a chair inside Don Dale. Image via

After horrific abuse of juveniles inside the Northern Territory's Don Dale Youth Detention Centre was revealed by ABC's Four Corners on Monday night, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced a royal commission. Footage obtained by the program shows underage detainees exposed to tear gas while trapped inside their cells, during an incident in 2014 that was described by media at the time as a "riot."

NT Chief Minister Adam Giles also announced Tuesday afternoon that the territory's Corrections Minister John Elferink had been sacked in the wake of the Four Corners report, which also revealed young boys inside Don Dale were held in solitary confinement for weeks at a time. Lawyers discovered that five young boys, who escaped the centre in 2014, were put into 24-hour isolation for between 15 and 17 days as punishment. According to the ABC, the cells had "no running water, little natural light, and were denied access to school and educational material."

The Chief Minister remained adamant neither he, Elferink, or other officials within government had seen the shocking footage before it aired last night. He alleged "there's been a culture of cover-up" within the NT prison system for a long time.