Quantcast
Channel: VICE CA
Viewing all 38002 articles
Browse latest View live

We Went to a 48-Hour Player's Ball in a Mansion

0
0

We drove a retired rusty cop car to the hills of Caledon, Ontario to attend an end of summer 48-hour "player's ball." From the south side there is a hamlet inhabited by young kings from the house of Humber Boulevard Money Boys (HBMB). Living life to the fullest, on the hustle to succeed, survive, and of course, party.

Follow Levi Halo and Donny Kashh on Instagram.


It Sucks to Be Undocumented When You're an Average Student

0
0

Alejandra Matias with a friend between classes at MetWest High School in Oakland, California. Photo by Diana Clock

On a typical weekday morning, 16-year-old Alejandra Matias takes the bus to MetWest High School in Oakland, California. After class, she babysits her little brother or commutes to an internship at a local nonprofit. Before bedtime, she squeezes in homework.

Matias seems like any other teenager. She likes spicy Cheetos; she giggles a lot when she's with her friends. But beneath the normal confusion and stress of adolescence, other worries gnaw at her.

For example, the fact that she's undocumented. Matias immigrated with her parents to the United States from Guatemala when she was five years old. Her father was granted asylum, and she was included in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects certain undocumented youth from deportation. But she worries about the future, especially amid Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's threats to end DACA and deport millions of immigrants.

There are typically two narratives about the estimated 1.1 million undocumented minors in the United States: They're either criminals, or university-bound valedictorians. But what about all the teenagers like Matias, who fall somewhere in the middle?

When the immigrant rights movement introduced the DREAM Act in 2001—a proposal to grant conditional residency to undocumented youth in the United States—it came with a neatly packaged, sympathetic image of undocumented youth. Advocates highlighted the qualities that made DREAMers "deserving" of citizenship: They were smart, hardworking, and high achieving. These best and brightest would secure America's place in a competitive global market, even if they were born elsewhere.

"The exceptionalism part of it is a political strategy that is going to have to be stomached until we have fair immigration policy," said Maria Chavez-Pringle, the department chair of politics and government at Pacific Lutheran University, in an interview with VICE.

But other advocates worry that this strategy, along with recent media attention on a pair of undocumented valedictorians in Texas, makes life harder for undocumented students who aren't at the top of their class.

"The valedictorian story should be celebrated, but as part of a bigger pool of a diverse group," said Linda Sanchez, program director of 67 Sueños, a San Francisco nonprofit that promotes the inclusion of migrant youth stories through art and activism. Sanchez, who is herself undocumented, told VICE the valedictorian narrative obscures the challenges undocumented youth face. It implies that "if you don't make it, there's something wrong with you, and not your surroundings," even though many undocumented youth live in poverty and balance school with part-time jobs.

Alejandra Matias waiting for the bus. Photo by Diana Clock

Statistics from the US Department of Education show that just 54 percent of undocumented youth over 18 have a high school diploma, compared to 82 percent of US-born youth of the same age. Poverty, language barriers, and the psychological stress and stigma of being undocumented each contribute to the low graduation rate. The introduction of DACA in 2012 has helped a little, especially in reducing students' fears of deportation, but many students don't qualify for DACA, and the longevity of the program isn't guaranteed.

It only gets harder after high school, as undocumented students aren't entitled to the federal grants or in-state tuition that make paying for tuition possible for so many students. In some states, undocumented students are explicitly banned from attending public universities.

Undocumented students sometimes feel that they're held to a higher standard than their documented peers, despite dealing with harsher circumstances and trauma just to get to the United States.

Cuahuctemoc Salinas, who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in May, lived out of garages with his mother and brother when they first immigrated to the United States from Mexico. His childhood in the US was rough, and he says he was physically abused by his stepfather.

In high school, he sold donuts to pay for his bus fare. When he was accepted to UC Berkeley, he had to cover many of his college-related expenses on his own. Last summer, Salinas juggled seven part-time jobs to cover food and rent. His traumatic past and uncertain future—both related to his immigration status—took a toll on his mental health. "I definitely felt anxiety," he told VICE. "I felt very depressed."

After graduating with a bachelor's degree in social welfare, Salinas accepted a job with an organization that provides housing to homeless individuals. He traces his advocacy work to growing up "in a background where voice." But the constant pressure to succeed amid worries about his undocumented status still leave him feeling overwhelmed.

"I'm always in hot water. Every day there's that pressure," he said. "I'm the first person to get a bachelor's degree in my entire family. Every day is, like, me hoping my dreams will come true because of how much trauma I carry. It's really hard to let go of something that affected your life a lot."

In Matias's case, the station wagon smuggling her and her parents crashed, flinging her mother from the window. Matias later awoke in the back of an ambulance, hooked up to a tangle of IV tubes. "I didn't think my mom had died, but then her body was lying down right next to me," she remembers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Matias and her father but let them stay in the country. They settled in Oakland about a year later, where they adjusted not only to a new country, but to life without Matias's mother.

During her freshman year of high school, Matias started an internship with 67 Sueños. Back then, her grades were "really bad." Amid family conflict, school had fallen by the wayside. But through 67 Sueños, Matias told VICE she "finally found a reason why I should be doing well in high school, why I should empower myself in my community."

Matias now earns straight As—not to prove anything, but to get to college and position herself to influence real social change in the future. She doesn't see herself as a DREAMer, but instead, as someone who "empowers my community and helps them stand up against those oppressing us."

Sanchez, the director of 67 Sueños who is a college graduate, also rejects the DREAMer label.

"There is more complexity within an individual," she told VICE. "Once I acknowledge I'm a DREAMer, that's the only thing celebrated about me. Instead, I want to be known as a full individual."

Follow Melissa Pandika on Twitter.

Photos of the Brand New Orthodox Megacathedral Funded By the Romanian Government

0
0


This article originally appeared on VICE Romania

Romania is a pious country – about 81 percent of the population practices Orthodox Christianity. The Orthodox Church has so much power in Romania that the government is funding the construction of a €500 million (£418 million) Orthodox megacathedral. One Swedish politician criticised the move as being "pharaoh-esque" in one of the poorest countries of the EU.

Though the construction is still incomplete, local religious leaders in Bucharest decided to hold a sermon last weekend on a huge stage in front of the church – to celebrate how far they've come and to collect even more financial support for its completion. The event was supported by local political leaders – who in the past have had help from the Church to get elected – and whole event was funded from the city's cultural budget.

A lot of young people from Christian NGOs attended the sermon, many dressed up in traditional Romanian outfits. They prayed, celebrated and held debates – on the subject of the evil spread of homosexuality in the West, for example. Which was worrying to say the least, especially at an event sponsored by a city government in an EU member country, organised by one of the most influential churches in Eastern Europe.

More on VICE:

Photos of Romania's Neglected Orphans Then and Now

Snoop Dogg Accidentally Posted About Being in Romania and the Entire Country Freaked Out

Inside the Gaudy World of Romania's Wealthiest Witches

What We Learned About David Lynch After Spending Three Years in His Art Cave

0
0

David Lynch portrait courtesy of 'David Lynch: The Art Life'

Right now David Lynch is definitely drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and painting a picture. Those are the only three activities you can imagine him doing, despite having no evidence to actually back this up. In new documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, you'll discover this is quite literally all he does, day in day out, holed away in his workshop.

This is a documentary purely for the hardcore Lynch fans (which naturally accounts for the vast proportion of his fan base). It's a slow-paced but rich watch, following Lynch around as he paints and sculpts and carves, giving a fly-on-the-wall sense of his day-to-day life – "the art life" as he calls it. Despite the fact he's been interviewed plenty of times over his career, the filmmakers have managed to draw out strange new little anecdotes of his childhood that've had a huge influence on his vision. If you enjoyed Lynch's short book, Catching the Big Fish, you'll love the way this fills in the gaps of his early life.

I spoke to the director, Jon Nguyen, whose previous work includes Lynch (2007), which followed Lynch through the process of making Inland Empire, ahead the film's premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday.

VICE: Hi Jon. In 2006, David Lynch was reluctant to do interviews. How did you change his mind?
Jon Nguyen: With Lynch, I remember we wanted to ask him a lot of questions. And you could tell from his body language that he wasn't really comfortable or interested in answering. At one point he just said, "Follow me and you'll know what the film's going to be about at the end of shooting". And then we realised, he was always cagey. After it was over I remember his friend Jason said, "I feel like David's getting to that age where he's probably going to want to share some of these stories. Maybe in a couple of years, we can come back and see how he feels about it." By the time he had his daughter, who is now about three-and-a-half or four, we approached him again and kind of pitched to him that this was a chance for him to tell her all the stories of her childhood and he thought it was a great idea.

The intimate access to Lynch is so rare. You're literally with him in his personal sanctuary as his daughter is running around.
David's a very private person and he has his close friends, and I think really, if it wasn't for Jason being there helping make it, and him having the trust and that kind of close friendship with David, this wouldn't have happened. You can't come off of the street and get David to open up like this. David's was not the easiest person in the world to interview. He leads the conversation quite often.

The interviews took place on the weekends and that was about 25 interviews over nearly three years. Jason was living at David's complex, so he would get a call on the weekend from David saying, "Hey I've got an hour, why don't you come down?" and then they would sit down and Jason would set up a microphone and it was like chatting to an old friend.

