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The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election: Meet the Dominatrix Trying to Take Down Donald Trump

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I walk into a restaurant in Downtown, Los Angeles. It's Friday night, and I'm late because the parking lots around here only take cash, and obviously no one carries that anymore. But after a traversing the streets, desperately hunting for an ATM, I've finally made it, to the Dominatrices Against Donald Trump! Presidential Party and Fundraiser, hosted by Mistress Tara Indiana, head dominatrix and founder of the BDSM playpen Den of Iniquity. I'm here because Mistress Tara is running for president.

Mistress Tara invited me to the fundraiser personally, after reading a VICE article I'd written about one of her workshops. She wasn't thrilled about this, so I'm nervous. The program for the night, according to my ticket, includes a sit-down dinner and Mistress Tara's presidential stump speech, followed by a burlesque show and some mingling among members of the BDSM community. There's also going to be a raffle.

"Are you here for the event?" a hostess asks as I walk in. The restaurant isn't rented out, so I assume she says "event" to maintain some level of discretion or anonymity. I nod yes, and she tells me to find my place card.

There are about 50 people in attendance: an assortment of professional mistresses and their male subs, Tara's childhood friends, and some photographers. And me. There are also two old friends of mine from high school sitting at the bar, but they're not here for Tara; I nod and wait for the rumors to start circulating about the new crowd I've started hanging out with.

I head to the press table, but my place card isn't there. So I walk to a few other tables, and realize I don't see my name anywhere. I start to think the Doms Against Donald are playing some kind of elaborate prank on me, and my immediate reaction is to freak out and bolt, because that's my immediate reaction to most situations. You don't belong here, I tell myself. Run. So I do.

I walk back outside, already planning to call this piece off, or write about how I was duped over by a dominatrix. This is my payback for writing that article about Mistress Tara's workshop in the first place: A 30-minute drive and $10 for parking to walk around a restaurant humiliated. But eventually, I take a breath, suck it up, and head back inside to explain the seating issue to the hostess.

This time, she tells me to follow her, and suddenly I find myself face-to-face with Mistress Tara. There's my nametag—it's been waiting for me all along, seating me at her table. We exchange a polite hello, and she tells me she's glad I could make it. I do not know why, but for some reason, I'm intimidated. Like seeing a teacher out of school for the first time and expecting to be assigned homework while at the grocery store, I keep expecting to be whipped or flogged at a dinner party.

Seated to my left is an older gentleman who, within minutes of arriving, will not stop talking. He is an infectious disease doctor, which I know because he tells me every few minutes. He doesn't admit to practicing BDSM, but hell, does he know a lot about it. When he finds out I'm writing an article on the event, he asks that I not identify him in the piece. He also asks for the paper and pen from my purse and proceeds to take extensive notes for me.

He explains to me the pleasures of cock and ball torture; I zone out but it has something to do with nerve endings. He tells me BDSM isn't a fetish but rather a sexual orientation. This is all well and good, but I'm here to cover a presidential campaign. Even in a world where women reign, there seems to be room for some well-intentioned mansplaining.

Our conversation is interrupted when a photographer comes up and addresses a tall blond mistress seated at the table next to me. "Do you mind if I take your picture?" he asks. She waits a beat and looks up from her cell phone. "Babe, I'd be pissed if you didn't," she laughs, before posing for about five different shots that look remarkably the same.

Eventually, Mistress Tara begins her speech. She doesn't have a podium; instead a subordinate male kneels at her feet gratefully, holding her the text of her address steady in the air. He is flogged every time it is time to turn the page. None of this seems to be taken very seriously, though, and the crowd laughs and cheers as she speaks. The other diners at the restaurant—the ones who aren't here for Tara—are Snapchatting the scene in bewilderment.

In an election cycle that bears striking resemblance to Mike Judge's Idiocracy, all of this somehow doesn't seem that out of the ordinary. It seems like these days, anything goes. Maybe a dominatrix is what we need to "whip America back into shape," as Mistress Tara's campaign slogan suggests. Following the fundraiser, I spoke to the stunt candidate herself about what she's attempting to accomplish with her campaign, and how she plans to shame her "rival," Donald Trump.

VICE: Why did you decide to get involved in this election?
Mistress Tara: I wanted to bring attention to how utterly broken our political system is. What is both glorious and tragic about this election cycle is how clearly it illustrates a core principle of our country – that anyone, and I do mean anyone, can run for president. Whether that be a washed up reality-TV star, a person being investigated by the FBI or a dominatrix. Really, of all these choices, you have to ask yourself, "Which is the most ridiculous?"

Is there a correlation between BDSM and politics? There are probably similar fundamental principles: power, control, understanding the needs of people?
There is a correlation on several levels. The obvious one is, as Oscar Wilde said, "Everything is about sex, except sex; sex is about power"—and nowhere truer then in S&M. But on a deeper level, I've noticed being in the scene for over 25 years, that fetishes and kinks come in trends, just like fashion, music, et cetera. And these trends tend to be reactions to the social and political zeitgeist.

For example, when I got into the business in 1989 your garden variety slave was into foot worship, and cross dressing. I see this as a reaction to changing gender roles and a need to work though those issues. Then when AIDS started to affect the straight community, things like heavy medical, blood sports, and scat became popular. People were tired of "safe sex"—they wanted to do things that were dangerous and risky. They were tired of having to suit up in a latex body condom to be intimate with another human being. And now chastity is really popular. I think it's because sex is more readily available to men then ever, so they are fetishizing not having sex.

Can you describe what's in your campaign platform?
The problem with this country and, indeed the world is there are not enough women in leadership positions. Men have been in charge for the last 6,000 years and they've really fouled it up. It's time for a woman to be in charge. My platform is based on this foundation.

The first thing I'm going do after I'm sworn in is to decriminalize all consensual sex acts between adults. I will prohibit white men from holding office without permission from their Mistress. And then I'm going to institute a sexier enhanced interrogation program lead by leather-clad dominatrices incorporating teasing and denial methods to break ISIS operatives. We also need funding for scientific research into BDSM. I believe it's genetic and it's time to settle the nature vs. nurture question. Finally, I will require men to carry purses, and be fully responsible for their own keys and wallets.

How did you think of your slogan?
Oh, that was easy. It wrote itself. If Donald Trump was going to "Make America Great Again," then I was going to "Whip It Back into Shape." Beating middle-aged white men is my most well-developed skill set. That's what I've been doing for the past 25 years—and I do it well.

Who are your supporters?
Well, they say politics make strange bedfellows, and I'm no exception. I'm going to carry the millennial vote, especially hipsters that will vote for me ironically, as well as disgruntled Bernie supporters. I'll also run well with moderate Republicans who can't bring themselves to vote for Trump or Hillary. I'll likely get all of those votes. I'm also polling well in the black community, lesbian community, and of course, the kink community. [Author's note: As far as I can tell, this is unsubstantiated. Mistress Tara has not been included in any reliable polls.]

Do you think you're the most authentic candidate? All of your cards are kind of out on the table.
Without a doubt. My skeletons are all out of the closet. I'm an open book and my positions have been consistent through out my career. I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. You always know where Mistress Tara stands on any issue. Especially when she's referring to herself in the third person.

Talk to me about Donald Trump. You've had some pretty harsh things to say about him.
I think he's a needle-dicked carnival barker whose every thought and deed is to compensate for the size of his incredibly tiny micro penis. I mean really, building giant gold plated skyscraper with your name on it? If that's not overcompensating for some deeply ingrained inadequacy, I don't know what is. Even his choice of words; huge, tremendous, big—it's laughable. He wears his ties long, as if to cover his shame. The bragging, all of that, are all obvious symptoms of small penis syndrome.

One of the things I've noticed being in the sex business is the men who are the pickiest about what a woman looks like are always the ones with the tiniest penises. They feel so powerless to attract a female that they'll beat up on women's looks to feel better about themselves. Just like Trump's statement "It's very hard to be a 10 without having big boobs."That's typical of a man who is very insecure about his own body.

From what you know about Trump, can you guess what his fetishes might be? What do you think he's in to?
I'd peg him as a human toilet. People are almost always the opposite in scene as they are in their everyday lives. So much shit comes out of his mouth, it'd only be natural that he'd want to put some of that shit back into it.

Who would you pick to be your vice president?
That's been a very tough decision. I had some incredible people on my short list: Mistress Snow Mercy is a scientist and would have been incredibly helpful on global warming issues; Mistress Genevieve would have helped me lock up the South. And more recently I was considering George Takei, but after a lot of deliberation I realized I had to stay true to my party and pick a woman for VP. And that woman is Wanda Sykes. She's tough, dedicated, and takes no prisoners. I'm proud to have her as my VP.

How can people get involved if they want to help your campaign?
Like Donald Trump, I am self-funding. Unlike Donald Trump, I am not a billionaire, so donations are greatly appreciated. People can make donations at mistresstaraforpresident.com or our Indiegogo campaign, "Dildos for Democracy."

Part of our "Dildos for Democracy" campaign is to send Donald Trump 1,000 tiny dildos. So we've have set up an Amazon Wish List for him. All you have to do is purchase a tiny dildo from the list, and it will be shipped directly to him at Trump Tower. So far, we've sent 128 but with the help of the American people, we'll send him those 1,000 tiny dildos!

Another way is to join in on our Twitter small penis humiliation campaign. Just go on Twitter and make jokes about Donald Trump's tiny, tiny penis with the hashtag #mistresstaraforpresident and you will help me defeat Trump this November.

Follow Alison Segal on Twitter.


After a Police Shooting, One Father's Quest for Justice Sets a Precedent

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Nicholas Heyward Sr. stands in the stairwell of the Brooklyn housing project where a New York City police officer killed his 13 year old son, Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. All photos by Meron Menghistab

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

Nicholas Heyward Sr. stood on the rooftop of 423 Baltic Street, steps from where a cop killed his 13-year-old son in 1994—long before America came to know Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, or Philando Castile. He looked out over the panorama of Brooklyn around him—the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan to the northwest, the New York Bay to the south, and miles of Kings County opening out to the east, punctuated by church spires and water towers—before walking me into the stairwell where his son had been shot.

Afternoon light poured in from a glass-block window above the landing to the fourteenth floor of the building, one of several in the Gowanus Houses, a public housing complex in the southern part of the borough. Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. and three of his friends were playing cops and robbers on the evening of September 27, 1994, when they decided to go downstairs and search for the other boys in the game. They lined up single file, toy guns in hand, and prepared to sneak downstairs.

"When Nicholas turned the corner," Heyward recounted, "he saw the officer. The officer yelled out will go away. It's a reflection of the same attitude that you find in police departments and law enforcement today: It's just a black kid."

Hynes's lawyer, Sean Haran, says the former DA "stands behind the good and highly professional work that his office performed in investigating and reviewing the matter."

DA Thompson may be considering criminal charges against George and may also seek to determine whether Hynes or the police department committed any wrongdoing, and Heyward is optimistic that he will; Thompson pursued charges against Peter Liang, the officer who killed Akai Gurley, and he's overturned roughly 20 wrongful convictions from previous DAs' tenures. There's also reason to be skeptical: DA Thompson is the one who recommended the judge not sentence Liang to jail time, resulting in the community service and probation sentence, rendering the case something of a show trial. A spokesperson said the DA's office is unable to comment on the investigation because it is ongoing.

It's been a year since the DA reaffirmed his intention to fulfill his campaign pledge. The long wait for closure—for some sort of reasonable response by some level of government to the killing of his child—has only compounded Heyward's suffering. Now, when the pain comes, it comes in stronger, he said, and he finds himself in tears at unexpected moments. Every time a police officer shoots another black man, he said, "You're reliving the pain of the loss of your loved one over and over again."

Heyward holds the toy rifle that he says Nicholas was playing with on the day he was killed.

As ever, Heyward holds out hope. He invited Thompson back to this year's Day of Remembrance—the annual celebration of Nicholas's birthday—held on a Saturday afternoon in late August at the Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. Park.

This year marked 35 years since his birth and 22 years since his death. As in previous years, there was music and speeches, arts and crafts, basketball games, and a toy-guns-for-books exchange. Thompson did not attend. Still, Heyward told his son's story to all who gathered and said that he hopes, this time, the DA's investigation into his son's death is thorough and transparent.

Toward evening, friends and family members began to say their goodbyes, and the crowd thinned and the plaza quieted. Soon the only sound left was the laughter of the children from the Gowanus Houses playing in the park.

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

I Spent a Gloriously Geeky Day with the Makers of Dungeons & Dragons

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The offices of Wizards of the Coast in Renton, Washington. Photo courtesy of Wizards of the Coast


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A wraith, steaming white and full of malice, screamed in agony. Behind us a hall of blades swished and sliced at odd angles, presenting a difficult escape. And as an undead warrior rose from his tomb and pointed his broadsword at my tiny gnomish ranger I wondered, How'd I end up here?

With Greg Tito, Wizards of the Coast's communications manager, as my guide, I took in my surroundings. This was the end of my day at Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering,and Mike Mearls (head of IP design and R&D for D&D), was about to kill my character in a brutal little dungeon of his own design. Not every day at WOTC ends up like this, but plenty do.

Statues and oddities litter the halls at Wizards of the Coast.

The headquarters of Wizards of the Coast, founded in 1990 and acquired by Hasbro in 1999, sits nestled among the pines in Renton, a small town 30 minutes outside of Seattle, Washington. The company's office building is a big, imposing, glass structure that is rather nondescript save for the blazing purple company sign. I passed a large cafeteria-looking room full of tables set up for gaming and took the elevator to the Wizards lobby, where I was greeted by a giant statue of a dragon (who, I would later learn, was named Mitzy).

The hallways were painted in muted beiges, the carpets all classic office patterns. At first glance, it all seems mundane. You can hear the click-clack of typing behind cubicle walls, and the fluorescent lighting buzzes overhead. But around every corner and in every nook were hints of the heart of the company. Wizard, knight, and goblin statues stood watch silently, as busy employees hurried from cubicles to meetings and back again. Without these hints at personality, this would look like any other drab office where people pecked away at boring work.

Description: ND HALL.JPG

Though my focus was on Dungeons & Dragons , I started my day with another important Wizards game, Magic: The Gathering. Hugh McMullen, director of global communications, introduced me to an upcoming set of Magic: The Gathering cards. Called Kaladesh, McMullen described it as "steampunk minus top hats... meets India." Each project takes years to complete, McMullen explains. "I just had a baby, and I'm working on a set now that will come out when he's in kindergarten." To his right hung a whiteboard with a list of tasks to complete under the header "To-Do Before Baby."

Description: ND Playroom.JPGD&D means a lot to me. I've been playing the tabletop role-playing game for well over a decade, and I first cut my teeth at VICE with an article about how D&D was officially cool again. But for Nathan Stewart, brand director for D&D, my years-long escape is his day-to-day. "Half the time, I'm stuck in management corporate bullshit like any other company, but the other half of the time, I get to do crazy stuff that you wouldn't believe."

Stewart's a lively, fiery guy who comes from the world of video games, working in brand marketing for XBOX, Rockstar, EA, and Bandai before making the move to Wizards of the Coast. He remarked on how often he gets in trouble while giving interviews (usually because he gives away some embargoed secret), but he spoke passionately about the game he represents. "When you've got a brand as big and loved as Dungeons & Dragons, that touches people so emotionally, you're only limited by your ability to tell good stories," Stewart says. "You never know who's going to be your next biggest fan."

Many employees spend their lunch breaks in this room, playing D&D campaigns or trying out new decks from 'Magic: The Gathering.'

Since its newest edition, the game's been moving toward simplicity and storytelling and away from hard mechanics and heavy math. Older editions could feel impossible to master and lent themselves to natural boy's clubs with their depictions of "busty maidens" and a reliance on damsels in distress and man-hero narratives. But the game has opened up and become more accessible over the last three years.

