Get the VICE App on iOS and Android.

Last night, Black Market: Dispatches explored the contours of the massive illicit gas smuggling network running from Venezuela to Colombia. Attempts to measure the scale of this trade are mostly educated guesswork, but reports estimate that between 25,000 and 130,000 oil barrels worth of gas or crude can cross the border into Colombia every day—with the cumulative traffic valued at between $1.5 and $3 billion per year.

Over the border, Venezuelan smugglers pass their gas off to local distributors, who run it to pimpineros, informal retails named for the five-gallonpimpina jugs in which they sell their gas at a fraction of the Colombian market price. Selling dozens of pimpinas a day, these hawkers supply up to 15 percent of all the gas used in Colombia. This gargantuan black market employs well over ten thousand people on both sides of the border.

And that's just one (if perhaps the largest) element of Venezuela's total illicit gas trade, which is also vital to neighboring regions of Brazil, Guyana, and a few Caribbean islands. Given the size of this market, it feels like there should be some epic tale as to how it developed into a cornerstone of the regional economy. But in truth the whole sector was born of dirt-simple economic forces that snowballed with run-of- the-mill corruption, organized crime, and impunity.

While both Colombia and Venezuela produce and export oil, Venezuela has the world's largest crude reserves and is among the top producers in the world, miles ahead of Colombia's supply. This bounty and a long history of state subsidies long kept gas prices in Venezuela low. But over the last two decades, local officials essentially froze domestic gas prices at already low rates, drastically widening its price gap with its neighbors year-by-year. This subsidy system, which now costs the state about $15 billion a year, meant that (until a few months ago) locals could buy a liter of gas for $0.01. Going by the artificial official exchange rate (about a tenth of a cent to the dollar's black market value), the cheapest gas prices in the world—cheaper than water—while Colombians paid about $0.50.

"You worry about buying bananas," says Pedro Mario Burelli, an ex-board member of state oil firm Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and current a financial advisor. "You worry about milk. You worry about sending your kids to school. But gasoline is not an element in your budget."

There's always been smuggling across Venezuela's long and porous borders, so as long as there's been a price differential, there's likely been an illicit gas trade in the region. But as people realized they could fill up massive cars with gas for a few dollars, then drive it to the border and sell it for hundreds or thousands even (by using the unofficial exchange rates), smuggling expanded to the point that in 2014 it sucked up an estimated 16% of all the gas produced in Venezuelan refineries and sent over national borders. "It's almost impossible for that temptation not to occur once you have set a policy course where raising the price of gas is impossible," says Burelli.

Colombians picked up the trade on their end to make up for the scarcity of work in regions hit by the after-effects of border tensions and paramilitary instability. Their margins are smaller, but a single gas run can now net a distributor or seller up to $200. Similar factors are at play in often remote, infrastructurally-and-financially-constrained cross-border towns in other nations as well.

It's unclear how quickly this market escalated, but some say that it grew more organized on the Venezuelan side in the early 2000s as President Hugo Chavez radically altered PDVSA's structure and finances, reducing checks-and-balances and using its profits to fund his projects. Chavez, who also reportedly weakened the judiciary's independence, made it much easier for not just small smugglers and gangs, but officials as well to enrich themselves by abetting smuggling infrastructure and scale.

In addition to this, "Chavez, in his desire to buy the military, began to turn a blind eye to a lot of things that were happening in the military," claims Burelli. "It was a way to muddy up the entire system to neutralize dissidents and keep others on a short leash."

Meanwhile in Colombia, powerful organized criminal enterprises had sprung up over the years, likewise increasing the efficiency and scale of smuggling operations on their end of the border. "Smugglers occasionally get crude oil by perforating the pipelines on the Colombian side," says Adam Isacson, a policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America who visited a border region with substantial gas smuggling networks last month. "In Catatumbo, they have that do enormous environmental damage."

Smuggling in general spiked over the past couple of years, as an ongoing economic crisis in Venezuela has increased incentives for people to get involved in illicit trade—especially as the state expanded its subsidies to a wide swathe of new consumer products, which citizens decided to hawk for liquid assets and vital supplies more readily available in Colombia. The spread of smuggling as a means to acquire(by the state's own estimates) about 40% of all consumer goods in the nation finally prompted a crackdown from the regime of embattled Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

In recent years, Maduro has attempted to regulate gas sales and other goods in border regions, send more cheap gas to Colombia to blunt demand, and divert gas to alternative uses—and has arrested smugglers, busted purported crime rings, and seized illicit goods shipments. Most notoriously, after a purported attack on Venezuelan soldiers last year by Colombian paramilitary forces (who Maduro largely blames for the nation's problems), Venezuela unilaterally closed its border with Colombia, deploying 17,000 soldiers to control major checkpoints.

Colombia has likewise attempted to reign in—or, at least, control—its illicit gas trade. They've busted up a few alleged smuggling rings and instituted heavier fines and new jail time for traffickers caught with too many pimpinas. But they've also attempted to regularize the trade via cooperatives of illicit traders, intending to mainstream them into the official oil industry—a move that's been met with heavy resistance from unofficial illicit gas trade groups, that are organizing for the defense of their members against new laws and agitating against cooperatives.

Crackdowns and attempts at regulating goods on both sides of the border did lessen the flow of gas and knock some small-scale smugglers down. But they haven't really hurt the large, organized networks behind the trade, who've just adjusted to new bribes and routes. "However they're supplying the Colombian market," says Isacson, "they're still doing it fully. I think I saw only one functioning gas station, and that was far from the border. Everybody gets gas from pimpinas the price of illicit gas remains low. I was told that it only went up when protests on the Colombian side blockaded roads, making it scarcer."

Ultimately the price differential between Venezuela and its neighbors is just so steep that, even with a few more risks and roadblocks and even after the state's first hike in domestic gas prices in 20 years (from $0.01 to $0.60 per liter, which is still cheaper than Colombian gas using the black market exchange rate), illicit gas is still an alluring business. Black market entrepreneurs will find a way to bribe or weasel their way through absurd levels of crackdown on either side of the border. Perhaps the only way the market could dry up would be if Venezuela radically normalized its oil prices to reflect the global market value. But that's unlikely to happen, given how earth shaking the recent shift has been and how polarizing gas subsidies are in local politics.

"It's going to take the emergence of somebody with Chavez's charisma but with a straight head and set of principles who can sell some pretty tough medicine," says Burelli. Until then, this gigantic and peculiar black market in a vital yet oddly mundane commodity will likely hold steady or grow unabated.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Jenkem founder Ian Michna with Forrest Edwards. All photos courtesy Ian Michna.

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android.

Until fairly recently, skateboarding was an unviable career option. It was a hobby practiced mostly by people too young to vote and a few adults with zero ambitions for wealth or recognition beyond their city limits. It was fiercely loved by many but also not taken too seriously, and even the best skaters knew that the most they could hope for was fun and some free product until—at the latest—their early 30s. As a result, the skateboard media mirrored that attitude. Skate magazines were dumb as shit, printing anything the editors thought was funny or weird or gross or interesting, often regardless of whether or not it had anything to do with skateboarding.

In 2016 skateboarding is shifting into a more mainstream place. It was announced a couple weeks ago that it will be in the 2020 Olympics, contests with purses upward of $100,000 are a regular occurrence, and "skate coaches" are a thing. These changes aren't necessarily bad, but they are changes, and as is often the case, the media reflects the culture it covers, making the wonderful weirdness found in publications like Big Brother harder to come by these days. That's why outlets like Jenkem, a New York–based site founded in 2011 by Ian Michna, are more important now than ever.

Jenkem sits in that space on the Venn diagram where top-notch skating meets dick jokes meets legitimate skate criticism. Articles offering support to balding skateboarders sit next to explorations on gentrification's effect on skateboarding and investigations into the origins of the dreaded mall grab. In some ways, it feels like a throwback to those simpler days when we could all laugh at ourselves and know that, like most things, at its heart skateboarding is very, very stupid.