I was surprised to see how solitary his artist's life is.
Throughout the film you sometimes see him writing because he's writing Twin Peaks at that time. But almost always he's just up in his studio painting. I was getting all the material every single day and thinking, "Man all you're showing is David painting." Jason said, "John, all David does is paint, from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to bed". Of course, when he's making a film, he goes off filmmaking. But outside of filmmaking he wasn't doing anything else. He doesn't make his own coffee, except on the weekends. I'd say "Can't you get shots of him watering the plants or something?" Jason'd say, "I'll ask." But David would only be caught doing mundane things if it's what he was actually doing. He'd never play up to the camera. It just turned out that it was just morning to night, he's in the studio and he's like that since he was a child, working and working on the studio. That's all he does, he's a hardcore artist. He definitely lives the artist life.

THE ART LIFE TEASER 1 from DAVID LYNCH THE ART LIFE on Vimeo.

Considering he's private, how did you go about the format for the interviews?
So each interview was different. He would talk about his grandparents and their stories and then about his whole family. But we noticed that there was a thread throughout it all that was him discovering art. He did fingerpainting classes and by the time he graduated from high school, had gone through six or seven private studios for painting.

His parents were so brilliantly supportive too. I love the anecdote he tells about his mother not giving him colouring books like his siblings because she could see his real passion for art.
She definitely saw something unique with him, some kind of potential. I'm not his mum, I don't know what she saw, maybe he was doodling and it was something other kids weren't doing. His dad too had a huge influence on him. David says his dad showed him him the world underneath the tree bark with the bugs. He kind of took that. But the thing that surprised me is that scene in the documentary where he takes his dad down to the basement to show him the weird experiments he was doing. . I don't know if he dad realised he was the direct influence on David for that.

There are numerous strange anecdotes he tells from his childhood which could be directly linked to his style and work. Especially striking is the time he was playing out in the street late in the evening as a boy and a naked woman came walking through the street near him.
When I heard that story, wow, it reminded me of that scene from Blue Velvet. And when he sees Bob Dylan live and says "he was so little on stage", it reminded me of the old couples in Mulholland Drive when they come out of the bag. A lot of his artwork incorporates a radio and in the documentary he talks about when he first went to college and after he said goodbye to his dad, he sat in his room for two weeks and never got out of the room he was in. He just listened to the radio until the battery died. That was powerful for me.

He implies that after experiencing that solitude in his room as a young adult, he's always been that way.
Yeah. I imagine he had some sort of agoraphobia about being outside. It definitely became more pronounced. He comes from smalltown America, and all of a sudden, he lands in Philadelphia. It was about two weeks after the race riots happened in a war-torn, completely destroyed, downtrodden town. He's always said that Philadelphia more than anything else had a big influence on his art in his life.

I didn't know he had some kind of intestinal or stomach spasms as a young person, either. What were those linked to?
I don't know what it was but I imagine these stomach spasms came from anxiety or stress. I imagine it was a manifestation of his mindset at the time because he talks about a lot about wanting to keep his family separate from his friends at school and his friends separate from his art friends. He lived in three different worlds and he never let them mingle which to me, links to movies like Mullholland Drive or Lost Highway where characters take on different roles, separated. He won't say this but I can only guess those ghost themes come from his childhood.

Bob Finds Himself In A World by David Lynch

Does he still have to lead those separate lives or has he finally found peace in the art life?
When he's in LA, he's not someone that goes to a lot of Hollywood parties, or to dinners and stuff. He leads a quiet life at home. I imagine it might have to do with the anxieties and agoraphobia. So I'm sure he's matured and developed a lot but he still has these issues.

If people watch this they'll realise the struggle that he actually went through to get any recognition at all.
David worked hard to get where he is at. He had doubts, he had to work through all the shitty paintings that he did. And that story that we put in at the end about his Dad telling him he should stop making Eraserhead, and David said no and then came back and sat in front of his sister crying. That to me was a revelation because I just took for granted that everything came easy to David, but really he had a lot of opposition, because he had a family to feed and his Mom and Dad probably didn't want him to be a struggling artist, and if it wasn't for the grants that he received we would not have David Lynch today.

When we wanted some photos of David from that period, I contacted a friend of his that went to art school at the same time in Philadelphia, because he was a photographer. He was like, "Oh I'm so happy he's made it big, everybody knows who David is. I followed his career, because after school in the 60s I tried to make it as an artist, but after a couple of years I had to give it up and pursue another career, and anyways I'll go down to the basement and I'll dig through some of the boxes and try to find pictures." And this guy still lives in Philadelphia today, and he is beginning to receive some recognition now for his photos from that period, but I think, "Man, that could have been David."

Were there any loose ends or questions about the man you were left with after the film wrapped?
There's one story in the film that we never got an answer to. In the film he remembers leaving Montana as a kid and saying goodbye to a man called Mr Smith. I don't know if you can tell but he was nearly crying and getting really sentimental. We came back to that story several times and every single time David would get really choked up and say he was sorry but he couldn't go there. It was strange, because we were like, "You didn't really know Mr Smith, so why is this scene saying goodbye to the Smith family having this effect?". All I can guess now is that that was the demarcation between his happy years, because then his family moved to Virginia, and his dark period set in with his anxieties. He even talks like his boyhood was sunshine and happiness, but Virginia was dark. So I think he lost his youthful innocence maybe. He probably misses the 50s and the happiness with his family.

Did he like the film?
Yeah he did. The thing is we made the film from all the parts that he gave us. He gave us all his family photo albums and access to all his paintings, and then we walked around his painting studio and his house, and did the interviews. We didn't go out and interview third parties, we didn't really insert any pictures that he hadn't given us. He even picked the name. So it's really almost pure David.

Thanks Jon.

@hannahrosewens

More on Lynch:

Can You Tell Which 'Twin Peaks' Scenes Were Directed By David Lynch?

'Mullholland Drive' Made Me Rethink Cinema

David Lynch on Twitter, Partying and Being Free

'Atlanta' Is More Than Strip Clubs and Trap Houses

0
0

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android

The last time I lived in Georgia, Atlanta-based rapper Ludacris was atop the Billboard 100 charts with "Money Maker" featuring Pharrell, from Release Therapy. The city of Atlanta has undoubtedly changed since I left the South in 2006, marked by signs of urban progression, from construction to demolition, but has retained its charm. A true Southern city, Atlanta's pace is perhaps a little slower than its counterparts in the Northeast, but its citizens are warm and genuine as you pass them while walking the streets. Beyond the media portrayals of trap houses and strip clubs, Atlanta is best defined by its people, its neighborhoods, its music. The city—a black Mecca for me, my family, and others—is almost mythological, a perspective skewed as much by what people wish from Atlanta as it is by its realities.

Donald Glover—actor, writer, comedian, and musician—aims to dispel the city's mythology with Atlanta, his new television series on FX. The clues are in the details. The show's pilot episode, "The Big Bang," begins with a nighttime altercation outside a liquor store where Earn (Glover), a Princeton dropout, tries to referee a disagreement between his cousin Alfred "Paper Boi" Miles (Brian Tyree Henry), a local rapper on the cusp of neighborhood stardom, and the young man who kicked Paper Boi's sideview mirror for reasons later revealed in the episode.

Authenticity is the first litmus test for the show. The altercation feels real, no different from fights witnessed in front of various QuikTrip gas stations dotting the American South. The drawl in the accents are real but not caricatures; the dialogue, partially fogged by marijuana smoke, devolves from requests for recompense for the side mirror to a critique of Paper Boi's latest mixtape. And as the overhead camera shot fades in the title credits—right as a gun is fired—we fly over sections of Atlanta, which includes a dilapidated, caved-in house. Atlanta has long been a capitol for black American wealth and influence, but the city's blight, its projects, also appear in Glover's Atlanta.

All photos by Guy D'Alema/courtesy of FX

The series comes with high expectations for Glover, the mercurial, shape-shifting artist who was last seen receiving a Grammy nomination for his 2013 rap album Because the Internet, an album that, like Ludacris's Release Therapy, attempted to repackage and reimagine Glover as a real, serious musician with real, serious ideas. Whether Because the Internet succeeded or not is up for debate, but Atlanta picks up where it left off: Glover, Atlanta's creator and executive producer, continues to wrest and maintain creative control. This ethos is echoed in the pilot when Earn's father, played by veteran actor Isiah Whitlock Jr., says of his son, "When wants to do something, he does it. On his own terms."

It is clear Glover wants Atlanta to achieve a balance of natural, rhythmic comedy with drama and depth. While Louie tries for the same balance, and often fails with routine dives into the morbid and melodramatic, and Master of None makes the same attempt yet fails with stilted dialogue and comedic timing that rarely dips below the surface, Atlanta, at least in its first two episodes, succeeds. It's a testament to Glover's all-black writers' room for Atlanta, which situates its characters in the depths of Atlanta without buffoonery or canned jokes at every turn.

The second episode, "Streets on Lock," doubles down on the humor, drama, and depth. While Earn sits in lockup, awaiting processing and bail, Paper Boi—his single now playing on the local radio, thanks to Earn—becomes a local celebrity, attracting attention wherever he goes, even at home when a stranger in a Batman mask knocks on the door, confirms it is Paper Boi's residence, and runs off. Meanwhile, Earn and other men in lockup are entertained by the humorous machinations of a mentally ill individual, a lockup regular, until the man spits toilet water onto a police officer. Violence ensues, sirens blare, and every man—Earn included—looks down at the floor, not so much to avert their eyes but to admonish themselves for having forgotten themselves and their surroundings.