" a metaphor for our changing tastes," Stewart tells me. "I was talking with someone recently about cult classic movies, and about the narration at the beginning of Blade Runner, because they thought fans would be confused. Now if you did that, the fans would protest and be like, 'We're not idiots—we fucking know what the deal is here. Don't spoon feed us.' You have to be really in touch with what they want, and they want really great stories, rich details, thoughtful ideas. Don't sell me the weight of the book, sell me the quality of the adventure."

During our lunch break at a small tavern in Renton, I chatted with several other WotC employees and got a great sense of the company. People love their jobs here, but it isn't all sunshine. There was talk of explosive yelling matches and the chaos of fast-approaching deadlines. And I didn't get a sense that this was a "we work hard, we play hard" corny truism; everyone seemed jangled by the pressures of the job. Anytime the mention of deadlines came up, higher-ups in the company grimaced, and some ground-level employees nearly jumped with fright.

On average, the company releases a major set of Magic: The Gathering cards in the spring and fall, and two ancillary sets of cards (which include specialty and self-contained card sets) in-between the major releases. On the Dungeons & Dragons side, each year sees a new major storyline adventure with a full marketing push, a separate adventure, and one or two ancillary books full of references and world-building for the players. This amount of output is extreme, and, as McMullen mentioned earlier, each product has two to three years of development behind it.

The dragon Mitzy greets visitors when they first enter the WOTC lobby.

Key to those upcoming products are Mike Mearls (the evil dungeon master mentioned at the top) and Chris Perkins, principal story designer. Though they've been working on D&D for years now, there are always new challenges. Take Volo's Guide to Monsters , which revisits the classic "Monster Manual" in an era of moral ambiguity. "We took a bunch of creatures like gnolls, goblins, trolls, and we asked why?" explains Mearls. "Why are they the way they are? In this post- Game of Thrones world of fantasy, you can't just say 'Oh, they're evil.'"

For Perkins, who acts as the face of D&D by serving as dungeon master for livestreaming celebrity games, there seems to be almost a workaholic drive to do everything himself. He talked about writing all of Curse of Strahd (a special horror-themed adventure that dungeon masters can run for their players) in a sort of fever pitch over a few weeks of holiday break.

Mearls and Perkins ran down the dizzying list of steps needed to go from an idea to a finished product. After the team settles on their big storyline or major idea for a new adventure, they create a one-sheet breakdown of the story. "It's the kind of document that we could show to our CEO, and he could get the big idea, or we could show to someone in the office, and they could get it," says Perkins.

Once they've been able to reduce the entire adventure to a single page, they then blow it out in the opposite direction and create huge design documents covering every tiny detail, from what the illustrations should look like to possible outside product development. "Then it splits into text and art streams," says Perkins, "where we're creating imagery that are meant to be inspirational pieces. They're not static. They're energetic, exciting. If we showed them to someone at Warner Brothers, they'd go, 'Oh, I want to make a movie about that scene!'"

Next comes the design guide, which "encapsulates all the crunchy bits of the story, all the information that our partners would need to bring these characters and conflicts to life. And it's a substantial document, sometimes as large as our printed products, but it gets down to the weeds." After all this background work is done, and the partners have bought off on the ideas within, they can finally go off and create the product.

Description: ND Dragon.JPGNow, of course, my experience at WOTC wasn't really a proper day in the life at the company. But what I gleaned from my time with the D&D team, aside from a palpable tension in the air whenever someone mentioned "deadlines," was almost a sense of awe in the work they were doing. "Working at Wizards is like working at the geek White House," explained one Wizards staffer. The analogy is apt—it's awesome and stressful and fun and serious, all at the same time.

And that brings us back to the top, as the body of my poor little gnome hero smoldered in the pit of some foul dungeon, staring down an ancient evil unleashed just for me. Several other D&D staffers sat at the table, and we'd formed a motley party to drive off a subterranean menace. When I thanked them all for taking the time to play with me, one of my fellow party members, a sorcerer, waved away my thanks. "Stop work early to play D&D? It was the least I could do."

Description: ND Giaco & Witch.JPGFollow Giaco Furino on Twitter.

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We Asked People What They Regret Most in Life

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This article originally appeared on VICE Denmark.

Everybody has regrets. Not just the kind that hits you a couple of hours after buying a pair of funky moccasins because you felt the sudden urge to spice up your style a little bit—but the real stuff. I'm talking about the regrets you bottle up—those that keep you awake at night, wishing you could go back in time and change things.

"Regret is a modern taboo," psychotherapist and former priest Ilse Sand explained to me. "There's a lot of pressure on being perfect and having everything under control, so it's become hard to admit to ourselves that we've made a bad decision we regret." Which is a shame because when we don't have regrets, we miss out on the chance to make up for our mistakes—or learn not to make them again.

I asked five brave souls to tell me what they regret most in life because talking about it makes everything better.

All photos of the interviewees by Tor Birk Trads

Céleste Nshimiyimana, 25, Student

I regret the last phone conversation I had with my big sister, the day before she committed suicide. I was too self-involved to take her call seriously. She had a tough life, and I didn't make it any easier for her—we fought about everything. She called me one Saturday just before midnight. She asked me to sit down, and she started listing a bunch of positive things about me. She kept saying I should never forget how much she loved me—but I was so occupied with getting ready for the party I was headed to that I didn't think about why she was saying it. I was just basically waiting for her to hang up so I could go.

She had been admitted to a psychiatric ward a few times before, but they always let her go after a while, and I didn't take it too seriously. I was mostly just annoyed that she always made a fuss over everything. I regret not having done more to understand how awful she was feeling; I think about that every day. After the first time my sister was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, I even convinced our mom not to quit her job. She was planning to do so to be able to move in with her daughter and take care of her.

That night, the second I hung up, I forgot all about our conversation. Now I keep replaying it in my mind. I don't know if I would've been able to do anything to save her, but if I could go back, I'd make sure to tell her that I loved her, too. I'd list to her all the things that were great about her. It might have made a difference.

Carina Ladegaard, 36, Digital Relations Manager

I regret starting my own business instead of just enjoying my youth and traveling the world. I got my degree at a private tailoring academy when I was 20, and a year later, one of my former teachers—who owned the school—offered me the chance to buy her out. I come from a family of entrepreneurs—my mom, several of my aunts, and my grandfather have all started their own business—so it was only natural I'd follow the same path.

I wasn't prepared for the responsibility at all. I had gone directly from high school to the academy and hadn't taken the time to do some proper partying or enjoy my freedom. And then, suddenly, I had this whole school I was responsible for. The staff was so much older than I was—I'd chat with them over lunch about how much they spoiled their grandchildren. The pressure really got to me after a while—I had my first stress-induced ulcer at 23. If I didn't take any sleeping pills, I would just lie in bed at night, thinking about work.

I sold the company at 28. I feel I missed out on my youth—I skipped the years you can get away with being a little egotistical and irresponsible, living in the now without thinking about the consequences. For about six years, I did what I thought I should be doing, not what I wanted to do or what made me happy.

Morten Espersen, 27, Shipping Agent

I regret not being a better boyfriend to my ex. We knew each other for about seven years, before we started dating in 2012. It was a big, serious kind of love—I was sure I'd have kids with her and we would grow old together.

My work was always a priority for me, to the extent that I didn't leave any room in my life to really be there for her. She had a mild depression and was struggling with her studies, but when I came home from work, instead of supporting her and helping out at home to take some of the pressure away from her, I felt like I deserved to chill and put my feet up. We'd fight over that—we fought over everything. Then one day, during an argument we were having at her dad's house about me not being home enough, the fight just completely derailed for some reason, and we left each other on the spot.

A couple of days later, I drove over to her place to pick up my stuff. We said a quick goodbye, and that was it. I guess we were both too proud to suggest trying to move past that last fight. I think about her a lot—I've never cared more deeply about any girl in my life. If I had listened to her, we might still be together now.

Fanny Olhats, 27, Journalist

I regret that it's taken me so long to accept my body the way it is. I grew up in California, in an environment where everyone was beautiful and skinny. My dad is a chef, so I grew up surrounded by great food—and I probably always ate a bit more than I needed. I hated my body at times; it was never the body I wanted. I wasn't comfortable in my own skin; I wasn't comfortable with who I was.

That obviously had an impact on my daily life—if I couldn't find the right clothes to cover my body, I'd stay home instead of going out. If I was having a fat day, I'd call in sick. I hated the idea of confronting other people with my body by wearing a swimsuit or a bikini—so I never went to the beach or the pool. In 2012, I broke up with a boyfriend who cheated on me, and I was just wallowing in self-hatred, when I suddenly found a fitness class that was mostly about having fun and treating yourself well. Through that class, I somehow learned to be nicer to myself.

I really regret that I've wasted so many years being obsessed with how much I hated my body. Recently, we had a competition at work—you could send in Instagram pictures, and ten of them would be hung on the kitchen wall. I sent in a nude picture of myself, taken from behind in a bathhouse in Malmö, Sweden. Pictures like that aren't a big deal for most people, but it was a huge victory for me. I cried when I submitted the photo.

Rasmus Veltz Nielsen, 27, Nursery Assistant

I regret not studying abroad when I had the chance. I was selected for a program in Australia along with a former roommate—I studied Danish, and he studied economics. We probably spent about eight or nine months organizing the whole trip and had everything arranged when he suddenly dropped out to study something else. At that point, I just ditched the whole plan because I couldn't be bothered to go through with it by myself.

Now I know that that was a mistake. I've never been good at just spontaneously leaping into new things, but that trip could've taught me a thing or two about standing on my own two legs and making my own decisions without overthinking them.

Sometimes when I'm trying to make a big decision or I'm having a discussion, I suddenly feel there's something unresolved inside me. That there's something I should have done but didn't. That old roommate recently went abroad for six months as part of his new studies. He went alone and just got back. Now I'm considering going to South America to do some volunteer work for about six months—if I can make it work financially.

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Ranking Canada’s Prime Ministers from Most to Least Boring

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Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Thatcher. That suit is not boring at all. Photo via CP.

Everyone knows Canada is one of the greatest countries in the world. But what about the people who made it great? That's right: I'm talking about the prime ministers. We have a rich history of illustrious leaders making the good decisions that we like, which are helpful to us in following our dreams. But what do we really know about the 23 white people who have bossed us around for the last 150 years?

The answer: a lot. Several thousand words it turns out—at least. So to save you some time, we here at VICE Canada have compiled a definitive list of the Titans of Confederation in order of most to least boring (by definition, with the exception of Pierre Trudeau, no Canadian politician can be "cool.")

Behold your prime ministers in ascending order of excitement.


Image via Wikimedia

23. Alexander Mackenzie (1874-1878)

Alexander Mackenzie was a stone-mason by trade, and carried all his life the no-nonsense, straight-shooting attitude of a good, working class 19th-century Protestant. He also looks like the old man from Home Alone.

22. Mackenzie Bowell (1894-1896)

Bowell is one of only two senators to serve as prime minister. He was also the Grand Master of Orange Lodge in Canada, which represents a powerful commitment to hating the Irish. Despite staying on in the Senate until his death 1917, no one from the government showed up at his funeral. Harsh.


Photo via Wikimedia

21. Charles Tupper (1896)

Charles Tupper was prime minister for roughly two months in 1896 before losing an election to Wilfrid Laurier. He was also largely responsible for bringing Nova Scotia into Confederation in 1867 and presumably felt pretty entitled to the job, because he refused to resign after his loss and tried to appoint his own government until the Governor General told him to fuck off. He was also seduced from his staunch Baptist upbringing on a trip to Scotland when he encountered some delicious Scotch whisky and later broke off an eight-year engagement to his teenage sweetheart. I choose to believe these two things are related.

20. Louis St. Laurent (1948-1957)

Nice guy. His relationship with US President Dwight D. Eisenhower was frosty at best.

19. Wilfrid Laurier (1896-1911)

Laurier was the first Francophone prime minister, served in Parliament for 45 years, coined the phrase "sunny ways," and pretty much established Canada as we know it today both geographically and as a more-or-less culturally liberal country. But the only interesting things about him are that he carried on a 20-year emotional affair with some other woman while he was married and that John Diefenbaker sold him a newspaper in 1910.


Photo via Wikimedia

18. Paul Martin (2003-2006)

Paul Martin is best known for his epic rivalry with Jean Chretien and for his brief stint as a steamship mogul. He fulfilled his family dream of someone named Paul Martin becoming the prime minister. He also beat polio, which is much more impressive than anything FDR ever accomplished.

17. Joe Clark (1979-1980)

Joe Clark is literally best known for being forgettable, and also for losing his luggage. Some guy recognized Clark once out on the streets of Montreal in 2007 and then punched him in the face. Joe Clark is the Charlie Brown of Canada.

READ MORE: A Definitive Ranking of US Presidents From Lamest to Coolest

16. John Abbott (1891-1892)

Before entering politics, John Abbott was best known for successfully defending Confederate soldiers from extradition after they were repeatedly captured trying to attack Vermont from across the Canadian border. This pissed off Lincoln so much it almost brought us into the American Civil War on the side of slavery. He is also distantly related by marriage to Dr. Norman Bethune, who fought with Mao in the Chinese Civil War. John Abbott and his family loved civil wars, I guess.


Image via Wikimedia

15. Arthur Meighen (1920-1921; 1926)

Arthur Meighen is a huge nerd who was repeatedly humiliated by Mackenzie King. After losing government to King twice in the 1920s, Meighen tried to stage a comeback to federal politics in the early 1940s, winning the Conservative leadership in 1941 and trying to get a seat in a 1942 by-election. It was convention at the time that the government wouldn't run anyone against an opposition leader, so King didn't run a Liberal—but he hated Meighen so much that he poured money into the CCF candidate's campaign, who trounced Meighen and kept him out of Parliament. Quite possibly the biggest loser in Canadian history.

14. John Turner (1984)

John Turner qualified as a track sprinter for the 1948 Olympic team, almost married Princess Margaret, and rescued John Diefenbaker from drowning in Barbados in 1965. He was also caught on television in 1984 patting women from the Liberal Party executive on the ass. Most noteworthy for being brutally owned during a televised election debate by Brian Mulroney.

13. Robert Borden (1911-1920)

Robert Borden is #13 on this list because he survived Parliament burning down in 1916 by crawling out of the inferno on his hands and knees, and also because he is distantly related to Lizzie.

12. Richard Bedford Bennett (1930-1935)

Imagine if they made the villain from It's A Wonderful Life the prime minister and you have a rough approximation of R. B. Bennett. His solution to the Great Depression was rounding up single unemployed men in military-run work camps where they did hard labour for less than 20 cents a day. When they kicked up a fuss about this situation, Bennett had the RCMP beat the shit out of them in Regina on Canada Day 1935. Fuck R. B. Bennett.


Brian Mulroney with some American dude. Photo via Wikimedia

11. Brian Mulroney (1984-1993)

Brian Mulroney is basically Patrick Bateman, minus the murders. He was so charming that his law firm kept him on the payroll despite failing the bar exam twice. He also had a noted fondness for receiving cash in brown envelopes from sketchy German businessmen, but hell, who doesn't?

10. John Thompson (1892-1894)

John Thompson was briefly premier of Nova Scotia for two months in 1882 and was the first Catholic prime minister. He died of a heart attack at 49 in Windsor Castle while visiting Queen Victoria, which is kind of a power move.


Photo via Facebook

9. Justin Trudeau (2015-present)

Justin Trudeau has a cool dad and good hair and enjoys The Tragically Hip and is allergic to shirts. He was blessed by Richard Nixon in 1972, which is a pretty amazing baptism. He beat up Patrick Brazeau on live national television, and he has definitely smoked weed. He was also really nice to me the time I accidentally spilled Diet Pepsi on him in 2006.

8. Stephen Harper (2006-2015)

Stephen Harper is a grand conservative visionary in the tradition of John Diefenbaker. He had none of Dief's weird charm and all of his alienating coldness. He was also (arguably) one of the least socially-conservative figures to emerge out of the Reform/Alliance, which is impressive for a guy so into Murdoch Mysteriesthat he wrote himself into the show. His family fosters cats and he is such a big hockey nerd that he wrote a book about it while prime minister. He also played in a band with a sex offender and performed a surprise set with Yo Yo Ma in 2009. In retrospect, Stephen Harper's personal life sounds like a really surreal episode of Arthur.

