This post originally appeared on the Trace.

The trace starts with a call or fax to the National Trace Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia. A police department has recovered a gun at a crime scene that was bought from a dealer that has since gone out of business. The inquiring officer turns to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to find out who purchased the weapon and when.

Federally licensed gun dealers are required to submit sales records to the ATF when they close up shop. The agency has acquired a massive library of such records: some 285 million, which it scans and digitizes. Those documents are saved into one of the 25 "data systems" that help the ATF source guns used in crimes.

The physical records, some 8,000 boxes, are then stashed away in the Trace Center building. Another 7,000 or so are kept in nine shipping containers outside. They are stored there to keep the floor inside from collapsing. The good news is that agents usually don't need to search the boxes by hand. The bad: The computerized system isn't much better.

The ATF's record-keeping system lacks certain basic functionalities standard to every other database created in the modern age. Despite its vast size, and importance to crime fighters, it is less sophisticated than an online card catalog maintained by a small town public library.

To perform a search, ATF investigators must find the specific index number of a former dealer, then search records chronologically for records of the exact gun they seek. They may review thousands of images in a search before they find the weapon they are looking for. That's because dealer records are required to be "non-searchable" under federal law. Keyword searches, or sorting by date or any other field, are strictly prohibited.

The government takes making gun records difficult to search quite seriously. A Government Accountability Office report released last month concluded that in two data systems, the ATF did not always comply with "restrictions prohibiting consolidation or centralization" of records. The GAO, which is tasked with making sure federal agencies follow the law, was essentially chiding the ATF for making it a bit easier for its hundreds of investigators to do their jobs.

Alarmed headlines from conservative publications followed. A Fox News pundit even falsely claimed the report had found that the ATF had "a list of every gun owner and every gun owned."

Congress imposes conflicting directives on the ATF. The agency is required to trace guns, but it must use inefficient procedures and obsolete technology. Lawmakers in effect tell the agency to do a job but badly.

At this point, you likely have some questions. We're here to help.

Why are there so many boxes of records anyway?
Until very recently, gun dealers were prohibited from using electronic, cloud-based computing systems unless the ATF granted them specific permission to do so. As a result, many records are on index cards, water-stained paper, or, in some instances, even toilet paper and napkins.

What happens when the ATF acquires a box of records?
Investigators scan and save them as digital image files. They are like online piles of paper, or PDFs, arranged by one field only.

How can a database be "non-searchable"?
Trick question: The system can't really be considered a database—there is a reason the ATF uses the phrase "data systems" instead. There is no ability to search the text of a file, and no effort is made to tag files with identifiers that could later be used to sort and search.

"We compare it to an electronic card catalog system, where records are digitally imaged, but not optimized for character recognition," ATF spokesman Corey Ray said.

Why is the ATF required to trace guns but with crappy technology?
The 1968 Gun Control Act gave the ATF authority to regulate federally licensed gun dealers. In 1978, the ATF tried to make dealers report most quarterly sales. The National Rifle Association and other groups attacked the plan and lobbied to kill the reporting requirement. Congress did as the gun lobby requested, blocking the quarterly report proposal and reducing the ATF's budget by $5 million, which happened to be the amount the agency had sought to update its computer capacity.

"From that point on, if you even said 'computer' at ATF headquarters, everybody ran and hid in a closet," said William Vizzard, a former ATF special agent and emeritus professor of criminal justice at California State University, Sacramento.

The war on searchable technology continued. In 1986, Congress enacted the Firearms Protection Act, which bans the ATF from creating a registry of guns, gun owners, or gun sales. Federal lawmakers have also put a rider barring the agency from "consolidation or centralization" of gun dealers' records in every spending bill affecting the agency from 1979 through 2011. At that point, Congress made the prohibition permanent, under law.

Why can't the ATF use technology ten-year-olds have in their phones?
First comes keyword searches, and the next thing you know, you have national gun registries. That, at least, is the rationale for the law that prevents the ATF from creating a searchable system. Gun rights groups argue that once the government has a list of firearms, it could use that list to confiscate weapons from private citizens.

How did the ATF skirt the rules meant to guard against searchability?
Many ATF traces are conducted on guns sold by active dealers. The ATF gives servers to these dealers, upon request, so that they can upload sales records. This saves both parties time: The ATF can conduct a trace without contacting a dealer in every instance, and the dealer doesn't have to spend time handling ATF requests.

When a dealer with a server goes out of business, it hands over that server to the ATF. Between 2000 and 2016, the ATF consolidated all the data from these defunct servers into one data system. But the GAO determined that the agency is not allowed to combine records in that fashion. Thus chastened, the ATF has deleted all 252 million records on the server.

What is the consequence of restricting the ATF's use of data?
The ATF processes a high number of trace requests: 372,992 last year alone. The agency says a trace takes on average four to seven business days to complete.

If it wasn't for the ban on consolidating data into a searchable system, the ATF could create a database that allowed investigators to immediately check the sales history of any gun used in a crime. The National Trace Center itself, and its 300-plus employees, likely would be obsolete if the ATF were permitted to create a modern, searchable database.

Still, the ATF claims the current system is adequate. "ATF considers the process in place efficient, especially when you consider that most urgent traces are completed within hours—if not minutes—of the request," Ray said.

But Vizzard, the former ATF special agent, says that by shackling the agency, Congress is hindering police investigations. "It's a 1950s record-keeping system in 2016," he said. "It's as though your bank still didn't have a computer."

A version of this article was originally published by the Trace, a nonprofit news organization covering guns in America. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Trace on Facebook or Twitter.

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The Okey Doke Tattoo Shop has been a staple of the Toronto tattoo community since tattooer Eric Newstead opened its doors back in 2012. It's probably most famous for its "Get What You Get" tattoo vending machine—essentially a more affordably priced tattoo, the design of which is determined by whatever pops out of the machine.

I first met tattooer Kyle Hollingdrake when it was only him and Newstead working out of Okey Doke's initial location at College and Ossington. Through our shared love of motorcycles and bad punk rock, we became fast friends. I was able to sit down with him recently to chat about the new shop—their second location suffered major fire damage from a neighbouring store that was accidently set ablaze—and find out the highs and lows of inking loads of people with tattoos they might not necessarily have chosen for themselves.

All photos courtesy of The Okey Doke Tattoo Shop

VICE: So, Get What You Get tattoos, how did you guys come up with it?
Kyle Hollingdrake: We didn't come up with it. I had heard a long time ago that this guy Mike Malone, who's an infamous or famous-type tat guy, apparently came up with this idea of a Get What You Get (GWYG) tattoo. I had heard the story where you put tattoo ideas in a box or there was a Wheel of Fortune style deal, but I wasn't sure the history other than that.

So the idea was handwritten?
Yeah, it was just written on a piece of paper or something. I never really heard the details, I only heard about it ages and ages ago.

Whisperings in the tat world...
Yeah, then years later, I did a guest spot at a tattoo shop called FAITH up in Santa Rosa, a little north of San Francisco. They did GWYG tattoos there—and I wanna say it was $50 or $60 bucks—you pulled a folded piece of paper randomly out of a box, and it just had an idea written on it of what the person got tattooed. Then the tattooer could do whatever the fuck they wanted based on what was written on the paper.

So what were some of the ideas written down?
It would just be standard shit like: "a skull," "a ship."

Nothing funny?
No, not really. I even did a few, but it was mostly pretty standard shit. Though, one of the tattooers who worked there told me the town was full of kids walking around with sleeves just full of GWYG tattoos. Because they were cheap, way cheaper than the minimum shop rate, which was like 80 bucks. I know that a lot of the tattooers were getting irritated because it was funny at first, but then these cheap skate kids had 30 of these little tiny tattoos that they had to draw and do all this work. So the shine of the whole thing had kind of worn off.

So when did you start doing it here?
When we opened the second Okey Doke, I had always wanted to do GWYG tattoos, but originally, the idea we had was a huge sheet of flash with tiny designs on it. Each one was going to have a number and you would roll three dice, and the corresponding number would go with the piece of flash. Then the idea evolved into using a vending machine. So we got it and filled it up with designs, and we were fuckin' ready to go from there.

How was it received here?
When we first started because we thought no one would go for it we charged $60. We thought maybe we would sell a couple because the idea was too crazy. But it was super fucking popular like every minute of our day. In the schedule, anything that wasn't booked with tattoos, doing $60 GWYG tattoos. I was doing like six or seven a day in between all of our tattoos.

So what were some of the drawings you guys were doing?
First we just picked a lot of stock standard stuff just so we could fill the machine, just shit that was off old sailor flash: roses, dagger hearts, and shit. But then later, as we got kind of bored with it, we had more fun. Like we did a lady 69-ing with a donkey, there were 4 of those in there...

OK, how many of those have you done?
We've done two of those.

Do you have any that stand out as your favourites?
There was lots of cool shit in there, things that were funny or just kind of entertained us. Eric put a design in there, and it said, "An Inch Will Do In A Pinch," and it was a picture of an inchworm wearing a sombrero. That one was awesome. All the dumbest shit you could think of. All of my favourite ones that didn't survive the fire were all memes like the Dat Boi Frog or the "You Mad Bro" face—those were awesome

I feel like there was the trend of tombstones around then?
We did a bunch of those, but that's still going strong.

READ MORE: The Dumbest Tattoos Canada's Top Artists Have Been Asked to Ink

I just remember there was one that said "who cares," and another tombstone that just said "you."
Haha yeah, totally! That one was good!

Has anyone ever turned down a design?
Like one or two people, and we've done hundreds of them.