As for Glover himself, his portrayal of Earn is authentic and understated. His character often appears out of sorts, displaced, with the look of a man who crash landed back home after whatever happened at Princeton. He is low on money and approaching desperation, seemingly leaning on Van, his daughter's mother played by the wonderful Zazie Beetz, for financial and emotional support (it is Van who eventually bails Earn out of lockup). Glover positions Earn as a down-and-out intellectual, a former wunderkind rummaging through his past glory days for any way forward.

Combined with questions surrounding Paper Boi's rap career—Will he become a rap superstar? Is that even what Paper Boi wants?—Earn's story propels Atlanta, the two narratives braided yet buoyed by supporting and ancillary characters. The hilarious bits from "Streets on Lock" often come from actors other than those with top billing, Glover included. In two episodes, Glover and crew have created a community, shrinking Atlanta's metropolitan scale down to its actual neighborhoods, corners, blocks, and its citizens. Atlanta strives to reflect its city's humanity beyond the projection of the show creator's insularity. Atlanta is real in every sense, and so far it delivers.

Follow Mensah Demary on Twitter.

Atlanta airs on Tuesdays at 10 PM on FX.

Michael: 'Michael's Job Interview,' Today's Comic by Stephen Maurice Graham

These 80s French Rockabillies Loved America More Than You Do

0
0

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

In the early 1980s, I was working as a photographer and living in Evreux, a commune in northwest France. I had been working steadily for a weekly since 1975 and was just starting to sell my photos to newspapers and Parisian magazines. One day in the winter of 1982 I met a group of rockabilly friends from Evreux while they were hanging out near the city's cathedral. Their look fascinated me, so I approached them and asked if I could document their daily life. They agreed.

For four months, I followed Marco, Raynald, Michel, Éric, Boumé, Lionel, Titi, Denis, Alan, Jimmy, Laurent, Bouboule, and others, at home in their bedrooms, at work, in the King Bee record shop, at the market where they'd buy their outfits, and on their nights out. The boys all dreamed of moving to the United States and listening to Gene Vincent, Elvis Presley, and Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers. They usually met up at the Liberty Bar, which dated back to the time when American air forces were based at Evreux in the early years of the Cold War. They hung out in parking lots where they repaired their classic cars—French Simcas, not Chevys.

Over the course of a few months, I went from being a photojournalist interested in them as subjects to someone they knew well; they invited me over to their houses, and I'd have lunch with their parents. After a while, they even invited me to come along to their hair appointments. Their salon was owned by Mr. Tuffier—a man who always wore glasses, a goatee, and a wide tie with a floral print. That was an honor: Mr. Tuffier was the quiffmaster of Evreux, so a visit to him was the most sacred of their activities.

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Two Juggalos Allegedly Cut off a Woman’s Pinky and Then Blowtorched It in a Blood-Drinking Ritual

0
0


Preston Hyde, AKA Bloody Ruckus (photo via Facebook)

A Wisconsin horrorcore rapper named Bloody Ruckus was arrested yesterday for his involvement in an alleged blood-drinking ritual that ended in the severing of a woman's finger—ultimately provoking exactly what his name suggests.

On August 27 in Saumico, Wisconsin, the rapper, real name Preston Hyde, was with two other men and one woman when the alleged incident went down. According to WBAY, all of those involved were Juggalos and they were performing a "ritualistic memorial" for the one-year anniversary of a fellow Juggalo's death.

Apparently the group was talking about drinking blood that morning, when the woman, 27-year-old Shelby Nuens, volunteered her own.

Jon Schrap, one of the dudes there and a childhood friend of Hyde, then grabbed a machete— yes, this is why you always have a nearby machete—to take her blood.

The criminal complaint says: "Jon had taken a machete and made an approximate one inch laceration on her right side forearm. She was bleeding profusely... Jon filled up a shot glass with her blood and drank her blood."

Sounds like a certified rager, amirite?

But the gory morning didn't end there. The group then started talking about cutting off someone's finger, as one does, and Nuens again volunteered. In one fell swoop, Schrap chopped her pinky off right up to her palm.

"Jon then placed the finger in his freezer where he said he would cook it and eat it later," the complaint says. "The group then attempted to stop the bleeding by using a car cigarette lighter which failed. They then used a blowtorch."

Nuens later told police that these (failed) attempts to cauterize her hand were more painful than getting her finger severed.

If you're wondering if she ever thought to go to the hospital, she finally did later on that night, and only after her boyfriend's mom saw her hand and, as we imagine, probably freaked the fuck out.

There's no details yet on Hyde's arrest, however Schrap has already been charged with "mayhem" and "reckless injury," both of which, let's be honest, sound like solid Juggalo names.

Follow Ebony-Renee Baker on Twitter.


How Weed Could Help Prevent Brain Injury in the NFL

0
0

On an all new episode of Weediquette, host Krishna Andavolu talks to football players about treating pain with weed, as well as why some believe the drug can be used to prevent deadly brain injury.

Then, on the season two premiere of GAYCATION, hosts Ellen and Ian travel to Ukraine to hear about the experiences and struggles of its LGBTQ community.

Weediquette airs Wednesdays at 10 PM ET/PT followed by GAYCATION at 10:30 PM ET/PT on VICELAND.

Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 4 Show Was (Literally) Too Hot

0
0

Kanye West doesn't get bogged down in details. He doesn't trap himself in the weeds with semantics or political correctness. He's like Donald Trump in that way: He says his big idea and hammers out the details later. Case in point: his Yeezy Season 4 show.

When Yeezy dropped his casting-call graphic on Twitter, his favorite soapbox these days, it kicked up a backlash. "Multiracial women only," he requested. Tweets and headlines began to crop up about the colorism of the aesthetic, claiming that Ye's meaning was to exclude darker-hued girls. Given West's history of diversity, putting women of all shades and all colors in his shows and in his materials, that was a curious conclusion to draw—in fact, his last show was the most diverse of all of New York Fashion Week.

"The ten thousand people that showed up didn't have a problem with it," West told Vogueof the backlash. There he revealed that the idea came out of a conversation with Vanessa Beecroft—though that artist has had racial problems of her own. "How do you word the idea that you want all variations of black?" Ye continued to explain. "How do you word that exactly?" And while the wording is off, the casting itself, best depicted in a tableau engineered by Beecroft that could easily be a still pulled from imagery of Beyoncé's current Afrocentric era, best exemplified what Ye was going for. That phrasing was a detail; the final visual, the big idea.

The clothes themselves were nothing groundbreaking. Ye knows this; he calls them apparel as opposed to fashion and speaks of slowly and intentionally building on and evolving his aesthetic of thoughtfully considered military basics rendered in neutral tones. So there's really nothing to say about the clothes. Sure, "Fade" star (and choreographer and artist in her own right) Teyana Taylor looked cute in the black knit cardigan she was wearing. Sure, the cut-out bodysuits looked very on-trend. The show's military-inspired outerwear came mixed with looks that seemed right out of Kim Kardashian's closet with tank top dresses and over the knee boots. But what tweets and commentary about the show centered on was the treatment of the models.

Yeezy Season 4 was a half-day affair. First, editors were bussed from Manhattan to Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, a memorial built off the plans of Louis Kahn, a man some have called one of America's foremost architects. This gave way to an hour wait (the show was running late, as most fashion shows do) outside of the venue, followed by 30-minute tableau style presentation inside. There models stood on the green under the heat of the sun and as time went on, one by one they began to—quite literally—falter.

It's unclear now whether models were given instructions to sit when they needed to but sit, kneel, and squat they did. The frequency with which they did would suggest they were given freedom to do so. Some would sit for a few minutes and then stand again. Others just stood motionless. And then a model fainted. And then another.

In June, the New York Times wrote a feature about fainting models. Any critic or fashion week attendee that has been to their fair share of fashion presentations (as opposed to runway shows) has likely seen it happen. Sometimes it happens because models have locked their knees. Other times it's because of dehydration as well as the heat of the lights. For whatever the reason, it happens in New York, it happens in Miami (I've seen it several times during Swim Week), it happens in the other major capitals. And it happened at Kanye's show. The difference was the outrage.

Particularly vocal was Stella Bugbee, editorial director of New York's The Cut. "Honestly adidas should be ashamed," she tweeted as the German brand had underwritten the cost of the presentation having entered into a new deal with Ye this past summer."This is shameful and horrible and I regret coming," she continued. "Most awful thing I have ever seen at NYFW." Still, considering her high role at a fashion-affiliated publication, I'm surprised that she somehow hasn't witnessed this before.


It's true that Kanye West is a controversial figure. He barks loudly, and the responses, too, can be quite loud. Yeezy staff reportedly said that they were trying to "figure it out" when people asked about models. Shortly before the runway portion of the show started, a girl (seemingly a model) ran across screen to hand bottles of water out to those in the static presentation. So, was this the case of Kanye being insensitive or plainly unaware? Did he just have a big idea of all of these beautiful brown models, in a picturesque scene and forget about details like heat exhaustion?


Considering his last-ditch effort to provide the water, I'd bet the latter. But that isn't to say the practice, though widespread isn't problematic. It, like many of fashion's other problems, has just been highlighted through the inclusion of celebrity. The circumstance is sad, though, as Kanye is quickly about to see his big idea overtaken by these specific details.