7. Lester B. "Mike" Pearson (1963-1968)

Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for orchestrating the UN response to the Suez Crisis and inventing the concept of peacekeeping. He was also briefly a pilot in World War One, but he kept crashing planes. His instructor started calling him "Mike" because he thought "Lester" was a name for nerds, and the name stuck because he was right.

6. John A. Macdonald (1967-74; 1878-1891)

John A. Macdonald was a corrupt genocidal drunk who loved railroads. He once powered through a five-hour speech by continuously drinking gin and he is sitting down on the steps in that 1864 group photo of the Fathers of Confederation because he was too hungover to stand. He united British North America via the Canadian Pacific Railway at the same time as he was deliberately starving Indigenous peoples onto reserves. He is your father and you will respect him.

5. Kim Campbell (1993)

Kim Campbell appeared in a "tasteful" nude in 1993 and has the best Twitter out of everyone on this list. Mostly, though: a woman running the government? Way too wild for Canada, man.


Image via Wikimedia

4. John Diefenbaker (1957-1963)

JUST LOOK AT THIS GUY. John Diefenbaker was a fucking maniac and nobody liked him. He spent most of his life losing elections at every possible level of government. But he never gave up and eventually, somehow, he became the prime minister and won the largest majority government in Canadian history in 1958. He gave Indigenous peoples the right to vote in 1960 and managed to keep apartheid South Africa out of the Commonwealth, but he was a bitter weirdo who wound up alienating everybody in politics. He was so bitter that when Lester Pearson died in 1972, his only comment was "he shouldn't have won the Nobel Prize." ICE COLD. He also (probably) fathered at least two Diefenbabies out of wedlock, because Dief the Chief is unstoppable.

3. Pierre Trudeau (1968-1979; 1980-1984)

Pierre Trudeau aggressively did not give a fuck. He was friends with Fidel Castro and endorsed by John Lennon as "a beautiful person." He dated Barbara Streisand in 1969. He was a black belt in judo, stared down rioting Quebec separatists, and regularly flipped people the bird. He was cool to the point that it pissed people off, and you can still use his name to start bar fights in Alberta. Famously, he invented modern Canada in 1982.

2. Jean Chretien (1993-2003)

Jean Chretien's favourite hobby growing up was beating the shit out of people. Clobbering dudes was his one true passion in life. He started a frenzied melee on the floor of the 1986 Liberal convention and they had to call the cops. He was out for a walk in 1996 and just straight-up choked a guy. He was also fond of figuratively destroying people, like the time he gutted federal government services in 1995, or "everything that happened to Paul Martin after 2003." Chretien turned the Liberal Party of Canada from a vehicle for Trudeau's lofty liberalism into the ruthless killing machine it is today. The guy just loves to fight. I probably have to go into protection now.


Image via Wikimedia

1. William Lyon Mackenzie King (1921-1926; 1926-1930; 1935-1948)

Mackenzie King is arguably Canada's most successful prime minister, but he was inarguably an extremely fucked-up person. He is the only prime minister to have a PhD, which he got for writing a dissertation on "Oriental Immigration in Canada," where he argued "that Canada should remain a white man's country... highly necessary on political grounds." He would later go on to round up Japanese-Canadians in internment camps during the Second World War.

He was also really, really, really into the occult. He regularly held seances with paid mediums, chatting with the ghosts of Leonardo da Vinci, Wilfrid Laurier, his mother, his grandfather, FDR, and several of his dead dogs (one of which he believed to be an incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ). He would lie awake at night in the 1930s obsessing that he was put on earth to help Adolf Hitler turn away from evil and redeem the German people. He never married, (allegedly) had regular sex with prostitutes, and may or may not have been in love with Governor General John Buchan. Minus the racism, Mackenzie King is an inspiration to lonely weirdos everywhere: you can do anything you set your mind to, as long as you ask ghosts about it first.

Follow Drew Brown on Twitter.

Why We Returned 'No Man’s Sky'

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Disclaimer: I like No Man's Sky. I'm quite content puttering around in my little ship, mining here and blasting there, popping a few pirates when they show up on my radar, trading minerals with TV-headed aliens. I love the soundtrack, and when the environmental colors combine at their most magical, they just pop off my TV. But plenty of people didn't like the game. Loads of them, in fact.

Its developers, Hello Games, were accused of being liars by players disappointed by a dearth of longevity-encouraging features available when the game launched in August, and a high number of refund demands caused Steam to restate its official policy on returns. Concurrent player numbers on Steam fell by 90 percent after two weeks, a sharper-than-usual dip and evidence, perhaps, of an en masse about-turn by the game's PC community. Players simply weren't seeing what they'd been hoping for.

I reached out to five people who ditched their copies of No Man's Sky however they could, to learn what bummed them out about the game and who they think is to blame for it not going down brilliantly with the gaming public.

Dan, 19, from Manchester, UK

What were you expecting from No Man's Sky, prior to getting it home, and how did the reality of what you played fail to live up to that?
The only thing I was really expecting, or at least hoping, from No Man's Sky was to just be amazed. Be amazed by the discovery, by all the different worlds, by the adventure. For the first hour, on my starter planet, I was, but that feeling soon faded away. I was expecting what was showcased in the first reveal trailer: Valleys populated with herds of strange and awe-inspiring creatures, from massive dinosaurs to weird antelopes, all interacting with each other in an ecosystem that was unique to that planet. Even though the creatures were completely different, they did look feasible, as if they could actually exist. What I actually got was the odd animal that had been spat out of an algorithm and was such a weird abomination that it shouldn't be alive. Instead of the bright, luscious worlds, I got dull and ugly deserts.

How long did you give the game before you decided that you wanted rid of it?
My first hour with No Man's Sky was magical. I wondered a seemingly desolate, lifeless, radioactive planet wondering if there was anything there at all, as I searched for zinc. Then, out of nowhere, I began to hear faint cries, and soon I stumbled across a tiny "Diplodocus" with a penis for a head. Then I noticed some sort of building in the distance, and as I trudged toward it, a massive scaled creature with a wolf-like head casually walked by in front of me. It truly was a moment of wonder.

I finally managed to leave my first planet, but the more planets I landed on, the more it became apparent that they are all practically the same. Yeah, the sky might be a different color and the atmosphere might slowly kill you via another method, but they were all just different flavors of poison.

Once that realization dawned on me, the magic of No Man's Sky quickly evaporated, and I just didn't have the will or desire to go back. No Man's Sky came out on August 9, and I traded it back in the very next day.

"I don't blame Sony, Hello, or Sean Murray for hyping up their game. But if that's the route they wanted to take, then they have to deal with the consequences."

You got it on day one, then—was that through a pre-order?
No, I didn't pre-order the game, but I did buy it before any of the backlash had started. The reason was, simply, that I was really excited for it. I remember watching the initial reveal and being was blown away, and afterward, I didn't follow any coverage at all as I wanted to go into the game completely fresh and see things first hand. I didn't want to wait for any reviews of it, because I wanted to go in without any preconceived notions and make my own decision on it. It was a game that promoted discovery, and I wanted to do so with my own eyes.

Did you trade No Man's Sky in for any other game?
I didn't swap it for a different game on this occasion, but being a student, the trading-in market is usually how I'm able to afford keeping up with AAA releases. But I'm not someone who will rush through games just in order to get the most value on my trade in; if I'm enjoying a game, I'll take my time and only get rid of it when I'm ready. The sensational Witcher 3: Wild Hunt remains on my shelf and will never be given back, for example.

What do you think that Sony, and to a lesser extent Hello Games themselves, could have done to make some of the more visceral response to No Man's Sky less negative?
It seems quite simple to me: Just tell the truth. I don't blame Sony, Hello, or Sean Murray for hyping up their game in the slightest, as it was their jobs to sell it and make money, and they no doubt achieved that goal and then some. But if that's the route they wanted to take, then they have to deal with the consequences and reaction that followed. The No Man's Sky I saw revealed at was not the No Man's Sky that I played, and I recall Ubisoft, rightly, getting ripped to shreds when it did the very same thing with Watch Dogs.

In interviews just months before release, Sean Murray was saying that No Man's Sky would have features that aren't in the game, a form of multiplayer for instance. Yes, things change in game development, and good ideas have to be cut all the time for completely innocent reasons. It happens in every game. But in this case, Murray and company continued to promote the game based on what wasn't in it, all the way up to the release. That's why the backlash has been so visceral. Had the game's actual features been properly marketed, maybe the reaction wouldn't have been so intense, but then maybe it wouldn't have sold all that much either.

Do you think that you'd have enjoyed the game more if it'd been priced a little cheaper and perhaps if the hype hadn't become so massive?
As I steered clear of much of the coverage leading up to No Man's Sky's release, I feel that the hype didn't really affect me. I was just excited for it because it was first shown as something completely different, as something that we'd all dreamed of seeing ever since we started playing games. In reality, No Man's Sky was really just another standard survival game that gets released on early access every day. I might have enjoyed the game more if it didn't cost as much, but I would have found it just as boring no matter how much I paid.

Article continues after the video below

Watch: VICE Gaming meets Zoë Quinn

Jake, 24, from Burlington, Vermont, USA

What were your expectations for No Man's Sky, and how did the reality of the game fall short of them?
I tried to avoid the hype of the game and didn't watch each and every interview that Sean Murray was a part of, so I felt that I managed my expectations for the game well. I really just wanted a bunch of worlds to meaningfully interact with. I wasn't expecting to be able to do literally everything, but I thought there'd be a good deal of systems in place to make traveling feel worthwhile, and if not that, I expected the worlds to be interesting enough to want to explore them. However, the systems in place felt really bare bones. The crafting felt repetitive, and the inventory management was a bit of a headache. I didn't find much joy in exploring planets, as the procedural nature of the game made the various worlds feel pretty soulless. I also thought I'd be allowed to explore as much of the universe as I wanted, instead of being limited to jumping between star systems.

How long did you give the game to impress before you decided that it wasn't one you were going to stick with?
I gave the game about four days to impress me before calling it quits. I put four or five hours into the game the day it came out and came away feeling kind of empty. I wanted to like it, but I think I knew deep down that it wasn't happening. I put it down for two days or so and came back to it. After another few hours, I made the decision to sell it. The feeling of exploration just wasn't strong enough to justify spending any additional time with it.

What made you buy the game before reviews came out, before seeing some of the critical reaction and YouTube coverage?
I bought it the day it was released. I believed that while the game wouldn't be the next big thing, it would still offer a compelling experience. The game had been discussed for almost three years, and I really just wanted to play it and find out what this thing actually was.

"I love exploring virtual worlds, but this game felt so aimless."

How did you sell your copy?
I sold it through the internet, to someone in town, because I figured someone else would want to play it, and I could get more money from them than a retailer—and they'd still be buying the game quite a bit cheaper than MSRP. I do occasionally trade in games I don't want anymore, but I try to be mindful about which games I buy before I buy them and if selling them is the right decision to make.

What do you think could have been done by the developers, and the distributers, to make the public response to No Man's Sky less negative?
I think there are a few things they could've done. Hello Games could've limited the scope of their feature set earlier on, instead of trying to do things that they realistically couldn't finish with a team of their size, as it's pretty clear that they wanted to do a lot more with the game than what we got. I think being honest about the state of the game at launch would've altered the tone of the reception quite a bit, too. Sony might've set a firm deadline on Hello, meaning they had to cut a lot of features. If that's true, they can't throw Sony under the bus, but they could've done more to manage the community's expectations.

Do you think that you'd have enjoyed the experience more if the game cheaper, and perhaps if the excitement for the game hadn't reached such levels?
Honestly, I don't think so. I love exploring virtual worlds, but this game felt so aimless. There really wasn't anything meaningful to see or do on any of the planets, and the structure and progression weren't enough to entice me.

'No Man's Sky,' launch trailer

Hirun, 21, from East Grinstead, UK

Why didn't the game meet your expectations?
I really didn't have any expectations for the actual game. I'd never watched a gameplay demo, and I'd avoided the onstage demonstrations that Sean Murray had given for the game at various expos.

How long did you stick with it, before returning the game?
I actually put around 30 hours into the game over a period of about ten days, but it was around the 20-hour mark that I began to get the feeling that the gameplay was utterly stale.

Did you pick the game up day one? If so, why didn't you wait until reviews were well and truly out, before buying it?
I didn't pre-order the game, but I did go out and pick it up on day one. All the attention that it had received undoubtedly meant it was one of the biggest games of the year, whether it's good or not, and I wanted to be able to form my own opinion on a title of that significance.

"Instead of at least appearing to be honest, they've got a PR nightmare on their hands."

What do you think could have been done by Sony and Hello Games to ensure that the public weren't mislead by what the game had to offer?
I think it's all about transparency in modern gaming PR. You've got to lay out your plans for the game clearly, which they apparently didn't do; but even if those plans then fall through, and you end up having to cut content from the finished product, Hello Games should still have put out a statement regarding this weeks before launch. Now, instead of taking that approach and at least appearing to be honest, they've got a PR nightmare on their hands, all because they didn't actually communicate properly with their audience as to the content in the finished product.

Did the hype for the game play a part in how it was received by people? If it'd been less of a big deal, a smaller-scale release in terms of its marketing and asking price, might you have ultimately liked it more?
I can't really speak to the "hype" part of this question, as I was never embroiled in it to begin with. However, I don't think I would've enjoyed the game if it had been cheaper, mainly because I don't think the core gameplay would've been any more enjoyable if the price tag had been cheaper. You can't really put a price tag on the enjoyment of a game, for example I enjoyed Journey more than any Call of Duty games, and those are at the opposite end of the price spectrum.

Nathan Smith, 26, from Grimsby, UK

What were your expectations for the game, and how did it fail to match them?
I had reasonable expectations. I've played enough Minecraft and seen countless "survival" games on Steam to get an idea of what the game has to offer. However, I really didn't expect to feel like I'd seen it all within a few hours. It lacked depth and polish, and it constantly crashed when I was warping.

How long did you stick with the game for before you decided: nope?
After playing it for a few hours, I already knew the game was going to go. I figured, why not give it some time. I actually got the Platinum trophy on PS4, as it seemed easy enough to acquire. Toward finishing, I ended up resenting the game. It wasn't due to being burned out on it, either.

Did you pre-order the game, and if so, why not wait until the reviews were coming in? It's not like you couldn't have picked it up afterward.
I ordered it the week before it came out. It was relatively off my radar as I was waiting on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but seeing the hype everywhere leading up to its release made some friends and I cave and order it. We're huge fans of Destiny, and it carries some of the same aesthetic. Nothing sounded cooler than looting and grinding, building better things—and with friends, too, like Minecraft meets Destiny. Unfortunately, nearly all of that was just an assumption.

"A perfect storm of vague advertising, high expectation, and a healthy dose of assumption on the consumers' behalf led the game to ultimately disappoint."

New, on Motherboard: Sony Says No to Mod Support on 'Fallout 4' and 'Skyrim'

Did you trade No Man's Sky in for any other game? Is this a common practice for you, keeping one new game for just a while and then "swapping" it for another?
I did. I was already sold on buying Mankind Divided, so I used it as trade-in value toward that. Honestly, I wouldn't have been so quick to trade it in, but hearing that most shops were offering good rates for the game, almost as much as the cost of buying it new, it was a no brainer.

What do you think that Sony, and to a lesser extent Hello Games itself, could have done to make some of the more visceral response to No Man's Sky less negative?
I think the damage was already done. A perfect storm of vague advertising, high expectation, and a healthy dose of assumption on the consumers' behalf led the game to ultimately disappoint. I can't say I've seen a game this big receive such a backlash in a long time. Both (Sony and Hello) being quiet about the deception since release hasn't helped its case, either. Anybody I know who was thinking about buying the game has been totally put off, and they feel like they've dodged a bullet. Right now, I don't think there is anything they could do to get that interest back.