Do you remember what they turned down?
Really pedestrian stuff: They wanted one thing specifically and they didn't get it, so they were bummed. I remember one time I did a rabbit on someone, like a really cute bunny, and the dude went through with it, but you could tell he was super bummed. I was like, Man there are so many worse things in there you could have gotten.

I guess if you're a super-hard dude.
I guess, but if the one thing keeping you from being deposed from your super-hard gang is a bunny tattoo, you're already fucked.

So let's talk about the new shop. You mentioned the fire that happened next door to the old Okey Doke.
Now we've opened The Okey Doke 3 at Dundas and Ossington here in Toronto mostly because we wanted to be closer to KFC so I could get my daily fix of Zingers.

Are there any plans to bring back the Get What You Get either with a new machine or the dice plan?
We'll bring it back for sure because it was so popular. We literally did hundreds and hundreds of those things. I feel like the last time someone tried to make an educated guess, it was for sure we'd done over 300 of them. What was cool about it in this post-reality TV show world, where everyone felt like their tattoos had to be super meaningful, is that I really liked the GWYG tattoos because it obviously can't be meaningful, but it can still be fun. Like, fuck your tragic story and your grandpa's initials, get this "You Mad Bro?" face or a woman 69-ing a donkey because that shit's fun.

Or even just a cute rabbit...
Yeah, daggers for sweet ladies and cute bunnies for gangsters... cuz like how else are you going to get those tattoos?

Look at Anna Haifisch's art and comics on her website and Twitter.

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On this episode of VICE Autobiographies, we sit down with Jackie Cruz, of Orange Is the New Black, to talk about her ascent as a Hollywood actress. She explains how surviving a tragic car accident at 17 not only reestablished her ties with her family, but forced her back into pursing a career in acting.

Illustration by Joey Alison Sayers

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By its very nature, pornography is a visual medium—despite the loose plot and mood music of some, at the end of the day, it's what's on the screen that gets you off. But what do the blind and visually impaired turn to when they want to buff the banana or flick the magic bean? As it stands, little—and considering there's an estimated 22.5 million Americans who report experiencing vision loss, the potential market for accessible pornography is huge.

This June, web pornography behemoth Pornhub launched a (NSFW, obviously) "described video" category to make a portion of their offerings accessible to visually impaired users. The site hired professional voice actors to record "audio description" tracks—a translation of visuals using precise, brief language—for 50 of the site's top-viewed videos. It may represent the largest and most comprehensive effort to date to make erotic materials available to the visually impaired, a field that has, until now, been sorely lacking quality content.

Since 2006, volunteers have recorded audio descriptions of pornographic videos and porn trailers on a website called Porn for the Blind, and while the amateur offerings there represent at least some sort of accessible erotica available for the visually impaired, the majority of the site's content is of poor quality. Clips there are solely audio description and lack audio from the actual pornography they describe, amounting to an "uncomfortable sounding voice talking to you about sex you can't hear," Cody Kirchner, a 27-year-old blind man, told VICE. "Not sexy at all."

In some, describers use clinical language, such as "vagina," "anus," and "ejaculate"—far from sensual. "One sample I listened to described a girl as having 'clearly augmented breasts,'" said Kirchner. "No one wants that kind of language in their porn."

Beyond Porn for the Blind, the Reddit community /r/gonewildaudio, created in 2012, represents a popular and higher-quality alternative for aural pornography; there, users write and perform pornographic scripts, akin to erotic radio plays, which are then shared with the community. Some feature multiple characters and involved plots, while others have sound effects and mood music, and a variety of genres—from science-fiction porn to BDSM—are represented.

Oliver Kennett, a blind writer from Bristol, England, prefers the narrative pornographic offerings of /r/gonewildaudio to other kinds of visually accessible porn. Especially for those who have always been blind, involved narratives are a welcome alternative to the simple physical descriptions one may find in other offerings. "For example, 'she takes her top off' can be quite true," he told VICE, "but unless one can actually visualize what a girl with her top off looks like, it's meaningless."

Pornhub's offerings represent a huge new entry in the field and are made possible through the company's philanthropic arm, Pornhub Cares. "The point of this initiative was to improve the experience for those who are visually impaired and also initiate a larger conversation with our user base on how to make our platform more accessible to all," Corey Price, Pornhub's vice president, told VICE.

And it's an important step forward. Porn is part of our shared culture, and the blind should absolutely have access to a Kim Kardashian sex tape, albeit with a breathy voice describing Ray J's schlong as "waving around impressively."

"I train audio describers around the world, and I always emphasize that there's no good reason why a person with a physical disability must also be culturally disabled," Dr. Joel Snyder, a veteran audio describer and director of the American Council of the Blind's Audio Description Project, emailed VICE. "People who are blind or have low vision have the right to experience anything their sighted peers can experience."

I solicited feedback on Pornhub's audio described clips from visually impaired people, and they expressed a positive reaction to their content. "The actors sounded like they were comfortable using four letter words, knew the kind of things people like to see in specific scenes, and accentuated them," said Kirchner.

But the offering is new, and some issues made themselves apparent, including audio volume. "The description is too loud compared to other, well, sounds in the video," Jakob Rosin, a visually impaired student and journalist, told VICE. "Where a straight, sighted man might look for large breasts or a big butt , a blind person might look for a girl who sounds sexy, or is a screamer, or begs for something to be done to her," said Kirchner. And if users are unable to hear their pornography over the description of it, they're going to have a bad experience.

"There are certain things—upping volume of original footage, toning down description in certain instances—that we will be mindful of while compiling new content," Price said, emphasizing the site is interested in opening a conversation about accessibility and tailoring their service to suit the needs of the visually impaired.

"I've only had the opportunity to experience snippets," wrote Snyder of Pornhub's audio described offering. "But I do note that the site's promotional material emphasizes 'professional voice talent.' That's fine—and can be an important part of the audio description process—but the writing, the language to be used, is far more critical. That's where the emphasis should be—audio description training is necessary to help AD writers/producers understand how to use as few words as possible in the most effective ways."

Indeed, the difficulty in making porn accessible to visually impaired people is that the fundamental point of porn is pleasure, not plot—it's style, not substance, that counts most when it comes to describing what's happening within it. Of course, users want to know if a blowjob is happening on-screen, but the most important aspect for them is not that it's described, it's how it's described. And robotic, clinical, or demure descriptions are bound to be a boner killer. "You can't merely state the facts of what's happening on-screen," said Rosin. "When you describe porn, the vocabulary and words you use become important. They need to be as sexy as the video. If you read your description, however juicily written, with the tone you'd read the latest Bloomberg economy reports, you'll lose viewers pretty quickly."

"It's like trying to verbalize a piece of art—anything evocative is lost in translation," said Kennett. Making porn accessible to the blind isn't simply about tacking on a few descriptions of what is happening; it's about making the whole audio descriptive experience of porn more erotic. And the field, as it stands, has a long way to go until it truly reaches its erotic potential.

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Conservative MP Kellie Leitch wants potential immigrants to be screened for their values. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

If I were to be screened for "Canadian values" I would probably fail the test.

I don't listen to the Tragically Hip. My interest in hockey is limited to when Vancouver is in the playoffs, and even then, it's tepid. I think ketchup chips are nasty. I've never watched the Trailer Park Boys. I hate camping. Honestly, this list could go on for a while.

Aside from feeling left out of the occasional water cooler conversation, this hasn't really been an issue for me. And if it comes up, I just blame my immigrant parents.

If Conservative MP—and hopeful party leader—Kellie Leitch has her way though, perhaps people like my parents won't even make it into Canada. In a survey her campaign sent out last week, she asked, "Should the Canadian government screen potential immigrants for anti-Canadian values as part of its normal screening for refugees and landed immigrants?" After the survey made headlines, Leitch doubled down, telling the CBC, "Screening potential immigrants for anti-Canadian values that include intolerance towards other religions, cultures and sexual orientations, violent and/or misogynist behaviour and/or a lack of acceptance of our Canadian tradition of personal and economic freedoms is a policy proposal that I feel very strongly about."

Hmm OK. Maybe Leitch has never heard of Steinbach, Manitoba, which held its first ever Pride parade in July that local Conservative politicians refused to attend. Or how about her own former leader Stephen Harper's proposal to ban the niqab during citizenship ceremonies—aka "intolerance towards other religions." As for "violent and/or misogynistic behavior," one in five female post-secondary students in Canada will be sexually assaulted. In fact, today a Federal Court judge is facing a hearing because he asked a sex assault complainant in a trial he was overseeing why she couldn't keep her knees together.

By the sounds of it, we're doing a great job promoting shitty values on our own. What is Leitch's recommendation? Should we deport all of those assholes out of Canada?

Just like its predecessor, the completely useless "barbaric practices hotline," (another one of Leitch's winning ideas), the values screening test exemplifies racist dogwhistle politics. It provides an opportunity to further villainize and otherize Muslims looking to gain entry into Canada as well as those who already live here. As fellow Conservative Rona Ambrose has pointed out, we already screen potential newcomers to check for criminal backgrounds.

The truth is, aside from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadians don't have to abide by any one set of shared values. That's kind of the whole point—we're all free to believe what we want, so long as we aren't harming other people.

Leitch's views aren't far off from those of Republican US presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who wants to see "extreme vetting" for new immigrants to determine if they share "Western liberal values" (values like religious tolerance that he himself, with his proposed ban on Muslims, clearly doesn't share.) And here's how that turned out:

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People protesting the construction on a four-state oil pipeline at a site in southern North Dakota gather at campground. AP Photo/James MacPherson

For days, images of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota lingered in Erica Ryan-Gagne's mind, and kept her awake at night.