Follow Mikelle Street on Twitter.


Why Sad Memes Will Live Longer Than All of Us

0
0

When biologist Richard Dawkins coined the phrase "memes" he meant "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture". A popular song, a kid playing the piano, a screwdriver; almost anything can be a meme if you want it to be. Animals have memes too, but what makes us different is that we can write them down. We are content creators. We make high fidelity memes. We make internet memes.

If you dissect any given internet meme you'll find an incredible amalgamation of culture, tone, humour and knowledge. When we're studied by future generations, our ancient artefacts won't be adolescent diaries or Tracey Emin artworks, but variants on the Condescending Willy Wonka meme. And that's because memes are both an expression of their creators and the wider world around them, meaning viewers understand them intuitively. Memes don't need to be learnt.

"Most memes are just slipping in," said Brad Elder, Professor at Doane University and a meme obsessive, over the phone . "If you drive down the road, everything in front of you will stick in your brain. Now all you have to do is scroll."

Of course, not all memes are made equal. And because the intention when you make a meme is generally that it resonates with someone and they share it, by their nature all memes are competing for our attention. Some are stronger; some are weaker and get forgotten. That's how the veiny forehead of that kid trying to hold in a fart in a classroom is etched into the fabric of your memory. It's basically like natural selection in biological evolution.

So what does it say about us that the memes that tend to take off are the more negative ones?

"A strong meme will latch onto a person like a virus," says Elder. "It's diabolical because the strong ones are most frequently negative. If you think of our mind as the immune system, it struggles to reject it. A negative meme will come in and find a home."

Whats defines the majority of the most popular memes of the last few years is a sense of sadness – whether it's the misery of another, the misery of ourselves, our collective misery or often all the above.

Take "Netflix and Chill", a meme that's become so synonymous with our age that we're now referred to as the Netflix and Chill generation. In its innocent beginnings the phrase meant kicking back with a laptop and a takeaway. Now it's code for two people meeting up and hooking up. Completely bypassing chivalry or the idea of an actual date, the greatest outcome in this scenario is watching Netflix, the probable end result: fucking. We laughed because we recognised the truth in it; we laughed until it fed back into itself and came to define how we view relationships, sex and dating. And now it's just a little bleak.

Chris Chesher, a professor in Digital Cultures at the University of Sydney, believes that an internet meme's agency in society is a manifestation of an iteration of Roland Barthes' concept of the punctum.

He theorises that the feature of an image that wounds or punctures the viewer exposes the common experiences and situations people face in life – thus the meme reveals something that individuals have already felt but are unable to articulate. Obviously, the more people who relate to a meme, the more they're likely to share it; the more the virus is infecting until we're dropping memes into our everyday conversation both online and off.

We all know the mighty "Why the fuck you lyin'?" video of 2015, featuring Nicolas Fraser singing the line in his back garden, grinning knowingly at the camera. This, again, reflected a negative reality back to everyone – even Chris Brown reposted the meme on Instagram.

Our lives are filled with lies and apathy. When our friends cancel because they're "ill". When we cancel because we're "ill". And, of course, within meme culture, girls are shown to be nagging hoes hellbent on catching men out through their social media activity. Why the fuck is your other half lying?

Most people sharing a variation on the Lil Mama Crying meme might not know exactly where it's from. Her face is captioned with relatable stuff like, "When u start rubbin on his dick n he move yo hand," or, "When you text him 'Merry Christmas, I love you' and he replies lol you wild, merry xmas." The image all this text is laid over is actually a screengrab of the artist tearing up on radio while talking about her mum dying of cancer when she was a teenager.

We like celebrities being miserable in memes. They are no longer untouchable, but just as unhappy as us, as we drag them into a visceral global misery. Crying Michael Jordan has been a favourite, as has Sad Ben Affleck. When Nicki Minaj uttered the immortal words, "Miley, what's good?" we were blessed with both the pop culture moment of the year and the perfect way to express one person slamming another. Leo DiCaprio running topless became our enemy (or us) pathetically pounding along through life.

And never forget Pizza Rat, the New York rat struggling to carry a whole slice down a flight of stairs. Why did the image spread so widely? Because really, aren't we all this rat, just trying to get by in work and our personal lives, but consistently failing, crushed by the immensity of our tasks?

These are just a few examples. But think about memes for a second; I'd imagine the specific ones that stick out most in your mind have some kind of negative slant. Dissect most internet memes that have really flown and you'll find some kind of negativity.

The result of this global conversation is powerful. "The force of this becomes even crazier when you realise memes affect other organisms," explains Elder. "So if I'm brought up to think that all snakes are slimy creatures, that's a meme in my head, and it might mean that I actively go out and kill snakes in my backyard. These are organisms that don't interact with our society really, but memes are forcing us to go out and do this."

My favourite meme creator of the moment: Kristen Cochrane aka @ripannanicolesmith

On the one hand, we should be fascinated by memes. They make us cry with laughter on our phones in bed at night. They have done an incredible job of expressing our discontent. They've allowed people to pinpoint something that needs to be expressed – memes have flourished in the mental health community, for example – that they might not have been able to otherwise.

And what, you might ask, is greater than all people across the world finding connection in the face of Good Guy Greg?

But if memes are a reflection of the people who make them, and the world that makes those people, what does it say about us that the memes we most eagerly consume are the ones that represent the act of wallowing or of relishing in negativity? Should we worry that the more we eat these up the more they'll be absorbed into our collective consciousness? To put it simply: were we the Netflix and Chill generation before we told ourselves we were?

@hannahrosewens

More on memes:

This Is What Happens When You Become a Meme

A ' Know Your Meme' Co-Creator Explains What a Meme Actually Is

Why We Need Memes to Understand Politics In 2016

VICE Long Reads: I Spent a Day Trying to Get to Know a Real-Life Narcissist

0
0

The author inspecting Ilma Gore's painting of Donald Trump

A few months back I went down to the Maddox Gallery, just off Regent Street, to peer at Donald Trump's micropenis. This fleshy pink acorn was painted by US artist Ilma Gore, who's said she thought it would be "interesting to paint a micropenis onto this prolific figure".

The picture began life as a neat bit of gag art, but after it started gaining wide publicity, Gore received a punch in the mouth from satire haters. In the silo culture bitch-fight that followed, the painting quickly became too hot for any US exhibition. So it was carted across the Atlantic, to sit in the Maddox, downstairs, in a big gilt frame, behind a small, slightly mocking velvet rope.

If you'll remember, the inspiration was that Donald had been waving his hands about in the Republican primary debates, telling reporters there was "no problem in that department". Even in the lalaland of the primaries, this literal piece of dick-waving felt unusual enough to open a bigger press discussion about what Trump even was.

Commentators got psychological. They started openly questioning whether he wasn't suffering from a proper personality disorder. Was this man more than just a shapeless blob of rage and bravado? Instead, could his specific pattern of rage and bravado conform to the classic signs for something called Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

A raft of articles followed: Psychology Today kicked things into gear. Then The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and on and on.

Of course, Donald was only the icing: narcissism was already having its moment. "Psychopath" had long had its day, via Patrick Bateman and Jon Ronson. "Bipolar" had a decent innings, peaking in popularity about ten years ago. But by last year, the psychologising of Trump had given "narcissist" its coming-out party as the go-to term to describe any objectionable psyches around us.

It was an intriguing, rather brilliant category – as a cold-read set of symptoms, the term could mean almost anything in the right circumstances. Show me someone who isn't self-centred. Show me someone who doesn't fly off the handle, use the silent treatment or entertain a few decent delusions about their own value to the human race, and I will show you the sort of feeble-minded vegan few have as a friend.

In a social media age, narcissism was a disease ready-fitted for the hazy yellows of a Nashville filter. Anders Breivik was accused of it, Pistorius was too. Kanye, Tony Blair; even Obama and Steve Jobs have been daubed with the narc brush. By 2016, if someone blanked us on Tinder they were a narcissist. If they broke up with us they were definitely a narcissist, and if their idea of the deep committed relationship in-between didn't correspond to ours, they were a narcissist on toast. That was the lighter side. Beyond the fatuous, a host of people switched on genuine lightbulbs about their eternally selfish estranged dads, or found a social framework through which they could crawl out of subtly abusive partnerships. Or maybe just found a level at which they could express why the fact they were always drawn to strength in the people around them was probably a Bad Thing.

Going to pay homage to Donald's shiitake glans was the start of a documentary I've made as part of VICE's Chosen Ones series, trying to trace this wave of interest in NPD. I've talked to everyone from the YouTube narc-hunter gurus, to the well-varnished girls dating on hotties-only site BeautifulPeople.com, to the IRL world of Narcissistic Victim Syndrome and its support groups, trying to peel the pop back away from the psych and see what's left.

There was only one real hold-up. We had reams of victims, binders of experts, but the hardest bit turned out to be finding an actual narcissist to film. The reason was obvious: true narcissists never admit they're that. NPD is an all-pervasive attempt to keep the darkness out, to never to admit fault in anything, especially not that one is, rather than basically-great, instead labouring under a medically-diagnosable delusion. Except in one case – where a particularly canny narcissist seems to have found a loophole.