Do you think that you'd have enjoyed the experience more if the game was priced a little cheaper, and perhaps if the hype hadn't become so massive?
Absolutely. At no point did I feel like I was playing a game valued at what it was. But I don't think my opinion would differ if the price were lower—it was still an average game that was over sold.

Bryan, 23, from Bury St. Edmunds, UK

What were you expecting from the game, prior to getting it home, and how did the reality fail to live up to that?
Hard to explain, really. I guess I was expecting something akin to, say, a combination of Starbound and Elite Dangerous—a procedurally generated, interesting world, with a universe that feels alive, structured in such a way that the limitations of the game world—galaxy, I guess—would either be hard to notice or irrelevant. However, in reality, I ended up feeling the game's limits very strongly and early on. The first few hours of exploration, discovery and surprise were really nice, but eventually the fact that I was repeating the same things—unique by degrees or not—over and over again set in. In a way, it felt like Diablo, except lacking the feedback loop: I ran out of inventory slots really quickly, every upgrade to tech was just an incremental numbers deal, and the combat felt really bland. The spaceflight part of the game was way too simple for me—that's what I get for playing Elite, though—and the universe didn't really feel alive. The only goal was nebulous and felt pointless, and the aliens might as well all be some guy named Bob who only existed to eat my carbon and spit out a random word every so often while speaking in gibberish the rest of the time. It felt like, even if I understood everything they were saying, I wouldn't really feel satisfied by what I learned. It's unfortunate, because I really did want to like the game. I'm not saying that it's awful, though. Just a bit of a sad, half-empty balloon.

How long did you give the game before you decided to get rid of it?
I played for around a week, 20 or 30 hours altogether.

"I'm not saying that the game's awful. Just a bit of a sad, half-empty balloon."

Did you pre-order the game? If so, why?
I did pre-order it, due to a combination of expectation and also the fact that I had a £50 GAME gift card. So I figured I didn't really have anything to lose, even if I ended up hating the game.

Did you trade No Man's Sky in for any other game? Is this a common practice for you, keeping one new game for just a while and then using it for credit toward another?
I didn't trade it for anything specific, but I ended up using the money to buy Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Trade-ins are something I tend to do about half the time, with console games that I can't see myself replaying in the future.

What do you think that Sony, and Hello Games, could have done to improve the response from the public?
To be honest, I don't think the hugely negative, angry response that they've received is merited. Disappointment makes more sense, but disappointment over a video game shouldn't really make you angry. Anyway, they probably should have been more careful when communicating what their product actually was. Because details about the game were vague in the lead up to release, everyone who bought the game had their own expectations as to how it would play and what it would contain. What does the player actually do in the game? What does 16 quadrillion planets, or whatever, mean from a practical standpoint? Expectations could have been managed better, or you get a Peter Molyneux–like situation. Though the No Man's Sky team used obfuscation instead of hyperbole.

Do you think that you'd have enjoyed the experience more if the game a little cheaper and hadn't arrived backed by such massive hype?
I don't think I would have. Price and hype don't really bother me, as a general rule, anyway. If it had been cheaper and less hyped, I would still have purchased it, and I imagine I still would have been disappointed, because price and expectations don't change the game itself. Gameplay remains the same, regardless.

Many thanks to all contributors.

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

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Quebec University Students May Be Expelled Over Game Accused of Promoting Rape Culture

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Members of advocacy group Silence is Violence protest rape culture at York University. Photo via Facebook.

Quebec university students accused of promoting rape culture through a game that awarded points for completing sexual challenges may face expulsion.

The game was made up as part of last week's Les Jeux de la Communication—an inter-university event involving communications and journalism students from several francophone universities. Organizers from Gatineau's Université du Québec en Outaouais handed out a list called "Les 12 Travaux d'Hercule" (The 12 labours of Hercules), which encouraged participants to do things like kiss a girl; take a photo of someone's breasts and bra; and take part in a wet t-shirt contest.

Once the list surfaced on social media, the game was slammed by the university community as sexist.

"This is the worst example of rape culture I've ever seen. It's the most vulgar one, too," Valerie La France, head of UQO's women's committee, told the CBC.

Read more: Another BC University Under Fire for Botching Sex Assault Cases

Three UQO student leaderswho helped organize Les Jeux de la Communication have stepped down from their positions. Denis Harrison, the school's rector, said an investigation is being conducted and students involved in creating the game may be expelled. He told the CBC the game is "not appropriate" but did not go as far as to say the university has a problem with rape culture.

Les Jeux de la Communication is reportedly launching a consent-focus campaign in response to the controversy.

UQO is not the only Canadian university come under fire for fostering a rape culture. In 2013, Saint Mary's University in Halifax was criticized over a frosh week chant that included lyrics like, "Y is for your sister; U is for underage, N is for no consent; Saint Mary's boys, we like them young." A similar incident took place at the UBC's Sauder School of Business. Dalhousie University dentistry students were investigated in 2014 following the discovery of a Facebook group in which male students made sexually explicit comments about their female classmates.

A number of Canadian universities, including York University and University of British Columbia, have faced backlash over having inadequate responses to sex assault complaints.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

How Tupac and Biggie Went from Friends to Deadly Rivals

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The following is excerpted from Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap by Ben Westhoff, forthcoming from Hachette Book Group on Sept. 13, the 20th anniversary of Tupac Shakur's death.

Tupac and Biggie first encountered each other in 1993, in Los Angeles. There on business, the Brooklyn-bred rapper Biggie asked a local drug dealer to introduce him to Tupac, who invited Biggie and his party to his house. There, he shared with them a "big freezer bag of the greenest vegetables I'd ever seen," said an intern for Biggie's label, named Dan Smalls, who was part of the group.

Tupac got them high and pulled out a "green army bag" filled with handguns and machine guns. "So now, here we are, in this backyard running around with guns, just playing," continued Dan Smalls in The Fader. "Luckily they were all unloaded. While we were running around, 'Pac walks into the kitchen and starts cooking for us. He's in the kitchen cooking some steaks. We were drinking and smoking and all of a sudden 'Pac was like, 'Yo, come get it.' And we go into the kitchen and he had steaks, and French fries, and bread, and Kool‑Aid and we just sittin' there eating and drinking and laughing. And you know, that's truly where Big and 'Pac's friendship started."

"We all thought he was a dope rapper," Tupac's longtime friend E.D.I. Mean, a member of Tupac's affiliated group the Outlawz, told me. Tupac gifted Biggie a bottle of Hennessy. Biggie slept on Tupac's couch whenever he came back to California, and when Tupac was in New York he came by Biggie's neighborhood, picking him up in a white limousine and throwing dice with the locals. The pair freestyled back to back at a concert called Budweiser Superfest at Madison Square Garden in 1993, with Biggie wowing the crowds with lines like Oh my God I'm dropping shit like a pigeon / I hope you're listenin' / Smackin' babies at their christenin'.

Despite the Garden cameo, Biggie still wasn't much known outside of Brooklyn. Tupac, by then a platinum‑selling rapper and movie star, acted as a mentor. Biggie and other young rappers assembled in recording studios or hotel rooms to hear Tupac lecture about how to make it in the game. "'Pac could get up and get to teaching," said E.D.I. Mean. "Everyone was transfixed on this dynamic individual, and soaking up all the information we could soak up." But Tupac devoted special attention to Biggie, grooming him and letting him perform at his concerts. Biggie even told him he'd like to be a part of another of his affiliated groups, called Thug Life. "I trained the nigga, he used to be under me like my lieutenant," Tupac said.

Tupac claimed to have directly influenced Biggie's style. "I used to tell the nigga, 'If you want to make your money you have to rap for the bitches. Do not rap for the niggas,' " he said. "The bitches will buy your records, and the niggas want what the bitches want." As proof that Biggie had heeded his advice, Tupac cited the difference between his early track, the aggressive "Party and Bullshit," and softer songs from his debut Ready to Die like "Big Poppa," which appealed more to the ladies. Soon as he buy that wine, I just creep up from behind / And ask what your interests are, who you be with?

But before Ready to Die came out, Biggie worried he could miss his shot, considering that the new label he was signed to, Bad Boy—owned by his manager Sean "Puffy" Combs—hadn't taken off yet. Things weren't happening for him quickly enough, he complained. He asked Tupac to take over as his manager, in hopes Tupac could advance his music and film career as rapidly as he'd done his own. "Biggie looked like he was wearing the same pair of Timberlands for a year 'Pac was staying at the Waldorf‑Astoria and buying Rolexes and dating Madonna," E.D.I. Mean said.

But Tupac declined the offer. "Nah, stay with Puff," he told Biggie. "He will make you a star."




In New York to shoot the 1994 film Above the Rim, Tupac became enmeshed with a group of notorious Queens toughs. He was modeling his character Birdie—a gangster involved in youth basketball programs—on a Haiti-born high roller called Jacques "Haitian Jack" Agnant.

Tupac had noticed Haitian Jack at a Manhattan club, surrounded by women and champagne, and asked for an introduction. They also spent time at a Queens bar, where Jack would bring through celebrities including Madonna, Shabba Ranks, and Jamaican musician Buju Banton. (Tupac briefly dated Madonna, after Rosie Perez introduced them at the 1993 Soul Train Awards in L.A.) Biggie, who ran in the same circles as Haitian Jack and his associates, warned Tupac to keep his distance from him, to no avail. Tupac liked Jack's swagger. He introduced the rapper to high-end jewelry and Versace duds, as well as the local gangstas who called the shots. "e loved the respect and recognition I got in New York and I think he wanted that same respect," Haitian Jack said.

The two were partying at a downtown Manhattan club called Nell's in November 1993, where Tupac met a nineteen-year-old woman named Ayanna Jackson. They got close on the dance floor and went back to his suite at the Le Parker Meridien hotel. Four days later she met up with him at the hotel again, only to encounter not just Tupac, but Haitian Jack, Tupac's road manager Charles "Man Man" Fuller, and another man who was not identified. There, she alleged, the group gang-raped her and forced her to perform oral sex. Tupac claimed he left the bedroom when the other men entered and fell asleep. She called the police, and Tupac, Haitian Jack, and Fuller were arrested. The police also found guns, which Tupac later claimed belonged to Biggie.

The prosecution alleged Tupac, charged with sexual abuse, sodomy, and illegal weapons possession, had offered up Jackson "as a reward for his boys." Tupac denied this, but after the trial told Vibe he blamed himself for "doing nothing" to protect Jackson from the other men. Before the trial began, Tupac's and Fuller's cases were severed from Haitian Jack's; in a deal that Tupac and his lawyer deemed too good to be true, Jack pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors and avoided jail time. Believing Haitian Jack was a snitch, Tupac told a New York Daily News reporter that Jack had set him up. (Ayanna Jackson and Haitian Jack have denied this.)

Calling out a reputed gangster in the press is not sensible. But, ironically, after spending so much time with Jack and his ilk, Tupac had begun to feel invincible. He went wherever he wanted, wearing flashy jewelry worth thousands of dollars. Secure in his street credentials, he was convinced that nobody would mess with him.

Supporting his extended family and paying lawyers for his interminable string of court cases, Tupac's bank accounts withered. In late 1994 he agreed to record a guest verse for a rapper named Little Shawn, who was close with Puffy and Biggie. The invitation came from Little Shawn's manager, Jimmy "Henchman" Rosemond, whom Tupac had met through Haitian Jack, and Tupac was to be paid $7,000.

Tupac had begun to feel invincible.



On November 30, 1994, Tupac arrived stoned to Quad Recording Studios in Times Square. He came with three associates, none of whom were bodyguards, and encountered three other men he didn't know, wearing army fatigues. This was fashion from Brooklyn—Biggie's home—so Tupac assumed they were with him. He felt better about the situation when Biggie's affiliated rapper Lil' Cease yelled down to him that Biggie was upstairs recording. Puffy was there, too.

But before Tupac's crew could get on the elevator, the men in army fatigues drew 9 mm guns and ordered them to the floor. Instead, Tupac reached for his own gun. He was shot, beaten, and robbed of his jewelry. He played dead and the assailants left, at which time he staggered into the elevator and rode it upstairs. When the doors opened he saw a group including Puffy, Biggie, and Henchman. Tupac said the crew looked surprised and guilty, but Puffy claimed they showed him "nothing but love and concern."

Tupac believed the incident was more than a random heist. "It was like they were mad at me," he said. He claimed to have taken five bullets, including shots to the head and through his scrotum, though forensic evidence suggested he likely shot himself.

Bill Courtney, a retired NYPD cop who also worked hip-hop cases, believed the stick-up was a response to Tupac's Daily News comments against Haitian Jack. "A message was being sent to him not to name-drop," he said.

"Nobody came to rob you," Henchman told Vibe in 2005. "They came to discipline you."

Puffy and Biggie denied their involvement in the crime, or any prior knowledge of it. Haitian Jack also claimed he wasn't involved, and following a separate conviction was deported to Haiti in 2007.

On December 1, 1994, Tupac arrived to a New York City courtroom wearing bandages and confined to a wheelchair, and was pronounced guilty of sexual abuse in the Ayanna Jackson case, though acquitted on the sodomy and weapons charges. Sentenced to a minimum of a year and a half in prison, pending appeal, his bail was set at $3 million.

Unable to raise bail, Tupac served most of his time at Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in upstate New York. Me Against the World, Tupac's third album, was released soon after his prison sentence began. Tupac considered making it his swan song; he was tired of all of the music industry drama. But his passion reignited after a disturbing rumor began to sink in, one that came from people he trusted: that Biggie knew in advance about the Quad studios shooting.

"He owed me more than to turn his head and act like he didn't know niggas was about to blow my fucking head off," he said later. And even if Biggie hadn't set him up, he should at least have been able to find out who did it. "You don't know who shot me in your hometown, these niggas from your neighborhood?"

The way Tupac saw it, his own friend had betrayed him—a friend whom Tupac had helped to acquire fame and fortune.

While in prison, Tupac asked his wife Keisha Morris (whom he had married while incarcerated) to relay a message to Suge Knight, the head of the volatile label Death Row Records: He was broke and needed help. On top of the lawyers' fees and everything else, his mother was losing her house.

"Suge sent $15,000 and put it on his books," Reggie Wright Jr., Death Row's head of security, told me. Tupac was jubilant, and sent Suge another message, that he'd like to see him.

Few places in the U.S. were farther away from Los Angeles than Dannemora, New York, where Tupac was incarcerated, but Suge began coming out. Further, Death Row offered him something no one else seemed to be able to deliver: release. Death Row's lawyer David Kenner pledged to help Tupac with his case, and began working to spring him on an appeal bond.

Suge didn't just try to recruit Tupac to his label, he offered him a place in his family, the most powerful and out-of-control family in hip-hop.

Tupac was still incarcerated in August, 1995, when Suge came to visit him again. Immediately afterward Suge headed down to New York City, where, on August 3, the annual awards show put on by hip-hop magazine The Source was held at Madison Square Garden's Paramount Theater. Death Row spent some $100,000 on their opening-act stage show, which included life-sized jail cell replicas.

With his chest puffed out, Suge took the stage to accept his label's award for best soundtrack, for Above the Rim. Giving a stink eye to the audience he digressed, throwing a pointed barb at Sean "Puffy" Combs, the head of Bad Boy, Biggie Smalls' label. Alluding to Puffy's tendency to insert himself in his performers' works, Suge said: "Any artist out there wanna be an artist, and wanna stay a star, and don't have to worry about the executive producer trying to be all in the videos, all on the records, dancing—come to Death Row."

The venue erupted in boos. "Why would you do that?" Death Row rapper Nate Dogg thought to himself.

What inspired Suge's bizarre attack? After all, he and Puffy had been cool with each other until fairly recently. They'd discussed how to keep the feds from tracking them, and, earlier in 1995, Suge had even invited Biggie Smalls to perform at his Club 662 in Las Vegas. The show never went off, but this didn't sour their relationship.