On an all new episode of Black Market: Dispatches , we travel to Lebanon to talk to the young Syrian refugee women who are being trafficked into the sex trade under the guise of religion.

Black Market: Dispatches airs Tuesdays at 10 PM ET/PT on VICELAND.

Some millionaires protesting for some reason. Photo by Flickr user Caelie_Frampton

Good news, Vancouver! We're all millionaires. Or, at least a study released today found that we're Canada's first "city of millionaires" when you look at average net worth per household. Vancouverites' average net worth apparently reached $1,036,202 in 2015, up 7.1 percent from $883,049 in 2014.

The new WealthScapes report found the "average" Vancouver household got richer than everyone else in the country, thanks to a real estate boom that kindly divorced itself from reality last year. And meanwhile, cities with oil-based economies like Calgary, Edmonton and St. John's took a hit because of the downturn in oil prices that started in late 2014.

I called up the study's lead author Peter Miron to find out more about this "average" Vancouver household, and what it means for Canada's economy. He told me the "vast majority" of us aren't actually millionaires, thanks to wealth "polarization." Multi-millionaires, he says, are obviously pulling up that average, while a huge chunk of us struggle to keep afloat. But because real estate investment anticipates long-term growth, his team at Environics expect that overall rise in wealth to continue into 2016.

"When you think about real estate, it's got this wonderful attribute in that it's not really measuring wealth of today so much as it's describing future and anticipated wealth trends," Miron told VICE. "You don't take on the debt and costs if you don't expect those fortunes to pan out in the future."

When I ran these findings by economist Marc Lee, he didn't think "city of millionaires" describes what's really going on. "It doesn't resonate with the lived experience of a lot of people—if anything is causing more problems," Lee told VICE, adding "city of dumb luck" might be more fitting.

Read More: Is Canada Really Sitting on a Real Estate Bubble That's About to Burst?

Because housing values have gone up so quickly, property owners who got in a decade ago have reported on-paper gains higher than what they've earned over a 20-year career. "Most of the people who have made phenomenal gains aren't shrewd investors, they were just in the right place at the right time."

By Lee's estimation, the top 20 percent of wealthy people in the city own nearly 70 percent of the real estate market, while the bottom half essentially owns nothing. "That's arguably worse now because of the surging in the market," he said. "That has benefited those who are already in the market."

Miron's report also found Vancouver is taking on more debt than the rest of the country, which exposes the city to a few economic risks.

"The first risk is a severe downturn in the local economy that affects incomes," he told VICE. Miron says this is an unlikely scenario, since incomes have been going in the opposite direction, thanks to a growing export market.

The second risk is a real estate shock, likely caused by interest rates going up. Vancouver's real estate market is already showing signs of a slowdown. Sales dropped 26 percent in August following a new tax on offshore investment.

"The biggest worry is all of a sudden our expectations get reset," Miron told VICE. "If there's anticipation of a massive correction, that drives away buyers, and becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy."

According to the latest Bloomberg survey on Canadian housing attitudes, more people than ever are expecting the real estate market to take a hit in the coming months. Now 22.5 percent of Canadians are expecting prices to come down.

Lee says the young people who barely squeezed into the market by taking on massive amounts of debt will be the most vulnerable, should prices take a tumble. So maybe don't change Vancouver's welcome sign to "City of Millionaires" just yet.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Illustration by Stephanie Santillan

My debut novel, Arcade, came out this June. It tells the story of a man grappling with his sexuality and identity at an adult arcade.

Despite the appearance of a regular porn shop, an arcade's primary business isn't selling DVDs or sex toys. It's renting booths in which porn can be viewed and where people—mostly men—meet for anonymous sexual encounters, running the gamut from mutual masturbation to group sex and activities that even the most jaded would classify as "hardcore."

Some of the narrator's experiences in my novel were based on my own recollections of an arcade I hadn't visited in ages. It seemed a good time to refresh my perspective on a place I'd just spent years writing about, so I decided to seek out guys willing to talk about their experiences at arcades in the "Men Seeking Men" section of Craigslist.

Arcades are theme parks for cruising, where entrants pay for the possibility of getting laid. My older gay friends describe their ubiquity in the 1970s and 80s in Austin, where I live. They were a staple of urban enclaves across the country throughout those decades. I've long heard about how they once dotted the city, filling up with gay men when the bars closed at 2 AM. Like bathhouses, most seem to have disappeared with the AIDS crisis and the advent of the internet. Those that survived have been pushed to the outskirts of cities, ignored or unseen by anyone not looking for them.

My ad was titled "Ever go to the arcade/XXX bookstore?" and solicited stories from Austin men who used them. Replies flooded in nearly instantly and were far more unguarded than I could have anticipated.

A 64-year-old named "Mike" told me he goes to the arcade once or twice a month. Asked what he does there, he replied "Usually just me sucking a guy off or sucking him off then letting him fuck me. Wife has no interest in sex anymore."

"Joe," 42, and also married to a woman, said he goes to the arcade every 10 days or so. "I am looking for men to please," he wrote. "I get naked and wait on all fours. I am just trying to get used."

Despite their activities at the arcade, practically everyone who replied identified as "straight." This didn't come as a surprise—one gets the sense from these men that they have but momentarily excused themselves from their normal, closeted lives.

When it came time to set up in-person interviews, things got complicated. Most leads went cold when I tried to schedule a face-to-face. Even when I did find men willing to meet, exchanges often became focused on my "stats"—age, height, weight, and dick size. Those guys I avoided.

At last, a reasonable-sounding man agreed to meet for an interview. He emailed me the name of a park in the Austin suburb where he lived and told me precisely where to meet him in its sprawling grounds. When I arrived, I found that there was nothing but acres of soccer fields abutting a small parking lot next to a lavatory building.

When Jason arrived in a beat up work truck, I hesitated for a moment, then got into the cab with him. The smelly red Dodge was stuffed with papers, trash, and tools. The lot was empty, save for a few cars belonging to a group of soccer players kicking a ball 50 yards away.

Jason, a portrait of mildly grungy lower-middle-class heterosexuality, told me something right away that I hadn't grasped when setting up the meeting: The park's restroom was one of his favorite cruising spots.

"I met a couple guys here the other day," he said, raising a tattooed forearm to stroke his long goatee.

"Two of them?"

"Yeah, but there were regular people in the bathroom, so we went over to that parking lot." He pointed to another paved area across the field.

"What happened there?"

"They took turns sucking my dick."

"And you identify as bi, gay...?"

"Nah," he said, "I'd say I'm straight."

A bold statement. Still, it wasn't his sexuality that surprised me most. What I really couldn't get over was the setting. There was nothing about that placid park that suggested privacy from prying outsiders. The 20-somethings on the soccer field could have returned to their cars at any moment. There was certainly nothing about the environment that suggested sex.

Two months earlier, police had arrested five men in a sting at a park bathroom just 20 minutes from where we sat. I reassured myself that at least I had my notepad and list of questions as evidence for the moment a SWAT team swooped in.

Jason shifted in his seat to look at each passing car. At first I thought it was because he shared my anxiety, but no—he told me he was hoping someone would arrive who he could follow into the bathroom.

Suddenly, my fear shifted from being arrested to losing my sole interview prospect. I began firing off questions in a frenzy.

"How old are you?"

"35."

"And you're married?"

"Yeah, for about a year."

"How's your sex life with your wife?"

"Great. We fuck every day."

"Every day? Really?"

"Yeah, unless one of us falls asleep first."

"How often do you hook up with guys?"

"Couple of times a week, probably."

"Does your wife suspect anything?"

"Hell no. Why would she?"

"Do you think you have a stronger sex drive than other men?"

"Nah, I think most guys want to fuck a lot, and that's why they fuck around with other guys. Because it's easier than finding women."

"What kind of porn do you watch?"

"All kinds. Straight girls with big tits. Guys with big dicks fucking girls with big tits. I like really huge tits. If it's dudes, I like hairy guys with big cocks. Group stuff is good... and some trans porn..."

He began playing with his phone as he spoke—on a hookup app, I imagined, since the park had been a bust. Still distracted, he began talking, at last, about his experiences at arcades. He'd been to tons of them. "They're all over. Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas. They can be fun, too." He seemed not to have much else to say on the subject.

It struck me then that sex in restrooms or cars was really no different than sex in coin-operated booths. They're all the same, really, just odd spaces that some men—especially closeted men—carve out and claim for themselves in their hunger for contact, affection, or even just plain sex. People will try to tell you that cruising is a thing of the past, but especially for closeted and "discreet" gay men, the practice has never died. It has only moved, like the arcades themselves, to the outskirts of culture.

Suddenly, Jason hit on the thing he'd been searching for. "This is what I like," he said. He was searching for a video, not a partner. Straight porn. The woman's breasts appeared so immense that my strongest impression was that she must struggle with debilitating back pain.

"I see," I said.

Jason began to rub himself through his jeans. "Nobody's coming," he said, referring to the bathrooms that had remained vacant since our arrival.

Then he propped the phone on the console cup holder between us, and we watched in silence. After a moment, he undid his pants.

"You don't mind, do you?"

"No," I said. "But do you think it's safe here?"

"No one's coming," he repeated, pulling out his dick. "I was watching this one at home earlier."

"Oh," I said. "Nice."

"You can join, you know." This, he said lifting his chin in the direction of my lap.

"Thanks," I said, "but I'd better not."

Minutes later, in rhythm with the ejaculations of the terrifyingly well-endowed man on the screen, Jason lifted his T-shirt, groaned softly, and came on his stomach.

"Well," I said, "thanks for meeting with me."

"Wait," he said. "Shit. I got nothing to clean up with. Help me find something."