For some reason, Michna decided to print out his favorite articles from the last five years of the site and stick them in a literal book, a copy of which you can order here. I asked Michna some questions about that and the future of skateboard media.

VICE: Why would you put words and pictures from a website into a book in 2016?
Ian Michna: Because you can smell a book. You can rip pages out of it, write on it, show it to people, use it as a coaster on your coffee table, wipe your boogers on it... After five years of working on the website, there's no better feeling than creating something tangible. No interview or article or video I've published online has been as rewarding as opening the first box filled with copies of a 240-page hardcover book that myself and a team of friends and contributors dreamed up and made.

What made you want to get into the lucrative and glamorous world of skate journalism? What were you doing before this?
I never really planned to get into this, it kind of just happened. Jenkem started more as an outlet to vent my frustrations as a skate nerd and explore, interview, and touch base with the skaters and people I've always admired or looked up to. It was a hobby (that I secretly took kinda seriously), and it grew slowly, article to article, week to week, year to year. Eventually I found more people that believed in it and wanted to make it grow, and now I work with Alexis , and a bunch of amazing humans who are down for the cause and make this whole thing what it is today.

And obviously, it's not a big-money gig, I don't own a cool car or a house. I live with three roommates in Bed-Stuy, but skateboarding pays back in things that can't be quantified. I get the opportunity to meet so many different types of people, travel the world to cover skate contests, drink beer, bowl, skate, hang out, and document stuff with the people you've always looked up to. Working in skateboarding pays back in life experiences.

Skateboard media can often feel one-dimensional. At Jenkem, you have a knack for exploring stories with depth, stories that go beyond who dropped a new clip online or left one company for another. What are you trying to do here?
I guess what most attracted me to skating when I was a kid were the crazy personalities and the skate mythology around the culture. The stories behind the tricks and skaters you'd see in the videos. Did Jamie Thomas live as a homeless beach bum to become a pro skater? Did Rocco really try to motivate his riders with hookers and booze? How does Fred Gall not die? As a kid, I was always curious about stuff like that. All these pro skaters seemed like highly functioning lunatics in their own way. I love watching them skate, but always wondered what it was like to be in their world, to do these inhuman things on a skateboard and then party all night. So now I'm just trying to satiate my inner skate nerd by being around these people and reporting back via Jenkem on what the experiences are like.

Did you see this year's Dime Glory Challenge? That sort of goofy attitude that doesn't take itself too seriously is one of my favorite things about skating, and I think it was missing for a long time. Contests like that, and publications like yours, seem to be bringing a bit of that back. Is that part of a conscious effort?
Skate contests are 90 percent boring, but the Dime Glory Challenge has been such a refresher to that stale-contest format. That attitude was definitely missing for a while in skating, especially around 2007 through 2009, I think. At least on our part, it has definitely been a conscious effort to try and bring that fun attitude and outlook back into skating.

What would you say is the quintessential Jenkem story?
Uhh... I don't know if what we do is that well thought out. These questions are hard. It's more of a gut feeling. When we discuss stories here, we always try to find the "Jenkem way" of going about something, the jenky angle. It usually turns out to be the more work intensive, impractical, and foolish way, but that's us. I also think it's really important to balance the silly with the academic and to do it all with some sense of self-awareness. And if we can cram all of that into one piece somehow, that's the ideal.

Jenkem was one of the first outlets to do a feature on the transgender skater Hillary Thompson. As the intro to that piece admits, skateboarding hasn't always been the most LGBTQ-friendly community. Why do you think that is, and do you think those attitudes are changing?
I have to give credit where credit is due. KingShit was the first mag I know of to do something with Hillary. We tried to do our story about her in a much different way than them, but they were definitely the groundbreakers there.

Sadly, I don't think it's really all that surprising that skaters aren't on the forefront of embracing the LGBTQ community. Skaters love to think of themselves as an open-minded and experimental group of outsiders, but it's no secret that the skate industry is still a big boys club, made up mostly of a bunch of guys from working-class homes with relatively little formal education and even less exposure to culture outside of skating. And it doesn't help that a lot of people in the culture got into it when they were in middle school and haven't really had to mature much since then. I think it falls on the industry and the media to start shining a light on these topics to normalize them. It's pretty bad when the NFL has more openly gay male athletes than skateboarding does, but that's where we're at now. Pretty crazy.

What do you think about skateboarding becoming an Olympic sport in 2020? Is it the death knell for the culture as we know it or no big deal?
I once asked Pontus Alv (the head honcho of Polar Skate Co.) how he feels about skateboarding getting corporatized, and he had a really surprising response. It was something like, "Thank you, Monster. Thank you, Street League. You only make the underground grow stronger." And I happen to agree with him. On one hand, skateboarding the sport is gonna be wack as fuck, and you're gonna have soccer moms talking to you about Nyjah's gold medals and the best tricks to try to get into the 9 Club or whatever. You're gonna have skate-coach dads at the parks pushing their kids down vert ramps and yelling at them to man up and land that 1080. But, on the other hand, you're going to get a few kids who start with Nyjah and then stumble upon Baker 3 or Yeah Right! on YouTube, and maybe they discover the aspects of skating that got me into it way back when.

Skateboarding will never be just a sport, and most skaters know that. We won't let one competition that happens every four years hijack or define our culture. Skateboarders are too dedicated and too stubborn to let that happen. The Olympics, and everyone pushing for it, can try to cage us in in a million shiny new skateparks, try to bribe us with TV time and big-sponsor checks, but there's always going to be dirty skate crews mashing down the streets, ollieing over bums and onto cars, yelling at pedestrians and one another, destroying property, and loitering in parking lots and on curbs across the world.

What's next for Jenkem?
More physical editions of the mag, more merchandise, more stuff that you can hold, and more of the same old good shit on the website. But more seriously, buying a standing desk is next on the agenda for sure. Or maybe one of those bouncy balls you sit on? I'm trying to keep my legs alive here. My ollies are getting soggy from sitting all day.

Order a copy of Jenkem Vol 1 here. If you don't like books, look at their website.

Follow Jonathan Smith on Twitter.

This story appeared in the August issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Photographer Lola Paprocka grew up in Polish housing estates, where she developed an obsession with Brutalist architecture and what she calls its "concrete everything" aesthetic. This nostalgic affection is easy to see in her photos of Blokovi, a group of urban neighborhoods in Belgrade built in 1948 and now home to about 90,000 people. Her photos show the neighborhoods and their diverse residents, which include many painters, photographers, musicians, and sculptors, as she found them during her stay there.

Screenshots provided by Curve Digital

Read Part I here.

Every time I've played Hue, I've loved it a little more. Now, having had my hands on a pre-release (but very nearly final in this case) build of the game for a third time, it's firmly established as one of my favorite games of 2016—and it's not even properly out yet. It might not look like much, all bold colors and simple shapes, somewhere between Thomas Was Alone and Limbo, but in terms of how it plays, it's got the potential to match those titles for critical and, I think, commercial appeal.

The basic premise is that the world has been robbed of its color by a wicked doctor, and the player-controlled character, Hue, must collect shades to progress through the game, in search of his missing mother. How he does this is simple but brilliantly effective: Using a right-stick activated color wheel, you switch the background color—and whatever obstacles are the same color disappear from the foreground, allowing Hue to pass by as if they're not there at all. There is much more than simple blockages to get around: In what I've played so far, I've dodged boulders, gigantic skulls, and laser beams; I've navigated fast-moving platforms through one-fall-and-you're-dead passages where being able to change colors mid-jump is essential. It's a really intuitive system, but one that is adaptable to all manner of different challenges. (Color-blind players are also catered for, with symbols placed atop each color.)