Sam Vaknin (left) and the author

Sam Vaknin had woken up in an Israeli jail cell at the age of 28 and forced himself, by dint of his IQ of 185, to accept that his recent losses of both fiancée and liberty might be something to do with a diagnosis he'd been given of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

In the intervening years, he moved to Macedonia and performed a cunning short-circuit on his hurricane-force narcissism, transforming his status as a walking museum of NPD into a vehicle to make himself famous. He has his own YouTube pulpit, where he delivers pointy-headed, pompous lectures about the subject. He'd written a doorstopper of a book too, called Malignant Self Love. And he claimed to have invented some of the jargon that wept from every pore of the online side of the topic.

As the line to Vaknin rang, I wondered what to expect on the other end. As the line clicked in, I had my answer. Small talk: none. Instead, an instant proposition to strong-arm me.

"Gavin, I am going to make you an offer. If you come to Macedonia to interview me, I will grant you access to my full set of contacts in this area. These will cut your research time by 85 percent. If you do not, then we cannot do business."

I sensed we'd found our guy. But we still didn't know if that would be worth flying to Macedonia for, so I sent him a holding email. In it, I called him "charismatic popular and knowledgeable Mr Vaknin" – which seemed, in my untutored view, like the sort of lavishings a narcissist would enjoy. Wrong. Because I wouldn't give him what he wanted, he still slung back a harsh response. The PS gives some of the flavour:

"PS: If you are so dirt-poor that you are unable to afford a $30 air ticket + $30 overnight stay, you can count on my largesse to donate the funds requisite to shore you over."

When we decided to bring him over to the UK, things got pernickety. Now, every bit of his journey seemed to require a lengthy chain of emails to finalise. But he promised us it'd be worth it: "Modesty aside, making a film about narcissism without me is like making a film about the 2016 elections without mentioning Trump."

The narc was already narcing us off, and the greatest tell was that he flagged many of his emails as "high priority" – a big pathological giveaway from the MS Outlook era. Eventually, though, the day dawned: he and his wife were poured out of the red-eye from Skopje onto the streets of London, and the fun was ready to start.

Vaknin's wife Lidija was, he claimed, co-dependent. Neither of them, Vaknin pointed out, was actually capable of real love. But they did have "an agreement" which Vaknin said mutually benefitted them in respect to certain social goods. The best defence of marriage I'd ever heard, apart from, "It makes hotel rooms cheaper."

Lidija's father had been a narcissist, so she was accustomed to being treated as a means rather than an end, and in a deep-Freudian kind of way, she'd decided she actually quite liked it. They didn't have sex, though – Sam was quite clear on this.

In our emails, Vaknin had himself chipped in with a few ideas on how to illustrate the topic at hand. I was heartened to learn that he had evolved the Donald J Trump habit of referring to himself in the third person:

"Vaknin's interactions with mirrors, window-shops, and cameras (reflective surfaces)

Vaknin's use of language

Vaknin's raging envy of successful people

Vaknin's misogyny (Vaknin around women, especially attractive or supersmart women)

Unfortunately we didn't have any supersmart women – just my producer, Lauren. So we decided to start him out with 9/11 footage – the second plane sharking into the tower, the immediate aftermath – none of which jerked out any emotion. "It's just pixels," he shrugged.

I raised about as much journalistic faux-outrage as I am capable of: "People are dying, Sam."

"People die every day. Why should I feel specially about these people?" was the valid but inhuman response.

We began talking about how he treated death in any context, and Sam seemed to reject the idea that all humans had value. "If someone is capable of making a very good symphony, then I would be sad if they died. But most humans are not capable of anything very special." He pointed out that he'd be spared his own bone-meal view of the human race because he had produced – was producing – great works; his book on narcissism, for a start.

Perhaps my favourite illustration of this Great Men of History principle was when he explained how intelligent he was: "I have an IQ of 185. The average human has an IQ of a hundred. Therefore I am more intelligent than the average human, to the same degree that the average human is more intelligent than a chimpanzee." Sam was living in his own Planet of the Apes, and all of us monkey stumblebums were window-dressing for him to conceive of this radical new consciousness, to affirm his date with greatness. And in IQ terms, he certainly had the numbers to prove it. It felt rude to disagree.

As we "hung out" in an east London pub, I tried to figure out whether I liked Sam. I realised I did. But then the way he framed his internal workings to me, it made me feel like I was deluded in any friendly overtures I perceived – that I might as well try to develop feelings for a Cadbury's Creme Egg.

"I don't think I could be a true friend to anyone in the sense that I don't think I would have an emotional correlate," he said. "If I become friends with you there would always be a question of what's in it for me. It would be a contaminated version of friendship. So contaminated that I would sincerely doubt whether it complies with the definition."

I felt a bit like someone talking to the owl who'd lost his woo – or maybe like someone trying to tell a depressive to "cheer up", constantly trying to point out to Sam that he was flesh 'n' blood; that he therefore had the capacity to feel and to join in with the communion of souls. And then he'd find another intellectualised way to tell me he just didn't. That he was barely human – a mask, behind which twitched a lizard-man, who could only get around by memorising, learning by rote, all of the little social graces that make a person work. It sounded exhausting, Herculean, like trying to run a Fortune 500 company with only the use of an Etch-a-Sketch.

At the centre of him, he said, was something called "narcissistic rage", a big boiling magma-pot, a sense of all underlying feelings being catalysed into anger, ready to pour out if anyone tried to negate, criticise or counter his exalted sense of self. We tried to test the full extent of his rage via a few pub games, but he refused to play pool. We couldn't drag him near the Monopoly board. Vaknin seemed to have a great deal of awareness for what Sun Tzu framed as "play the enemy on your own terrain".

Sam Vaknin

Nowhere was this unwillingness to step outside of a central comfort zone more evident than in his relationship with sex. Vaknin would, he admitted, sit on the edge of the toilet and masturbate instead to purge the body of excess fluids. He was, he explained, a "Cerebral Narcissist". That meant that his brain was everything to him. The body, he found revolting, and could barely bring himself to cart it around. Hence, he emphasised, the sheer effort of sexing his wife was beyond him. "Besides, to have sex with someone requires an effort of intimacy." In other words, he couldn't stoop to fuck.

Sometimes, though, he went on, he'd switch – he'd turn into a Somatic Narcissist. A phase of hyper-sexuality would ensue, whereby he'd pretty much fuck anything that moved in pursuit of his own gratification. For Somatic Narcissists, the body was ultimate validation, and ceaseless conquest was its own reward. But even this explanation seemed to have a vague air of over-compensation to it.

I looked to Lidija for some kind of confirmation. She seemed annoyed, as though she hadn't been included in this Vaknin power-play. That this was the point where Vaknin's self-diagnosing self-mythologising parted ways with her buy-in. She argued that, at her age, sex was just no longer of interest, but it was hard not to see a discomfort in her response.

Yet, for all that queasy interlude, they still left arm in arm, off for a walk around Old Street. Later, Vaknin said he was going to spend the evening reading The Economist in his hotel, and I could only assume this wasn't code.

It had been an exhausting day all round. Something in following Vaknin around had knocked the stuffing out of both me and my producer, Lauren. What was it? It wasn't one thing. He hadn't been crass or volatile. He'd just been consistently, endlessly trying. It was a sense of being worn down by the unrelenting boggling sense of gamesmanship in every direction. He'd do little intellectual jousts. "I'm just trying to find the limits of your vocabulary," he'd say, after chucking another fifty-cent word into the interview. He accused me of being passive-aggressive. "You, with your little tricks." He'd make little jokes constantly, yet however quick they were, none of them seemed to even admit the possibility of a sense of humour. To be truly funny you have to be vulnerable, I supposed. And he had none of that.

Yet despite it all, and despite Sam's warning that narcissists were "ominous – the stuff of horror movies", I couldn't help but feel more compassion, not less. Earlier, Vaknin explained a bit more about his own childhood. "It was torture. My mother... effectively sought to eliminate me." His mother, he believes, was also a narcissist. She was severely abusive towards him. "I was being assaulted in the home. But at the same time, I was this child genius, who went to university at the age of 11, hence became something of a celebrity in Israel at the time." This daily dissonance had hardened into the impenetrable emotional exoskeleton of narcissism.

Sam had suffered. That was why he was a dick. An extreme case, yes, but one that went to the heart of how narcissists are made. Put very crudely, it's a pathology of nurture not nature. It's a childhood of either over-love or under-love – each will reach the same destination. Either be smothered in icky-pink specialness to the point where they point-blank refuse to take on the outside world's verdict that they're just a person. Or be constantly treated like an instrument – loved only conditionally; a child who then learns that in order to be loved they need to maintain a glassy facade of something: "success", "normality", "attractiveness". Often that can mean families who outwardly seem quite "loving" but aren't very "accepting" can still produce narcissists.

Listening to Sam's story, I began to think about how perhaps this present wave of interest in narcissism could be a new key in a more sympathetic, rounded understanding of why adults visit the same miseries on their children that were visited on them.

That was one upside of narcissism. The other was just Donald J Trump, a man of enormous resources and energy, who is going to not only Make America Great but mash all other nation-states into one big bouillabaisse of shittiness and then wipe out definitions of NPD from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatry, in favour of the inverse disease that cleaves him from 99 percent of the population, NTD: Not Trump Disorder.

I'd learned to love narcissists more. And as Western societal values had begun to merge into theirs, so too had the American public. It was just so sad that the narcissists could never love us in turn.