I glanced around the cab of his truck. There were empty Gatorade bottles at my feet, papers stuffed into the pocket of the door.

"Look in that tub," he said. "Hurry." He leaned back, trying to capture the runoff before it reached his pants.

In a plastic bin in the backseat, I discovered a handful of fast food napkins, which I thrust into his hands.

Sopping up the mess, Jason thanked me. "You got any more questions, you know how to reach me."

He was a nice guy, actually.

Awkwardly, we shook hands, and I exited his truck and got back into my own car, where I sanitized my hands with a travel-size bottle of Purell and wrote up my notes from the meeting. I was still sitting there as he reversed out of the lot and took off down the road.

Drew Nellins Smith's debut novel 'Arcade' is out now from Unnamed Press. Follow him on Twitter.

Cosby arriving at the courthouse last July. Photo by Gilbert Carrasquillo/Getty Images

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During a hearing on Tuesday, a Philadelphia judge set the trial date for Bill Cosby for June 5 for the alleged drugging and sexual assault of Andrea Constand, as reported by NBC News, among other outlets.

At the hearing, prosecutors filed a motion asking the judge for permission to call 13 of the nearly 50 women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault as witnesses. Though the 79-year-old comedian isn't being charged for any of the other incidents (many fall outside the statute of limitations), the prosecution wants to include the other women's testimonies as what's known as "prior bad acts" evidence.

Cosby's attorneys will fight to keep them from testifying and also filed motions asking the judge to keep a couple pieces of evidence from the courtroom: a call between Cosby and Constand's mother in which he admits to performing "digital penetration" on her daughter and giving her pills, which the mother secretly recorded, and a deposition that had Cosby admitting he gave women Quaaludes.

Cosby continues to maintain his innocence.

Read: Meet the People Who Still Defend Bill Cosby on the Internet

"The past is a foreign country" is a phrase LP Hartley chucked at the start of one of his books. Looking back at July 2016, it's easy to forget how that particular 31-day-long foreign country was annexed by people leaping in front of cars in an attempt to catch Pokémon.

Nowadays those who didn't live through that period rely on history books to tell them about the names, faces and trends that defined July 2016. Those books tell of how wildly the fallout of the Brexit vote was underestimated, and of President Trump's journey to the Oval Office. In popular culture you'll read names like Justin Bieber – as they were then known – and Drake, while the record books show that it was Portugal who won what turned out to be the last UEFA European Championships.

Little is said, now, of Pokémon Go, which in July 2016 reimagined a mid-1990s computer game as an app that allowed users to catch digital creatures in real locations, and was being used by tens of millions of users in the US alone within days of release. But with clear blue water between the 'then' and the 'now', we're able to examine its significance – and ponder how those events of July 2016 affected the way we live today.

"In a sense, we're always looking for something to believe in," suggests Dr Aaron Rosen, author of Art and Religion in the 21st Century, and Professor of Religious Thought at Rocky Mountain College, when he considers the Pokémon Go phenomenon. "There are so many periods of obsessional neurosis in history – from tulip mania in 1637, to the South Sea Bubble in the early 1700s, or even the Crusades – but what's interesting is how accelerated that was by July 2016."

One man who experienced the highs and lows of that acceleration was Sam Clark, who made headlines that month when became the first person to catch all UK Pokémon – and lost two stone in the process. He's still alive today, and speaks to VICE from Southampton.

"I put a video on YouTube when I'd caught them all," he recalls, "then the BBC got in touch. The phone didn't stop ringing for three days. It was like a super-hype. I ended up on CNN; Newsnight wanted to Skype me. NEWSNIGHT! The BBC story got four million hits. I had crime reporters asking for my advice about playing at night. I'd been around gaming all my life, and I'd never seen any game have that much attention. For three weeks every news story was Pokémon-related. 'Someone's trapped on the beach – it's because of Pokémon Go.' 'Someone fell off a cliff – Pokémon Go.' 'I've cooked a meal while playing Pokémon Go.'"

But with his fame Sam faced what he refers to as "the dark side": a wave of trolling and abuse so extreme that, in the end, he gifted his Pokémon Go account to his nine-year-old nephew. It was a decision he grew to regret, and by September 2016 he'd started a new account – and caught every Pokémon for a second time.

New Zealander Tom Currie also made international headlines in July 2016 when he quit his job to become a full-time Pokémon trainer. Back then he was a 24-year-old barista; now 24, he can still recall the day Pokémon Go arrived in his life. It was the 6th of July and he was staying with his father in Charleston, a very remote village on New Zealand's south island.

"There was barely any cellphone reception, so I'd have to go up the hill to get a signal," Tom reminisces. "I was out for a walk, collecting rocks because I was making a rock garden. When I got to the top of the hill I checked my phone." A friend had recommended Pokémon Go on Facebook – the social networking site that at that point still boasted over 1.7bn users. "I thought, that looks exciting," Tom remembers. "So I stood on the top of the hill for 30 minutes while it downloaded over my limited reception. I was in the middle of nowhere; there were no PokeStops or gyms. I popped an incense, and caught a couple of Pokémon."

The next day he quit his job. "I called up my employer and resigned over the phone," is how Tom remembers it. Did he explain why? "Absolutely not."

He spent almost two months traveling New Zealand, during which time he caught all but one Pokémon. By September 2016 he'd got a job with US company Gamer Sensei, giving gaming coaching via Skype, and become an ambassador for a Finnish solar backpack company. He'd also got his job back, but he insists that Pokémon Go improved his life. "I ran out of money after about a month," he remembers, "and wherever I went I was hosted by Pokémon trainers and friends. I was fed, sheltered, taken out and shown amazing places. I was shown the best hospitality I could possibly have asked for. I'm a much better person for it, and it made me want to become a better person, to repay all these people for their kindness."

He also saw his fair share of miracles. "I met a woman at the very bottom of New Zealand," he adds. "Her son had autism, and she said he was out walking more in the first day of Pokémon Go than he had in an entire year."

An almost miraculous turn of events, then – and Dr Aaron Rosen can indeed look back and see the game's spiritual significance. "There was a religious parallel," he explains. "Pokémon Go showed a desire we as humans had to find spiritual or virtual beings or entities out there in the world. It was very revealing. If you were to resurrect Emile Durkheim, who was writing in the late 19th and early 20th century about totemism, he would have LOVED this stuff."

There are so many periods of obsessional neurosis in history – from tulip mania in 1637, to the South Sea Bubble in the early 1700s, or even the Crusades – but what's interesting is how accelerated that was by July 2016.

Rosen brings up Stranger Things, whose first season also debuted back in July 2016. Like Pokémon Go it played on nostalgia and, at the heart of its narrative, also featured an entire community searching for something — in that case a missing child. But, as Rose recalls, that wasn't the only missing persons search going on that month. During July 2016, he received an AMBER alert on his phone. In the US, these alerts were blasted into phones and across airwaves in the event of a public emergency, in this instance, a child abduction.

"I watched people looking at their phones and going, 'oh, it's just another AMBER alert, it's just another child that's gone missing'," he recalls. "And at the same time people were out there looking for Pokémon! People were willing to look for something random that explicitly has no value, and at the same time there was something else on your phone asking you to find someone who was completely real, giving you tangible clues like license plate numbers. But if you asked people to use their phones to look for missing people, the reaction was, 'ooh, I don't know, that sounds like a lot of work'. In a way Pokémon Go was perfectly crafted to appeal to all the instincts of the 21st century: while it's true that we might always be looking for something to believing, we're also looking for something meaningless to believe in."

In any case, the phenomenal early success of Pokémon Go couldn't last forever. By 29th of July, technology website Techcrunch had run a story headlined, rather ominously, "Pokémon Go's paying user base has reached a plateau".

Credit: Pokémon

"There's no single reason trends collapse," explains Eric Shapiro, senior consultant at cultural insight specialists Crowd DNA. "But inability to adapt to mainstream exposure is a common theme." As an example he mentions the 2013 Ghetto Gothic scene, and its "shark jump" moment when Rihanna, at that point still best known as a singer, co-opted it for a video. "Because the internet sped up the exposure side of things by 2016, the struggle to adapt was harder. Countless trends had risen and fallen previously, but in 2016 the speed of that process had become weeks or even days, as opposed to years."

With specific reference to Pokémon Go, he adds: "The Pokémon Go craze was fuelled by online speculation and a degree of exclusivity, with some countries able get access before others; the game itself was also initially vague and not particularly transparent, which means those 'in the know' were at an advantage. But as it gained traction, that underground, community factor became vague, lost and overblown. The games makers weren't able to adapt the platform quickly enough to satisfy the experienced users, while new users struggled to cope with being so far behind, and didn't want to put in the time to become competitive in the games battling feature."

Sam Clark, who during July 2016 had become something of a local celebrity in Southampton, remembers that when the media interest subsided, "it was like having climbed up Everest, then jumping off the end."

"Still," he adds, "I lost over three stone playing a game on my phone. That can't be a bad thing, can it?"

From the vantage point of today, the Pokémon Go hysteria of July 2016 might sound ridiculous or hard to imagine; to many the notion will seem as quaint, and as antiquated, as that of plugging a set of headphones into a mobile phone. We live different lives now. But if the past is indeed a foreign country and – and if you'll permit a splicing of over-used literary references – there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever being trampled by those in search of digital monsters.