What soured it was Tupac.

Suge had flown straight to The Source Awards from visiting Tupac in prison. That's where Tupac not only agreed to join Death Row, but where he told Suge about his anger at Biggie. "I need you to ride with me because I'm going to destroy Bad Boy Records. I believe they had something to do with me getting shot," Tupac told Suge, according to Reggie Wright Jr. Suge pledged his loyalty. Tupac's enemies would be his enemies.

Battle lines had been drawn, and The Source Awards were the first shots in what would become known as the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop wars. Though there's no evidence that Biggie or Puffy knew about Tupac's shooting in advance, Tupac's belief that this was the case—and his ability to convince Suge as much—spurred a conflict that would eventually claim the lives of both Tupac and Biggie. Their murders remain unsolved.

Follow Ben Westhoff on Twitter.




Joseph Gordon-Levitt Explains Why He’s the Perfect Person to Play Snowden

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The new Oliver Stone movie Snowden is an old-fashioned biopic, walking viewers through the life of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. However, in sharp contrast to the star-studded comic pageantry of Stone's previous biopic, W, about the life and presidency of George W. Bush, Snowden amounts to a pared-down character study, one focused on Snowden's nine-year journey from one political extreme to the other.

When we meet Snowden, as portrayed in the film by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he's a dorky young Army recruit in 2004 with no qualms about placing himself at the end of the spear on behalf of President Bush. It's quite a start for a protagonist who we know (assuming we read the news) will eventually leak classified information to the press in 2013, and flee to Russia for fear of being charged under the Espionage Act.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for his part, professes nothing but sympathy for Snowden's eventual decision. That anti-establishment sentiment seems like it could have presented a layer of challenge in bringing across some of Snowden's early conservatism, such as a moment early on in the film when Snowden winces at a left-leaning girl he just kissed (Shailene Woodley as Snowden's real-life girlfriend Lindsay Mills), and tells her "you taste like liberal."

We caught up with Gordon-Levitt to find out more about his political past, present, and future.

VICE: You do a vocal impersonation of Snowden. Why did you find that important?
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Most of my favorite performances are the sort of chameleon performances, and most of my favorite actors are the ones who kinda disappear. I won't compare myself to those great actors, but that is what I aspire to for sure.

I think it's safe to say the movie Snowden comes out 100 percent in support of the Snowden leaks. Did you initially feel the same when you joined this project?
The truth is, when I was first offered this job, I didn't know very much about Edward Snowden at all, and I had a lot of learning to do. One of the things I learned about, that to me speaks to what you're talking about—why any of this really matters—is that it has as much to do with privacy as it does with government accountability and democracy.

Was there a moment in history that made you feel strongly about this particular issue?
The fact that there was this hearing a few months before Edward Snowden made his disclosures—a senate hearing. The director of national intelligence, this guy named James Clapper, testified before congress, and was asked by a senator under oath, "Is the NSA collecting millions of records on American citizens?" and he said no. It was an outright lie. To me, when a high-ranking government official like that is just blatantly lying to a senator under oath, our democracy is slipping away, and the promise of what the United States of America is—the reason that I'm so grateful to be born and raised in this country, the fact that the government is accountable to the people—that's slipping away. The founders of our country knew its human nature. Every government will always try to get more power for itself. That's inevitable, which is why they wrote the Constitution, and gave us the Bill of Rights, which is designed to help the people protect themselves against governments that are naturally always gonna do that. So when that government is violating the constitutional rights of millions of American citizens, and doing so in secret, and lying about it, that's scary.

Right. But spy stuff is kinda cool. Didn't you ever feel conflicted about this kind of thing?
Part of it for me is the way I was raised. My grandfather was a film director and was blacklisted.

"If you're just taking the word of whatever political party, or political candidate you were brought up to support, you're not really looking into it." —Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Right, the guy who directed Pillow Talk.
That was after he was blacklisted. His last movie before that was called Cyrano de Bergerac, and the actor who was in it, José Ferrer, won the Oscar. It's actually a very different movie from Pillow Talk. And it was right at that moment, right as he was coming into his own as an artist that the government instituted this policy. He had been to some meetings, which were nothing more than gatherings at people's houses where they were talking about rights of workers and things like that. The government put him on a list and he couldn't work anymore. It's sort of in my family to be aware of when the government is doing things that are undemocratic, that are really against what America is supposed to be about.

Was the blacklist thing a big part of your upbringing?
This is before I was born obviously, but my mom was a kid, and her dad couldn't work anymore. They left to LA. They moved to Connecticut. So having that in your story makes you more sensitive to when the government starts doing things that are un-American—ironically since the organization that created the blacklist was the House Un-American Activities Committee, and they were the ones who were as un-American as it gets. The First Amendment of our Constitution is freedom of speech. And the fact that just for having meetings, they were denying people the right to make a living, is really scary.

So you were raised on the political left, and got into the family business, which is Hollywood, and meanwhile Edward Snowden was raised on the political right, and got into the family business, which was the government. Did that help you identify with him?
That's a really apt observation, and it's really true. Part of what makes this movie a fascinating drama, beyond a political statement is that Snowden's upbringing is, in a lot of ways, the diametric opposite of mine. His grandfather worked for the government, his father worked for the government, and his mother worked for the government. When you meet Snowden at the beginning of this movie, you meet a man who is one kind of patriot. And I think there's sorta two different kinds of patriotism, but he's the kind of patriot who just believes that everything the country does is right, and doesn't ask any questions. And this is why in 2004, Edward Snowden enlisted in the US Army. He wanted to go fight in Iraq. In 2004, when Iraq was at its most dangerous. So it's in his upbringing to not question. It's in my upbringing to do the opposite.

Right, and then I think the changes between your life and his get even more stark...
He breaks his legs in basic training. He can't go fight in Iraq, but he ends up working for the CIA, and eventually the NSA, and he starts to change. And it also has to do with falling in love with a woman who has a very different mentality than he does. And good drama is always built on a person who changes. So watching him evolve from one kind of patriotism to another kind of patriotism is only possible in a free country like ours, where we are afforded the right and the privilege to hold our government accountable, to ask these questions. Not everyone in the world lives in a country that affords them those rights, but we do, thankfully.

Have you ever had your political beliefs shaken like he did?
I remember one time, I was with a girl—this is years ago—who was from a more conservative upbringing, whose dad was a veteran, and whose grandfather was a veteran. And I remember we went to see the movie Team America. Remember that movie? And Team America is a really funny movie. It starts out very much by toeing the party line on the left side—criticizing the hell out of the government, and America, and the right-wing point of view...

"America, Fuck Yeah..."
"America, Fuck Yeah!" But then by the end of the movie, it also criticizes the hell out of the left wing. And I remember my girlfriend loving watching the movie with me, because I was, like, so into the first part of the movie, and then was surprised the movie proceeded to completely lambast the left. And I think that was good for me. I don't think partisanship in any form is really very useful. As I've said, I was brought up to be more what you would consider left-leaning. But the thing about being partisan is it sort of means you aren't thinking for yourself. If you're just taking the word of whatever political party, or political candidate you were brought up to support, you're not really looking into it.

I hear you're doing a movie about the Klan next. Um, any particular reason?
That's just in the very early stages, but yeah. There was this great article about the sort of early days of the Klu Klux Klan. Obviously, there's so many conversations going on about race relations right now... I guess the reasons are obvious.

Snowden is now playing in theaters around the US.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Here Are Some of the TIFF 2016 Films That Do and Do Not Pass The Bechdel Test

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Kristen Stewart in 'Personal Shopper'

The 2016 Toronto International Film Festival is currently smiling down upon all cinema-insomniacs right now with a week of art-house premieres, well-stocked blockbusters, and celebrity sightings. Many films are already garnering Oscar buzz with a variety of films featuring diverse casts, women in the director's chair, and inclusive, intersectional stories. Yet while TIFF has always prided itself on inclusivity, the only way to really prove this claim is via the Bechdel Test: a quick four-question process to gauge whether or not a movie is in fact portraying well-rounded women characters.

1. Are there more than two women characters in this film?
2. Do they have names?
3. Do they talk to each other?
4. As they talk to each other, do they speak about topics other than the men in their lives?

If a film cannot fulfill these tiny four requirements, then you know it is not a film that actually fosters female voices, narratives, and inclusivity. Now, that doesn't mean a film is automatically a bad film. You'd be surprised how many masterpieces of our generation that feature strong female characters didn't pass muster. Everything from Run Lola Run, Lord of the Rings, The Little Mermaid, Avatar and even IMDB darling The Shawshank Redemption fail the Bechdel test.

Here is a cross-section of 2016 TIFF films that do, and do not, make the grade.

Elle
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Starring Isabelle Huppert
Grade: FAIL

This is a surprising Bechdel fail, seeing as how Elle is all about a woman who is raped and sets out to not only find her rapist, but turn the tables on him. Isabelle Huppert plays brash and brazen Michèle, a woman who runs her own video-gaming corporation, lives in an affluent Paris neighbourhood, and naturally garners respect from every encounter she has. The violent sexual assault, which is the scene that opens the film, sets the tone for a dark exploration in the ways in which exploitation and victimization can be internalized and later manifested in everyday life. But Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Black Book, Starship Troopers) is not a director known for portraying women in a multifaceted light, rather favouring style over substance. In fact, it could be argued his films notoriously depict women who enjoy their subjugation and take it as a compliment. Here we see Michèle asking her rapist if he enjoyed it. What? Michèle has many interactions with women in this film, all of whom have names. But they do not discuss anything other than the men in her life. She gripes to her colleagues about her male subordinates. She fights with her mother over the reputation of her incarcerated father. She listens to her best friend woefully talk about her suspicions that her husband is cheating on her, only to reveal that she is in fact his mistress. I don't know what kind of women Verhoeven is surrounding himself with, but strong-willed, fierce women don't innately hate each other. Michèle says, "Shame isn't a strong enough emotion to stop us from doing what we want." And that's why this film was made, folks.

Personal Shopper
Directed by Olivier Assayas
Starring Kirsten Stewart
Grade: PASS

In her second outing with director Assayas, Stewart plays an American personal shopper in Paris, running between fashion houses to pick up the fancy threads for a vacuous supermodel. However, her twin brother has just died of heart failure, and she has the same heart malformation. Believing that she has the powers of a medium, she tries to make contact with her brother. This film easily passes the Bechdel test, as all the women have names, and they speak to each other about loss and mourning rather than men. But this film is a bit bewildering for what we are offered: a ghost story, a psychological thriller, a murder mystery, a family drama? It's all those things, and perhaps it needs to hone in one and make that its focus, because it's hard to believe the CGI ghost effects when in the next scene she's at Cartier trying on dangly earrings. Stewart is an enthralling actress and her performance is worth the price of a TIFF badge alone.

I, Daniel Blake
Directed by Ken Loach
Starring Dave Johns, Hayley Squires
Grade: FAIL

Having won the Palme D'or at the Cannes Film Festival should be an indicator of just how wonderful this film is. A stirring, quiet, contemplative, and understated film about a man with a heart condition who is given the runaround by the government dole and benefits scheme. He encounters young mother Kattie (Squires), who is also facing hard times and they form an unlikely kinship. This film is emotionally gripping from beginning to end. At the press screening I attended, which was populated by ornery, grumpy film critics who all look like Silent Bob, everyone walked away glassy-eyed. But does it pass the Bechdel test? Nope. Kattie is the only character with a name that we know of. She meets no other women and speaks to no other women. This is truly a shame because it shows that out of all the characters in this film, any one of them could easily have been written as a woman instead of a man. If this film was called, I, Daniella Blake instead, it would have changed nothing about the story, or the character's traits, or the narrative arc, nor changed the outcome.

Manchester By the Sea
Directed by Kenneth Lonergan
Starring Casey Affleck, Gretchen Moll, Michelle Williams, Matthew Broderick
Grade: HUGE WHOPPING FAIL

Here's a perfect example of a wonderful film written by a man who clearly hates women. Affleck plays Lee, a Boston janitor who must return to his hometown when his brother dies to take care of his teenage nephew Patrick. The performances by the entire cast are stellar and will rip your guts with each subtle facial expression. From the outset, the audience feels like they're given a window into the lives of characters that are so well-rounded and nuanced, it puts our real lives to shame. But that's praise reserved only for the male characters (aka all but two of the cast). Gretchen Moll plays as a selfish, neurotic drunk without a care for her grieving son, and Michelle Williams plays a nagging, sour-faced, misanthropic hoser. Women and even teenage girls in this movie are portrayed as annoyances, cruel, cold, and even the butt of jokes. They are the buffoons of the story, not to be trusted nor granted dignity. And not a single one of them ever speak to each other. This is what happens when men write women. There is no reason why Lee had to be a man. If Lee had been portrayed by Parker Posey or Samantha Morton, it wouldn't have changed one iota of the narrative arc.

The Eagle Huntress
Directed by Otto Bell
Grade: PASS

This delightful documentary set in the Altai mountains of Mongolia follows 13-year-old Aisholpan as her father trains her to become the first female Eagle Hunter. For centuries, the tradition of capturing eagles and training them to hunt has passed from father to son, and in a village run by elders who do not see the value of women behind domestic duties, Aisholpan surprisingly comes from a family whose support for her is unwavering. We see a cunning and guiling Aisholpan wrestle boys to the ground or best them at chess whilst training for the great eagle hunter festival that she is hell-bent on winning. These may be a people who live in gurs, but the gurs have solar panels, so of course modernization has found its way to the remote foothills of the Mongolian wasteland. This ethereal film, with mountainous landscapes that take your breath away, passes the Bechdel test easily. We see Aisholpan's classmates cheering her on, we see her sisters talking about how proud they are of her, and her mother proud that she is "as brave as any man." The only conversations about men in this film are the ones men have amongst themselves of their superiority to women, which provides the lone comic relief. This is a breathtaking documentary that shows when we encourage our daughters, amazing things happen.

Window Horses
Directed by Ann Marie Fleming
Starring Sandra Oh, Ellen Page, Don McKellar
Grade: PASS

This colourful Canadian animated feature follows Rose Ming (Sandra Oh), a self-published Vancouver poet who is invited to a poetry festival in Shiraz, Iran and on a whim, actually attends. We learn that Rosie is half Persian, and never knew her Persian father, and so this journey to the poetry capital of Iran—where Hafiz wrote his most famous works 800 years ago—is also a journey through Rosie's family tapestry. The animation uses different textures, styles, and motifs to tell this story and it is a feast for the eyes. The vermillion sky, the ochre trees, the violet horses all add to the funny script. And naturally, it passes the Bechdel test. Rosie's conversations with other women envelop poetry, family, friendship, loneliness, longing, mourning, healing, hope, and all the good stuff. At one point she asks the festival organizer Mehrnaz, "How is it everyone here knows everything about everything?" to which the reply is, "Rosie! We're Persian." There actually isn't much room for men in Rosie's life, except for maybe the stolid German poet Dietmar (McKellar) who displays so much Germanic stoicism that even when he weeps, he says, "I'm not crying, I have angst."

Paterson
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Starring Adam Driver
Grade: FAIL

Paterson is one of those typical Jarmusch outings where you walk out of the cinema wondering if you've just had a stroke. What was the point of that? Who knows! But it was infuriatingly twee so you can't hate on it too much. Driver plays a man named Paterson who lives in Paterson, New Jersey. OH THAT WACKY JARMUSCH. He drives a bus for a living, he writes saccharine, lame-duck poetry, and he has a country-music-loving wife who paints everything in their house in monochrome, including their cupcakes. His dog hates him, and all the people at his local watering hole know his name. There. That's the movie. There is no central conflict to speak of. Nothing of note actually happens. Jarmusch litters each scene with visual gags that I think only he is supposed to get. Why are there twins everywhere? Why are the kids dragging the strip in their lowrider so concerned for the dog's safety? Why is Method Man rapping along to his laundry at the local laundromat? ONLY JARMUSCH KNOWS. And there are only two women and one girl in this movie. None of them speak to each other, and frankly, Paterson's wife is written as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. This film is oddly charming for a slow-moving concept, but if you're gonna pay for Jarmusch, Jarmusch is what you get.