The game is made by Henry Hoffman and Dan Da Rocha, under the umbrella of Fiddlesticks, and is published by London-based indie Curve Digital (The Swindle, OlliOlli, The Swapper). Already the recipient of a handful of indie expo awards—check out the full list at the game's official website—Hue comes out for Steam, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 at the end of August, with a Vita version following soon afterward. I last met up with Da Rocha and Hoffman in March, when Hoffman was about "70 percent happy with it". Now, I wanted to see what'd been changed, improved, refined to get the game release-ready—to learn a little something about the game-making process, and the importance of the final few weeks of development.

VICE: So that's the nearly finished version of the game, right there, that I've just played. What's changed since I last played it, in March?
Henry Hoffman: There's a ton of what I like to call "invisible stuff," that we do to make the game more playable, I guess. So, you know when you're overlapping a color now, and that prevents you bringing up the color wheel, to begin with that was a set width—if you were overlapping, you were overlapping. Now, we've changed it so that if you're falling that allowance will become slightly larger, to accommodate your falling speed, and it'll get smaller if you're running. There are variations there, to make the game easier. We've added a "ghost jump," so you have a small amount of time as you fall off a ledge to actually jump, which makes the platforming more forgiving.

Last time you played it, we had a lot of placeholder audio. We thought then that the writing was finished. Nope. It was definitely not ready. I must have rewritten it, the entire thing, 30 or 40 times since then. And I was rewriting and rewriting right up until we did the final voice recording, on that same morning.

But that comes about, I suppose, when you reach a state of Zen about how the game plays, which allows you to focus on stuff like the story that's being carried by it?
HH: Once the game was playable, from start to finish, it was able to see it as a whole. Before, it's very fragmented in your mind, and you're not sure how things will tie together. I found that I didn't much care about the "whole," back then—I was just focused on getting each segment to work well. And then, when it's suddenly done and you can see the broader picture, you're just like: "Shit." There was a lot of stuff that needed to be redone to make the game work as a complete experience. And we found that the story was quite good at the beginning, and OK at the end, but it didn't really develop characters as we'd like, and there wasn't any real emotional arc. I didn't think the story was convincing, but now we've rewritten it so that it does work within the framework of the game.

'Hue,' "coming soon" trailer (note that the release date is now a week later)

What I love about Hue is how it has this really endearing aesthetic, but it really is out to get you, to kill the boy at the center of the story—as you've seen when I've been playing it. It's a lot closer to something like Inside than static screens might imply. Did you have to dial back the difficulty at all, to make sure that people would see that "complete experience"?
HH: When we've been testing the game, it's not so much that the game is, or was, too hard, but it was definitely too punishing. Players thought the game was unfair, that they were losing and it wasn't their fault. So we've added things that allow a degree of contingency and make everything more forgiving. Those split seconds of generosity make it better for everyone. We've also done things like add an indicator, a little dot, on the color wheel—before, it was easier to accidentally select the wrong color. Now we're making it clear that if you get that wrong, it's definitely your fault, and you have no excuse.

So a lot of what's gone on is refining, really. But these are the improvements that make the game, right? Until it's perfect—unless these things can never actually be perfect?
HH: I don't think they can. There are bits of Hue that I know I'll never be happy with, not without a seven-year development cycle. But I'm coming to terms with that at the moment. I had to accept it on previous projects, but on those I'd be really enthusiastic at the beginning of them and then be desperate to see the back of it come the end. Here, this has happened in reverse. At the start, I felt bored, but as the game's matured, and I've realized that the mechanic really had legs, real enthusiasm took over. I could happily continue working on this for another couple of years—but I don't think we're allowed.

Well, I'll look out for the Hue: Definitive Edition in a couple of years.
HH: But seriously, just this morning, I was thinking about new puzzle ideas. They'll pop into my head when I'm on the Tube, or wherever. But you have to accept there's an end point to any game—but maybe, if it does well enough, we can do a second Hue. I know that we've not exhausted the possibilities of what we can do here. Even with the mechanics that are in the game now, there are so many variations that we haven't tapped into yet.

The game's on most platforms going. But what does an indie developer need to do to reach that many systems?
HH: So I've been through certification before on a project with Microsoft, and that process put the game back a whole year. It was totally unexpected; we'd never done it before, so we had no idea what we were doing. We weren't hitting any of the requirements, over and over, so that was a massively longwinded process. And that's part of the reason why we teamed up with Curve for this project, because they know all about the requirements for each platform, and they've got an in-house QA team with people in it that have actually worked at the platform holders before. So they know everything inside out.

I've been doing a lot of the porting myself—to Xbox, and to PlayStation, and everything. I'll run that past QA, and they immediately tell me what needs changing, for each platform. I think we've passed everything—I think we can say that? It was pretty painless, anyway. And we are bringing the game to the Vita, too. I know it's not a brilliantly supported console, but it's important for us to be on as many platforms as possible. The Vita's sort of become this little indie machine—and I think when you do release a game on Vita, there's this expectation of quality, and that your game will fulfill this indie ethos. And that's something that we strive to do. I don't know if we necessarily achieve it or not, but we try. It's a great little platform, really.

We did want to get the game on mobile, too, but it simply doesn't lend itself to touchscreen controls. It's just too platform-y. You need that right stick, too, which is why it couldn't really work on 3DS. For PC, it can work with mouse and keys—you can select from the color wheel with the mouse, and it actually has greater fidelity than the controller, but the controller setup is more intuitive. Touch controls were fine for the puzzles, as we found out because we did implement them, but they make the platforming impossible. We wanted to build the best levels with the mechanics we had, and once the game began to fully take shape, it was obvious that mobile wasn't going to work, so we just scrapped it.

What's Hue taught you about your own ability to make video games? What are the main lessons you take away from it and into the next project?
HH: I've learned more on this project than any other one I've done before, and one of the key things is downtime. I always assumed that downtime in video games—as in, the parts of a game where not a lot is happening—was padding, just empty corridors and stuff. But what I found is that when you're building level after level of increasing intensity, it becomes overwhelming. So what we do now is follow a really difficult puzzle with a bit of downtime, where you just jump through some simple corridors and receive a letter, which continues the story. Adding that downtime has made a massive difference to how enjoyable the game is, I think. That's something I never realized before.

I've learned a lot about narrative design, as I'd never really done any writing before this game. That was a whole new world. And through bringing the game to so many platforms, I now know how to structure my code, to make porting easy. So there's been a whole load of stuff.

Dan, do you want to add anything, at all?
Dan Da Rocha: I guess the project could have been managed better. We've learned a lot there, about getting the right people in to help us. We spent a bunch of time and resources on people who didn't work out for us. So getting the right people in from the beginning is going to be key on future projects. But, hopefully, if this game does well, it raises our visibility, and maybe we attract that higher level of talent.

Hue is released on August the 30. Find more information on the game's official website.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

Photo via Black Lives Matter Toronto Facebook

A month after Abdirahman Abdi died following a violent police altercation in Ottawa, Black Lives Matter is staging protests across the country in a call for justice for a man they say was "killed because he teetered on the dangerous intersections of Blackness, Somaliness, Islamophobia, and mental health."

Photo via Sarnia Police/Twitter

After what was a contender for worst party foul of all time, in which approximately 1,500 Americans accidentally crossed into Canada while drinking on floats in the St. Clair River, the mayor of Sarnia, Ontario is pretty unhappy that his city had to shoulder the cost of rescuing and cleaning up. According to CBC, the city spent just north of $8,000 in resources after the unsanctioned event called the Port Huron Float Down went wrong.

"I'm hoping that some common sense will spring out of this," Sarnia's mayor, Mike Bradley, told CBC. "We could have had a major tragedy on our hands."