'Chosen Ones: How Narcissists Took Over the World' is out soon on VICE.com

@gavhaynes

More on VICE:

Are We Too Quick to Call Everyday Assholes Narcissists?

When Tourism Turns Into Narcissism

Talking Reality TV and Mass Narcissism with the Director of 'We Live In Public'

Brilliant News: Exercise May Offset All the Horrors You Do to Your Body with Drinking

0
0

You (Photo: Jason McELweenie, via)

Well I suppose the good news is:

Spending two and a half hours a week walking, gardening or playing golf may offset the deadly impact of drinking too much alcohol, new research suggests.
Telegraph, September 8 2016

GARDENING. We can offset all those pints, all those tequilas, those cheeky late night vodka-Red Bulls, all those rounds of shots, the tins you drink on a sofa on a Monday night to take the edge off the first day back at work, the wine with dinner, the whiskey you have to soften the day away before you drift off to sleep: we can offset all that (the thinned-down vodka you have with a cheap off-brand mixer in a nightclub and spill down and over yourself, sticky with it, sticky but euphoric, you are young but the night isn't, drink, drink, hooray)(the Pimm's you have at your mum's birthday party, she asks you to stop and calm down but you're just having fun, "What?" you're saying, "I'm just having fun! Your friends love me!" and then you wake up, as you always do, over the toilet with a towel over you for a blanket, the light of the day searing against you so hard it burns and you feel like your mouth will never taste right again) with a few tulips, some light cutting, a bit of a mow of a lawn. Or we can walk to the Big Morrisons that's a bit further away but offers a bit of a leg-stretch and plus: they have the best offers on large-purchase alcohol, so, win-win.

Although health guidelines state that both men and women should stop drinking at 14 units a week – the equivalent of seven medium glasses of wine or pints of beer – the new study suggests that exercising mitigates the lethal impact of alcohol even at higher than recommended levels.

Yeah so essentially a study between University College London and the University of Sydney found that exercising for two-and-a-half hours a week – and, as previously stated, it doesn't even need to be real exercise, it can be crap non-exercise like walking or something – can mitigate all of the heightened risk of death that comes with drinking.

The bad news, I suppose, is there is definitely a heightened risk of death that comes with drinking. Like: cancer. But also heart stuff. Liver all fuck up. Big ol' stroke. The study – which extrapolated research findings from eight Health Surveys from 1994 to 2006 – found there was an increased mortality risk for all categorised drinkers, even those who operated within the overly tight government guidelines of 1.6 units a day for women and 2.4 a day for men. That risk was substantially offset or at least lessened by walking around really quickly for 150 minutes a week, but the risk is still there. So it's sticky. Alcohol: definitely bad. But also: definitely good. Exercise: definitely bad. But also: definitely good. If you can do both, in the exact right balance, you should be alright, but honestly we all know you're not going to. "Prosecco with brunch, you say! Don't mind if I do!" — literally you.

The study's lead researcher Professor Emmanuel Stamakis said, like, if you're going to drink loads of alcohol and then try and exercise the cancer risk away, then be careful? With that? "We cannot suggest that doing some exercise is a licence to drink more alcohol, as alcohol abuse causes significant health and societal damage," he said. "Our research suggests that physical activity has substantial health benefits even in the presence of potentially unhealthy behaviours such as drinking alcohol." Ah, science. You giveth and you taketh.

@joelgolby

More stuff about alcohol:

I Tried to Get Drunk On Alcoholic Chocolates

Alcohol Gives You Cancer So I'm Not Going to Bother with Anything Any More

People Who Combine Coke and Alcohol Are More Likely to Kill Themselves

It’s Never Been Less Safe to Try Out Drugs

0
0

Remember how your parents never stopped reminding you that drugs could kill you even if you tried them just once? Previously, that was a bit of a far-fetched statement for some recreational drugs, but in the year 2016, your mom and dad's paranoia is actually starting to manifest itself into truth.

With drugs like the deadly opioid fentanyl, which is many times stronger than heroin, being spiked into or sold as other drugs—cocaine, MDMA, fake Xanax, and an ever-growing list of powders and counterfeit pills—there has never been a worse time to accept a line from a stranger when you're drunk at the club. Experimenting now holds a new disclaimer: Whether you're popping an M or a Xan, it is possible that your drugs could be tainted with fentanyl or other similarly scary opioids, and because of that, you are more likely to experience an overdose. Fentanyl overdose deaths have spiked in recent years in North America: more than 700 died in the US between 2013 and 2014 due to the drug, and between 2009 and 2014 in Canada, at least 655 died. Those numbers have only been growing since, as fentanyl continues to increasingly be found in other recreational drugs. One expert recently called opioid overuse the "worst man-made epidemic in modern medical history."

Yes, you're reading that right. This shit is not a joke anymore. You could actually die. Even if you made it through high school managing to only puff on a joint a couple of times, when you hit university age, you're more likely than ever to use drugs. And if you're going to try them anyway—we certainly aren't ones to talk, after all—here's the most sound advice we have.


This looks like Xanax, but honestly, who fucking knows anymore? Photo via Flickr user Dean

Prescription Pills Aren't Always What They Look Like Anymore

In Canada and the US, fentanyl and other similar opioids have been found being disguised as prescription drugs. The list continues to grow, but currently, OxyContin, Percocet, and Xanax have all been found as counterfeit pills containing fentanyl. According to a dealer VICE spoke to, fake Xanax is usually pressed to look like the white bar-shaped variety of the prescription drug and tends to be a bit thicker and crumblier than the authentic pills. And when it comes to the fake OxyContin that have plagued the west coast of Canada, these typically have an "80" printed on one side and are blue-green. Because these pills are being made illicitly, the amount of drugs in each one can vary widely, increasing the risk of overdose.

Lori Kufner, who works for the harm reduction group Trip! Project told VICE, "Anyone can press a pill these days. It's not very expensive or difficult... Even if you look it up and it matches something you saw online, it could still literally be anything."

A'lisa Ramsey, a 20-year-old from Calgary, told VICE, "When I started getting Oxys off the street, I didn't know it at first, but it was fentanyl... I realized that it wasn't Oxy when we went to the dealer over the guy who was selling to me, and he was like, 'No, those aren't Oxys, that's fentanyl.'" By the time she figured it out, Ramsey was already hooked on fentanyl.


Photo by Jake Kivanc

A Note on Accepting a Line at the Club

Let's face it: It's never been safe to take a line from a new friend while on the dancefloor considering white powders often look similar to one another. But Chelsea, a 27-year-old from Surrey, BC, had an experience at a strip club for a friend's birthday in July that made her swear off using drugs forever. After meeting a blonde girl hanging outside the club, she accepted the invitation to go do some cocaine with her. Chelsea had been doing coke recreationally since she was 18, so she accepted. When they went up to the dealer she asked for a bump instead of a line. Today, she says that if she had done a line instead of a bump, she might not be alive. "All I remember is walking up to my guy friend. It was about a minute before it happened... Someone told him, 'Your friend is ODing.'"

When Chelsea came to, she was strapped to a hospital bed, had her shirt cut open, and had to been saved using the opiate overdose antidote naloxone. She was informed that a tox screen showed the only drug in her system was fentanyl. After, she found out that the girl who offered her the "cocaine" had died, and that the dealer and another person at the club had also overdosed. "You just don't know anymore, it's just not worth your life," she told VICE.

Chelsea is not alone in her experience. On August 31 in Delta, BC, nine overdoses within 20 minutes may have been caused by fentanyl-laced coke.

Don't Use Alone

If you're alone, no one is going to be able to save you. "Even if you don't want to tell people that you're using drugs, don't do it by yourself in your dorm room," Kufner told VICE. "A lot of people wouldn't have died if they'd just been with someone else."

Get a Naloxone Kit

In BC, Alberta, and Ontario, naloxone—the antidote for opioid overdose—should be available over the counter at pharmacies. In other provinces, for now, a prescription is needed. Regardless of whether you live in the US or Canada, outreach programs are often the best bet for finding out how to get ahold of a kit. Though naloxone is a great tool, you cannot administer it to yourself if you're ODing—another person must be there to give it to you.

If you can, ask your doctor or pharmacist for a kit, learn the signs of an opiate overdose, and carry it on you at all times. However, be forewarned that if you don't have a prescription and are carrying it in one of the provinces where it's sold over the counter you may have issues getting it into a club or concert considering it comes as a needle.

Know Your Source

As always, if you're going to do drugs, it's best to know who you're getting them from and to have other people vouch for the substances you are taking. At the very least, it's good to have a policy of no random strangers and try to at least grab from a friend of a friend. "It's definitely a bad time to not have good connections, and even if you do have good connections, it's not great... The risks are really high," Kufner said.

Small Amounts Are Safer

As many of the drug warnings out there advise, it's best to take a small amount and wait 45 minutes to an hour to see what happens before you take more or before another person takes the same drug. But Kufner recommends that after that first trial period, you take a second small amount. "Especially with the fentanyl, it's such a small amount that could be in the substance... there could be not enough to do anything in the first sample, and then enough to kill you in the next sample."

Kufner says that in the harm reduction community, they've heard of cases recently where there's been a death when several people were sharing the same drugs, such as a bag of powder or splitting a pill. She said it's completely possible for one person to die from an overdose whereas the others sharing the same bag are completely fine. Because such a small amount fentanyl can be harmful, just a few flecks of the substance mixed up in a bag of a drug like cocaine could cause an overdose.