Unless
Directed by Alan Giselnan
Starring Catherine Keener
Grade: PASS

Don't get excited. This film passes the Bechdel Test with flying colours, as almost all the characters are women, they all have names, and they talk about everything and anything except the men in their lives. Amazing! Except this film, based on a novel by the late, great Carol Shields, is a slow-moving EMO wankfest that seems to exist inside the surrealist nightmare of a Kandinsky painting. Catherine Keener plays Reta, a woman struggling to understand why her daughter has without explanation become catatonic, started panhandling, and living on the streets of Toronto whilst holding a sign that says, "Goodness." Goodness grief. TIFF fans will delight in the fact that the entirety of this film was shot in Toronto, and Honest Ed's is pretty much the central character, but Ed Mirvish doesn't at any point pop out to hand out turkeys. The film has all its major scenes in and around the famous Bloor and Bathurst gaudy warehouse depot, even filming down Honest Ed's Alley, but the nondescript problem that this family faces is just too abstract to actually make us give a damn. When the audience finally finds out the reason behind the daughter's strange behaviour, it's deeply unsatisfying and verges on being comically ridiculous. One of Honest Ed's famous slogans could most aptly describe Unless: Come in and get lost.

Follow Christine Estima on Twitter

How Syrian Refugees Are Helping One Another Adjust to Life in a Strange Land

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A group of asylum seekers in Berlin. The massive backlog of asylum applications has left many refugees waiting for months before they can start their new lives in Germany. Photo by Mark Seibert/Die Linke

When Ahmad Denno arrived in Berlin seeking asylum, he felt unhinged. The young Syrian spoke no German, had no friends in the country, and slept with 200 other men in a repurposed basketball court. Many of his fellow refugees weren't much better off.

"Most people spent the whole day inside. They said they didn't know where to go," Denno told me recently at a cafe in Berlin. He's a svelte 25-year-old with a buzz cut and a gentle demeanor. "They only speak Arabic. They'd like to do something, but they don't know how."

Eager to help, Denno started giving out his phone number at the camps, telling people to call him when they needed something. Within three months, he's given it to at least 100 refugees.

"I was getting 15 or 20 calls a day, and it became too hard to handle them all," recalled Denno, who used his English fluency to find information when he first got to Germany. "I was thinking of what I could do, because we have more than 100,000 Arabic speakers in Berlin, most who speak only Arabic."

The dilemma led Denno to create Eedbeed, a website in Arabic with all the information a refugee might need in Berlin, like how to get a work permit, how to get medical care, and even how to ride the subway. Eedbeed—meaning "hand in hand" in Arabic—will launch later this year, with the help of Denno's 25-person team of refugees. To complete the site, Denno is meeting with several top German businessmen this month who are interested in investing.

"The biggest border for people here is the language. My idea with this is to get people to go out, to be active," Denno said. "It makes them integrate more easily now, because it takes from one to two-and-a-half years of studying to learn the language."

Eedbeed is part of a larger trend of information resources made by refugees, for refugees. In the past few months, newcomers like Denno have responded to the vast need for such services by creating a refugee newspaper, an app explaining how to access the German government's services, and a refugee radio station, to name a few.

But Denno insists that his site, unlike the others, will serve as a one-stop shop for all these needs. Eedbeed is an ambitious tool: It will include guides to German culture and law, an online newspaper, an events calendar, and a YouTube channel.

"Eedbeed will explain how to apply for permission to study the language, and how to apply for a work permit," said Denno, who worked as a marketer in Aleppo before fleeing Syria. "When I got to Berlin I learned alone with Google and a GPS. I called non-profits and the government for help, but it was hard—and I spoke English. Most people can't do that."

"I want this site to kill the hopelessness of waiting for asylum." —Ahmad Denno

Eedbeed will also help demystify German norms—both the serious and lighter ones.

"For instance, in Syria, if a woman takes a man to court her family will shame her, but here that doesn't happen. Women are more free," he told me. "And it will explain how to do 'cheers' with people. I was at a bar after a few months being here, and we did cheers but then someone came up to me and told me if I didn't look people in the eye during cheers I got six years of bad luck." (Actually, Germans typically say you have six years of bad sex.)

Zain Hazzouri, who is working on Eedbeed, made this video on how to use the Berlin metro for new refugees

"I want this site to kill the hopelessness of waiting for asylum," said Denno, who arrived in Germany December 2014 but still hasn't gotten his asylum status because of the large backlog of applications. "In shelters, people are hopeless. They think they should wait for their documents from the German government and then they can start to study, but they don't have to wait to do things."

Preparing the new arrivals to become informed citizens, the site will include local news written in Arabic—both stories translated from German sites and firsthand reported articles, since Denno already has journalists on his team, who were recruited from a large network of Syrian friends in Berlin.

Denno's friend Rami Morad, a Damascus native, will lead Eedbeed's news coverage. He told me he's already spent months posting articles on his Facebook page about Berlin.

"I'd spend every day, sometimes 20 hours, translating articles from German to Arabic," said Morad, who also had acquaintances around the city who would send him news tips they saw on the street. "I've been here two years, and I know every centimeter of Berlin."

To encourage refugees to explore the city, an events calendar will feature at least five activities daily, such as German language sessions, sports matches, and dancing. Eedbeed will also a YouTube channel and content posted to Facebook. Denno's friend Zain Hazzouri is even creating a "Refugee Reality Show," in which a refugee will go to bars, restaurants, and events with a camera clipped to his or her collar to demonstrate basic norms here, like how to order a meal and how to pay a bill.

"All refugees start off staying in camps, and it's like another world for them here. They're embarrassed even to order water—do they pay first or get the water first?" Hazzouri, a lanky 20-year-old, told me. "And when they enter a restaurant what do they do, sit down or wait? The videos will offer simple ideas of how to act in the city."

Hazzouri, a self-taught videographer who studied mathematics in Syria, is also preparing straightforward how-to segments for more complicated tasks, like going to the doctor. He got the idea after making a how-to video about using the Berlin subway to help his German friend with a university class assignment.

"He was supposed to make a project that helped refugees, or migrants from everywhere, but they had us make it in English," said Hazzouri, who plans to remake the video in Arabic.

Hazzouri made the English project last year, two months after arriving in Germany, at a time when he was working any odd jobs he could—from cleaning to helping people move. He was desperate for money, since the German government had not yet provided him their promised benefits for asylum seekers.

"It was hard for me, because for my first six months here I got no money from the government since they lost my file," he said. But he maintained that it was "hardest for people from the villages" to adapt to Berlin, since the city environment was so foreign to them.

Hazzouri and Denno hope Eedbeed can offer practical tools—and can bridge more abstract cultural barriers.

"I would like to start to make the Arabic readers know about how we can have a many different minds," Denno said, "but we should live together."

Follow Meredith Hoffman on Twitter.

A Coroner’s Inquest Into the 2010 Police Killing of an Ontario Man Has Begun

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Photo by Jake Kivanc.

A coroner's inquest into the fatal police shooting of a Toronto man began Monday morning and is expected to last until September 23.

The investigation, observed by a jury and led by medical professionals, is meant to reexamine the case of Eric Osawe—a Toronto man who was killed in 2010 during a Toronto Emergency Task Force (ETF) raid on an Etobicoke apartment.

Osawe, a Nigerian-born father of two, had a history of run-ins with the police before September 29, 2010—the day the ETF raided the apartment with weapons drawn in search of weapons and drugs.

While attempting to restrain Osawe with the help of other officers, Const. David Cavanagh's MP5 submachine-gun—which was hanging from his vest by a sling—allegedly discharged a single bullet, which fatally wounded Osawe in his back.

Cavanagh was subsequently charged with second-degree murder by the SIU, but was cleared of all charges when the judge ruled that the incident was an accident, and that police had reason to believe that Osawe may have been armed, or would have tried to reach for an officer's weapon if given the chance.

The police also recovered a firearm from Osawe's home, which was used as evidence to Osawe's alleged involvement in criminal activities. In late 2015, a coroner's inquest was ordered after calls from the family and community to have another look at the case.

At the time of the original charges, Cavanagh was the first Toronto police officer to have been charged with murder. However, in January 2016, Toronto Police Const. James Forcillo was convicted of the attempted murder of Sammy Yatim—the 18-year-old who was killed on a Toronto streetcar in July 2013—in what is considered by many as the most high-profile case of its kind in Canadian history.

Forcillo—who dodged second-degree murder after a jury found the fatal volley of shots to be justified—was sentenced to six years in prison in July, but has since appealed his ruling and is out on bail.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Why the Prison Strikes Going on Across America Really Matter

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This piece was published in partnership with the Influence.

Summer is drawing to an end here in the South, but in the region's prisons—and across the most incarcerated nation on earth—things are just starting to heat up.

Friday marked the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising. It also saw the launch of a coordinated series of nationwide work stoppages and hunger strikes by incarcerated Americans, perhaps the largest of its kind in history.

Organizers (and, as a formerly incarcerated person, I am one of them) currently estimate that incarcerated workers at more than 40 facilities in at least 24 states are participating. Since prison administrations' knee-jerk response to these actions is to lock down the facilities—and since, as I predicted when I previewed these actions last month, mainstream-media coverage is muted—it's difficult to gauge precisely how widespread the strikes are, where exactly inmates are striking, and how successful they've been.

But reports have trickled in from around the country, and through networks of organizers, media reports and communications from incarcerated people, we've worked to keep track.

One of the earliest reports came from Holman State Prison in Atmore, Alabama. The state has been a hotbed of prison organizing since at least 2014, when the Free Alabama Movement (FAM), inspired by the 2010 Georgia prison strikes, began to crystallize. Growing out of a class for jailhouse lawyers, FAM has become one of the leading voices in national discussions of prison reform and abolition.

According to inmates there, around noon on September 9, "All inmates at Holman Prison refused to report to their prison jobs without incident. With the rising of the sun came an eerie silence as the men at Holman laid on their racks reading or sleeping. Officers are performing all tasks."

At publication time, Holman's officers were still performing those tasks, with no signs of change.

Prior to the official strike kickoff, inmates at Holmes Correctional Institution, in the Florida panhandle, led an uprising that forced the facility to be shut down. More than 400 inmates participated in that rebellion, which the prison administration has linked to the national strikes.

As the list of facilities involved expands, the South continues to lead the way. Prisoners in multiple Alabama prisons, at least two other Florida prisons, Fluvanna women's prison in Virginia, and prisoners in North Carolina and South Carolina all reportedly engaged in various forms of resistance. Most Georgia prisoners don't work on Fridays, but some on-the-ground reports indicate that they plan to join the actions when their work week begins today (September 12).

But the South does not stand alone. More than 400 prisoners at Kinross Correctional Facility, Michigan, held a protest on the prison yard and caused property damage to the prison, prompting officials to transfer 150 of them to other facilities. Clallam Bay Correctional Center in Washington State is also said to be on lockdown after actions there.

Many women prisoners are involved: Those held at Central California Women's Prison, a women's prison in Nebraska, at Lincoln (Nebraska) Correctional Center, a women's prison in Kansas, and at Merced Jail in California have either refused to work, are on hunger strike, and/or have led uprisings in their facilities, I'm told.

It's significant that so much of the resistance is focused on women's facilities (although this certainly isn't without precedent: The 1974 Bedford Hills and 1975 North Carolina Correctional Institute for Women uprisings are two of the most significant events in US prison history). Women, especially young women of color, make up the fastest-growing corrections population, at least in local jails. And the history of resistance in US women's prisons continues to rapidly unfold, even if the media pays it little attention.

The actions haven't been limited to jails and prisons, either. Friends, family, and supporters of incarcerated people took to the streets across the country to express solidarity and support for the strikes. Atlanta, Arizona, Portland, Lucasville (Ohio), Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, St. Louis, New York, Providence, Richmond, Durham, Austin, Denver, Los Angeles, and plenty of other large and small US cities have seen protestors, sometimes numbering into the hundreds, take to the streets or picket prisons.

In Atlanta, where I live, about 50 people disrupted business Friday at Wendy's, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Aramark—companies that have been accused of exploiting barely compensated incarcerated labor—during street protests. According to witnesses, police responded by trying to run over protesters and dousing protesters, bystanders, and one another with pepper spray.

On Saturday, protesters from as far away as Atlanta and Athens, Georgia, met with members of Mothers and FAMilies (of FAM) to stage a solidarity protest outside the gates of Donaldson Correctional Facility in central Alabama.

Solidarity also came from outside the US—including Quebec, and from as far away as Greece, where prisoners offered a salute to their US counterparts, as well as Serbia. Such a broad display of unity and support across prison walls is unprecedented.

Strike organizers in different cities and states have expressed a broad range of goals, some immediate and some longer-term, but one theme ties the actions together: an end to prison slavery.

FAM organizers point out that the "13th Amendment to the US Constitution continues to permit slavery to exist in this country 'as Punishment for crime whereof the person shall been duly convicted,' and the institution and enterprise of slavery was legally transferred to the State government's prison systems." (Read the full text of the 13th amendment here.)

What constitutes a "crime" is, of course, a political decision—and one often taken deliberately to the detriment of certain populations, as the history of the war on drugs perfectly demonstrates. The modern prison system has been built on the ashes of chattel slavery, first through the convict leasing system, then the notorious "chain gangs"—which lasted into the 1950s—up to modern mass incarceration. As long as prison slavery is protected by the US Constitution, poor people and people of color will continue to find themselves victims of a harsh system that exploits free and cheap labor for the benefit of the state, corporations, and the ruling class.

Today, the signs of oppression and institutional violence are inescapable. Reports of police killing unarmed people of color have become commonplace, so much so that only the most outrageous cases gain national attention. Many of us barely bat an eye at the nonstop stream of stories about people behind bars being physically or sexually abused by guards and being forced to live and work in deplorable conditions, often without access to basic medical care or adequate food.

We also live in a time of resistance that our country hasn't seen in well over a generation, if ever. People directly impacted by modern mass incarceration, draconian drug policies, police violence, and the laws intended to protect but end up criminalizing sex workers by police violence—they are not only demanding change, they're making it themselves.

That, perhaps more than anything else, sets these modern social movements apart from liberation struggles of the past.

At the actions in Atlanta on Friday, a police captain, as soon as he appeared on the scene, asked protesters, "Who are the leaders?" Our group didn't miss a beat, responding that "we're all leaders." The system doesn't know how to respond to a movement without leaders to intimidate, harass, or even assassinate. In fact, the tone of the police changed dramatically after that, with officers allowing us to march in the streets to our final stop at Aramark, one of the biggest prison contractors in the country.

Whether the current growing wave of strikes will result in an end to prison slavery, of course, remains to be seen. Right now, events are unfolding so fast it's difficult to keep pace. But one thing is certain: Like Attica before it, September 9, 2016, opened a new chapter in US prison history.

Where this goes will be up to the people on the inside putting what little freedom they have on the line, and those of us on the outside fighting for their voices to be heard.

These strikes are the result of years of planning by people on both sides of the prison walls and follow on the heels of dozens of smaller strikes and uprisings that have swept through the prison system in the last six years. Many of us carry the scars of having lived through the largest prison system in world history for years, even decades, after we're released—if we're released at all.

Which is why solidarity is vital. It's easy to turn a blind eye to the struggles of people society has branded "criminals" when we haven't walked in their shoes. Hell, it's even tempting for those of us who have served time to turn our backs and forget about our incarcerated neighbors once we leave those jail and prison cells.

But incarcerated people are our neighbors today—odds are there's a county jail, probably even a state detention facility, in your backyard—and most incarcerated people will be released one day.

Slavery is alive and well in the modern US. The wheels to undo it are in motion at this very moment. How will we respond when they ask where we were while they screamed out for compassion, support, and solidarity? On which side of history will we wake up tomorrow?

Now, perhaps more than ever before in our lives, it's time to ask ourselves such questions.