More on VICE:

How 'Instagram House' Became the Soundtrack to the Lives of British Millennials

How AOL Instant Messenger Shaped the Sexuality of a Generation

I Played 'Pokémon Go' Without a Phone

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

Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

US News

Trump Wants Big Increase in Defense Spending
Donald Trump will call for a substantial increase in defense spending when he outlines his national security policy Wednesday. Trump officials said he wants to eliminate sequester limits on the defense budget. Both Trump and Hillary Clinton will talk on national security at a MSNBC "commander-in-chief" forum this evening.—CNN

Zika Funding Bill Fails in Congress
Returning after a seven-week recess, Congress failed to move forward a bill that would pay for a federal response to the Zika virus. Both parties blamed each other after they failed to get the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate. Florida health officials, meanwhile, announced seven more homegrown cases of Zika.—NBC News

Apple Set to Reveal iPhone 7
Apple is holding its annual launch event in San Francisco today, where the new iPhone 7 is expected to be revealed. Tech experts believe the upgrade could bring a dual-lens camera for improved picture quality, and reports suggest the new iPhone may not have a headphone jack.—USA Today

Police Probe Death of Ferguson Activist
Authorities in Missouri are investigating the death of Darren Seals, 29, one of the leaders of the Ferguson protests of 2014. Seals's body was found inside a burned car on Tuesday, and he had also suffered gunshot wounds. Police announced they are investigating the death as a homicide.—CBS News

International News

Syrian Government Blamed for Chlorine Gas Attack
Syrian government forces have been accused of dropping barrel bombs containing chlorine from helicopters on a suburb of Aleppo, injuring 80 people. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 70 people in the al Sukkari area were left choking and needed hospital treatment.—Al Jazeera

Yemen Air Strikes Kill 13 Al Qaeda Fighters
The US military says it has killed 13 members of the al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula group in airstrikes in Yemen. Three air strikes were carried out between August 24 and September 4 in the Shabwah governorate. US Central Command says the strikes "put consistent pressure on the terrorist network."— BBC News

Austria Threatens to Sue Hungary over Migrants
Austria's interior minister said his country would take Hungary to court if it refuses to take back migrants who, under European Union rules, are meant to seek asylum in the first EU state where they set foot. Wolfgang Sobotka said Austria "must sue" if Hungary does not accept the migrants or introduce a quota.—Reuters

'Pokémon Go' Accused of Blasphemy in Indian Court
Gujarat state's high court has been urged to ban the game Pokémon Go because images of eggs in places of worship were "blasphemous" to Hindus and Jains. The court has asked the makers Niantic Inc. to respond to the charges, after a single petitioner, Alay Dave, filed a public interest litigation.—The Times of India

Everything Else

Most Humpback Whales No Longer Endangered
Federal authorities are removing most humpback whales off the endangered species list. The National Marine Fisheries Service said nine of the 14 distinct humpback populations have recovered enough to warrant being removed.—AP

Spotify Reveals Drake Is Most Streamed
Spotify has announced its most streamed songs of summer 2016. Drake tops the global chart with "One Dance," followed by Rihanna's team-up with Calvin Harris, "This Is What You Came For," while Sia's "Cheap Thrills" made third place.—TIME

More Clown Sightings in North Carolina
Police say a person dressed as a clown disappeared into the woods after being chased by a man wielding a machete. Tuesday's incident is the third sighting in two days in Greensboro, North Carolina.—VICE

ITT Shuts Down Vocational Colleges
ITT Educational Services is shutting down its network of for-profit vocational campuses after the government barred enrollment of students on federal financial aid. ITT was accused of misleading students about job prospects after graduation.—VICE News

New NSA Documents Reveal Surveillance Efforts
Newly released NSA documents from the early days of the Iraq war show the agency wanted "unprecedented degrees of cooperation" to build its surveillance network. The documents, called WARgrams, were circulated in 2003 and 2004.— Motherboard

Justin Bieber Sand Sculpture Kicked In
New York State Police are searching for the person who damaged part of the New York State Fair sand sculpture depicting Justin Bieber's face. The Steve Martin and Bob Dylan faces were left alone, but Bieber's mug got pretty much destroyed.— Noisey

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Phyllis Schafly campaigning against the ERA in Kansas City in 1976. Photo by Bill Pierce/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

Phyllis Schlafly was a woman ahead of her time—and one, eventually, left behind by it. The anti-feminist icon died at her home on Monday at the age of 92 after decades of work as a right-wing activist. Depending on who you asked, she was either "the first lady of the conservative movement" or feminism's "Aunt Tom." Her greatest political feat was toppling the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the content of which was relatively benign: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Still, she managed to convince the American Political Establishment that the ERA would usher in an anarcho-gender revolution, undermining American values and throwing the country into chaos. But for all of Schlafly's successes—achievements enabled by the feminists who went before her and those who surrounded her—it turned out that the very horrors she warned would come to pass if women achieved equal rights have mostly come to fruition. She failed. And the world is a better place for it.

Schlafly liked to play the part of a housewife, but in reality, she was one of the most ruthless and ambitious women in America. She organized conservative white women who like her were concerned with the changing social mores of the 1960s and 70s—which meant not just feminism but the civil rights movement and moves toward racial equality—to oppose the ERA, a proposal that was overwhelmingly popular and, feminists thought, a foregone conclusion. By 1972, it had passed both houses of Congress, and in the next few years made its way through 35 state legislatures. Already incensed at a Supreme Court decision outlawing mandatory prayer in public schools, Schlafly decided that enshrining equal rights for women into law was simply a step too far away from America's righteously patriarchal past. She rallied her troops, mostly churchgoing Christian mothers like herself, and the ERA turned controversial. Several states rescinded their approval of the amendment, and by 1982, the ERA was dead, having ultimately fallen three states short of the number needed for ratification.

While Schlafly claimed she was advocating for all women, she was really pushing to retain the privileges afforded to affluent whites.

Schlafly's group, founded just after Congress passed the ERA, was called STOP ERA, which stood for "Stop Taking Our Privileges," and their arguments were as contradictory as they were fear-mongering: Women already had equal rights ("Women already have all the rights that men have," Schlafly told the AP in 2007), and the ERA would also undermine the special rights afforded to women. In Schlafly's telling, American women were the luckiest gals in the world, financially supported by their husbands and finding dignity in housework and childcare. The ERA, which put women on equal footing with men, threatened to destabilize that arrangement. Schlafly warned that it could mean the mother wouldn't be almost automatically granted custody of the children in divorce cases, nor awarded alimony. The military would have to allow women in combat. Who knew what would come next: We might have to allow marriage between homosexuals, taxpayer-funded abortions, even gender-neutral bathrooms.

While Schlafly claimed she was advocating for all women, she was really pushing to retain the privileges afforded to affluent whites. Even in the 1960s and 70s, African American and working-class women couldn't afford to stay home with their children at the same rates as their whiter, wealthier peers. In 1970, one in ten American children, and more than one in three African American children, were born to single mothers. For women outside of Schlafly's exclusive demographic, STOP ERA's promise to halt the taking of their privileges was an empty one—those privileges weren't theirs to begin with, and the ERA could have afforded a quicker route to equal pay and better treatment at work.

For women like Schlafly, though, the benefits of wealthy white womanhood came in spades. She was able to have the best of both worlds: A gauzy image of herself as a traditional mother, and a lucrative and demanding career that made use of her intellectual prowess and brought her a deeper sense of meaning and purpose (even if her purpose was making life harder for other women). Schlafly had six children after marrying a wealthy man a decade and a half her senior. She went to law school while her children were still at home and kept up an arduous professional schedule, writing and editing more than a dozen books, speaking around the country, appearing on TV or radio nearly daily at the height of her anti-ERA work, sending out a political newsletter, and running her organization, which became the Eagle Forum. To make herself sound appropriately domestic, she referred to her political career as a "hobby."

Schlafly, like many driven, intelligent, and ambitious women of her time, came into her professional life at a particularly auspicious time, when women's freedoms, slowly expanding in the postwar years, exploded in the 60s and 70s. Schlafly's stardom was enabled by a changing world, even as she set to work trying to change it back.

She was able to go to law school because feminists had pushed to open up institutions of higher education to women, and insisted that one could be a good mother and a good student or employee. She was able to make a career out of opposing the ERA because feminists made women's liberation a political issue, and insisted that women's voices be heard in politics. She was even able to run for office in 1952 at the age of just 27—after the Republican Party asked her husband to run first—because the feminist activists who came before her made it possible for women to run and serve (she won in the primary but lost in the general).

She remained pigeonholed by the right, useful when it came to the woman thing but otherwise something of a nuisance.

But Schlafly was still just a woman in an era where women were not accorded much respect in politics—a standard she wanted to preserve for others, while breaking for herself. She remained heavily influential in Republican politics, but often behind closed doors. She set a standard for right-wing anti-feminism, and GOP leaders quickly realized it was more effective, and made for better optics, to put women at the front of efforts to curtail women's rights. In that sense, she was a precursor to right-wing women who claim the mantle of tradition and oppose virtually any measure to make life better for women who are not themselves, while single-mindedly pursuing their own careers and political futures: Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham. But she remained pigeonholed by the right, useful when it came to the woman thing but otherwise something of a nuisance. Which is perhaps fair: Even at the height of her influence, she was a bit loopy, hyper-paranoid about Communist encroachment, and convinced that a small group of media elites and bankers ran the world.

The anti-feminism espoused by Schlafly and the modern GOP she helped shape didn't end with the defeat of the ERA. Schlafly claimed sexual harassment wasn't an issue at work, because "virtuous" women would avoid it. She said there was no such thing as marital rape—by getting married, women simply consented to sex anytime their husbands wanted it. She claimed sex education in school is "like in-home sales parties for abortions." She always managed to make waves, and while she never repeated the legislative success of her anti-ERA campaign, she did her part to enshrine hostility to gay rights and feminism into the GOP's identity.