Don't Mix Substances (Yes, Even Alcohol)

Kufner told VICE that some of the worst situations they've seen working in harm reduction were when people had been mixing substances—especially alcohol. And when you're drinking, Kufner said, you're more likely to take drugs. "If folks are drinking a lot, especially at all-ages and first-year parties, people end up drinking a mickey all at once, then they do some other ," she said.


Photo by Jake Kivanc

Get a Testing Kit

Getting a testing kit is a great way to try to ensure the drug you're taking is the drug you intended to do. You can buy kits online or get them from harm reduction services, depending on where you live. These range in price and with the types of substances they test for. However, be forewarned that when it comes to fentanyl and related opioids, sometimes trace amounts won't show a positive test, but could still hurt you.

If You're Going to Take Study Drugs, Do So Smartly

If you get through your post-secondary education without you or someone you know trying Adderall out of desperation to pass an exam, have you even gone to university? So far there haven't been any reported cases of fentanyl found in study drugs, though it has been found in meth.

"It's the same thing with any uppers, because they're all basically speed: Stay hydrated and get rest," Kufner recommends. She said people who stay up for days binging on study drugs are at risk for provoking mood and other health issues. On top of that, mixing a study drug like Ritalin with caffeine can put you at higher risk for a heart attack, and the lack of sleep, food, and water (see: basic human needs that go out the window when you're hopped up on study drugs) can put you at risk of a seizure if you drink alcohol. Kufner says taking breaks is key and to be forewarned that a lack of sleep mixed with an uppers binge is not the best recipe for writing an exam.

Follow Allison Tierney on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Sex Robots May Be So Good in Bed They'll Ruin Civilization as We Know It

0
0


Image by Lia Kantrowitz

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android

It seems like scientists have been working tirelessly this year to reduce human interaction in almost everything we do, from pizza delivery to Uber rides, and now even realistic sex machines aren't far from becoming a reality. But unfortunately experts in the robosex industry have some fears that banging bots will be so good that it'll ruin people's lives, the Daily Star reports.

Robotics experts and sex therapists are worried that a future of Ex Machina–style humanoid fuckbots ready and willing to dote on our every need could turn the masses into sex-addicted maniacs—people may find it difficult to stop taking part in the high-tech carnal pleasure palace and actually detach from the dolls.

"Sexbots would always be available and could never say no, so addictions would be easy to feed," Joel Snell, a research fellow at Kirkwood College, told the Daily Star. "People may become obsessed by their ever faithful, ever pleasing sex robot lovers. People will rearrange their lives to accommodate their addictions."

It seems a little far out to imagine that sticking your junk into an incredibly elaborate masturbation machine will actually be detrimental to society on a large scale, but Snell might have a point.

"Robotic sex may become better than human sex," he added. "Like many other technologies that have replaced human endeavors, robots could surpass human technique."

Read: We Got a Bunch of People to Draw Us Their Ideal Sex Robots


The VICE Morning Bulletin

0
0


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

Photo by John Lamparski/WireImage

US News

Trump Says Putin Is a Better Leader Than Obama
Donald Trump said Russian president Vladimir Putin was more praiseworthy than President Obama at Wednesday's national security townhall. "He's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader." Speaking at the same forum, Hillary Clinton said the US was "not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we are not putting ground troops into Syria." —The Guardian

Russian Jet Comes Within Ten Feet of US Plane
A Russian fighter jet came within ten feet of a US Navy plane over the Black Sea on Wednesday, described by US officials as an "unsafe close-range intercept." The Pentagon said the intercept lasted about 19 minutes. A Russian defense spokesman said Russian pilots had been "in strict compliance with international flight rules."—NBC News

Warrant Out for Jill Stein's Arrest in North Dakota
A North Dakota county has issued a warrant for the arrest of the Green Party's presidential candidate Jill Stein. The candidate is accused of spray-painting construction equipment during a protest against Dakota Access pipeline and has been charged with counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief.—CBS News

Ryan Lochte Suspended for Ten Months
Ryan Lochte has been given a ten-month ban by the United States Olympic Committee and USA Swimming as a result of false claims about the gas station incident at the Rio Olympics. Lochte will miss next year's world swimming championships as a result.—USA Today

international NEWS

UN Watchdog to Investigate Gas Attack in Syria
The United Nations' chemical weapons watchdog will investigate the suspected use of chlorine gas in Aleppo, Syria. Ahmet Üzümcü, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), described reports of helicopters dropping chlorine on Tuesday as "disturbing." The OPCW will report to the UN Security Council.—Reuters

Denmark to Buy Leaked Data
Denmark will buy data leaked from the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers scandal, taxation minister Karsten Lauritzen has announced. It is unclear whether Denmark will buy the data from the original source of the leak or a third party. One of Denmark's opposition parties called the decision "deeply reprehensible."—BBC News

Hungarian Camerawoman Charged for Kicking Migrants
Hungarian prosecutors have filed charges against a camerawoman who was filmed kicking and tripping up migrants fleeing police on the country's border. Petra Laszlo was charged for "disorderly conduct" for the incident, which caused international outrage in September last year.—CNN

Zimbabwe Court Overturns Ban on Protests
Zimbabwe's high court has overturned a two-week ban on demonstrations in the capital Harare following a legal challenge by activists. Police had tried to ban anti-government rallies after violent clashes with protesters in recent weeks, but Zimbabwe's High Court judge Priscilla Chigumba ruled the ban was illegal.—Al Jazeera

Everything Else

Kaepernick Jersey Now No. 1 Seller in NFL
Colin Kaepernick's number seven jersey has become the best-seller in the NFL, a little over a week after he began his National Anthem protest. Kaepernick said he would donate all proceeds he gets from jersey sales "back into the communities."—ESPN

Police Recover Bling Stolen from Drake Tour Bus
A reported $3 million worth of jewelry was stolen from Drake's tour bus while he was performing Tuesday in Phoenix. But police recovered the jewelry and booked Travion King, 21, on a burglary charge.—ABC News

New Mario Game Coming to iOS
Despite annoyance over the iPhone 7's lack of a headphone jack, Apple made some more appealing announcements. A version of Pokémon Go is coming to the Apple Watch, and a new Mario game called Super Mario Run is coming to iOS.—Buzzfeed News

Hollywood Still Very White, Straight, and Male
A new study of 800 recent movies found that women and minorities were still underrepresented in speaking roles. Of 35,000 movie characters examined by University of Southern California professors, only 26 percent were racial minorities.—VICE News

MIA. Drops New Track 'Foreign Friend'
MIA has dropped another track from her forthcoming album AIM, to be released on Friday. The track, "Foreign Friend," features Jamaican artist Dexta Daps on vocals. The album will feature production from Diplo and Skrillex.—Noisey

OPM Hackers Used Superhero Names
A congressional report into the recent data breach at the Office of Personnel Management reveals it was carried out by two hacking groups, likely from China. The hackers used Marvel superhero names to steal the data.—Motherboard

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android


Photos of the Raging Hormones at this Huge Annual Justin Bieber Party

0
0

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece

Last weekend, hundreds of Greek Beliebers got together in Thissio – a neighbourhood in downtown Athens – to get to know each other, sing, dance and debate their hero. Of course there was music, there was laughter, there were raging hormones and Bieber related prizes to be won in Bieber related quizzes.

The event is quite a tradition – given the fact that it took place for the fifth consecutive year, most teens in attendance have been going to this thing once a year for more than a third of their lives.

Greek photographer Panos Kefalos documented the festivities.

More on VICE:

In The Queue - Outside Justin Bieber's Hotel

We Asked a Psychic Healer How Justin Bieber Can Make His Life Less Spiritually Draining

The Man Who Received Plastic Surgery to Look Like Justin Bieber Is More Sane Than Justin Bieber

The VICE Guide to Right Now: The IKEA Flagship Store Is Making an Entire Town Smell Like Poop

0
0


Photo via Flickr user Marco Raaphorst

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android

IKEA has a long and storied history of angering customers with its build-it-yourself furniture or by triggering marital spats. But over the past few years, the IKEA flagship store in Sweden has been enraging people for a different reason—it constantly reeks of shit.

The Independent reports that residents in Älmhult—the small Swedish town where the furniture giant got its start—have been complaining about a putrid stench trailing from the company's flagship location. Apparently the locals first noticed the smell back in 2012 when the furniture company relocated. Since then, several attempts have been made to conceal the odor, but "the smell of fresh crap" still lingers over the city, according to one resident.

"We are currently investigating the cause of the issue and taking the appropriate measures to rectify it as fast as we can," an IKEA spokesperson told the Independent.

It's not the first time the company has tried to fix the stench. At first, local officials thought it might be coming from the store's plumbing, and then maybe the garbage disposal or grease separators. But after installing new equipment in May, the smell continued to waft over the town.

The stench of what is probably the gastrointestinal remains of a plate of cheap meatballs has now gotten so unbearable that some locals have reported it to the country's National Land and Environment Court, which will need to decide the fate of IKEA's funk and determine how best to restore order to the town's air.

Read: IKEA Employees Share What They've Learned About Relationships from Watching Yours Fall Apart

Is the 'Flesh-Eating Bacteria' That Terrifies the Gulf Coast Becoming More Common?