The prison strikes are sponsored and supported by a broad coalition, including Free Alabama Movement, the Formerly Incarcerated, Convicted People, and Families Movement, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Ordinary People Society, various Anarchist Black Cross Federation local chapters, the National Lawyers Guild, It's Going Down, along with many other organizations and individuals. For updates on what actions are taking place and which facilities are currently on lockdown, visit the IWOC Facebook page.This site also has a link to a document with regularly updated information on the actions.

Jeremy Galloway is a harm-reduction coordinator at Families for Sensible Drug Policy, program director at Southeast Harm Reduction Project, co-founder of Georgia Overdose Prevention, and a state-certified peer-recovery specialist. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and three cats. He writes and speaks regionally about drug-policy reform, harm reduction, his experiences, and the importance of including the voices of directly impacted people in policy decisions.

A version of this article was originally published by the Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow the Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Police Are Trying to Figure Out Who Left a Human Heart in an Ohio Park

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Image via Wikicommons and iPhone emoji

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After weeks of investigating, police are still trying to trace a human heart discovered in a field in Ohio back to its rightful owner, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Back in August, an EMS crew from a small town outside of Cleveland parked an ambulance next to a field and left to respond to a service call. When they got back about an hour later, the paramedics noticed a strange bag in the grass next to the truck. When they peeked inside the sack, they found what appeared to be a ripely dissected human heart, left for the crew like a little gift.

"It was fresh; it wasn't decomposed," local police chief Dave Light told the Norwalk Reflector. "The paramedics weren't sure what they had, so they called us."

No one is completely certain who the heart belonged to, or if it even belonged to a human at all—human hearts can look a whole lot like dog, pig, and chimpanzee hearts, so police took the loose muscle to both a coroner and a veterinarian to perform biopsies.

"They're 95 percent sure it was human," Light told the Reflector, "but they want to make 100 percent sure."

Ohio officials are currently waiting to get the reports back from both the biopsies. So far, no one has stepped forward to claim the missing heart or to report some kind of freaky Blue Velvet scenario.

Read: Some Guy Stole a Human Brain and Used the Fluid to Get High

Exclusive: RCMP Arrested This Ottawa Man Over Terrorism Fears Last Month

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Within days of a foiled terror plot that ended in the death of Aaron Driver, a known Islamic State supporter in southern Ontario, Canada's federal police arrested another young man over fears he would participate in terrorism, VICE News has learned.

Ottawa man Tevis Gonyou-McLean, 24, was arrested on August 12 and charged with uttering a threat to cause death or harm to another person. The RCMP are also pursuing a terror-related peace bond against him over fears that he might engage in terrorism at home and abroad.

At the end of August, Gonyou-McLean was released on a $1,000 bond and 27 bail conditions that heavily restrict his behaviour and movements, according to court records.

His name appears on a list provided to VICE News by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada that, experts say, paints the most complete picture of who has been pursued under terror-related peace bonds, which are legal tools used to restrict an individual's movements when there may not be enough evidence to lay a criminal charge.

The bail conditions forbid him from communicating with four other Ottawa men who have been embroiled in terrorism cases. They are: twin brothers, Carlos and Ashton Larmond, who recently pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit acts of terror; Awso Peshdary who will stand trial later this year for his alleged role as primary recruiter for a homegrown terrorist network; and Luqman Abdunnur, who was arrested in 2014 after he praised the shooting on Parliament Hill that year.

The reasons for the accusations against Gonyou-McLean are not outlined in the court document.

His mother told VICE News in an interview that he began espousing extremist views after he converted to Islam in March 2015.

The RCMP confirmed to VICE News in an email that Tevis Gonyou-McLean was arrested by the RCMP Ottawa Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET), and is facing a criminal charge as well as a terror-related peace bond application.

Because of a court ordered publication ban, "the RCMP will not be commenting any further on this matter," said RCMP spokesperson Annie Delisle.

Under his extensive list of bail conditions, Gonyou-McLean must wear an electronic ankle monitor and live in the special care unit at the Salvation Army, designed for adult men who have "spiritual, emotional and physical needs." Some conditions are related to mental health issues, including that he stay in touch with a mental health worker. He is also required to check in with his bail supervisor five days a week.

The Ottawa Salvation Army, where Tevis Gonyou-McLean has been ordered to reside. Photo by Fangliang Xu

"You don't have to be nervous around me," Gonyou-McLean told VICE News during a meeting at the Salvation Army Friday evening.

He was wearing a hat and a wrinkled grey button-down shirt. Having just woken up from a nap, his eyes were red. He works the late-night shift at a local pizza shop, the only other place he's allowed to be outside of the Salvation Army. Sitting on a chair in the corner of the common room, he lifted up his pant leg to reveal the black electronic monitor wrapped around his ankle.

Gonyou-McLean declined to speak about his case on the record, on the advice of his lawyer, Biagio Del Greco, who is currently out of the country. Del Greco's colleague, Brett McGarry, confirmed to VICE News that his firm is representing Gonyou-McLean. "We will have to reserve comment until we receive the evidence, which we haven't seen yet," he said.

The unit where Gonyou-McLean is staying is just minutes away from Canada's federal Parliament buildings, the site of Canada's most high-profile terror attack, where Michael Zehaf-Bibeau opened fire at police and security after killing a Canadian soldier guarding the war memorial outside.

In addition to not communicating with the group of convicted and alleged Ottawa extremists, Gonyou-McLean is also barred from speaking to or going near his mother Tamara McLean, although the records don't explain why.

In an interview on Sunday, McLean said that she is going to be called as a witness in the case against her son—although she said she wasn't aware there had been a peace bond application filed against him. McLean wouldn't go into the details of the case for fear of jeopardizing it.

She said she was there when Gonyou-McLean was arrested by police officers on August 12th at his apartment building, the first time he had been arrested in his life.

"I didn't know what was happening. I was just standing in the parking lot and they came out of nowhere," she said. "It was quite a shock to me. I didn't expect he was going to be arrested."

McLean said her son has struggled with mental health issues for years, and has used drugs throughout his teens and early 20s. "He was a lot like the other young men who've ended up in this situation," she said, referring to other radicalized Canadians. "He didn't like school, he was doing drugs all the time."

Then in the summer of 2014, he became a devout Christian and began worshipping at a local evangelical church. "He was even baptized in the Ottawa River," McLean said. It was surprising because she and her ex-husband, Gonyou-McLean's stepfather, who recently retired from the Canadian Armed Forces, didn't talk about religion much at home. He never had much contact with his biological father.

"I think he's searching and has always been searching for something, somewhere to belong." And turning to Christianity had made him a better person, McLean said.

"He said he was going to clean up his life and seemed very positive about doing that."

But things took a turn in November of 2014. He left the church, started using drugs again and his behaviour deteriorated. "He said that hadn't worked out and that he didn't believe in what they were preaching," she said.

The Islam Care Centre, which Tevis Gonyou-McLean attended. Photo by Fangliang Xu

A few months later, in March of 2015, Gonyou-McLean told his mother that he was converting to Islam. She was shocked.

"When he talked about converting, I had a conversation with him that there were two paths to go down in Islam: the good path of becoming a good Muslim, and the radicalization path. And he said he wanted to be a good Muslim," said McLean. "And obviously we know how that turned out."

McLean said that once her son started espousing extreme views, there wasn't much she could do to steer him away from it. "We've tried to support him and give him good values and I just don't think with any of these kids that when they get radicalized, there's a whole lot you can do," she said.

According to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, Gonyou-McLean is one of nine people who have pending applications for peace bonds against them—three of whom are facing formal terrorism charges.

Only one person, Kadir Abdul, is on an active peace bond that has been officially granted by the court. Abdul, 27, signed the peace bond order in July after he was arrested by RCMP earlier this year over fears he would leave the country to participate in terrorism.

Ten terror peace bonds have expired, according to that list, including that of Aaron Driver, another recent convert who was the same age as Gonyou-McLean. Many of the other expired peace bonds were pursued a decade ago as part of the investigation into the Toronto 18 group.

Driver was ultimately killed by police in August as he was leaving his residence in a taxi armed with a makeshift bomb near London, Ontario. Driver, who for years expressed his support for ISIS through social media, was never charged with a crime, but was arrested twice by police in 2015 and the court eventually granted his peace bond application over terrorism fears.

Because Driver clearly violated his bail terms and the conditions of his peace bond, his case has prompted discussion as to whether terror peace bonds are an effective anti-terror tool.

Since 2001, courts in Canada have granted peace bonds in cases where police feared someone might commit terrorism. Last year, the previous Conservative government overhauled the peace bond system as part of its anti-terror legislation (Bill C-51) and made it easier for police to request peace bonds. Since then, police have increasingly relied on them as a tool to prevent acts of terror where formal charges cannot be laid.

Gonyou-McLean is also forbidden from leaving Ottawa. He cannot access the internet, possess any object "with the logo of the listed terrorist entity ISIS/ISIL/The Islamic State," or "access or view any listed terrorist group materials, electronic or otherwise, that advocate or support the use of violence, or espouse extremist or radical views to achieve political, religious or ideological ends."

Apartment building that Tevis Gonyou-McLean lived in, on Cederwood Drive, at the time of his arrest. Photo by Fangliang Xu

In addition to being prohibited from contacting his mother, he must also avoid contact with Eric Tibbetts, a third-year Carleton university student who recently converted to Islam and has been involved with various Muslim community groups across the city.

Earlier this year, Tibbetts told reporters that he feared he was being targeted for radicalization by Awso Peshdary, one of the men Gonyou-McLean isn't allowed to communicate with under the terms of his release. Peshdary is facing criminal charges for recruiting people for what the RCMP describe as a "terror cluster" in Ottawa that allegedly also included brothers Ashton and Carlos Larmond who are currently serving prison sentences for conspiring to commit terrorism.

Tibbetts told the Ottawa Citizen that he met Peshdary at a dinner hosted in Ottawa by the Islam Care Centre in 2014.

As recently as last summer, Gonyou-McLean attended events at the Islam Care Centre. His mother said she would sometimes go with him.

The director of the Islam Care Centre, Omar Mahfoudhi, told VICE News he knew of Gonyou-McLean and his mother, but wouldn't elaborate further.

Gonyou-McLean also attended prayers and lectures at the Ottawa Mosque, although the vice president of the Ottawa Muslim Association, Ahmed Ibrahim, told VICE News he had no idea who he was. "We don't ask if people are new converts," Ibrahim said at the mosque on Saturday. "We welcome everyone."

Gonyou-McLean's next court date is scheduled for the end of September.

Follow Rachel on Twitter.

With files from Davide Mastracci.


The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election: A Timeline of the Conspiracies, Rumors, and Controversies Over Hillary Clinton's Health

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1841: William Henry Harrison, America's 34th coolest president, dies of pneumonia just a month after taking office.

1919: President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke while promoting his League of Nations idea. In the aftermath, his wife, Edith, keeps his incapacitation as secret as she can, screening his correspondence and even signing his name in some cases.

1996: Bill Clinton, then running for a second presidential term, gives an interview about his health to the New York Times. His Republican opponent, Bob Dole, had been making Clinton's well-being a campaign issue, even though the president hadn't had any serious illnesses. The Times story is exhaustive: Clinton confirms he's never had an STD; sleeps with a wedge that raises the head of his bed and "no question, it helps"; and says he's allergic to cat dander and smoke, which is why he gave up cigars (this turned out to maybe be a little fib?). During the interview, Clinton promises to tell the public about any serious illness he contracts while in office. Concerns about the health of a nation's ruler were relatively widespread even before the days of modern democracy, so all this is pretty routine.

2008: John McCain—then 71 years old and with a history of skin-cancer scares—lets the press look through his medical records. The Republican nominee probably took this odd step because he was looking ahead to the race against Barack Obama, 25 years his junior and in obvious good health.

December 2012: Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state, faints while suffering from the flu and hits her head badly enough to cause a concussion. This concussion in turn causes a blood clot near her brain, and she is hospitalized. Even at this point, she is seen as a probable 2016 presidential candidate, so speculation that there will be speculation about her health begins to circulate.

2013: According to a later note from Clinton's doctor, Lisa Bardack, she is tested for any lingering effects of the concussion and clot, and she's found to be essentially fine, though she is put on an anticoagulation medication.

2014: Infamous Republican operative Karl Rove says that "we need to know what's up with" Clinton's medical condition, a bit of rumormongering that Democrats push back against immediately.

2014–2015: Ed Klein, a prolific anti-Clinton journalist whose sources are sometimes, ah, a little suspect, publishes two books in which he claims that Hillary Clinton is hiding health problems from the public and has a series of strokes.

July 28, 2015: Clinton's doctor releases a note explaining the candidate's medical history, including detailed information about the 2012 concussion. "She is in excellent physical condition and fit to serve as President of the United States," the letter concludes.

December 4, 2015: Donald Trump's doctor sends out a similar note, though in keeping with Trump's general trend toward making the biggest, splashiest, most luxurious public statements possible, he goes further than Clinton's doctor while also being much less detailed. "If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

So. Trump is 70, Clinton is 68, and both are apparently healthy enough to be president. There are whispers around the nuttier margins that Clinton is sick, and there's a cottage industry of folks who say Trump is a narcissist, but it doesn't seem like the health of either candidate will be nearly as important as their temperaments and personalities. Thanks for reading this timeline, everyone! Article over.

Early 2016: OK, well, maybe it's not actually over, because some fringe-y right-wing sites like WorldNetDaily and Breitbart are spreading rumors that Clinton is secretly sick, but these are just echoes of the Klein books, and no one reputable picks them up. Whatever.

Summer 2016: Some conspiracy-minded YouTube channels post slowed-down videos of Clinton that they say prove she has Parkinson's or some bullshit like that. Outside of the comically credulous InfoWars wing of Trump voters, no one cares. This is still a non-story.

August 7: Or... it is a story after all? An old photo of Clinton being caught by her handlers when she slipped walking up some stairs is widely circulated on conservative websites, including the Drudge Report. #HillarysHealth becomes a popular Twitter hashtag.

August 8: Fake medical records purporting to show that Clinton suffers from dementia spread online.

The next week: Sean Hannity of Fox News, who has been unashamedly sucking up to Trump even by the standards of the conservative cable network, devotes major time to the alleged controversy surrounding Clinton's health, interviewing medical experts and asking if she could be suffering seizures.

Mid August: Trump seems to nod to these rumors when he starts talking about how Clinton lacks "physical stamina" in stump speeches. By now, many prominent mainstream news outlets have explained in detail why these theories about Clinton's health are pretty nutty—but Trump supporters aren't inclined to trust mainstream news outlets, and in any case, the very fact that this has to be debunked means it's no longer a mere rumor but part of the campaign.

By August 21: Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor now working full-time as a Trump hype man, tells Fox viewers to google "Hillary Clinton illness"; Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson claimed on MSNBC that Clinton had brain damage.

August 22: Clinton appears on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and jokes about all this, opening a jar of pickles as a way of laughing off concerns about her strength.

August 23: Alex Jones thinks that the pickle stunt was fake and brings out his own pickle jar to "prove" it.

August 28: Trump goes on Twitter to say that he thinks both he and Clinton should release their medical records. "I have no problem in doing so! Hillary?" he tweets.

September 5: Clinton coughs a lot during a campaign event, a fit her camp blames on allergies.

September 8: Like a cold that just won't quit, Clinton's health is a now full-blown story. The New York Times reports that releasing "full medical records" for anyone is pretty difficult and complicated.

September 9: Clinton is examined by Bardack and is diagnosed with pneumonia, though this information isn't revealed to the public.

September 11: While attending a 9/11 anniversary event in New York City, Clinton basically collapses and has to be helped into a car. Her campaign says Clinton felt "overheated" before revealing that the candidate actually had pneumonia. Later that afternoon, Clinton appears in front of the press to demonstrate that she's fine, but she also cancels a trip to California.