The party started in Port Huron, Michigan and was supposed to end in Marysville, Michigan roughly 12 kilometres away, but due to high winds, attendees were swept into Canadian territory. Though the event is held annually, it usually ends with wasted people in need of rescue assistance, according to authorities. This year, that rescue effort ended with hundreds being pulled from the river by emergency crews and 19 bus trips across the US border to return (likely hungover) Americans to their homeland.

In the video above, a potentially intoxicated, smiling dude on a float says, "We're being towed back to the United States from Canada, and we had a little incident," before being interrupted by another potentially wasted dude grumbling nonsense.

"When you've got over 1,500 people, many of them over-refreshed... on your doorstep, you have to handle them in a manner that doesn't lead to any other issues," Bradley said.

All photos by the author

Comment sections can be hate-filled wastelands. Some posters share their racist, misogynistic, and demeaning thoughts behind the protection of aliases. When forced to use their real names, they believe they have a supportive audience, no one cares, or won't face any real consequences. A Canadian hacker I'm calling Danny takes joy in exposing and punishing these people.

Wow, last call already? Photo via Pixabay

Whenever I go to a club, I always find myself staring at the old man at the back of the room lurking in the shadows and trying to dance to whatever obnoxious song the DJ is playing. I don't know why, but I can't seem to tear my eyes away. I especially feel so embarrassed for all the 50 year old dudes trying to hit on 20 year olds. In my opinion, watching these guys trying to pick up women is more entertaining than actually being at a club. Or maybe I'm just not drunk enough when I go out.

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android

It's been 15 years since Naomi Watts introduced American audiences to the horror of grainy TV footage in The Ring and 11 years since the sequel, Ring 2, but the creepy videotape is back. The trailer for this fall's Rings just dropped, and, well, it's got everything you could ask for: hands reaching out of the TV, hair vomit, bugs, evil whispers, and more!

The Ring series is the American remake of the beloved Japanese Ringu horror franchise that spans six novels, eight films, TV shows, video games, and a manga. The American version is not quite the same juggernaut—having only produced two feature films and a short before this year's Rings—but it's still one of the scariest horror films of the new millennium and inspired plenty of jerky teens to whisper "seven days" to their friends over the phone.

The basic premise of the franchise is that there's an evil videotape that will kill you in seven days after you watch it. When the tape ends, your phone rings, and someone whispers "seven days." A week later, you get killed by a creepy wet ghost.

Now, the video has gone viral online, and there appears to be some kind of cult around it. Even worse, one woman discovers another movie within the movie, "that no one has ever seen before." Samara is then unleashed onto the world in a whole new way, expanding her murder spree beyond a few random VHS tape viewers—which is useful since no one owns VHS players anymore.

Rings will be released October 28, just in time for Hollywood's annual Halloween horror film drop.

Goodnight, sweet prince. Photo via McCains

UPDATE: I am saddened to tell you right here right now, the round, calorie-ridden original pizza pocket as we knew and loved it is gone. In its place will sit a pale simulacra. An imposter of the highest order. People might try to tell you otherwise, "hey it's the same we swear." But where our beloved pocket was round, this "thing" is oval with some sort of faux-grill marks. There's now some kind of "Harvest" version full of healthy shit. It now comes in a two pack not a four pack. So there you have it, the whole, sad truth. I am just a messenger folks, I mourn alongside you. Here is McCain's statement to VICE, in full:

Despite false social media reports to the contrary, McCain has no intention of discontinuing Canadians' beloved Pizza Pockets. We know how much Canadians love our Pizza Pockets. In fact, in the coming days consumers will see Pizza Pockets in a whole new way. With a new look but the same recipe and great flavours Pizza Pockets are now part of an exciting new snacking line up that we're calling McCain Marché. Packed with wholesome ingredients and irresistible flavours, McCain Marché snacks are oven-baked, never fried, and come in a variety of choices to satisfy more tastes and cravings. In addition to Pizza Pockets, the McCain Marché line-up includes: Harvest Pockets—the perfect balance of mouth-watering flavours and wholesome ingredients in a delicious wholegrain or rosemary sourdough pocket, available in Roasted Chicken Club, Chicken and Broccoli and Three Cheese and Spinach recipes; and Protein Pop'ables—bite-sized snacks, delivering 14 to 23 grams of protein per serving, available in Chicken Parmesan, Jamaican Beef and Italian Sausage varieties.

We created the recipes for McCain Marché inspired by the flavours we know Canadians love. For nearly 60 years, McCain has proudly made some of Canadians' favourite foods and we're committed to continue introducing exciting new products, like McCain Marché, to meet changing needs and tastes.

There comes, in each of our lives, a time when the innocence of childhood is violently snatched away from us permanently, often inexplicably. Maybe you experience it while rewatching your favourite childhood movie as an adult and realize the giants of your imagination are now little more than ants. Perhaps it's when you reconnect with your first crush and are bowled over by their sheer averageness no matter how hard you try to remember how magic they once were. For me that tragic day has finally arrived, as I, mere hours ago, learned that McCain Pizza Pockets are being discontinued in Canada. The news broke this afternoon on Twitter when a responsible business man named Gene Coleman of Coleman's Grocery in Newfoundland tweeted the following:

Tonight, on an all new episode of GAYCATION, hosts Ellen Page and Ian Daniel travel to Orlando, Florida, to talk to survivors of the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in June 2016.

The Orlando Special of GAYCATION airs Wednesday at 10 PM on VICELAND.

Photo by Flickr user Elvert Barnes

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Miranda v. Arizona, the landmark US Supreme Court case that required law enforcement officials to read you your rights upon every arrest. Since that case, any statement made to law enforcement is inadmissible if the defendant was not first informed of his or her Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights—the right against self-incrimination and the right to consult with an attorney before answering any questions.

Even if you've never been arrested, you've seen enough movies and television police procedurals to know the familiar refrain: You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you, and so on.

But for primarily Spanish-speaking people in the United States—which has become the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico—those rights can easily get lost in translation. In countless cases across the US, Spanish-speaking defendants have been read incorrect or mistranslated versions of their rights, where butchering words like "free" and "right" can cost someone their best shot in court.

Now that could all change: The American Bar Association (ABA), at its annual conference earlier this month, voted unanimously to create a uniform Spanish-language Miranda warning and urged law enforcement agencies to adopt such a warning for defendants who do not speak English well or at all.

"As we looked into it, we discovered that too often Miranda is mistranslated, and that shouldn't happen," Alexander Acosta, who chairs the ABA's Special Committee on Hispanic Legal Rights and Responsibilities, told VICE. "This is something that should be very straightforward."

Related: Why Do So Many People Confess to Crimes They Didn't Commit?

Every year, law enforcement across the country use Spanish-language Miranda warnings in 874,000 arrests, according to a report from the committee. In many of those instances, inaccurate translations that could potentially violate a person's civil rights can lead to excluded statements in court. But countless other incidents slip through the cracks, where a person did not understand their rights and their incriminating statements are used anyway.

"Even if there is a one-in-1,000 error rate, you can imagine how significant that would be nationally," Acosta said.

The problem is not uncommon: The committee's report lists dozens of instances of bad translations, including the use of Spanglish, and completely made-up Spanish words like "silento." (The Spanish word for silent is "silencio.") In other instances, words were found to be mistranslated, according to the ABA Hispanic committee's report: One Ohio case used the word for right-hand side, instead of a legal right. In a few different cases, defendants were told they had the right to "apuntar un abogado"—to "point at" a lawyer, rather than to appoint one.

In other situations, bad translations can lead to complete inaccuracy as to what rights the Fifth and Sixth Amendments even afford you. In Minnesota, a defendant was told of a right "not to say nothing." Others were told of a "right to answer questions."