Schlafly won that battle against the ERA, but she and her cohort lost the war. Same-sex marriage is now legal. Child custody decisions are made by evaluating the best interest of the child, not privileging the mother. No-fault divorce is the norm. Most women work outside the home, even when they have children. Many schools (if not enough) teach comprehensive sex ed. Women outnumber men on college campuses and in many graduate schools. A federal law bars federal Medicaid funds from covering abortion services, but many state Medicaid programs do cover the procedure. Raping your wife is illegal in all 50 states. Paid parental leave and subsidized childcare for working parents are important campaign issues in the current presidential election, and have even been endorsed (in theory) by Donald Trump. Sexual harassment is increasingly taken seriously in workplaces and in the courts. Women still don't make as much money as men, but the gender pay gap is narrower, and women are increasing their share of leadership roles across industries. Businesses and institutions are gradually offering gender-neutral bathrooms, in part to adequately serve a transgender population who may be uncomfortable using sex-segregated units. Even the president has taken a stand for the rights of transgender kids to be accommodated at school.

Schlafly's dystopian feminist landscape has more or less come into being, and feminists are continuing to make it even more expansive. It looks marvelous. I'm glad she got to live to see it.

Jill Filipovic is a journalist and author of the forthcoming The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness.

Photo from inside of Fabric. Photo by Fabric via Wikipedia.

A couple of years ago, I was walking around the South Bank of London in the early hours of the morning. It was at a time when my life was dipping in and out of being unbearable and unliveable because of a heavy affliction of depression. It was balmy and quiet, and I just went from bench to bench along the River Thames, sitting for a few minutes and getting up and walking on. As I approached a wall to look down at the tide, I heard two excited voices bounding behind me. It was two Irish guys, no older than 20, speed-walking past me but then stopping a few metres down to have a cigarette, finish their cans and watch the water. They were talking about their night so far with such fervour and bright-eyed glee that it cheered my dilapidated, gloomy brain up. "I can't believe we're going to Fabric!" one of them said before throwing his can on the floor and running off.

It's a bit of a chintzy anecdote, but it always stayed with me. It returned to me often as an example of the sort of enthusiasm I wished I had for things. Now, though, it reminds me that Fabric was a destination nightclub. It was a place that people would come from far and wide to visit. Trains full of revellers wearing the same T-shirt and Kanye glasses coming to party alongside serious, muted techno guys, its labyrinthine interior passing you against hundreds of different types of people. It also became Valhalla for DJs. Your first booking at Fabric would have your heart racing with excitement, a sign that all your hard work had finally paid off, a step up into the next level of your career. With it gone, there are no longer any prestige nightclubs in London. Save for Sankey's in Manchester and Sub Club in Glasgow, the destination club in Britain is becoming a thing of the past, and surely, it's only going to get worse.

On Tuesday night, before deliberation began, an Islington councillor was reportedly in tears as he spoke of the drug deaths inside the club, and said that the club's license should be revoked. This sentiment was echoed by a police representative, who said that the club had become an "environment tolerant of drugs and crime". This idea has been roundly denied by both the club staff and revellers (including me). Fabric's door policy has always been one of the tightest in the city, sometimes almost off-puttingly so. The searches were mechanical and strict, there were metal detectors on the door, ID checks. The club was always aware of the pressures it faced from a constantly sceptical Met Police and it acted accordingly.

The most galling aspect of this whole charade is the mental image of people from a different generation, with no vested interest in club culture, no desire to see it thrive, and certainly no wish to progress it, holding the sword of Damocles over these places. A fusty old building filled with people who have antiquated mindsets, whose scaremongering viewpoints and opinions you can scarcely believe still exist inside people's heads in the 21st century, let alone in the heads of those who have the power to change things. 'Drug death' is a meaningless phrase out of context, and one that is used over and over, by tabloids and politicians, to silence the arguments of people trying to enact a positive change. It's another excuse for them to not look at drug laws and regulations properly, because the maxim of death - tragic, horrific death - is enough for them continue to blindly enact things that not only have a huge detriment to the safety of clubbers but also systematically destroying everything that makes British clubbing culture what it is.

Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum. If you'll allow me to be pretentious for a moment and refer to culture in its bacterial form, it needs places to thrive and grown. It cannot exist in the cold tundra, it needs its own pockets of warmth. Clubs are where scenes are born. People make the music, take it to the clubs, people come to listen, become fans, become friends, come away and make their own things, play the music that's been created and so on. Garage and house music are both named after the clubs they were born in. Dubstep would perhaps not exist in the way it did if it were not for Shoreditch's Plastic People and Brixton's Mass, two places that are now closed and will never incubate another scene again.

And to what end? It isn't merely about gentrification and property development any more (though it is still massively about that), but also the rank disrespect and devaluation that the establishment has for things that we hold dear. These people don't care that you had the best night of your life listening to Goldie play at three in the morning. To them, that experience is just an aside to the amorphous monster of 'drugs'. They are so distantly unaware of anything to do with clubbing culture that they made the completely facetious and moronic suggestion that the BPM of the music is what was causing people to take drugs, and should thus be lowered on a Friday night to avoid casualties. It harks back to another mindless suggestion made by the police to the now-closed Arches club, where they would turn the lights on and stop the music for five minutes in a "moment of calm".

"Over the past eight years, London has lost 50 percent of its nightclubs and 40 percent of its live music venues," said London Mayor Sadiq Khan in a statement about Fabric's closure. One of the Mayor's main campaign promises was to protect London nightlife, or at least what's left of it. "This decline must stop if London is to retain its status as a 24-hour city with a world-class nightlife."

I'm sorry to have to say it, but like Fabric's license, this status has been revoked. London stopped being that place a long time ago, and it will take a movement of the heavens and the earth to bring it back in the face of geriatric councillors, property developers and a Met Police and government who would rather close down a business than look in the mirror and change the way they do their jobs.

@joe_bish

More from VICE:

Explaining the Bizarre World of British Nightlife to Americans

How a London 'Night Mayor' Could Revive the City's Dying Nightlife

The Tragic New Type of Nightlife Threatening UK Clubbing

Wong Yuet-kwan (standing) with his younger brother, Kam-tsuen, at the Lok Sam House. All photos by author

Hong Kong's Lok Sam House is a government-funded medical hostel for the intellectually disabled, one of only a handful of facilities in the city of more than 7 million dedicated to that purpose. Located in the suburban district of Sha Tin, Lok Sam is tucked away in the leafy, quiet Lung Hang public housing estate. Inside, residents sleep eight to a room, the overcrowding a result of a system that is struggling under the weight of a problem it's ill-equipped to deal with. More than half of Lok Sam residents are now over 50, well past the age when the government thought they would have passed away. These people will stay at the ramshackle hostel until they die—and those are the ones lucky enough to get a bed.

The building is unchanged since the 1970s, creating some problems for the patients' caretakers. The wings are separated by outside space, and social workers at Lok Sam say that because of this, patients require constant supervision when they're moving from wing to wing, and often escape. The old doors at the hostel have trouble staying shut and locked, most of the furniture hasn't been replaced for decades, and the entrances to the bathrooms are too narrow for modern wheelchairs.

Candy Shum Mui-fong is the chief officer of service for Hong Kong's Mental Health Association, an NGO that runs the Lok Sam House. She told VICE that the problem is that the government's Social Welfare Department, which provides most of the facility's funding, has failed to adjust its policies to keep up with the times.

According to Shum, when the government last reviewed healthcare policies for those in Hong Kong with intellectual disabilities, more than 20 years ago, it was with the expectation these people would die at around 40 years old. But now, because of advancements in medical care, that same population is living up to 60 and older.

When VICE reached out to the government for a comment on how it plans to accommodate this growing population, a spokesperson said that a report had been written. "In 2014, a working group under the Rehabilitation Advisory Committee commissioned the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to conduct a survey study on aging of persons with intellectual disabilities as well as the enhancement measures to be implemented," said the Labor and Welfare Bureau's principal information officer. Shum has been pushing the government to adopt reforms in her capacity as the head of the city's working group for this population, organized by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, a federation of local welfare agencies that contributed to the report.

Over the past few years, the Social Welfare Department has increased its funding for manpower and purchasing rehabilitation equipment. Last year, the government injected nearly $21 million into the care of those with intellectual disabilities. Yet some say more fundamental changes are needed.

"In the past ten to 15 years, there hasn't been any review of the policy for those with intellectual disabilities, but these people are getting old," Shum said. "We need a new policy for these people, especially when a large number of them are getting old. How do we serve them?"

According to Alice Fu Lau Shuk-yee, an assistant director at the Mental Health Association, the government expected most residents to die by now. But they haven't, and even though the waiting list to get a spot in Lok Sam is 12 or 13 years long—that's when the next inpatient will die, freeing up a space—there are no plans to build other facilities where the intellectually disabled can live.

"If these people were in a hospital, they'd just be restrained," Fu said. "They can't communicate and nurses don't know what do with them."

At another hostel in busy Kowloon, where some patients with intellectual disabilities are lucky enough to get a bed, the picture is brighter, but far from perfect. The facilities are modern and have been recently renovated, and it's more spacious than Lok Sam. But with 50 inpatients living inside just over 6,000 square feet, it's still crowded—and, as with every other facility, there's a long waiting list.

The government plans to add 436 beds for inpatients to address increasing demand. Right now, there are 2,248 people in Hong Kong with severe intellectual disabilities who are waiting for a bed in a public medical hostel. Each must be assessed by the Social Welfare Department—part of a slow-moving process called the Central Referring System for Rehabilitation Services. "There is a priority list for cases with very urgent and genuine needs," said Fu. "But of course these priority cases still have a waiting period."