The video of Clinton being carried into her car, unlike the old out-of-context clips of her having "seizures," actually does make her look sick, because she is sick. But more than that, the Clinton campaign's handling of the incident invites a lot of very simple questions:

If you know that the candidate's health is an issue—no matter how dumb you think it is—why not tell everyone about the pneumonia on Friday? If Clinton's biggest weakness is her reputation for secrecy, why hide information about her health, especially when hiding information about her health is LITERALLY WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN ACCUSED OF BY YOUR ENEMIES FOR MONTHS? Why even attend a public event in the heat when you are seriously ill?

Also on September 11: That night, Trump's campaign tells Bloomberg that he's not going to weigh in on the whole pneumonia thing, preferring to stay out of the spotlight and let the press focus on Clinton.

September 12: Oops never mind—on Fox News, Trump again pledges to release more of his medical information and says that the two candidates' health is "an issue." Only 56 days until Election Day.

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The VICE Guide to Right Now: How One Artist Ended Up Stranded on a Bankrupt Company’s Cargo Ship

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View from the stranded Hanjin Geneva. Photo via Instagram

A British artist completing a Vancouver gallery residency is stuck aboard a mammoth container ship off the coast of Japan.

For almost two weeks, Rebecca Moss and the ship's crew have been stranded on board the giant boat, which is slowly circling about 40 kilometres offshore, after its South Korean owner, Hajin Shipping Company, filed for bankruptcy protection.

The company, the seventh-largest shipping company in the world, is drowning in debt, and ports around the world aren't allowing its ships to dock because the company can't pay the fees associated with docking, storage and unloading its cargo.

As of last Monday, the company said 73 of its container ships, holding upwards of $14 billion in cargo and countless crew members, were stranded at sea around the world.

Moss boarded the Hanjin Geneva destined for Shanghai for Access Gallery's Twenty-Three Days at Sea residency, in which artists are placed on board container ships.

That's how the 25-year-old artist found herself in the middle of a story about a global shipping crisis.

"Still waiting on the Hanjin Geneva. Another week of inactivity and absence of communication?" she tweeted on Sunday.

"'Stranded' implies that this inaction is an accident, we are deliberately being kept here by Hanjin Shipping," she tweeted on September 10.

"Still waiting on Hanjin Geneva without an end-point to this madness," she tweeted on September 9.

"Captain and crew working extremely hard on Hanjin Geneva, I wonder how long we will be made to float here," she tweeted on September 7.

Photo via Instagram

"We are in close communication with Moss; she and the crew are safe, and the captain is currently working to secure a port for their vessel," the gallery's director Kimberly Phillips wrote in a statement.

Most media have emphasized that Moss is stranded at sea, but Phillips tells VICE News, "She's perfectly fine, she's just witnessing a global financial event." The gallery director said the German ship is stocked with a month's worth of food and water, so Moss has been eating well—mostly sausages.

Phillips said the gallery is in touch with the British consulate, but the consulate has said this isn't an emergency since no one's life is at immediate risk, though they continue to monitor the situation. Moss signed a contract that included the possibility of delays, and she wasn't scheduled to arrive in Shanghai until September 14, the director said.

"I can't begin to describe how it feels to look out the window and see a huge stack of containers, surrounded by miles of ocean in every direction, and realize they actually don't have a destination," Moss wrote in an email to Phillips on Wednesday. "All the labour, the scale of this operation, just feels even more completely insane now."

"She's very interested in how humans insert themselves into the natural environment and so in a sense, being on a huge ship, which doesn't have a port, which is filled with cargo that can't go anywhere is kind of comedic in a wry kind of way," Phillips said. "This situation allows her to explore some of those themes, which she was going to do anyway."

According to her bio on the gallery's website, the London, UK-based artist is focused on comedy, and "stages interventions, stunts, experiments and games within the landscape to create slapstick scenarios that the artist feels to have emotional and political potential."

VICE News was unable to reach Moss for comment.

Hanjin's financial issues were caused by an oversupply of ships and a lack of cargo, but there is some hope in sight now that some of the company's ships have been allowed to dock in the US.

Last week, a US judge granted Hanjin temporary protection from asset seizures after the company's lawyers said a South Korean court had approved the release of $10 million to unload four ships, the Associated Press reported. The Hanjin Greece unloaded its containers in Long Beach, California over the weekend, with three more ships expected to do the same, according to the Wall Street Journal.

According to Bloomberg News, the company is seeking stay orders from judges in 43 countries so more of its boats won't be seized.

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Creep Catchers Are Gaining Momentum After Busting a BC Mountie and Sheriff

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Surrey Creep Catchers chased down this man outside a restaurant last week. Still via Facebook

It's been a relatively successful couple of weeks for vigilante child predator hunters in Canada.

Last Friday, Surrey RCMP announced they were investigating one of their own officers for child luring and sexual exploitation as a result of a Wednesday night Creep Catchers sting.

A video posted to Surrey Creep Catchers' Facebook page shows chapter president Ryan Laforge confronting a man who he calls a "cop pedo." The police were later called in and apprehended a suspect—a Mountie whose name has not yet been released. RCMP spokesman Rob Vermeulen told VICE the officer has been suspended with pay and was released after a judicial hearing with a number of conditions.

"We continue to liaise with Crown Counsel with respect to charges," he said. The lack of charges explains why the officer hasn't been publicly identified.

Read more: These Vigilante 'Creep Catchers' Bait and Trap Alleged Child Molesters

Meanwhile, an Okanagan group called Creep Hunters identified a BC sheriff in late August as having expressed interest in a sexual relationship with someone he believed to be a 14-year-old girl. The sheriff reportedly responded to a fake Craigslist ad posted by Creep Hunters and sent several photos of himself, including two where he was in uniform, and a couple of dick pics.

Speaking to Global News, a woman who identified herself as a decoy for Creep Hunters said the sheriff "had placed an ad about a father and daughter fantasy he had."

After being confronted by a couple of Creep Hunters members in a parking lot, the sheriff bailed, but later reached out to the decoy "asking me what he could do so I don't ruin his life." She told Global the sheriff is the third person she's hunted who is a member of the justice system.

The BC Justice Ministry told VICE the sheriff "is no longer a public service employee" but did not say if criminal charges have been laid against him.

The developments appear to fly in the face of heavy criticism lodged at civilian child predator hunters by law enforcement agencies who condemn vigilantism.

"Creep Catchers is proving that we, the people, have to take control of our lives again. We can't trust the police or government to protect us," reads a post by Paul Jeeves on the Surrey Creep Catchers Facebook wall. "We need to have to right to protect our families and property, without the worry that WE will be arrested because we exercised that right."

However, the group demonstrated its own shortcomings by wrongly identifying an innocent Mountie—Dan Johnson—as the suspect from last week's sting. Laforge said a name he said on camera sounded similar to Johnson's and other Creep Catchers wrongly assumed Johnson was the suspect.

In a statement released Friday RCMP Assistant Commissioner Brenda Butterworth-Carr said "I would also like to take this time to ensure there is absolute clarity that the police officer we are dealing with is not Const. Dan Johnson as some individuals have indicated on social media. The misinformation and unfair assumptions attached to Dan have been extremely difficult for him and his family and is an example of why we ask for an investigation, due process, and formal charges to be considered before any name is discussed publicly."

Toronto-based criminal lawyer Michael Lacy said the screw-up is just one reason why so-called vigilantes shouldn't take on the work of police. Another issue is that they could botch a police investigation by tipping off a potential criminal before there's enough evidence to make an arrest.

"Because they're not trained investigators... they may not gather evidence that can be used in court," Lacy told VICE. He said they can also put themselves in harm's way and unlike police, they're not trained in use of force.

"I don't think these organizations should feel emboldened by the fact that what they've done has led to an arrest."

But, judging by the rate at which Creep Catchers branches have popped up across the country, the trend is unlikely to stop any time soon.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Corporations Have Finally Made Weed Boring

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All photos by the author

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There was a time, I'm told, when sparking up a joint was just about the most subversive move one could make. That hasn't been true for a long time—certainly not since celebrities from Wiz Khalifa to Whoopi Goldberg have started launching marijuana products the way celebrities used to launch handbag lines.

With five states voting to legalize recreational weed this November, and four more voting on medical marijuana, legal pot is expected to be a $7 billion industry by the end of this year, according to market research. And that means a new wave of corporate interest in Big Bud, with a whole slew of companies hoping to "get rich or high trying."

Nowhere was this more apparent than at last week's Cannabis World Congress and Business Exposition in Los Angeles, where you can see firsthand what happens when you cross one kind of green with another. This wasn't a showroom of bongs, pipes, and weed candies. Instead, there were 100 or so booths selling agricultural equipment, packaging materials, insurance, and accounting software suites to the thousands of industry professionals in attendance.


In some of the booths, enormous stainless-steel machines touted features like "vaveless expansion technology"; giant glass flask and beaker rigs towered over their sales teams like props that would seem too on-the-nose in a mad scientist laboratory scene. They spun and whirred, demonstrating just how well they could, I don't know, separate molecules? They looked almost like enormous bongs, but very expensive ones.

Related: Is a 'Starbucks of Pot' What Corporate Cannabis Really Needs?

A number of the vendors had no direct connection to the drug itself, but were presenting related business services. Robert Carp, a Boston-area attorney, was selling how-to guides for would-be dispensary owners to "help them avoid getting into a mess, or get them out of one." American Security Products, a company that makes safes, was marketing to dispensaries that needed a secure way to store product and cash.

At another booth, Vangst Talent Network, the "nation's largest cannabis staffing agency," promised to match clients with jobs in grow houses, dispensaries, and everything in between.

There was even a Tax Defense Partners booth, encouraging attendees to come out of the closet with their earnings. States with legal weed are collecting loads of annual tax revenue—nearly $70 million in Colorado and more than $1 billion in Washington—so dispensaries need solutions to manage those relationships with Uncle Sam. As the woman working the booth explained to me, a lot of dispensaries use their in-house ATM receipts when filing their taxes, which probably isn't going to cut it for long.

Watch: Inside Canada's New Corporate Weed System

Dispensaries themselves were also getting a full capitalist makeover at the expo. Xander's Green Goods, a dispensary in Washington State, had easily the most opulent booth in the room with its faux-foliage walls and handsome wood paneling. Xander's, one of three dispensaries in the portfolio of weed umbrella company Cannar, has been touted as the poster-child template for the classy pot shops of tomorrow and was presenting franchising packages for entrepreneurs who wished to copy its successful business model.

Despite the encroaching big business, a few holdouts from the olden days peppered the expo aisles. This included new-agey Buddha Bliss massage oil, cannabis-infused wine, and even a guy selling fake books with little lockboxes inside, an homage to the days when you actually had to hide your stash.

The real indication that weed has officially become boring was that the expo's keynote speaker wasn't a stoner hero like Tommy Chong or Snoop Dogg, but Montel Williams, your mom's favorite television personality. Williams, who's been a proponent for medical cannabis since he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999, spoke to the crowd about his new medicinal company, Lenitiv Scientific, and his mission to legitimize CBD, the non-psychoactive part of cannabis that offers pain relief without getting you high.

"People need to remember that this whole movement was built on the backs of patients," Williams said. "Lot of people wanna be weed slingers and bud tenders. There're still patients out there that need taken care of. Get us off the battlefield first."

A number of expo attendees I spoke with were disappointed to learn I'd found the event so stuffy and boring. But in the bigger picture, that's not all bad. Sure, weed might not be as cool now that its cheerleaders are wearing suits and talking about tax revenue, but this sort of legitimacy is what many advocates have been working for all along.

The event's singular moment of raucousness came later, on a rooftop afterparty for the conference, when a guest stripped down to his briefs and cannonballed into a hot tub. The crowd briefly glanced over at the scene, assessed whether or not they'd been in the splash zone, and then turned back to their networking conversations.

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election: How Bad Is It That Hillary Clinton Has Pneumonia?

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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stops her speech to cough at the 11th Congressional District Labor Day festival at Luke Easter Park in Cleveland, Ohio, Monday, September 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Hillary Clinton was forced to leave a 9/11 memorial ceremony on Sunday early, owing to a bout of illness. It happens. People get sick. But Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has been plagued, as it were, by the notion that she's in poor health. Much of the bad press has been tabloid coverage saying she's essentially a ticking time bomb, along with concern-trolling articles and conspiracies from right-wing media outlets about Clinton having horrible, fatal illnesses. Oh, and there's also a hashtag: "#hillaryshealth."

When Clinton had her health incident Sunday, all that rumormongering suddenly looked like it was validated—particularly when Clinton was seen collapsing like a sack of potatoes as she got into a van. Then that validation got a little muddled by footage of Clinton looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed hours later, resulting in yet another hashtag, "#hillarysbodydouble," intimating that she's too sick to appear in public at all and needed her lookalike Teresa Barnwell to fill in for her (that was not actually the case).

But Clinton's mysterious health problem has a name now, and it's a familiar one: pneumonia, according to Clinton's doctor. Pneumonia, as we all know, is an umbrella term for inflammation and fluid in a person's lungs, caused by a virus, bacterium, or even a fungus. Pneumonia causes coughing, fevers, trouble breathing, and—when sufferers are already sick, bedridden, or very old—it can be fatal. And at 68 years old, Hillary Clinton is no spring chicken.

So we got in touch with John Kress, a pulmonary specialist at the University of Chicago School of Medicine, to find out whether Clinton's case of pneumonia is a sign that she's a walking Jenga tower, ready to topple over any minute, or just one of the 5 to 10 million people who come down with the condition every year.

VICE: Not much information has been released on what kind of pneumonia this is, but Clinton's doctor has said she's on antibiotics. Does that mean it's bacterial?
Dr. John Kress: The statistical probability is that it's bacterial, although it certainly could be viral pneumonia. It's difficult to get an actual diagnosis, though , which they would send to a lab to try to identify an organism, though many times the samples don't disclose a particular organism.

What do you mean by "sputum"?
Coughing up mucus from the lungs, which often is green or yellowish in color. Some patients can produce a lot of sputum, and some can't. It's related to how strong the person is and her ability to generate a vigorous cough. It might also be that some pneumonias are more inclined to lead to substantial sputum production and some aren't.

Clinton appearing to produce significant sputum on September 5. Via Giphy

But in either case, would it be normal to provide antibiotics?
Usually we're going to give what are called empiric antibiotics. That is, we'd treat the common causes of pneumonia. I don't know if she's on medications that suppress her immune system. If not, it would probably be a standard, community-acquired-pneumonia treatment.

Some publications call this "walking pneumonia." What's that?
The term refers to the patient being ambulatory as opposed to in the hospital. It's kind of an old term, but it basically means you aren't hospitalized. The medical term would be "community-acquired pneumonia." Many patients with community-acquired pneumonia are treated without being hospitalized.

How would that cause a patient to faint?
It depends. If she's otherwise healthy and has no heart problems, then the coughing could lead to fainting just by virtue of the vigor with which the person coughs. That can actually tangibly impede blood flow back to the heart and make you dizzy. She might be dehydrated if she has bad pneumonia. There are a lot of things that could be in play there. Obviously if she has underlying heart disease .

At 68, it's probably safe to call Clinton "elderly." Is her age a big red flag when it comes to pneumonia?
I've definitely seen the term "elderly" changing year by year. Some doctors would describe that as elderly, but probably not. But she certainly isn't 21, how about that? And a middle-aged person could have trouble with vigorous coughing; in conjunction with dehydration and fevers, and that kind of thing, that could certainly lead to this type of problem. But assuming she doesn't have chronic illnesses, and isn't on medication that suppresses her immune system, I'd say the statistical probability for her recovery is pretty good.

Could a pneumonia diagnosis be a reflection of poor overall health?
This condition—assuming all the information about it is truthful—is not something that, by virtue of it happening, would likely result in a difficult road ahead, unlike a stroke, for example, or a heart attack or a seizure. If I were to reach into the magic hat, and pull out "heart attack," "stroke," "cancer," "seizure," or "community-acquired pneumonia," I'd be happy to get the community-acquired pneumonia.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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