One high-profile case in 2013 led to some clarification on the issue of Miranda translation. That case stemmed from a 2008 incident in which defendant Jeronimo Botello-Rosales and four others were arrested and charged with conspiracy to manufacture more than 1,000 marijuana plants. Botello was also charged with illegal possession of a firearm, according to court records.

Upon arrest, Botello-Rosales was read his rights, first in English, and then in Spanish. Officers said he waived those rights and proceeded to spout off a number of incriminating statements, including his alleged connection to a marijuana operation and about his immigration status, according to a brief.

Botello-Rosales's lawyer, Michael R. Levine, filed a motion to suppress his client's post-arrest statements, something not uncommon for such a case. Here, though, Levine had the court interpreter listen to the Spanish-language warning read by the arresting detective on the stand.

"He finished, and then I turned to the interpreter who was in the back, and I said, 'Well, how did it go?' And she said, 'Well, actually, he made a couple of mistakes,'" Levine told VICE. "And I immediately perked up and said, 'What do you mean mistakes?'"

It turned out that, in his warning, the detective garbled the translation and misinterpreted the word "free," as in "without payment." According to court documents, the detective informed Botello-Rosales, "If you don't have the money to pay for a lawyer, you have the right. One who is free could be given to you." But the version of "free" he used was the Spanish word "libre," which would be interpreted as "available," or "at liberty" to provide service. The Spanish word for "could" instead of "would" was also in dispute, as it is the government's obligation to provide a free attorney, not a choice.

The detective later admitted that he didn't always deliver the Miranda warnings the same way, but added that he always used the word "libre" in that way, according to court documents.

"He'd been doing it wrong for 25 years," Levine said. "He thought, honestly, that the word 'libre' in Spanish meant 'at no cost,' which it doesn't."

The district court nonetheless denied the motion to throw out his post-arrest statements, finding that Botello-Rosales probably understood the English Miranda warning. He pleaded guilty, on the condition that he could appeal the judge's order denying the motion to suppress.

On appeal, the Ninth Circuit panel reversed the lower court's decision. The panel's opinion effectively said that Miranda rights must be translated correctly in order for them to be valid—reciting them properly in English is not enough. The case was remanded, and Botello-Rosales took a plea deal for a lesser sentence, according to Levine.

"This is something that's given probably thousands and thousands of times every year, to a myriad of defendants, and there's no reason to assume that they're not getting it wrong," Levine told VICE.

That case and others illustrate the need for a standard of some kind. Once the ABA commission puts together an official translation with help from law enforcement experts, it will look to promulgate the translation out through state attorneys general and local bar associations, according to Acosta.

"I think at the end of the day, if the American Bar Association says, 'This is one that we have vetted and we support,' I think many law enforcement agencies would certainly use that," Acosta told VICE. "Because it provides them a safeguard."

Of course, even a consistent Spanish-language warning is not a cure-all solution. For example, while the warning may be uniform, the Spanish language itself is not. The committee is working on trying to address regional or dialectal differences in its implementation to help mitigate this. And of course, there's human error: In some cases cited by the commission, even printed-out Spanish-language Miranda cards contained errors.

But the ABA's vote this month was a promising first step that could lead to translations not just in Spanish, but ideally in other languages—and a decision that defendants, attorneys, and judges could benefit from. During remarks to the commission ahead of the vote, Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Bernice Donald talked about her stint as a federal judge and said she hopes that her time on the bench was not marred by mistranslations.

"We have an opportunity with the passage of this resolution to make certain that Miranda is more than words," Donald said, echoing the theme of this year's ABA conference. "I spent 15-and-a-half years as a judge on the United States District Court, where I heard cases, and we had one Spanish-language interpreter. I hope that we were not one of the courts that engaged in any of those mistranslations. But this is serious."

Follow Paul DeBenedetto on Twitter.

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

Photo by Jonathan Bachman / Stringer via Getty

US News

Trump Calls Clinton a Bigot
The Republican nominee called Hillary Clinton a "bigot" who doesn't care about minority voters. "She's going to do nothing for African Americans, she's going to do nothing for the Hispanics," he said. Trump was joined onstage by Nigel Farage, the right-wing British nationalist who helped lead the Brexit campaign.—NBC News

Wave of Heroin Overdoses Hits Cincinnati
Authorities in Ohio are on high alert after more than 50 overdoses took place in Cincinnati over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday. Only one of the overdoses was fatal. Police suspect a batch of heroin mixed with fentanyl, carfentanil, or rat poison could be to blame.—ABC News

Hackers Publish Nude Photos of Leslie Jones
Comedienne and actress Leslie Jones has been targeted by hackers who posted nude photographs and other personal information on her website. A photo of the dead Cincinnati Zoo gorilla Harambe appeared in an apparent racist insult. The star tweeted: "I want to hate so bad but I can't because I know it doesn't fix anything..."—VICE News

NYPD to Stop Releasing Cops' Records
The New York Police Department has reportedly decided to stop releasing records on police discipline to the public. The NYPD has cited a clause in a state civil rights law to backtrack on allowing access to personnel orders on police officers, an important way of tracking what happened in fatal shootings and other incidents.—New York Daily News

International News

Italy Earthquake Death Toll Rises
The death toll from the devastating earthquake in central Italy rose sharply overnight, to 247, after rescue teams struggled to find survivors under the rubble of ruined towns. Officials said the death toll was likely to climb further. At least 368 injured people had been taken to the hospital, according to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.—Reuters

Attack on University in Afghanistan Kills 12
An attack by gunmen on the American University in Kabul has left 12 people dead, including seven students. Two attackers were also shot dead by security forces ten hours after the siege began on Wednesday evening. Around 700 to 750 students were evacuated from the university, and 44 were wounded.—Al Jazeera

Columbia Finalizes Peace Deal with FARC Rebels
The Colombian government and the leftist FARC rebel group have reached a final peace agreement to end five decades of fighting. The two sides signed the deal in Cuba, and it will now be put to a referendum in October. "The Colombian people will decide if we are right," said lead FARC negotiator Ivan Marquez.—VICE News

French Burkini Ban Goes Before Court
Photos of police appearing to ask a veiled woman on a beach in Nice to remove her tunic have fueled fierce debate in France over a controversial "burkini ban." A bid by the Human Rights League to overturn the ban on religious clothing is due to come before France's highest administrative court today.—BBC News

Everything Else

Prince's Home Will Be Opened to the Public
Paisley Park in Minnesota will be made into a museum and opened for public tours this fall. "Fans from around the world will be able to experience Prince's world for the first time as we open the doors to this incredible place," said his sister Tyka Nelson.—VICE

Hope Solo Suspended for Insulting Sweden
US soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo has been suspended from the national team after she called the Swedish team a "bunch of cowards." The US lost to Sweden at the Olympics. Solo said she was "saddened" by the decision.—The Guardian

Hannity Gifts Trump $31 Million in Free Media
According to analysis by Media Matters, Fox News host Sean Hannity has given Donald Trump airtime worth more than $31 million in advertising value. In 2016 alone, Hannity has given Trump more than 13 hours of interview time.—Salon

The Sun's Nearest Star Has an Earth-Sized World
According to exciting research published in the journal Nature, the very closest star to our sun hosts an Earth-sized planet within its habitable zone. Dubbed Proxima b, the exoplanet is about 1.3 times the size of Earth.—Motherboard

House Prices Up, Homeownership Down
The median price of an existing home in the US hit $244,100 in July, up 5.3 percent from the same month last year. Meanwhile homeownership has tumbled to its lowest level in five decades as first-time buyers struggle to afford rising prices.—VICE News

Court Rules Cops Can't Stop Vehicles Based on Out-of-State Plates
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that it's unconstitutional for police to stop vehicles simply because they have out-of-state license plates. The ruling was based on a case in which cops in Kansas pulled over a man with a Colorado license plate partly because he was from a state "known to be home to medical marijuana dispensaries."—VICE News

NOT SAYING THIS GUY HAS TAKEN ANY DRUGS, but this is what gurning looks like (Screenshot via)

Gurning is an inescapable part of taking MDMA or ecstasy, whether you've been double-dropping since The Hacienda or you took your first Mitzi last weekend. Of course, some gurn worse than others, and a cursory nose around YouTube will reveal reams of videos of people afflicted with more extravagant facial contortions than you've probably ever seen in the flesh. Still: it affects all those who dabble.