Though Lok Sam may seem drab, it's better in many ways for those with a severe intellectual disability than Hong Kong's public hospital system. "If these people were in a hospital, they'd just be restrained," Fu said. "They can't communicate, and nurses don't know what do with them."

Even taking patients from Lok Sam to receive offsite medical care presents challenges. "We have more than 40 patients with special needs, and there are two to four specialists who can accommodate for those needs," said Shum. "They have to be escorted to the clinic, but we can't spare the manpower—so we have to arrange for private caretakers, which are paid for by the patients." In Hong Kong, clinics—both public and private—have notoriously high waiting times because of medical-staff shortages. "But it's even harder for those with intellectual disabilities," Shum said. "When we take them out and have them wait for hours, maybe up to five, for the doctor, they have outbursts."

Shum and Fu have been looking for spaces for new facilities, but their efforts have been stymied by competition from other projects funded by the Social Welfare Department. They say it's relatively easy for the government to turn a space into a home for elderly care—it's something that's more widely accepted by the city's communities. But with "spaces for the mentally ill or intellectually disabled, no, no, no," Shum said. "It's down on the list with ex-offenders and rehab."

Wong Yuet-kwan with Kam-tsuen, inside the Lok Sam House's recreation room

Wong Yuet-kwan, whose younger brother Kam-tsuen has been resident at Lok Sam House for 32 years, is just now beginning to think about the possibility of his death. "At the time we brought Kam-tsuen here, no, I didn't know that he'd be here forever," Yuet-kwan said. "I've accepted that it's the truth he'll die here, and yes, it's difficult to face it."

Kam-tsuen, now 57, was diagnosed in the 1970s with a moderate intellectual disability. At the time, he lived with his brother on a boat in Hong Kong's Aberdeen harbor, where the two were fishermen. Yuet-kwan was scared for his brother as he deteriorated; he once fell overboard and nearly drowned.

When Yuet-kwan heard that Lok Sam had just opened, he applied to get his younger brother a bed—but Kam-tsuen was placed on a decade-long waiting list. At the time, the competition for beds was nearly as competitive as it is now because the Lok Sam House was the only facility of its kind in Hong Kong.

"There's been no change here since when I first brought Kam-tsuen to Lok Sam House in 1983," Yuet-kwan said. "The government should offer more resources, including manpower, and improve these facilities—Lok Sam House is too crowded. I want the government to build more of these facilities, so there's no need for the intellectually disabled to wait so long—and I want the government to train more people to take care of them, because there aren't enough social workers and therapists."

When I met Kam-tsuen, he was in a wheelchair and had difficulty keeping his head upright. While he was mostly unaware of his surroundings, he seemed to recognize his brother, who wheeled him through the center.

Still, Yuet-kwan seemed grateful for the Lok Sam House and its dedicated staff. "Even if I had money, I'd choose this place for Kam-tsuen," he said. "I have more confidence in the Hong Kong government than the private sector." (We met just days after an autistic boy jumped out of a window to his death at a private facility for the intellectually disabled.)

For Yuet-kwan and many others, the Lok Sam House—in support-starved Hong Kong—is the best home they can find for their loved ones, despite its flaws.

"We don't want parents killing their intellectually disabled kids and then committing suicide, which has happened before," said Fu. "We feel that it's better the patients stay here until they pass away."

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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The 2016 election has gotten so heated lately that some people have felt the need to violently destroy campaign signs they take issue with. To defend against the onslaught of potential sign-trashers, one man in Indiana has set up an elaborate array of booby traps to keep his Trump sign proudly displayed in his front yard, ABC reports.

The Trump supporter, Phillip—he asked ABC not to use his last name—set up an ingenious system of ropes anchoring to the unassuming little Trump sign to various points around his front yard. He also went so far as to spray-paint the rope green, so it would blend in with the grass. He also attached a camera to the tree opposite the sign to catch vandals in the act. The whole thing is basically something that a grown-up Kevin McCallister might do if he was committed to Making America Great Again.

"I'm 2 and 0," Phillip told ABC of his record for catching thieves. In one attempt caught on camera, a woman can be seen snatching the sign, but she gets caught up in the green rope and ultimately drops the sign and runs. Phillip has brought the footage to the police, but so far no charges have been made.

"Whether it's a Bernie or Hillary or a Trump sign, you might disagree with whatever the politics are, but it's not yours," Phillip said.

Read: Fuck This Election

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At 17, I started sleeping with men in hotel rooms for cash. A lot of cash.

It was easy. All it required—besides my willingness—was a car and the internet. The time between placing my first ad on a message board for sex workers until I was meeting a man in his 50s who could have been my principal or one of my teachers was maybe 48 hours. After that first appointment, I was hooked. I worked regularly my junior and senior year of high school. I had my last appointment over Thanksgiving break my freshman year of college.

I did it by choice. I was a good student in high school. I was elected president of the debate team. My parents gave me a generous allowance. I didn't have a drug habit to support. I didn't even smoke pot until my senior year of college—five years after my first appointment. I am an only child who was given every advantage in the world: sports, dance, theater, summer camps. I skied all over Europe. I did well. I was arrogant. I was curious. I was smart. And I was turned on by the idea of being paid to fuck grown men who presumably knew more about sex than the boys at school.

A decade later, I decided to tell my story. And I told everyone. I bothered people at bars, on planes, on dates. I wrote an article. I did podcasts. I couldn't stop talking about it. Nothing bad happened. The angry mob I had envisioned so clearly in my nightmares never materialized.

The only people I didn't tell were my parents. I didn't exactly know how. I knew my mother would both willfully misunderstand my choices but ultimately be fine. But I was convinced the revelation would kill my father. Eventually, of course, they found out because... the internet.

My father is a Green Beret. He served in the Dominican Republic, two tours in Vietnam, and in Desert Shield/Desert Storm in the Middle East. He's seen a lot of combat. He calls himself an independent despite believing most of what Fox News tells him—he's difficult to label. He's principled. He wants to do what's right, even if it's inconvenient, even if it's unpopular. So do I. We have similar values that way, although they were forged by radically different life experiences. We've both walked away from opportunities because we weren't willing to compromise our integrity, as we define it for ourselves.

I almost believed he would have an easier time accepting me as a murderer than a whore.

We both run red lights if there's no traffic, because "I'll be damned if I'm going to let a light bulb tell me how to live my life." In all my battles with teachers, principals, administrators, he could see me stubbornly fighting for what should be, against the inertia of what is. Even though he didn't always agree with me, he was always on my side. And even later, when we threw politicized insults at each other, he always recognized himself in me. We've both got a healthy dose of "fuck you, watch this," woven into our core personalities.

I was afraid to tell him about my having been a prostitute because he was a great dad. I didn't want him to think one had anything to do with the other. I didn't want to burden him with this indulgent, selfish secret because I feared the images that "your daughter was a prostitute" would conjure might break him, even when his various tours of duty didn't.

I showed up at the house. I had a key, but I rang the doorbell anyway. My dad opened the door.

"I guess you want to talk," he said.

He was curt. He was white knuckling his way through a lot of feelings. He asked if I wanted a drink. It was 2 PM. I did. We both did. I almost believed he would have had an easier time accepting me as a murderer than a whore. I didn't know what to expect. My father didn't talk to his sisters or his mother for 20 years over a fight I still don't fully understand. I knew that type of behavior wasn't outside the realm of possibility here.

We talked for hours, never addressing my prostitution directly. We got tipsy, and my father turned into the charming storyteller he becomes at parties. He caught me up on his ongoing "war" with those "damned chipmunks." We commiserated about strange relatives and teased each other about old political fights. But in between all that he said a few things I think are important, that he was proud of me, and that I could always come home. "No matter what."

I could see he wasn't angry. He was nervous for me the same way he's always been. "I'm sorry you're just like me—life is tough for hard-headed guys like us."

My father has been to three wars. He's killed people with his hands, and I've had sex with strangers for money. We've both seen and done things. Neither of us is particularly eager to hear the details, but we trust that it was intense.

Thanksgiving with the whole family came and went shortly after. I held my breath the whole time. No one had any questions. Life goes on, and the sexual choices I made a decade ago simply aren't that important. We had job opportunities to fret over, weddings to plan, hunting trips to discuss, relatives to mock. I exhaled.

Recently, my father wrote me this, "You have done things I wish you had not done. You have done things I am extremely proud of. And really that is how it is supposed to be, and how it has always been. When a child grows to adulthood they become their own person. They make their own decisions. They reap the rewards, or suffer the consequences, of their actions. I would never try to tell you how to live your life. I have no right. Hopefully I raised you to weigh your options honestly, and make your decisions with clarity of purpose."

Dad, you did.

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This post originally appeared on the Trace.

Summer had barely begun when the grim record was set: forty-nine people murdered at a gay nightclub in Orlando, the worst mass shooting in modern American history. Summer's end brought another unwanted milestone as 85 homicides—73 of them by gun—gave Chicago a single-month body count unseen in 20 years and pushed the city past its shooting total for all of 2015. In between, in Dallas, another terrible superlative was notched when a sniper's rifle delivered law enforcement its deadliest day since 9/11.

Now add in gun violence you didn't hear about. The period between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend—93 days—left more than 4,100 Americans dead from gun homicides and unintentional discharges, according to the nonpartisan nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA). More than 8,650 others were wounded. That's a daily average of at least 44 dead and 93 injured, a rate slightly greater than last year, when the totals were higher but a quirk of the calendar also made the summer a full week longer.