0
0

Microscope image of vibrio vulnificus via the Centers for Disease Control Public Library

"When I shuffled into the water, I felt my foot go into something's mouth," recalls Kelly Blomberg of her last fishing trip to Grand Isle, Louisiana. "There was blood everywhere. LSU's biology department determined it was a baby blacktip shark. Thank god I didn't lose my foot from that!"

But the bite quickly became the least of Blomberg's problems. That wound allowed vibrio vulnificus—a rare microorganism sometimes called "flesh-eating bacteria"—to enter Blomberg's bloodstream.

Vulnificus doesn't actually eat flesh, but instead excretes a toxin that causes white blood cells to destroy the flesh to banish the intrusion. "At first my foot got huge, then there was a red line running up my leg. I was freaking out," says Blomberg, who after three months off work is only now beginning to heal. "The whole time that it was getting worse, nobody told me I had flesh-eating bacteria... there were tendons and muscle showing... They had to do a skin graft."

Though it's uncommon—the Centers for Disease Control confirm just 124 vibrio vulnificus cases reported in 2014—it can be a frightening and even deadly occurrence; many vulnificus victims lose a limb and around half of them die. "Vibrio has destroyed the lymphatic system on most of the left side of my body," Jocko Angle, who contracted a vulnificus infection after incurring an open wound at a Mississippi beach three years ago, tells VICE. "My left leg looks it has a bad case of diabetes. I've gone to several surgeons, and I've asked them to remove it."

August was the peak month for vibrio vulnificus in the Gulf of Mexico. The bacteria thrives on a perfect brackish mix of salt and fresh waters, around blood temperature or higher. It blooms thick in stagnant back bays, before summer storms flush it out and distribute it onto more active shores like Grand Isle.

Blomberg and Angle were relatively young and healthy when they contracted the bacteria, but they represent the exception rather than the rule, experts say.

"People say, 'I worry about letting my kids get in the Gulf water.' But kids are actually the least likely to get the disease," says retired professor of fisheries and Louisiana Sportsman writer Jerald Horst. According to Horst, over 90 percent of vulnificus victims entered the water with previous medical risk factors that compromised their immune systems. These include diabetes, leukemia, lymphoma, kidney disease, even alcoholism. "I'm 70 years old, and if I was on cancer medications, I might stay out of the water at Grand Isle. Otherwise, you are in almost no danger."

Vibrio vulnificus reports continue to grow marginally more frequent along the Gulf Coast, judging by annual stats from the Louisiana Office of Public Health, among other sources. Many locals also believe the bacteria is on the rise."I been living on Grand Isle since I'm a little kid, and I seen all the changes. In my time, I can't remember at anytime that anybody had this flesh eating bacteria," says Jules Malancon, a fourth-generation Grande Isle oyster fisherman. "But the last ten years, it's been lots of incidents of vibrio."

Some people chalk up this rise to the 2010 BP oil spill, and Malancon agrees. "During shrimp season, lotsa people coming down staying out on the water for sometimes a month, two months—and suddenly we gotta clean the beach every week it's so full of garbage," attests Melancon. "And when I worked on the tugboat, it was even worse. You got people with incidents of people pumping oil and sewerage and everything into the water."

Other more common types of vibrio, such as vibrio cholera, thrive on fecal bacteria. But the CDC and other experts say pollution doesn't cause vulnificus—and most only hint that filthy waters may provide conditions for the bacteria to live and breed. "The incidence of vulnificus isn't correlated with fecal pollution or fecal bacteria, but the presence of those things likely indicates an increase in organic nutrient, and vibrios like high-nutrient conditions," says James D Oliver, a professor of microbiology at the University of North Carolina. "I would say you'd find higher numbers of vulnificus in polluted (organic) waters, possibly of fecal origin, but it's the nutrient, not the fecal aspect."

The bacteria has been found to love tar—particularly the tar balls ubiquitous to some parts of the Gulf of Mexico in recent unfortunate years. In one limited study, Covadonga Arias, a professor of aquatic microbial genomics at Auburn University, found extremely high levels of vulnificus in beach tar balls. "Vibrio utilizes many types of carbon sources. They need organic matter to grow," says Arias. "Tar balls include a lot of organic carbons, and so also lot of vibrio.

"Ultimately, though, we honestly don't know what it means," she admits, since her team wasn't given money to do a more comprehensive study.

Vibrio may also seem to be on the rise, simply because ocean lovers and doctors are only now informed and on the lookout. "Vibrio is naturally occurring here. It lives in Louisiana year-round just like a speckled trout lives here," promises Horst. "We've just gotten better at diagnosing it. Not 20 years ago, most doctors gave you a blank look if you mentioned vulnificus, whether it was ingested by eating raw oysters, or if it entered through a wound. It was once routinely misdiagnosed."

The bad news is not that we've gotten better about identifying vulnificus, it's that we may have to deal with it in a lot more places. Climate change seems destined to exacerbate vibrio vulnificus by gifting the bacteria warmer waters in which to breed, and bigger storms to push it out into new, uncharted habitats. As the planet warms, vulnificus may be swimming elsewhere very soon.

Follow Michael Patrick Welch on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election: An Expert Explains What Might Happen if Russians Were Caught Interfering with the US Election

0
0

Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama meet in China during a G20 summit. The two would have to have words if Russian hackers were suspected of tampering the election. (Photo by Alexei Druzhinin\TASS via Getty Images)

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android

On Monday, the Washington Post ran a story with a horrifying headline: "US investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections." According to an anonymous intelligence official, a Russian hack aimed at influencing or discrediting the election "is something we're looking very closely at."

Coming on the heels of another Post story reporting that Russian hackers had targeted voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois, and the Russian-linked hack in June of the Democratic National Committee's computer system, this all seems kinda concerning. When I go to the polls in November, will some Guy Fawkes mask–wearing dude in Vladivostok be monkeying with my vote-o-matic? And what would that mean for American democracy and security?

To find out, I checked in with Jeffrey Carr, a security consultant and the author of the book Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld. He told VICE that, yes, our democracy is vulnerable to a destabilizing attack, but said he wouldn't be as quick as others to blame the Ruskies.

VICE: Is a hack on our voting system really more likely this year than in the past?
Jeffrey Carr: Every four years—every time there's a presidential election—there are stories about tampering with electronic voting. And this is the first time we've blamed it on a foreign government. That's because electronic voting is insecure. These stories always pop up, and it's always too late. There's never enough time to fix the problem when all of a sudden it becomes an issue a few months before the election. And when the election is over, it's shoved aside.

How would hackers break into voting machines if those machines aren't internet-enabled?
The systems aren't internet facing, but it's not that difficult to compromise systems that are not internet-facing, we use existing systems without the benefit of encryption, or two-factor authentication—for example, your chip-and-pin type method that we use for purchases. Something like that could be used to secure our voting as well, or some other kind of two-factor authentication. I'd like to see two systems used: Whatever we're using for electronic voting, because it's too late to really fix that—but also, ask every voter to prepare a paper ballot at the same time.

So what happens if Russians hack the election, and we find out about it?
Since it's never been done before, I don't know what would happen. Does Obama stay on until some new type of election is held? I have no idea. That's an interesting question. Do we have a plan for that? This could easily be the one where that happens.

"Ideally what would happen is Obama would call Putin and say, 'What the fuck?'"

In your opinion, would Russian president Vladimir Putin be a likely culprit?
I doubt it. I don't understand why he would bother. if Russia wanted to keep it secret, why would they use their own servers?

I think people do have responses to those hypotheticals...
The answer will be, "Well, because they want us to know!" But they don't want economic sanctions. Why would they risk more? There's no good answer to that.

Who else might want to hack the election?
Nobody can seem to predict what Donald Trump will do, and he may well resort to saying the election was rigged or tampered with.

Are you saying Trump could hire people to pretend to be Russian hackers? How would they make that believable?
You can simply buy everything you need online in a Russian forum, including the tools that'll show Russian tool marks. People won't stop for a second to question it. They'll immediately say it was Russia. In a climate like this, where crazy, Rusophobic, Cold War speculation is rampant, that's all Trump would have to do. For six figures, he could easily hire hackers to use Russian malware, and compromise one or two voting machines, throw the entire election into chaos, and blame it all on the FSB .

So if someone convinced the US that the election was tainted by Russian influence, do you think a cyberthreat like this could escalate to a broader military incident?
There are so many people in the US government right now stirring the flames of anti-Russian sentiment, compromising our election process is like attacking our critical infrastructure, and it rises to a level where a kinetic response would be justified. I doubt that's true, but countries' leaders make decisions like that all the time.

And would those bad decisions lead to a potential war?
Well, ideally what would happen is Obama would call Putin, and say, "What the fuck? Did you guys do this? Because we've got a serious problem here." And would say no, and Obama would say, "Can you tell us what was done, and which servers were used, and who was involved?" Hopefully the FSB would cooperate.

Sure, but would they actually cooperate?
There are plenty of examples where the FBI and the FSB have cooperated, when it comes to Russian criminals that the Kremlin is just as anxious to get rid of as the US. In this case, I can't imagine why they wouldn't cooperate if it were this serious. They would literally have to, or everyone would assume that yes, it was Russia, and then serious consequences would probably follow. But even if the FSB said, "Yeah, it wasn't us. We'll help you try and figure out who it was," they may or may not be successful in doing that. It just depends on how savvy the hackers were that did the work.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Viewing all 38002 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images