But what causes it?

"Gurning is likely predominately a result of bruxism, which is prolonged jaw clenching," says Harry Sumnall, Professor in Substance Use at the Centre for Public Health. "And also trismus, which describes reduced mouth opening. This can lead to chewing motions and lateral movements of the teeth."

Bruxism is a problem that generally affects people when they're sleeping, and according to the NHS it can be attributed to increased stress or anxiety in 70 percent of cases. The most common symptom is the grinding of teeth, and in the worst cases can lead to premature tooth loss, or – in the the case of your very intense mate Eccie Ian – a face that looks like it's being suspended from a crane by the lower jaw.

"Orofacial effects are probably a result of a release of serotonin, and to a lesser extent dopamine and noradrenalin. Studies in rats have shown that the release of serotonin after MDMA inhibits protective jaw opening reflexes, which usually serve to prevent clenching and teeth grinding. When rats are administered multiple doses of MDMA, different neurotransmitter systems come into play and there is the further inhibitory effect of noradrenaline," says Sumnall.

Tangible evidence for this in relation to humans is scarce, and he says: "It's always difficult to extrapolate directly from rodent studies to human use of MDMA, but these studies are plausible and in keeping with what we know about bruxism in general."

So should we be wary of the negative effects of gurning/bruxism, beyond the possibility that a picture of our masticating face will end up on social media and be turned into a wildly circulated meme that will prevent us from ever gaining meaningful employment again?

"Although ecstasy gurning is not inherently harmful, dentists have expressed concern because people often report prolonged dry mouth due to reduced saliva secretion after taking it," says Sumnall, adding that this can last up to 48 hours. "Combine this with bruxism, which is reported by many users for up to 24 hours after taking the drug; dehydration from prolonged dancing; and the possible consumption of acidic fizzy drinks, and there is the potential for dental damage."

As well as the harm to your teeth, another common complaint following a night on the beans is jaw soreness. This will be tenderness in the temporomandibular joint (TMJ), the "hinge" that connects the jaw to the temporal bones of the skull, in front of each ear, and where any bruxism-related clenching will be focused.

When it comes to traditional pre-emptive treatments, there's little that would appeal to the average pill-taker, with the Bruxism Association recommending splints or mandibular advancement devices, AKA gum shields. Sadly, unless you're super into looking like you just wandered off a rugby pitch on a night out, neither of these are really an option.

Instead, it's the old trick that'll work the best: sugar-free chewing gum. Harry also says that "dentists have recommended the use of fluoride mouthwash to alleviate dry mouth rather than fizzy drinks", though whether anyone is going to bother smuggling a bottle of Colgate into a club with them is doubtful.

A trawl through the depths of Reddit will find many posters bestowing the virtues of magnesium pills. A lack of magnesium is often cited as a trigger for bruxism, and most bodies naturally lack it anyway, so the thinking goes that if you keep it in surplus it might stop you gurning. That said, there's little data out there to prove it.

READ: Can You Reverse the Horrible Long-Term Effects of Drugs with Exercise, Food and Vitamins?

I'm interested in the connection between drug strength and the severity of one's gurn. The UK is currently in the midst of an epidemic of industrial strength MDMA and ecstasy. Data from 2014 suggested the average pill had 108mg of MDMA, compared to the 80mg average of the early 90s. Fiona Measham from drugs harm reduction company The Loop tells me there's even "been pills up to 330mg", which, frankly, sound absolutely terrifying.

Unexpectedly, the answer turns out to be yes. Probably. "Effects are likely dose-related," says Sumnall. "So higher dose tablets might be more likely to lead to these , but so too would repeated dosing of lower strength tablets."

And what effect does your age have on your susceptibility to an intense gurn? Will a relatively experienced drug user their late twenties have to pack double the amount of Airwaves to a kid that's still in the florid embrace of a pill honeymoon?

"You might see a difference between a 21-year-old and a 50-year-old, but probably not between someone who's 21 and 35. However, younger users will tend to have more frequent patterns of use, so there might be greater likelihood of tolerance to some of the effects, whereas older people's use will tend to be sporadic and infrequent, so they may be more likely to experience these effects. Saying that, younger people will be more likely to use higher doses anyway, so it might counteract that."

Whatever your age: if you want to keep your gurn at bay, don't go to the party without your gum.

@Gobshout

More on VICE:

How Your Menstrual Cycle Can Affect Your Reaction to MDMA

UK: This Is What's Actually in Your Ecstasy

Why You Get 'Brain Zaps' After Taking MDMA, and How You Can Stop Them

Illustration by Sophie Castle

When you look back on memories, recent or distant, the most vivid ones are usually the bad stuff that happens to you. I suspect that humans are hardwired to remember the negative memories, perhaps through some basic evolutionary trait that focuses our brains on constant improvement, or at the very least avoiding painful things to survive. I bet you can name every single time you've had your heart broken. And I bet you can remember every time you were bullied at school, too, the nonsensical names you were called, the warm shame you felt. So it should be no surprise that the strongest memory I have, the one that comes back to me again and again, is of the time I nearly died in a car crash. Though they have faded and blurred with age, I still carry the physical and psychological scars around with me today.

Like most things that happen in your teens, it started with me being stoned in the passenger's side seat of a hatchback. My friend Tom was driving around 70mph as we bobbled down a muddy countryside road on our way back to school. We were late for class, so maybe that's why we were going so fast. Or maybe we were just 18 years old and thought driving fast was cool. I don't know. As we hurtled along, a duck flew into the windscreen. I remember very clearly seeing a green and grey smudge outline race across my vision. Tom must have seen it too, because he freaked the fuck out, jerked the wheel, locked the back tyres, and sent us swerving towards a tree.

I don't remember screaming, but apparently I was, because I was on the phone to my girlfriend at the time and she said she heard a lot of screaming. We hit the tree, with the passenger side taking the full force of it, breaking the door off its hinges. Another thing that I thought was cool when I was 18 was not wearing a seatbelt. I was catapulted out of the windscreen and went bouncing down the road like a skimmed stone.

You might imagine that everything went into slow-motion at this point, that I saw each bit of twinkling glass hovering next to my body as I rotated through the air like a roasting pig. But no. The next thing I knew, I was underneath the car. I'd somehow landed in front of its wheels as it continued to move, and my arms were being crushed.

It put me into a pretty bad way, physically. I had gravel embedded in all parts of my body. My left hand was ripped apart and, in shock, I tried to chew off bits of loose skin around the gash. My face and left arm had been torn open. The worst feeling came from half of my back being burnt to the third degree from road rash. I had been going so fast when I hit the road that the impact had literally burned all the skin off. (So next time you see Daniel Craig jump out of a speeding car onto concrete in a James Bond film and get up no bother, just know that it's fucking bullshit.) It was the first time I had cried from pure physical pain since I was 11.

Psychologically, the effects have been long-lasting. The car had been completely caved in on my side, beyond where the seat was, so if I had been wearing a seatbelt I would've either had no legs or I would have been straight dead. As a young man coming down from the hormonal high of my teens, I had been walking around with a shield of imperviousness, just like most young men do. I used to imagine how I'd win street fights in my head, or how I'd never get hurt from drunkenly climbing that scaffolding, but this crash changed all that. My invincibility had been shattered.