The stats collectors at GVA scrape their numbers from news reports and law enforcement feeds; the official federal counts, and their racial breakdowns, will be slower to arrive. But the established pattern offers a safe prediction: Roughly 50 percent of those killed will be shown to be men of color, who make up just 6 percent of the population. The disproportionality carries over to victims of the police shootings that fuel a vicious cycle that leaves the residents of some city neighborhoods trusting street justice instead of law enforcement. When a single summer day in an American city can conclude with 30 people shot, you begin to comprehend how it can be that Black, Male America, if measured as a distinct nation, would have the second highest homicide rate in the world.

This disparity—injustice is the better word—is no recent development. But this summer, in fits and starts, it began to become a national story.

"For so long people have said, 'Gun violence does not affect my community,'" Amber Goodwin, who founded the Community Justice Reform Coalition to enlist more people of color in the fight against gun violence, told The Trace. "For a lot of marginalized communities, this has always affected us. But now other people are saying, 'Enough is enough.'"

After Orlando, a filibuster launched by Senate Democrats focused on shaming Republicans for siding with the National Rifle Association on the so-called "terror gap," but over its 15 odd hours it also brought the spotlight to children living in neighborhoods kids where "police sirens and ambulance sirens are their lullaby at night." House Democrats followed with an even longer sit-in sustained in part by frustrations over everyday killings and led by civil rights leader John Lewis, who wondered, via Twitter, "What's the tipping point? How many more mothers? How many more fathers need to shed tears of grief, before we do something?" Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, through radically different messages and policy prescriptions, each in their way decried the epidemic of urban gun violence, making it a presidential campaign issue for the first time in memory. Pollsters went to African American and Latino voters to get their take on the crisis. They were told, in so many words, that change cannot come fast enough.

"From the standpoint of someone who studies crime and justice, statistics and gun violence—this is old news," said Nancy LaVigne, who directs the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute. "The question is, how is the media covering it, and is the media finally giving it justice?" This summer, the media could answer, "We are working on it." The New York Times dispatched a corps of reporters to document Chicago's bloodshed, while a team from the Guardian dug into the racial dimensions of gun violence as part of a six-part series. A pair of writers at Vox, a site with a mandate to explain the news, reported that during the course of the Democrats' dual acts of political theater, another 136 people were shot, many of them on the same city streets where those police cruisers and ambulances too often wail. The Undefeated, a new site from ESPN, a media company built on coverage of sports, ran its own week-long series and convened a televised town hall on urban shootings and their hidden costs.

Another Times article, picking up where most Americans still begin when they think of gun violence, looked at mass shootings, but through a distinct lens. The stricter definition of the phenomenon, used by the FBI and some journalists, is reserved for events that leave four or more victims fatally shot, a standard that fails to capture hundreds of major shootings each year—such as when 13 people are wounded at a house party in Connecticut, or two people are gunned down and 18 people are injured at a club for teenagers in Florida. In its investigation, the paper set the bar at least four victims, whether killed or not, and reached a searing finding: Across a pool of 358 such shootings, "nearly three-fourths of victims and suspected assailants whose race could be identified were black."

Despite the progress, most killings still received less media attention than the latest Trump tweet, and at times the candidates' attention to urban shootings obscured more than it illuminated. As campaign rhetoric got conservatives and progressives arguing about whether the more accurate picture of violent crime in America is a recent spike or a longer downturn, a more meaningful metric—murder inequality—showed how much the risks of being shot vary by race, and just how acute the danger becomes when a person of color is poor.

The story that America began to tune into this summer is a story of privilege, but one where the dividing line falls between security and slain bystanders, peace of mind and homes scarred by pock-marked reminders of close calls.

Return for a moment to those numbers from Chicago, where one particularly awful weekend left the police superintendent Eddie Johnson bereft. "I'm just sick of it," he told reporters. "There's no other way to describe it." It's true: Things were dire this summer in Chicago, which has recorded more homicides and shooting victims so far this year than New York City and Los Angeles combined. But it's also true that per capita rates are worse in St. Louis, Memphis, and Detroit, to name just a few. To really understand how gun violence afflicts a city requires looking at the ranges of safety and danger within it. Chicago's affluent, overwhelmingly white Lincoln Park had two shootings this summer (the first of which targeted a driver and passenger from outside the neighborhood), and none at all in 2015. At a single intersection in Englewood, a neighborhood where the vast majority of residents are black and the poverty rate approaches 50 percent, there have been five people shot this summer and nine since the beginning of the year.

Pick a different city, and you'll find a similarly cruel mosaic. Milwaukee, for instance. In August, the shooting of an armed black man by a black officer in the city's Sherman Park neighborhood sparked an uprising that spanned two days and was a long time brewing: The police districts that Sherman Park straddles have murder rates between 13 and 18 times higher than Milwaukee's downtown.

Citywide, 46 percent of Milwaukee's blacks live in high-poverty neighborhoods. "We should not lose sight of the fact that we're talking here mainly about low-income people of color," said the sociologist William Julius Wilson. "Better-off blacks are much less likely to be victims of violent crime."

So this story that America began to tune into this summer is a story of privilege, but one where the dividing line falls between security and slain bystanders, peace of mind and homes scarred by pock-marked reminders of close calls. In bullet-torn neighborhoods, summertime pleasures can be chancy endeavors. Grilling with friends on his back porch in South Philadelphia, a 16-year-old boy was gunned down in a drive-by. Two brothers in North Carolina died when an argument during a Father's Day cookout escalated. Seven people were hurt in Brooklyn when a man angry over being denied entry to a Fourth of July cookout grabbed his gun and fired into the crowd. So far this year, at least 73 people have been shot at cookouts (some of those shootings fell before Memorial Day, when unseasonably warm weather drew victims out to their barbecues and into harm's way).

That total does not account for 19-year-old Daquarius Tucker of Houston, killed in July when gunfire exploded at an Independence Day block party. Sixteen days later, his brother, Damarcus Tucker, who had served as a pallbearer at Daquarius's funeral, was killed when a shooter mistook him for someone else. A mother lost two sons in less than a month.

The mother of Arshell Dennis III lost her son because he went to sit on the porch on a warm summer's night. The 19-year-old son of a Chicago police officer, he was set to return to college in New York City in a few days. His mom and sister were watching a movie and sharing a bag of popcorn he'd popped for them. He said he'd be right outside, which is where he was when the gunman fatally shot him in the chest.

Sometimes not even sleep guarantees safety. Montell Ross, 8, and Jayden Ugwuh, 9, were both killed when gunfire poured into their Kansas City, Missouri, home on August 13 and found them in their beds. Mortally wounded, Ross ran to his big brother, Jayson, who was asleep in another room, and snuggled up next to him as he died. In Florida and Ohio, one-year-old babies were shot as they lay in their cribs.

In the aftermath of senseless slayings, communities often seek solace at candlelight vigils held to honor the dead. The attack on the Pulse nightclub brought out thousands of mourners to a park in downtown Orlando, holding homemade signs. "This is a way for us to get closure, to show that we're not afraid," said Manny Carames, 44, who woke up after the shooting to frantic phone calls and text messages from friends making sure he was all right. But imagine being part of the America where routine gun violence offers no sanctuary, even to those already grieving.

In July, someone opened fire at a vigil for a 24-year-old homicide victim in West Baltimore, wounding five people—in the same spot where the person being mourned was gunned down. "We only wanted to celebrate my son, and they're shooting at us," the victim's mother told the Baltimore Sun. "What else is it you want? You got my son, and you're still shooting at us? When will it end?"

In Miami, Florida, a family was coming together to remember a 19-year-old man shot 13 times when a gunman unleashed a volley of bullets into the crowd, killing a 15-year-old boy and a 22-year-old man. Four others were wounded.

On Chicago's West Side, Ashake Banks has been to more memorials than she can recall since her seven-year-old daughter, Heaven, was killed in 2012. On August 21, Banks was pulling up to her latest vigil—it was for the 14-year-old son of a friend on Chicago's West Side—when she found herself coming to the aid of yet another victim. A young girl had been shot and was bleeding from a bullet that had pierced her wrist.

"I can't imagine anyone in this country not seeing this as a shared duty we all have," said Amber Goodwin, the gun violence prevention group founder who thinks that the summer of 2016 may have marked a shift.

"There are more people saying not just, 'enough is enough,' but 'what are we going to do?'"

A version of this article was originally published by the Trace, a nonprofit news organization covering guns in America. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Trace on Facebook or Twitter.

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On Wednesday, Apple unveiled its new line of iPhones in San Francisco, and while it made a bunch of little changes that will push the phone onward and upward or whatever, the company also rendered that wadded up ball of white headphones in your pocket obsolete.

That's right—the headphone jack is dead, time to welcome the choking hazard–size "AirPods."

In order to listen to music and stay sane on your commute home from work, iPhone 7 and 7 Plus owners will have to rock a pair of wireless ear buds, which look basically like the old earbuds, just without the skinny white cord. They'll be able to wirelessly connect to the phone and improve the battery life, and the new phones will include a free adapter if you want to use a set of non-wireless cans.

Among the other notable changes for the new smartphone, Apple announced that the new sleek model will be water resistant, so now you can really continue playing Pokémon Go even after stumbling into a lake. It's also given the home button a "force sensitive feel," which basically means that it's going to respond similar to the way Mac trackpads do.

Apple has also improved the iPhone 7 camera and added a duel lens to the iPhone 7 Plus, with an improved zoom function, so you're well on your way to racking up more likes on Instagram than all of your peers.

The new iPhone will come in white/silver, rose gold, and two separate shades of black like something out of Spinal Tap. The phones are set to hit stores September 16.

Read: I Did Everything Siri Told Me to for 24 Hours