To this day, I don't feel entirely safe in a car, especially at any speed over 'your nan on the way to the Post Office'. I used to love bombing down roads with my friends, blaring horrible dubstep at full blast on the stereo. I didn't feel as if I was ever in danger, because high speeds and rubbish dance fads were normalised, regular. But the crash made every journey unpredictable to me.

I used to imagine how I'd win street fights in my head, or how I'd never get hurt from drunkenly climbing that scaffolding, but the crash changed all that

I didn't have any therapy after the accident. Maybe it was a male pride thing. I assumed that therapy wouldn't solve any of the problems I had. I was caught up in the physical healing process and I was lucky enough not to get significant flashbacks or nightmares, but what I can't shake, to this day, is a feeling of dread about what would have happened to my family had I been killed or paralysed. But apparently that's normal, and might never go away.

There is a passage in Dostoevsky's The Idiot in which the protagonist describes someone who has had a stay of execution at the last moment from a firing squad. It's drawn from Dostoevsky's own experience, after he was pardoned from execution by Tsar Nicholas I, at the last moment. The man facing the firing squad is able to recall to the last detail everything he saw in those five minutes waiting for death, in vivid and luminous colour and sharpness. But although he had escaped death, he ultimately went on to waste his life.

I remember the crash as if it happened half an hour ago, even though my memory is now so bad I can't even remember what beer I was drinking last Friday. Although I had been so close to death, I haven't been able to force myself to live every day as if it's my last, to not take life for granted. The intensity of the pain has dulled to a small dot in a horizon behind me, the scars have blurred, the manic routine of life has done the rest. I almost died, and that still pops up at me in different ways to this day. But ultimately, the saddest thing is that it hasn't made me a more grateful, #blessed person.

Although with the injury claims money, I went to Thailand for two weeks and got a terrible tattoo. But that's another story for another day.

@williamwasteman

More from VICE:

A Stiff Upper Lip Is Killing British Men

Being In a Coma Is Like One Lucid Dream

Dimitrij Is Dying and Writes About It All on His Blog

It took four years, but Frank Ocean turned the follow-up to Channel Orange, his masterful debut, into an entire weekend event. There was a 45-minute visual album, Endless, a five-minute "Nikes" single and music video, a 360-page Boys Don't Cry glossy zine, the founding of a label of the same name, the debut of four pop-up shops, and the launch of the game-changing 17-track album Blond(e). It was a full production. And buried in the mix, Frank seemed to give a reason for it all.

The first feature of the Boys Don't Cry zine is an interview with Frank's friend's mother, Rosie Watson, the maternal voice of wisdom behind Channel Orange's "Not Just Money" and Blond(e)'s "Be Yourself" interludes. Known for dispensing advice to the bevy of young men that surround her, including the likes of Ocean and Syd tha Kid, she divulges the last piece of advice she gave Frank face-to-face.

"Remember in life: You have to have both swagger and sway," Watson says. "'Having swagger is not enough in life. With swagger alone, you're convincing yourself that you have something that you really may not have, and that others don't see in you. Sway is knowing what to do with that swagger. Sway is influence. It's persuasion." In the context of this past weekend, Frank—a.k.a. "Lonny" to Auntie Watson—seems to have taken all of that advice to heart.

The modern version of turning the release of music into a massive, multimedia cultural event can be traced back most neatly to Kanye West.

If swagger was Ocean releasing Endless at the end of almost three weeks of video-streaming, sway is using that as the launching pad to establish his own record label. With Endless having fulfilled the New Orleans native's Def Jam contract, "Nikes," with its visual queerness and NSFW imagery, was the first release out of his newly independent status. Sway was convincing Apple of a new way to beat the sophomore slump by immediately launching a third album two days later and building out a coffee-table publication and opening shops to distribute them. Sway was taking a release and transforming it into a happening.

Frank Ocean isn't the only one to do this. The modern version of turning the release of music into a massive, multimedia cultural event can be traced back most neatly to Kanye West. With Yeezus, Ye premiered songs like "New Slaves" by visually projecting them onto buildings in cities like Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles. Swagger was the new music—sway was pushing people to 66 locations across the US at different times to experience it. He's continued the approach, hosting a massive listening party at Madison Square Garden for The Life of Pablo in conjunction with his latest Yeezy fashion collection. There, fans could pick up the latest issue of his zine. With the controversial "Famous" video, West hosted viewing parties in various cities with times and locations announced on Twitter. All happenings.

Frank Ocean. From the album cover of 'Blond(e).' Courtesy of Boys Don't Cry

But when it comes to visual albums, Beyoncé has no doubt become the queen. After a bit of a trial run with B'Day, where she recorded the B'Day Anthology Video Album featuring 13 music videos, she outdid herself with her self-titled studio project. While it had attracted a flood of rumors prior to the release, much like Ocean's project, there was no explicit promotion by Bey. Swagger was the release of the music while sway was the ability to sell an album, in totality at a premium price with no promotion in the age of 99-cent singles on iTunes. She followed it up with the Emmy-nominated Lemonade, which debuted on HBO. That happening spawned fan-hosted viewing parties and a flood of headlines. But why do so many artists feel the need to go to these lengths for success?

One reason is the constantly evolving nature of distribution. Album sales numbers have lost out to the sales of singles, and those have lost out to a focus on streaming. To recoup some of their monetary losses, artists have been entering into exclusives; Kanye, Bey, and Frank have all employed exclusives in previous deals.

For Lemonade, after the film was released to HBO exclusively, the accompanying album was a Tidal exclusive. Once sale of the album saw a wider release, it remained as a stream exclusively on Tidal. Kanye, too, used Tidal to exclusively stream Pablo while Frank partnered with Apple, who some say even underwrote the cost of his zine. Even Rihanna, who gifted her album through Samsung and turned the album wait into a literal cellphone game (another recent if unsuccessful happening), did some exclusive streaming with Tidal. Although exclusives limit distribution, they can allow artists to benefit monetarily—Tidal offers better revenue than other music streaming services—and build hype in a time of peak hype culture. All of which is an extension of why artists are forced to create happenings in the first place: It's hype all the way down.

In today's pop culture, 15 minutes of fame have been whittled down to a momentary blip on Twitter and the frenzied media cycle. Frank's own Endless release was overshadowed by the release of Blond(e)—mostly because it was a bigger happening. It includes not only a fully realized creative work but an experience that stays with fans. An experience to talk about, to Instagram and tweet about. That's what today's artists end up striving for to stay above the fray and make noise: Snapchat filters that are built around pop-up shops; Twitter moments constructed around visual-album releases. Happenings are how modern artists release music that makes enough noise to get the credit it deserves. It takes a little bit of swagger and a whole lot of sway.

Follow Mikelle Street on Twitter.

A man using his phone, perhaps to text a mistress, who could possibly say. (via Hillary Clark on Pixabay)

Tell you what, lads. Being a bastard prick is getting very difficult these days. Used to be you could just do a cat-call and a sexy misogynist whistle at a woman minding her own business with impunity. You could say "Oi! Juggsy! Lessaverlookatthemtitsgo'onferfackssayk!" at a lady moseying past you. Nowadays, it's much harder to achieve this level of harmless banter without being caught on someone's bloody Vine account or Periscope'd straight onto the Cuntry Living Facebook page. Say goodbye to your job and your life, fellow bloke, because it's over now.

I'm harkening this message because, according to the Sun, a man called Gerald Kitching has ladded himself into oblivion. The 40-year-old father-of-two (two massive bollocks, I mean) was attempting to court over 250 women that he'd met on various dating apps like Tinder and Bumble and Plenty of Fish and stuff. Kitching, who is South African and also goes by the name of Gerald Roussouw, is also a bit of a pickup artist, hosting a £120 workshop that includes "Getting over Approach Anxiety, Conversation skills, Keno, Sexual escalation, taking the women home and Dating." Call me a prude but sexual escalation sounds like someone is getting bottled.

After accidentally adding all of the women to a WhatsApp group, the ladies began to chide him en masse and complain about his love tactics, labelling them "bizarre" and "aggressive". He also claimed to be a sex therapist. No doubt he sees himself as some kind of sex addict (not a real thing).

But Mr. Kitching is not alone. Being a horrible scumbag is something many men do. But in a time where everything is being recorded constantly, and there are more machines and avenues than ever to allow your bastardry roam free, it's harder and harder to really be the best cunt you can be.

Every one of your social media accounts is at constant risk. The only thing between you and a lifetime of embarrassment is a password or code. Apple have tried to make things easier for the slimeball by introducing longer passcodes and even fingerprint recognition technology. But for the modern philanderer, this is not good enough. The spy in your life will know you like the back of their hand, and will likely also know that you have the memory of a dementia-riddled goldfish, and will make your passcode 000000 or 111111 or 123456 because you are incredibly stupid. Even apes can memorise at least six different numbers, and you can't even be bothered to do that to hide your insipid 'wot r u wearin x' texts? You deserve your punishment.

You can't even show people who don't want to see your penis your penis any more. In fact, you can't even show people who DO want to see your penis your penis any more. Remember when former EastEnders actor and murderer Leslie 'Dirty Den' Grantham did some naughty shit on webcam in 2004? That was way before net sex even became sophisticated. This poor man (who was convicted of murdering a taxi driver in West Germany in 1966) – all he wanted to do was suck on his finger dressed as Captain Hook and call Shane Ritchie "big-headed" while fondling his knob, but no. Feminazi leftist rag the Sun put a stop to all that.

Fast-forward to now, and even uberlads like our old friend Daniel O'Reilly AKA Dapper Laughs are feeling the sting of this exposure. Here is a man that wanted to entertain, to bring joy to people's lives and say things like 'clungemuff' or 'a piece of milky gash' or something in public in earshot of women and perhaps young girls, but this privilege was taken from him, when his show On the Pull was cancelled after he said an audience member was "gagging for a rape". Criminal stuff!

There was a time when men could be men. When Cary Grant-esque characters could roll down the highway with a scowl and a cigarette going from house to house of various paramours, leaving a crying baby and a crying wife at home. Now men go to parenting classes. They eat quinoa. They wear sandals to their child's sports day, and when their kid doesn't win the egg and spoon race they hug them instead of smashing a whisky tumbler on their heads. What happened?

It's time for blokes to fully regress. Throw your phones in the lakes, unplug your router, get off the bloody internet! If you're a real pick-up artist, Mr Gerald Kitching, so-called sex therapist and printer-paper magnate, then go an artistically pick some women up, instead of blanket-messaging 200 of them asking if they want to see your chode, you fucking weirdo.

@joe_bish

More from VICE:

We Asked People If Sexting Really Counts as Cheating

What It's Like to Expose Cheating Men and Women for a Living

How Sexting Is Changing Our Sex Lives IRL

No matter how advanced a society becomes, the idea of a future written in the stars continues to be potent for otherwise rational people.

In this episode of our web seriesThe Chosen Ones, host Gavin Haynes dives into the world of horoscope-obsessed astrologists based in his hometown of London. He puts himself in the hands of lunar fixers, Indian Vedic astrologers, birth-chart readers, and whoever writes horoscopes for the newspaper, to discover his personal destiny as a Scorpio.

Photo by Fabrizio Di Nucci/VICE News

This article originally appeared on VICE Italy

Early Wednesday morning, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit central Italy, destroying municipalities on the border between Umbria, Lazio, Marche, and Molise. The tremors were felt from Rimini to Naples and, at the time of writing, the death toll has risen to 241.

Along with the Fire Services, the Red Cross, and Civil Protection, the first units of emergency psychological services are also on site. These include volunteers from the SIPEM SoS Federazione (SIPEM standing for Italian Society of Emergency Psychology), which, for years, has dealt with bringing the first psychological aid to victims of disasters in Italy. SIPEM was there after the devastating 2009 earthquake in Aquila and after last June's train crash in Puglia in the South of Italy; 308 and 23 people lost their lives in those disasters, respectively.

We spoke to SIPEM's president, Dr. Cristiana Dentone, over the phone to learn what can happen psychologically to victims during and soon after a disaster, and what the volunteers—all psychologists and social workers—do to help.

VICE: Your people are on site now. When something like this happens, what's the first psychological relief you can give to victims?
Dr. Dentone: Right now we're in the impact phase, where we provide assistance to people gathering in medical centers, field hospitals, and other facilities. Our people are in the streets, too, offering support to anyone who might need it. In this phase it's very important not to forget to spend time supporting the rescuers, too —they're experiencing their own kind of trauma. In circumstances like this, rescuers are often also just locals—victims who, despite maybe having suffered some loss themselves, go out to help and save others.

What kind of trauma do victims of destructive earthquakes usually experience, in this phase?
Well, people are confronted with something they couldn't have imagined before. The experience of an earthquake is terrifying and it deeply undermines a sense of personal, inner security. That can lead to despair and fear, but there are also many people who can sustain themselves in some way—enough to help with the rescue. After that initial stage, other types of emotional reactions surface—anger, fear of going back home, or the fear of never getting your house back. That can affect direct victims, but also people who didn't lose anyone and don't have any injured friends or family.

Given that everyone in an event like this has their own story and their own individual loss, how do you relate to those individual needs?
For now, we just do what's needed in this emergency. We help to reunite people, and if someone has lost a loved one we support them when they go to identify the body. Of course, it's only later that we can provide a kind of personalized care and ensure that people have the tools and support to process the trauma, and to prevent that trauma leading to chronic mental illness.

What could be the long-term psychological effects of an event like this?
The most notable long-term effects are linked to post traumatic stress disorder. The field of emergency psychology emerged from research done with Vietnam veterans, and with victims after the Oklahoma City bombing. The research shows that the failure to process certain experiences can lead to continued emotional imbalance. That can happen very early after the initial trauma, and our immediate intervention is aimed specifically at preventing that.

You have worked following many different catastrophes, the latest being the train crash in Puglia. How does your work change depending on the situation?
Of course the type and number of people is different, and how many people from vulnerable groups have been affected—elderly people, chronically ill people, orphaned children. And generally the scale is bigger in the case of an earthquake than after an accident, so an initial problem to solve in an event like this is the managing of our resources.

How long do you work in an area that has been hit by a disaster?
Emergency psychology is named precisely that because it deals with emergencies. The main objective is to normalize the experience and make sure the communities are reactivated—which includes psychological health centers in the area. We come in to help at the most difficult time, because local psychological professionals can also be victims. How long we stay really depends on the scale of the disaster, and it's decided on together with healthcare facilities.

I can imagine that knowing that other Italian places hit by an earthquake are relatively quickly forgotten by the authorities—Aquila's old town, for example, is still in shambles after the 2009 earthquake—can have some psychological impact on the victims of this latest earthquake.
Seeing what is still going on in Aquila has a very, very negative impact on new victims, who know that this could happen here too. Of course, we're all professionals, but we're volunteers—we try to do everything we can to be useful after this disaster. But for the rest, we can only hope for the best, just like everyone else.

In this special episode of GAYCATION, hosts Ellen Page and Ian Daniel go to Orlando, Florida, in the wake of the shooting at Pulse nightclub that killed 49 people and injured 53 on June 12, 2016. Page and Daniel meet with survivors like Angel Santiago, who crawled to safety after being shot in the foot, and Eddie Letzer, who lived but lost two friends that night.

They also speak to Nancy Rosado, vice president of the nonprofit Misión Boricua, about how the Latin community, which makes up nearly a third of Greater Orlando, was specifically affected that night and how marginalized it still is.

Watch the full episode of GAYCATION: ORLANDO above.